Agony and Ecstasy: The Big Alaskan Fishing Trip

After Jenn and I went to Alaska two years ago, I knew that I had to get my dad up there for a fishing trip.  Luckily, it didn't take much convincing on my part, since it's been on his bucket list for a while.  What I didn't know was that while my dad was on his mission in Scotland he met Allen Lee, who lived in Alaska for 18 years.  He and Allen planned out a float trip down the Talachulitna River, which is about 50 miles west of Anchorage, and invited Dan and I to go along with them.  Here's a recap of our trip:

 

In case you forgot what Shug and Paul look like, here they are!  They were gracious enough to let us crash at their house for the weekend before we left to go camping.  It was awesome to get to see them again!

Oh, did I mention that I got walking pneumonia the day before we flew to Anchorage?  For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of having walking pneumonia, it consists of having a fever for a week, following which you get to have a terrible hacking cough, and you feel absolutely exhausted all the time.  I was really debating whether I should even go on the float trip, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity, sick or not.

We went on a hike up to a glacier before we went out into the bush, and happened upon this little guy right on the trail.  He was pretty unconcerned that we were there!

Here's Raven Glacier, at the top of Crow Pass.  July 7th, and it was 38 degrees up there.  Brrr....

The hike down was a bit tricky as we decided to go across some snow fields, but nobody took a spill down the mountain.

On Sunday I just slept at Shug and Paul's and tried to feel better.  It didn't really work, as I still felt pretty sick on Monday, but it felt good to sleep a lot anyway.

The intrepid travelers in front of our float plane.

The view of the float plane airport out the window of our plane.  It's crazy how many planes are in Alaska.

This is Judd Lake, where we got dropped off.  That river you see is what we rafted down for 54 miles.

Our plane dropped us off on the shore of Judd Lake, and as we pumped up the raft and gathered our gear, he took off.  We simply told him to meet us at the bottom of the river at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, and then had faith that he'd be there.  I was still feeling sick, and as I watching him fly away I thought to myself, "Well, no turning back now!"

It didn't take us long to start catching fish.  Here's Dan with a dolly varden right on the shore of Judd Lake.  I think we caught 4 fish right here before we even got in the raft.

The first night on the river, we ran into a lot of arctic grayling.  I'd never caught one before, and we had a great time watching them come up for our flies.

Dan showing off the big fin on the back of the grayling.

Dad and I catch double grayling on the fly rods

Allen got in on the action as well, catching a nice-sized dolly varden on the river.

We camped on sandbars like this every night.  Dan and Dad made me sleep alone in the Pumpkin tent.  I'm pretty sure they spread honey on it in case the bears showed up.

Speaking of bears, we saw bear prints like this on almost every sandbar.  But, we saw a total of zero bears. Someone might have been coughing pretty much the whole trip, and that might have scared them off...

The king salmon run this year was so low that they actually banned fishing for them in most of Alaska.  On the second night of our trip, Dan was fishing for trout on his light gear when all of a sudden his line started zinging off his reel.  We saw the salmon jump about 3 times before it broke his line.  Dan's pretty sure it was "this big."  After that, we all used our heavier gear, just in case we accidentally hooked in to another one.

As it turned out, Dan hooked in to another one the very next day.  He caught this one right from the raft.

There was one set of serious rapids on the river, and we opted to line the raft through them rather than try to run them and capsize the boat.  Here I am standing in the water, ready to catch the rope from Dan before he and Allen go over the falls.  That water is freezing cold, by the way!

Here's a look at the rapids after we got the raft through them.

I need to pause here and show off my awesome spaceman waders that Shug and Paul lent to me.  My thighs were just a bit big for them, so my pants tended to scrunch up inside of the waders, leading to some odd-looking bulges.  But, I was the only one with neoprene waders, which are a lot warmer than the thinner ones that everyone else had.  So, despite my spaceman appearance, I was really grateful to have them!  Unfortunately, I punctured them with a stick when we crashed the raft into a tree.  Sorry, Shug and Paul!

Also, you see how I've got my hood on, zipped up all the way?  You probably think that's because of rain, right?  Well, it was quite rainy, but the hood is really for mosquito protection.  You have no idea how bad the mosquitoes were.  We kept only our heads and hands exposed, and made sure they were covered in 100% deet all the time.  The only time we were really exposed was when we had to go to the bathroom.  And I'll leave it at that.

Okay, back to the fishing.  As usual, my dad caught the biggest fish of the trip.  This lunker was 41", and somewhere close to 30 lbs., we think.  Just a huge fish.

Here I am fighting a king salmon of my own!

Yep, I landed him!  Definitely the biggest fish I've ever caught in my life.

On our last night, we camped across the river from a group of fishermen who were on this sandbar.  Around 6pm, it suddenly turned into Miami Vice when two helicopters showed up to take them back to their cushy lodge.  We didn't see many people at all on the river--maybe 4 groups total, and most of them were from the lodges on the midpoint of the river.

So, you can imagine our surprise when this little Piper Cub showed up on the same sandbar an hour after the helicopters left.  Look at that picture of the helicopters again to see just how small this little "runway" is.  You can see here just how close to the water they stopped.  They didn't have much extra room when they took off 4 hours later, either.  Just out for a little evening fishing, I guess.

I actually never saw the Piper Cub, though.  I was crashed in my sleeping bag, hacking and coughing and just feeling miserable.  That night I actually coughed so hard I threw up.  The whole week I was pretty up and down--sometimes I'd feel okay, then I'd end up shivering in my sleeping bag for a few hours.  The worst part was that all of the food we had was super heavy, and all I wanted was something light like chicken broth.  Instead, I was muscling down eggs fried in bacon grease, hash browns, pasta, etc.  Normally I love all of that food, but it just turned my stomach for every meal because it was so heavy.  After 5 days of this, I was reaching in a bag to grab a hot chocolate packet, and imagine my surprise when I pulled out a Lipton Cup 'o Soup packet instead.  "Dad!" I said, "Why didn't you tell me we had Cup 'o Soup?!?"  "Oh, well, I brought that in case anyone got sick," Dad replied.  "You didn't get sick, you already were sick!"  Haha, Dad.  Real funny.  :)  In all of the other food preparations, Dad had just totally forgotten that we even had the soup packets.  Needless to say, I had soup that night, and boy did it taste good!

We kept on fishing from the raft as we rode out the last few miles.  We caught a whole bunch of trout all through the river.

At last, we made it to the take-out point.  Our plane did indeed show up, only a 1/2 hour late, and took us back to civilization in Anchorage.  We stayed with Shug and Paul one more night, then bid farewell to Alaska ... until next time!

Several people have asked me if I'm glad that I went, given how sick I was.  Yes, I'm glad I went.  Would I go again, knowing how sick I was?  That's a bit more iffy, but I probably would.  However, I'd go back in a heartbeat if I were healthy.  Who's coming with me?