Floating the Talachulitna
September 14, 2000
Being one rung removed from the top of the food chain is not a feeling I’m comfortable with. Yet there I was, with three buddies — Chris Hayes, Jeff Darlington, Ty Shalley, and Rico — standing on a river bank in the middle of the Alaskan bush. Nobody said a word as we stood there, gawking at the huge grizzly bear tracks in the sand. Fresh bear tracks, each the size of a salad plate with 5-inch claws. I’m not sure what the others were pondering, but I kept thinking about the fact that grizzly bears can out-run a horse. That they can kill a 1,200-pound moose with one blow to the head. About how they could easily beat you in a swim race. About how “grizzly” sounds a lot like what your remains would look like after a bear got through with you.
Then the words an old-time, 50-year vereteran of the Alaskan bush said to me kept swirling in my head. He said that we would, without question, “see the bear” where we were going and asked if we would be prepared for such an encounter. We were about to embark on a 6-day, 50-mile float trip down a remote river that flows through the heart of prime grizzly country, yet nobody in the group seemed really anxious to set out after seeing those impressions in the sand.
For the first three days, we saw tracks and scat on every single sand bar we encountered, but no bears. After a while, I almost couldn’t wait to get the first sighting out of the way. At least then I’d know. Either you escape unscathed our you get mauled. The fear of the unknown was driving me crazy and the suspense was gnawing at me more and more each day. Every little snapping of a twig underfoot or the rustling of alder leaves in the breeze made us jump. One night, we heard four gun shots in rapid succession a few miles upriver and we hoped that some fellow rafters weren’t fighting for their lives somewhere out in the dark. That night, I awoke to the sounds of a terrible brown monster tearing through our camp and clawing and stamping the life out of my partners, one by one. I knew it was my turn when the tent started shaking violently. Though I was scared to death, I knew there was little I could do to fight off the attck. Then I finally shook the dream from my head and realized the wind had kicked up in the middle of the night and the tent’s rain fly was flapping in the breeze. Okay, so my nerves were a little frazzled by that point. Com’on you damn bears, show yourselves already…
One beautiful morning, we had just pulled out of a spot where we had given the salmon and trout a serious whippin’ when it finally happened. We rounded a corner and there he was. All 400 pounds of him. There’s nothing quite like the feeling I had right then. Every hair on the back of my neck stood at attention and an icy chill shot down my spine. Since the river channel was both too narrow and too shallow to attempt to float past the bear, I pulled hard on the oars to hold our position upstream of him. He immediately stared right at us, but he didn’t bolt into the brush as we hoped he would. The bear looked at us, then looked away. Then he turned his attention to us again, appearing to be weighing the pros and cons of dining on a five-course meal of city slicker neophytes. After a few tense moments, the big bear finally ambled off into the brush, in no particular hurry.
What a rush — we were buzzing for hours after seeing the bear. And though we actually wanted to see a few more along the way, the rest of our trip as grizzly free. The though of seeing one turned out to be worse than actually coming face to fce with a bear.
ANOTHER WORLD: The other portion of our Alaska trip was spent in the lap of luxury. We spent 3 days living the fat (or is that “phat?”) life on the world famous Kenai River in Soldotna, fishing ourselves into oblivion. Our base of operations was the beautiful Alaskan Hospitality Lodge (800-472-6218) which is located right on the banks of the mesmorizing Kenai. While we didn’t see any bears there, we spotted several moose wandering the roads a mile from town.
The lodge had a cool fishing dock right out the back door and it was there that Hayes, Rico and I absoutley trounced the sockeye salmon. The sockeyes, or “reds,” were swiming by in massive waves during our entire visit and we had a ball catching these 6- to 12-pound, fresh-from-the-ocean salmon on fly rods. Since the Kenai is so swift, the reds migrate upstream in the slower water right along the banks. That being the case, we could see the fish swimming by right at our feet and we never had to cast more than a couple of yards out to get into the action. We also caught some beautiful dolly varden off the dock and a 10-pound rainbow was taken by one of the other guests.
Les and Dee Dennis, the lodge owners, whipped us up a mean breakfast each morning, which turned out to be about the only food we’d eat each day. It was light enough to fish well past midnight, so we often lost track of time and skipped lunch and dinner. The lodge had a great outdoor patio located just above the river bank, complete with a barbecue, freezer, picnic table and fridge. Though we never utlized the barbi, we did our best to fill the frezer with sockeye fillets since the limit was 6 per day, per person.
One morning, I took a ride with a guide friend of mine on the Kenai. The king season was winding down, so I didn’t expect any real hot action. We rigged up with a stout rod, a huge reel spooled with 40-pound test mainline and a 60-pound test leader. To the business end of the leader, my guide tied a Spin-N-Glo large enough to scare most salmon in the Lower 48 and a 6/0 hook sweetened with a glob of roe the size of a golf ball. There’s just something about backing a bait down a river that produces the largest salmon in the world. The world-record 97 pounder was pulled from the Kenai about a dozen years prior to my visit, but the river kicks out king salmon over 80 pounds each season. We’d only been fishing for 10 minutes when I got a powerful strike. After a wild 15-minute battle, I had a king of just under 50 pounds on board and were headed back to the launch area.
Top to bottom…an awesome trip.
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