August 2006 Archives

We'd been asking for months when the fish would start running, and really the only answer we'd get was--"oh, when the cotton really starts blowing, then you know" or "they'll call us from down river."

Folks headed off to fish camp around what we would call the beginning of July. And soon stories of all-nighters cutting fish were floating around. People holding down jobs in town sent out fishcamp call-outs over the radio station, and women set up near the caches cutting, drying, smoking, jarring and freezing fish in fourteen and sixteen hour shifts.

A neighbor invited us over to see one of their first catches, a medium size (really big) King salmon they got in a fishwheel. The skin looked a little worse for the wear of swimming up 1000 miles of silty freshwater. But the fresh cut she gave us was gorgeous pink flesh. You just wanted to sink your teeth into it.

So we fired up the grill and Keith set about preparing our first fresh Yukon salmon meal. He cooked the thick steak through and lifted it off the grill with the spatula.

And then he threw it in the dirt. And then I think he must have stepped on it too, because despite flushing it with water to clean out the gravel, it was a very crunchy meal, and good sized pebbles flaked out of my piece.

Keith was quite dismayed to have dropped it in the dirt, but it was still very tasty and very fresh, and there was more where it came from. We've still got a handful of meals worth in our freezer for later.

Keith and I sought some advice before heading out towards the very end of the Denali road, where it roundabouts at the Kantishna airstrip...are the nine miles there straight up or down hill? Is it quite hilly? Uncle assured us it was pretty flat the whole way, nothing to worry about.
It'd been a year since I was on a bicycle, 18 miles was a little something I worried about...but if it was flat, what was the risk.
Four or five miles into the straight-out decent towards Kantishna I started to worry. Sure this flying through the wind pumping the hand brakes was fine for me now. But I know how hills work. Down is a one-way ticket.
We lunched on tuna sandwiches by a small stream, and washed away the bear-luring fish smell in the water.
Once in "Kantishna" we discovered little more than a couple of commercial lodges built where miners had struck something years before.
And then it was time to turn around. It was hot. It was a cloud of mosquitos. And it was up some serious hill.
I pretty much lost all grasp on sanity--flailing at the voracious insects, sweating, dusty and convinced I'd be carried away by bugs before I could walk my bike up 9 miles.
But Keith's infinite calm persevered, and soon we were cruising up a not so steep grade, stopping for photos at little clear lakes, enjoying a few breezes and proudly sailing into camp, muscles like jello and heads dripping of mashed mosquitos.

Cheers to Keith's attitude on this day. He saved a soul from the mosquito demons.

What are the kids calling it these days? Chillaxing? Anyways, a vacation truly in Denali, of Denali and for Denali---the view out our tent door.

Thanks to our little Puffins, we could out-paddle the bugs, cool our fingers in the clear water, and bask in Denali's wonder.

Denali from our campsite, in all its fuzzy glory.