“That’s where the fish have gone?” Jorie surmises.
“That’s right,” Sonny says. “He won’t find them here . . . and when these guys get hungry, they’ll eat anything: dead fish, rotting grass, moose calves, even their own cubs.”
“Goodness!” Jorie says. “How big are their cubs?”
“One tiny pound,” Sonny tells her. “You can hold one in the cup of your hand.”
“And how big is that one?” I ask, pointing toward the bridge.
“He’s probably between nine hundred and a thousand pounds . . . but in March, when he wakes up from napping all winter, stay faaar ay-way. He goes down to seven hundred pounds, and let’s just say he’s grocery shopping. There have been businessmen who have come in the spring and been delayed getting home from here by a couple days,” Sonny says. “You do not want to get in the path of a hungry bear.” He secures his ball cap down on his head. “Well, not much more we can do here if we can’t get from A to B. What do you say we get back in the plane and see what we see?”
We take off again, heading through the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes toward Katmai Volcano, whose last eruption in 1912 led to its reduction in height from 8,000 feet to 6,715 feet. Sonny zips the plane into the volcano’s crater and shouts to us over his shoulder, “I landed a plane in here once!”
“We believe you,” I tell him, “but let’s not try it again!”
Before us stands a verdant green mountain capped by a snow-white blanket and specked with spots as black as ants. “Caribou!” Sonny says. “There are just a few dozen of them here, but they’re part of a herd of thousands!”
He takes the scenic route back to Kulik Lodge, and Jorie and I cannot believe our eyes. The river below us is full of signal-red salmon on their annual run. They arrive from the ocean bright silver, and they turn red just prior to spawning. Then the male and the female lie on their sides and make a hole with their tails among the rocks at the bottom of the river. There the female deposits her eggs and the male fertilizes them. Together, they cover up the hole and move on upstream to repeat the process time and time and time again. Sadly, Sonny tells us, at the end of the spawning process, both male and female die and create food for the bears, the rainbow trout, and, of course, for their own baby salmon when they hatch—just part of nature’s cycle.
{Harold Lassers}
It is thrilling to watch pieces of tidewater glaciers break off in the afternoon sun. This calving can be very dramatic and create large waves.
Therefore, the rainbow trout here are massive, which no doubt contributes to the huge success of Kulik Lodge.
The next morning we wake at seven o’clock to a light rain. Optimistic that a drizzle won’t sabotage our day of fishing, we dress excitedly. By the time we enter the dining room for breakfast, though, the wind is shoving the rain at us in gusts of forty miles per hour. For the morning, we hide out in the dining room, telling stories until noon, when lunch is served: excellent spaghetti bolognese, a delicious salmon pâté, reindeer sausages, and peeled shrimp.
We return to our cabin to haul ourselves into our waterproof waders and boots. Vic, our guide for the day, awaits us down at the beach, where we climb into his small boat and go roaring up the Kulik River for our day of fly-fishing.
For the first twenty minutes, Vic teaches us how to cast—not an easy thing with the wind ripping at our poles. However, we both get the hang of it, and Vic sets us loose to start fishing. “If you’d like a little luck,” Vic says, “try fishing with this.”
I take the fly from his grip. “What is it?”
“A famous fly-tier made it, it’s a special fly. We call it the bunny hugger.”
“The bunny hugger?” Jorie says.
“Yes,” Vic says. “Yesterday, someone caught ten fish in an hour with it!”
“Go on,” I tell Jorie, “take it.”
“Why?” she asks. “You think I need the help?”
“Well, I suppose if you catch a trout, I can take the credit for having given you the bunny hugger!”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ve still given you the best fly with which to catch one!”
“Oh, I see, it’s a win-win for you!” she says.
Vic puts Jorie in the river first. As she begins to cast on her own, he comes down to me—and, on my very first cast, a rainbow trout hits the dry fly. “Quick! Reel it in!” he cries, but the fish escapes and swims away.
All afternoon we stay there fishing, wandering slowly downstream and casting. It’s certainly an interesting sport, standing up to your waist in freezing cold water, the rain and drizzle beating down on you, the howling wind, and basically for minutes on end . . . no action.
Then all at once, I hear a shout from upstream: Jorie’s got a trout. “I’ve caught him!” she shouts. “I’ve . . . almost . . . caught him!” Then suddenly, her expression is as vacant as her hands as the bunny hugger swishes toward me, just out of arm’s length. The fish—a huge rainbow trout that leaps high in the air on its way downstream—has bitten the bunny hugger right out of Jorie’s hands and escaped.
“Poor Jorie!” Vic calls. “You lost your trout and the bunny hugger!”
We laugh, Jorie the good sport included, despite the loss of her bunny hugger, and meander farther downstream. “At this point it’s more for the sake of the experience than the fish, wouldn’t you say?” Jorie says, and just then there’s a tug on my line.
“Vic!”
“Reel him in, Geoff!” Vic cries, and the three of us clamor in great excitement as I try to reel it in. This time the fish comes within ten feet of me, and then at the last minute he’s able to toss the fly.
“Let’s call it a day,” I say. “We’ve given it a good go.”
“One more cast,” Jorie says. “For good luck.”
We cast, wait patiently—and again a pull on my line. This time, I reel him in like the dickens, with whoops of joy when I get him with success. “This is probably the biggest one all day,” Vic says, unhooking him from my line. “He goes about two and a half pounds.”
“Not bad for our first try, Geoff!” Jorie says.
Quite pleased, I have to agree. “Not bad at all.”
“Okay,” Vic says. “Go on. Let him go.”
I take a good, long, longing look at my fish . . . and I toss him back downstream.
“Catch and release is a bear, eh?” Jorie says, patting me on the back in half-joking empathy.
“Having admired my trophy, I was happy to send him on his way,” I reply. “Not much, I hope, worse for the wear.”
“Indeed,” she says. “Honor prevails.”
When we return to Kulik Lodge, we pack hurriedly and visit the gift shop to buy some beautiful walrus ivory and a carved mammoth tusk. “You’re sure that it’s all right?” I ask Amy Bennett.
“Mr. Kent, these are only carved by the Aleut people. I promise you it’s totally controlled.”
We seek out Sonny Peterson to pay our fond farewell, and he tries to insist that we spend another night. He’s quite prepared, he says, to kick clients out of our cabin.
The Alaskans are so welcoming, like all pioneer people. “I’m going to miss this place when we return home in a few days,” Jorie says.
Bo Bennett stands assuredly outside our floatplane to check that we’re safely ensconced after we board. “This weather is especially horrendous today,” Bo hollers inside, as I glance up front to see who our pilot is.
Just then he turns around to me. “I’ve been flying the valleys around these parts for eighteen years,” he says. “I promise, Mr. Kent: you two are in good hands.”
The floatplane runs up and then lifts off ground, and when we’ve cleared the trees, I glance at the speedometer: one hundred and forty miles per hour. The pilot hugs the contours of every valley, dipping just fifty feet above the valley floors at some moments.
After just over two hours, we arrive in Fairbanks, where the local agent—very on top of all the details—takes our
luggage and checks us into our rooms at the Princess Riverside Lodge, one of the newest hotels in Fairbanks, located on the Chena River.
In the room we have a picnic lunch before a phone call causes me to rise. “Mr. Kent, I’m so sorry,” the local agent says. “There’s a possible change of plans, which I wanted to run past you before we shuffle any logistics.” She informs me that Bob Schuerman, the chief pilot and general manager of Frontier Airlines, has offered to take us in his own private aircraft tomorrow afternoon. “You’d be heading up to stay for a few days at Iniakuk Lake and visit the Yukon territory, which is an experience all of its own,” she says. “Bob called just to say how he’d love some time to meet with you and Mrs. Kent, but a plane ride north does so much more justice to the area than a restaurant or conference room.”
“Let me speak with my wife,” I tell her, “but this sounds fantastic.” Twenty-four hours later, Jorie and I are headed out the front entrance. “Back to the airport!” says our driver, taking our luggage for the van.
“Can you tell we can’t get enough Alaska?” Jorie replies.
At the airport, we’re delighted to discover that Bob’s plane is one in which we’ve both always wanted to travel: a Grumman G–44 Widgeon, which is a smaller version of the famous Grumman Goose. It’s a totally amphibious aircraft that was built during the Second World War—an antique and lovely old lady.
With no hesitation, Jorie hoists herself up front. “An aspiring copilot, I see?” Bob says, taking a rib out of my athletic but unassuming-appearing wife.
“Actually I’m a licensed pilot,” she says, acquainting herself with the controls. “Always wanted to fly one of these things.”
With astonished eyes, Bob turns to me in the back. I adjust our bags around myself and give him a closed-mouth grin. “My American girl,” I tell him. “We’re both licensed pilots, so I suggest she fly the first leg and I’ll fly the second.”
With that, he guns the engines.
We hurtle down the runway and lift off, heading toward Iniakuk Lake. I take out my guidebook: the lake is sixty miles above the Arctic Circle in the Brooks Range, near the boundary of the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. This is an area where there are no maintained roads, no telephones, no TV or radio stations, no restaurants, stores, hotels, or gas stations; and no emergency services are available, no hospital, ambulances, police, or fire stations. Unless visitors arrange for someone to rescue them, no one will. People still freeze and starve to death in remote cabins in this wilderness. Months may pass before their bodies are found. “Bob, it sounds like a free-spirited place we’re headed,” I call up front.
“I’ll say!”
“A real experience in self-reliance—”
“Or should we say suicide!” he says.
But one glimpse out the window proves the allure. The mountain scenery is beautiful, blazing with colorful lichens and wildflowers. “Go on, Jorie, you take it,” Bob says. For the next hour, Bob and I discuss opportunities to collaborate in Alaska as Jorie expertly pilots us north.
She and Bob combine forces to take a detour around the dreadful weather, and after two hours, we descend for Iniakuk Lake. Together, Jorie and Bob make the landing—an absolutely spectacular feat. In floatplanes, obviously the two floats hit the water first, but in the Grumman Widgeon, the main hull is first to meet the water. A massive wave crashes up over our front windows as we hit the top of the lake and skim along nosefirst.
Then Bob powers up the engines, which turns our plane into a high-powered speedboat. He accelerates until the hull with its floats rises out of the water, and when he arrives at the shore, he puts down the main wheels to bring the aircraft up onto the banks of the lake. “The Iniakuk Lake Wilderness Lodge,” Bob announces. “Unlike any place else you’ll ever stay.”
As we deplane, three figures approach us on the bank. They introduce themselves: Pat Gaedeke, who owns the Iniakuk Lake Wilderness Lodge, her son, John, and their well-known resident pilot, Don Glaser. “The Silver Fox!” I call to Don as he approaches to shake my hand. “You’re a legend, what is it? Thirty-five thousand hours of flying time?”
“Thirty-seven thousand,” he says with a flattered laugh. “Not that it’s like me to brag.”
No bragging necessary. Don’s experience only further complements the distinction of this lodge, which is 100 percent solar-powered. Staff arrive at the plane to port our luggage to our private cabin on the other side of the river. Bob bids us farewell and says he hopes to see us again soon, then Pat ushers us to the main lodge for dinner: grilled salmon followed by the best freshly picked blueberry pie I have ever tasted. The bread is spanking fresh, having been baked on the premises that afternoon.
“Pat, is your husband no longer around?” I ask her.
“No,” she says. “Six years ago we lost him in an airplane crash.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jorie says, visibly moved by Pat’s disclosure.
“Thank you,” Pat says. “John and I manage. Bernd first brought me to this area twenty-four years ago on our honeymoon, and we so fell in love with it that we just never left. We pioneered Headwaters Lake together—in fact, you’ll see it. The people in that area call it Gaedeke.”
“What did you put there?” I ask her.
“Bernd built some of the homes as specs and sold them, and he built us our own cabin. It’s a three-bedroom cabin with a fireplace.” She smiles. “Anyway, just wait until you see.”
“I can hardly wait,” Jorie says.
“As long as I’m in Alaska,” Pat says, “I feel him with me all the time. This lodge is his legacy. I’ll keep it going as long as I’m able.”
After dinner, Pat lightens the mood when she and her son show us into the main lodge’s storeroom. “Would you look at this?” she says, flipping on the light. Inside, the window is broken and a huge piece of paneling has been ripped from the wall.
“Who did this?” Jorie asks.
“It’s not ‘who,’” Pat says, “it’s ‘what’: a black bear!” The bear broke in early this morning, she says, and we scan the damage: the chest refrigerator is destroyed, as though the bear had climbed on top and jumped up and down on it. “It ate everything from inside,” she says, “including three boxfuls of Eveready batteries.” The only things it left, she says, were two tins full of mushrooms and chili peppers.
“Not much of a vegetables fan, I suppose,” Jorie says. “My heavens, can you imagine the stomachache?”
The next morning, we call for John. Since there are no roads, he comes and ferries us across the street to the little boat, which takes us to the terminal of the local airport, where Don Glaser’s Cessna 185 floatplane awaits us.
We take off on a lake over a mile and a half long filled with crystal clear, smooth water. Don flies us over Takahula Lake—turquoise and glorious—and Don says that here, guests love to board inflatable canoes and float down the river to be picked up again in five to six hours’ time. “That should go on A&K’s list of excursions,” Jorie says. “A nice piece of soft adventure.”
From there, the plane begins to climb. “Next site, the Arrigetch Peaks,” Don says. “We’ll fly up seven thousand feet. This is sure to be one of the highlights of your time in Alaska.” We sail over the glaciers, up, up, and up; and some of the walls of the peaks are as thin as razor blades, honed over the millions of years by glaciers. At one point, we reach a sheer vertical wall dropping 1,500 feet beneath us. Don continues to thread his way through the peaks, reading my mind when he says, “In my twenty years of flying these parts, I’ve never had a single crash.”
“Engine failure?”
“Just once,” he says. “But I was able to glide it and land.”
Over the ridge to the north of the Arrigetch, great excitement: a group of chalk-white dots on the green hills. “Dall sheep!” Jorie cries, and we count them, fourteen in all. Dall sheep are the only wild white sheep in the world, and native to Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory. “We are now north of the sixti
eth parallel,” Don says. “This is Alaska’s ultimate wilderness.”
“How far does it stretch?” Jorie asks him.
“Are you ready?”
She nods.
“Eight million acres.”
From here, Don takes us to the lake at the headwaters of the Alatna River, informally known to the locals as Gaedeke Lake, after Pat’s late husband, Bernd. It seems he’s sent us a happy omen when we discover our quest: the caribou migration.
I’ve read up on the caribou. Along with the deer and the moose, the caribou is one of the few species to shed their antlers completely. Both males and females have antlers, which begin to grow in late spring and are shed later in the year. They strike a strong resemblance to the fabled reindeer, and they are close cousins, but somehow the caribou appears stronger and more regal.
The tundra is dimpled with their tracks, and it reminds me of the Serengeti, its myriad spiderwebs across the land where the wildebeest trek in their migration. There are herds of caribou beneath us, easily in the hundreds. Don explains that when they’re all assembled, the main migration numbers four hundred thousand in this western Arctic herd.
Don lands us on Headwaters Lake and leads us to the cabin that Pat Gaedeke’s husband, Bernd, built for them. He walks inside to make coffee and light the fireplace, and Jorie and I take a seat on the cabin’s front porch. “What a place,” Jorie says. “Here we are, actually in the Arctic—”
“A hundred ten miles north of the Arctic Circle,” I add.
“This is the sixty-seventh parallel,” Don says, handing each of us a steaming mug. “You’re having coffee on the Continental Divide. Looking to our north, all the rivers run to the Arctic Ocean. To the south, all the waters flow to the Yukon River—”
“And from there to the Bering Sea?” I ask him.
“That’s exactly right.”
“And to think that Pat’s husband established all the homesteads in this area,” Jorie says.
“Can you imagine?” I ask her.
“Pioneers,” she says. “We know something about that, don’t we?” We watch the caribou roam all around us, and a red Arctic fox crosses and comes within twenty feet of us. Finally, Jorie rises to go birding. Don takes a seat on the porch and talks me through the commercial plane routes to Iniakuk.
Safari Page 18