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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Feb 11, 2013 - 07:12pm PT
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One of the finer Alaskan traditions is to spend an evening at "The Great Alaskan Bush Company" before you fly into the Alaskan Range, or at least that's what Greg Crouch told me on the plane as we were flying up for his first trip.
Could be something to that....the one time we didn't go was the also the year we didn't summit.
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mhay
climber
Reno, NV
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Feb 11, 2013 - 08:09pm PT
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Feb 11, 2013 - 08:21pm PT
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Funny ethnic moment:
Working with a Brit in Dillingham, and we were out on the town late at night. After they threw us out of the bar we were having a smoke down by the docks with a couple native guys, good times. Of course the natives are speaking with each other in Yupik, with even the occasional Russian phrase thrown in. They are speaking with a pretty thick accent, so is the drunk Brit....
So it goes something like this:
Brit* "Don't you want to get an education?"
Eskimo* "What do you mean?"
Brit* "I mean to give yourself more opportunities in life."
Eskimo* "Hey mutherf*#k, we're the only ones here speaking two languages.."
I just about puked laughing as the Brit shut his mouth!
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 11, 2013 - 08:33pm PT
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Somebody mentioned Fairbanks, and Fairbanks is indeed the center of the Universe for interior Alaska. The population is surprisingly small, and the town is surprisingly messy..which is just a small infection from bush Alaska.
I used to nab a hotel out next to the strip bar on airport road. After being alone for 80 days, and seeing damn few women, this was the spot, right?
So that one year when I hiked across ANWR and back. When I got naked and swam the Chandalar to Arctic Village to nab a local with a boat to take me upriver for my pack, it all started to get noisy as hell with humanity, and Arctic Village is tiny. I then nabbed a flight back to Fairbanks and I was insanely bushy when I hit town. All of the noise and people driving around doing stuff that seemed idiotic was almost too much for me.
So I'm heading to the strip bar. They had just gone full nude, so I took my bifocals for some GYN inspection. I walked through the door, paid my five bucks, and the place was all dark and full of blacklight stuff and wheeling lights. The sound system was blasting so loud that you could feel it hit your chest. My head started spinning and I got out of there before I puked. It was just like motion sickness except it was humanity sickness.
I didn't bump into Buddha out there, but I did get pretty spaced out after a while. Talking to myself to kill time and all that.
The Brooks Range is the Marrow of the World as they say.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 11, 2013 - 08:51pm PT
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So Ray Genet threw an epic party for some Rooskies- half the town was there. About 2100 we hear a plane coming low and fast along the river (Genet's place was south of town on the river). It's Doug Geeting - he's uncharacteristically late for the party. But even he sometimes allows business to intrude into his private life- he had just brought a load down from the mountain. He proceeded to put on one hell of an air show in his 185. I doubt the FAA would have been amused, seeing as how his 'floor' was about 300', but he was only endangering himself and the mud sharks. Needless to say he made it to the party with plenty of time to spare.
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Crackslayer
Trad climber
Eldo
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Feb 11, 2013 - 08:59pm PT
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My second time to Alaska and my first glacier trip. Had some crazy weather that trip. After a few days in skagway with perfect weather climbing rock, we hiked up to a glacier. This photo was taken on our first day and that next day there was a storm and zero visibility. We climbed that headwall in the background and then returned to camp and took some boomers. We had a lot of herb with us which was awesome because the weather got so bad we couldn't leave the tent for a couple more days. All of our stuff got wet and we decided to hike back. One of the most memorable hikes ever as we had to summit a peak and hike back to an established trail all with zero visibility. We never really got lost but we did talk about what we would do if it happened. I can't wait to go back!
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Feb 11, 2013 - 11:27pm PT
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Yep, Geeting sure could party....not necessarily what i look for in a Bush Pilot.
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mike m
Trad climber
black hills
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Feb 11, 2013 - 11:53pm PT
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Prediction: This thread will have legs.
I am a little embarrased to admit it, but I went to Alaska for a week and the only place I climbed was...... You guessed it. The Seward Highway.
Someday I will come back and do something proper. We did see a bunch of Dahl Sheep while climbing that we never would have seen otherwise so it wasn't all bad.
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SGropp
Mountain climber
Eastsound, Wa
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Feb 12, 2013 - 12:24am PT
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I first went to Alaska in 1979, rowing a 16' Banks dory from Puget Sound to Petersburg. It took 70 days to get there, a lot of it rowing against headwinds.
I was completely blown away by the country and the coastline. Life was never the same afterwards.
The next summer , my new girlfriend of a couple months and I went on our first ''big date'' in the same little boat, rowing around Vancouver Island in 80 days. We had quite the time of it, working our way down the wild West Coast .Coming in through the Straits of Juan De Fuca in mid September gave us a taste of the relentless power of the ocean as well as a sense of how much we could take..
She stuck around and we rowed from the San Juan Islands to Skagway as an extended ''honeymoon cruise'' a year later. This little jaunt took a 100 days, with rain every single day for the first 60.
This was just the beginning of a series of seven long trips in small boats to northern waters. We graduated from the rowing boat to a folding kayak, which although smaller, had the advantage of being able to be broken down into 2 bags so we could go further afield.
In the late 80's I spent 4 seasons as a skiff driver on a purse seiner in Southeast Alaska. We fished mostly on the outer coast at Cape Addington, Noyes Island. Driving a skiff , towing the net just off the rocky shore alternated from utter [ although noisy ] bliss to sheer terror when the wind and waves started to pile up.
And always there was that incredible land and seascape, so wild, so harsh and alive and beautiful.
An incredible adventure could be had climbing one of the countless coastal mountains, traveling there and back in a small human powered boat. No fuss, no sponsorship, no blog,
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MisterE
Social climber
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Feb 12, 2013 - 10:13am PT
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Treez: Too funny you know those people! Ran in to Brian and Deaby in Bellingham a few years back, But haven't seen the Ginters or David and Lisa in 15 years. Say hi to peeps for me if you see them (Yep, that's me 2nd from left). I think B & D are back in Juneau now, yes?
One more pic of Sidra from the B'ham days for your entertainment:
Cheers, Erik Wolfe
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 12, 2013 - 02:47pm PT
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Some great stories here and pictures. So many folks who love the place. Got a pm from an old climbing buddy I hadn't talked to in over a decade. I see that other folks are bumping into old friends too.
That's one of the cool things about Alaska. Huge geographically but such a small community that the degrees of separation between people are tiny. One of the most common conversations that happens when folks from Alaska meet is the question "you lived in XXXX.. did you know so and so?" Oh yeah we used to hang out all the time and did whatever.
Other things that I miss. Knowing that if you had a car problem someone always pulled over and offered a hand. People up there just have more tendency to look out for one another. Sad how surprised or even scared folks often are down here if you do that.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 12, 2013 - 04:57pm PT
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That's one of the cool things about Alaska. Huge geographically but such a small community that the degrees of separation between people are tiny.
NO SH#T!
There was this photographer who spent a couple of years in ANWR shooting pics for a cool coffee table book. He had some big writers like Peter Matthiessen write sections.
So I run into him at Waldo's in Kaktovik every time I was back in "town" for a year. The next year I had just crossed Guilbeau Pass and dropped down into the Hula Hula River headwaters. It started raining, and like all rainy days, I stopped, put up the bivy tent and covered my goods with tough garbage sacks (which are invaluable cheap protection). I snoozed for a couple of hours and then the rain stopped. The sun never set, so I wasn't on a 24 hour clock. I would just hike through the tussocks and thickets all day and stop whenever I felt like it or when the weather turned bad...which was often.
Anyway, I pack everything up and walk about 1/4 of a mile. Shubhanker and his eskimo guide, who I also knew well, popped up. They had been across the river watching me through their spotting scope while taking pics of dall sheep up high.
So I run into him 20 days from anywhere.
Then I run into him in Kaktovik, on the coast, where I picked up a box of goodies. That was the Muktuk fest day.
Then I take off and hike (and swim) over to the Canning and up and over Carter pass and back to Arctic Village. I didn't see a single footprint on that leg.
So I get back to Arctic Village, which is on the S side of ANWR. Any noise would make me flinch and jump I was so bushy. Just being around the town almost drove me back into the woods. I can explain that affliction further if anyone cares.
So I am going to take the first shower in forever, and wash the clothes that I had left. It had gotten hot, so I had to cut off the legs and sleeves of some Capilene near the south end of the hike.
So I am putting my stuff in the village washing machine and see Shubankher outside the window. I run outside to say hello. He was with this really tall old fart, who was Peter Matthiessen, the famous writer. I was introduced but all I wanted to do was talk with Shubanker (he was part of my little world by then).
Peter Matthiessen and him had just finished floating the Kongakut River, which is packed (for ANWR) with floaters. It is a famous float that Edward Abbey did right before he died. The guides whipe your ass and stand guard with pepper spray while the clients are all scared of the dark pussies. Meaning him. So PM started yacking on and on and was very authoritative and such. Then he looked down at my shotgun and made a snide remark about how those aren't needed and blah blah blah.
Well, he had been on a guided party of probably 10 or 15. Bears rarely attack more than 2 people. Rarely more than 1, really. I have lots of experience with bears. The locals won't go 500 yards out of town without a gun around there. Both eskimos and Indians both think that only a dumbass white guy would go in there without a gun. So everyone takes guns except for the guided groups, who are so big. Matthiessen would have been OK if he had kept his trap shut, but he had spent maybe 12 days up there with ten people around him, and thought he was an authority. He even started bragging about hanging out with Doug Peacock at the Grizzly Hilton in Montana. Screw that. You have to go to bush Alaska to experience real bears.
He was so rude and puffed up about himself that I came THIS close to shoving his old ass to the ground and kicking the living sh#t out of him. Seriously. I was that detached from the world. He was a prick to me, I had hit town only 2 hours earlier, and you can sort of understand the frame of mind I was in.
So I almost beat the sh#t out of Peter Matthiessen. It sounds weird, but it was logical at the time. Then they were gonna go yack with one of the elders, who I would visit and toke up with. I split and I never say PM again.
I get a flight on a Cessna Carravan back to Fairbanks a few days later. This would have been in my puking at the strip club time frame. I'm walking down Airport Road and I run right in to Shubanker and a photographer friend of his right there in Fairbanks.
I have other stories of meeting people in different places in different years up there as well.
Sorry to ramble. I hadn't thought about running into Shubankher over and over in quite a while.
Anyway, if you are out of a town, whites are the minority. Nobody has a car, because there might be three miles of road. The town usually has a pickup and a front end loader to handle stuff that get's flown in.
The eskimos along the Beaufort Sea coast all have CB radios in their houses, and in the small towns it is like cable TV. This channel for emergencies, that channel for gossip, etc. Sometimes somebody will get drunk and just babble sh#t for hours, which is funny but terribly sad.
Don Young bought a drug dog for the whopping town of Ft. Yukon just to keep weed from getting to Venetie or Arctic Village. They are against ANWR drilling and that makes them hated in Alaska..if you live in the North Slope Borough. Yep. The only congressman in the state got pork money to get a drug dog to keep weed from Arctic Village.
Arctic Village is very different from other remote bush villages. The Qwich'n Indians didn't want any money from the native claims settlement act. They just wanted their land. I would always send the mayor 25 bucks just for the privelige of crossing a mile from the airport to the refuge boundary. They are very traditional. They are trying so hard to maintain that language and culture that they put a lot of time into the kids and maintaining the language, which is still spoken. Alcohol ravages most bush villages. We all know of the problems with natives and alcohol. It can be terrible up there, leading to all sorts of abuse and stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Village,_Alaska
Weed, on the other hand, is perfect for their no-alcohol society. I didn't know this until one evening when I was sitting around yacking with one of the big elders and he toked one up and handed it to me.
So..Indians don't like ANWR drilling. Indians are attacked by Ted Stevens and Don Young in the New York Times.
The best way to screw Arctic Village is to get a drug dog in Ft. Yukon. The plane to Arctic Village makes a few stops and it stops at Ft. Yukon, the last "white" village before the next landings in the Venetie Reservation. Understand? He was trying to turn them into a drunk village. Even Arctic Village, population 152. They would intercept the weed on the plane, the only way in without chartering your own. Even then you wouldn't be able to stop for fuel in Ft. Yukon without getting your plane sniffed.
I don't smoke much herb. Only as a courtesy to certain friends. Given the choice of alcohol and then paint sniffing and mouthwash drinking and brewing sugar "beer" in a bucket....that just destroys whole families and villages. There is one village that is now on my permanent red X list. It is dry, like all villages, but only ten miles away there is a bootlegger doing his deal, just like the liquor stores ten feet outside of the Navajo or Pine Ridge, or whatever reservation.
Wow. What a stupid ramble...
Alaska is cool, though.
Here is a self photo of my tailored capilene. I had to cut the arms and legs off to keep from melting in the sun. It get's damn hot on the south side of the Brooks Range in August...
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johnkelley
climber
Anchorage Alaska
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Feb 12, 2013 - 05:17pm PT
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Best rainbow fishing in the world
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 12, 2013 - 06:11pm PT
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I have a secret fishing river. You pay a local who has a jet on the end of his outboard. He will take you about 70 miles upstream and you just float back to town on the coast.
We had one rod..going lite. The rule was that you had three casts and then you had to hand it back. I can't remember any of us ever having to hand the rod over. A fish every one or two casts. Then you have to fight them for five or ten minutes. Your back will get sore and you just quit for a few hours. Then repeat over and over for 10 days.
If you put a smaller hook on, you will usually catch a grayling. They are ravenous and sometimes even get their little mouths around a really big fly.
They were up in the 22" range, which for a graying, means over ten years old. Grayling are beautiful fish, but you try NOT to catch a grayling to get at the salmon, which are goooood.
Since we never dared to have fish around camp, because the river is infested with grizzly bears, the only fish I kept (my bud was a vegan), was a daily pink. Pinks are the smallest salmon at 3-5 pounds or so, and easy to catch. They jump out of the water, so you know it when you are over a pod of pinks. So we would pull out on a sandbar, get a fire going from willow or alder branches, and when it was all ready, toss a line in and bring in a small pink. Skewer it on willow sticks and eat it kind of half cooked. SUPER good. Then clean everything up so the bears wouldn't come hassle us wherever we camped, always a few miles from where I gutted and cooked the fish.
I have some great fish pictures on another computer. I will give out secret beta on which river it is if you can answer three secret questions.
No lie. The river is way over on the W coast. There are a bunch of famous rivers about a hundred miles away that are the world famous 7 grand per week guided gigs. We did this for the cost of our own boat and 500 bucks for the ferry upstream. You will have the upper 30 miles to yourself, and lower down you will see some folks. Imagine if the Goodnews river was all to yourself. Incredible fishing, crystal clear water, lots of bears that never bother anyone, according to the locals.
It is funny. I saw some friends and acquaintances on "Flying Wild Alaska" on the discovery channel. I would holler to my wife and she would just say, "Yeah, yeah..."
Alaska rules, but only if you get your ass way out there away from some gourmet cooked guided trip. You can do it for free, other than hunting, which I think requires a mandatory guide if you are from out of state.
If I wanted to shoot anything, I know spots for everything. Alaska rules.
Just get thine ass off of the road system and out in the boonies on your own.
Here are some shots of when I soloed the Canning River in ANWR once:
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Feb 12, 2013 - 06:19pm PT
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GO#@@MN!!! Nice fish, Kelly!
Like many, I lived up there for some years (Fairbanks). Loved it at times, hated it at times. Very happy to have spent time there, but also wouldn't move back (actually, I would for the right salary...as long as it was south of the AK range...no good moving-water rainbow fishing in the interior).
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Feb 12, 2013 - 06:26pm PT
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Nice stuff Base! Very enjoyable adventures!
Susan
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Feb 12, 2013 - 06:55pm PT
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How do the locals in the bush afford flights to get around? Aren't bush flights prohibitively expensive? Aren't most bush locals relatively poor (financially)?
Serious question.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Feb 12, 2013 - 07:06pm PT
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Based on observing some of the locals who belly up to the bar in the Fairview Inn in Talkeetna, they appear to be selling their teeth for cash. Would see the same folks on the same barstool every year and they always had fewer teeth.
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bergbryce
Mountain climber
California
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Mar 11, 2013 - 02:32pm PT
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bump for a good thread.
Talkeetna's not the bush.
Flying is prohibitively expensive. I used to fly a lot into small villages and it's not unusual for someone you ask you to watch their baby, basically hold the baby on the 20 minute flight to the next village so grandma can watch them for a couple days. Flights from a hub community like Bethel to Sleetmute would be something like $400, add on the $400 for the RT trip from Anchorage to Bethel and it gets expensive really quick. Sleetmute might have been connected to through Aniak, can't remember. Regardless, it is expensive to travel about anywhere using petrol.
I think Anchorage to Kotzebue to Kobuk was like $1000 and that's a jet to Kotz then a small Cessna three villages in.
I had a very pleasant experience in Arctic Village too. Neat town and very nice people.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 11, 2013 - 04:05pm PT
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Good time's I remember playing these towns back in squirts. Some great childhood memories brought back. Although this looks much warmer than I remember it. Real hockey is Outdoors under lights at -30deg. The jersies have not changed a bit in 30 years. Too cool.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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