Alaska Range 2013

[cwh]

I wrote it up in detail last year, and wanted to continue the tradition. Warning: this is long, and quite possibly boring.

Day 1
Fog and clouds had kept the pilot from getting Josh into the valley we were headed for. The pilot dropped Josh off with the satellite phone and told him to call when the weather broke. He was about a 45 minute cub flight out. We loaded my gear into the plane and refueled so we would be ready to go. We also loaded 3 5-gallon gas cans of avgas in the belly pod. That was when I realized just how far off the beaten path we were going.

Josh called a few hours later to say that the ceiling was lifting and we should probably make a break for it. I crammed myself in the back seat of the cub, and we took off. It was probably around 1:00 PM and we had a long flight ahead of us. The supercub is actually pretty comfortable once you are in it, and I love flying, especially with a pilot that knows what he is doing. We climbed up to the height of the upcoming pass plus about 20 feet. This guy knows what he is doing, but it is just plain spooky flying along, looking ahead and trying to figure out if we are going to clear the ground, which is rising…

We flew past glaciers and lakes, over spruce forest, tundra, muskeg, and several rivers that will remain nameless… We stopped at one point on a nice gravel bar and cached the fuel, then continued on to our destination. The overall flight time must have been close to an hour and 20 minutes. When we got to the spot, we circled for a bit, and looked for other camps, and had a discussion about which side of the river we wanted to be on. The pilot picked out a “gravel” bar, which means that it had rocks smaller than 1 foot in diameter for the most part. We did a low pass to take a close look, and then landed. We had about a 10-15mph headwind, and didn’t even use the whole gravel bar to land. We walked the gravel bar and cleaned some driftwood out of it to improve it slightly. Then the pilot was off to pick up Josh. I moved all my gear to the riverbank and scouted a couple of spots for the tent. Then I glassed for a bit, found a couple of caribou (didn’t have a harvest ticket – dumb!) but no sheep. I cleaned up the gravel bar a bit more and it was actually looking pretty good.

When the pilot came back with Josh, he used the whole runway. I was a little worried that he was going to run long and end up in the river, but he did just fine. I hadn’t noticed, but the wind was completely gone, and not having that headwind made a big difference. We got Josh’s gear unloaded, the pilot took off, and we set up base camp. We glassed for a bit, found some sheep, hatched a plan for the next morning, cooked some dinner, and went to bed.

Day 2
We made a mistake last year on our first spike camp. We had gone high right away, and climbed through alders for most of a day while only bringing 3 days of food. The next day we were weathered in (fog and rain), which meant that we climbed down the following day without really doing much hunting. I didn’t want to do that again, but our proposed spike camp was only about 1-1.5 miles away and we decided to just do a day trip, staying “fast and light” and try to kill one of the rams we had seen (assuming they were really rams… we were not 100% in the spotter). We hiked down to the river, which appeared to be only about 1-1.5 feet deep. We tried to cross in a couple of spots, but as usual with glacial rivers, it was deeper than it looked. We made it across, although I splashed water over the tops of my glacier socks a bit. I had taken my socks off and was just wearing glacier socks (basically a lw nylon hip boot) with crocs. No big deal, my boots and socks were still dry, although my feet were freezing. We moved on across the river bottom and up a drainage that would take us to where the sheep had been the night before. As we rounded a bend in the canyon, we spotted the sheep, about 1-1.5 miles away. They were up high, just below the cloud cover. We verified that they were rams, and we could see 3, with one being only a 3ish year old.

We decided to backtrack a bit and go up a side cut in the main canyon that would put us on the same hillside as the sheep. It was a good plan, and we climbed up out of sight, making slow progress toward the rams. The hillside they were on had a cut every couple hundred yards where water coming off the mountain had carved a small canyon. Down low these are just ditches in the shale, and we were not too concerned. We couldn’t see up high, which should have concerned us. Up high these cuts were loose rock and a couple hundred feet deep. We made slow but steady progress, crossing one cut after another and staying mostly out of sight. Some of these cuts took 40 minutes to cross, and there were a couple of minor spills along the way. Eventually we got to a point where we either had to follow the cut out to the bottom or climb up into the fog. We went high, and made it to a spot where we should have been in shooting distance from the rams. We didn’t want to push any farther in the fog, so we dropped a bit of altitude and found a decent place where we could drop packs. We waited for the fog to lift, and when it did we were about 1000 yards from the rams. At some point in the day it had started raining, and we were in rain gear, which was making us sweat. We had a decent perch, and there wasn’t much we could do to get closer without making a lot of noise rolling rocks, so we hunkered and glassed hard. Josh was in the spotting scope, and I was glassing with binos. Fog would lift, we’d glass, and then it would roll back in, and we’d wait. In one of the “clear” times, I saw another sheep about a mile up the canyon from the pack of 3. I tried to get the scope on it, but it fogged back in. I saw him two more times, and I was betting he was the biggest ram of the bunch. He was only visible for about 45 seconds, about every 15-20 minutes. One of the other 3 looked to be legal, but we could never get a 100% confirmation. He was an odd ram with wide flare and extremely tight curl on his left side.

We watched the clock and eventually hit our “bail” time. We backtracked to the first deep cut and followed it down the hill. Everything was going great until we got to the top of the waterfall…  Luckily we were able to climb out of that cut and descend on a steep grassy slope. We walked back to the creek, and out of the canyon. When we got to the main river, we looked for a better place to cross. I let Josh try a couple of crossings, and they quickly got too deep. We followed the river downstream eventually getting to our original crossing point. I decided to take the lead and give Josh a break. We were on the channel side of the river at that point, and it was where I had taken water on that morning. I waded in, and started to lose my footing. I took another step to steady myself, and that was deep enough that water went over the top of my glacier sock, filling it. The second sock filled just as fast. Bad news. The water was deep and fast - I was nuts deep in a fast, glacial river and I had two hip boots full of water. I honestly thought I was going in. I leaned on the trekking poles, and marched for a gravel bar about 25 feet away. As soon as I lifted my feet, both crocs popped off, propelled by the now full glacier socks. I made the gravel bar with my feet screaming, and much heavier than I went in. Cold water, and nothing but nylon between me and river rock wasn’t working for me. The glacier socks were snapped around my belt, and even when completely out of the water, they never popped off. I popped the snaps, which took some doing, and drained several gallons of water on the gravel bar.

As soon as Josh saw my crocs pop off and head down river, he headed downstream, fully expecting to have to pluck me out of the drink. He made the gravel bar after I did, and had taken some water also, although not nearly as much. Our feet were purple, and I was getting pretty serious shivers. We put the glacier socks back on and crossed a couple more smaller braids of the river, wanting to get to the tent ASAP. After we were through the deep braids, we put socks and boots back on and headed for the tent. I hung up my pants and glacier socks (all that got wet) to dry, got into long johns, puffy pants, hot socks, and then into my sleeping bag. I warmed up pretty fast, but I was not looking forward to the crossing the river again, which was the plan for the next day. It turned out that the river had come up about 6 inches while we were on our day hunt. Lesson learned: Glacial bowls can collect a lot of rain water in a short amount of time, and that, combined with melt, will change water levels quickly. Mountain house, shot of whisky, and bedtime.

 

[cwh]

Day 3
The plan was to pack up spike camp, cross the river, go up the canyon, and set up camp. We spent some time in the binos scouting out river crossings. We found one that looked really good. Unfortunately, it involved crossing a braid, walking about 150 yards downstream on a gravel bar, crossing a braid, walking about 30 yards, crossing a braid, and then being on the other side. All on rock, and I had no crocs to cushion the feet. I put on a pair of socks under the glacier socks, which had thankfully dried. With spike camp on my back, and 5 days of food, my pack was probably 55lbs, which did my feet no favors, but I made it across slow and steady. Later, I discovered bruises on both arches, the right one having actually made a hole in the skin. But at the time, I was just really happy that I made it across. We got back into boots and headed up the canyon. We found a semi-flat spot out of the creek bottom with nice soft vegetation and set up the tent.

We decided to head up canyon on an afternoon hunt. We pushed as far up the creek as we could, trying to stay concealed. We could not see the rams as the fog was fairly low, so they were either gone or we had good cover. We finally climbed up a cut bank and onto a small knob about 300 feet above the creek. We found the rams about the time it started to rain. With raingear on, we glassed on and off for about an hour. Again we could see the rams intermittently, as the fog rolled in and out. We climbed as high as we could get with cover, and then waited for fog to make a break for it. We had both put on insulating layers, and moving quickly had us both sweating like crazy. Back in cover, we moved up the ridge and toward the rams. I had a good feeling that we were going to kill one of them that day – we had paid our dues, faced death and won, sat out for hours in a rain storm while the wind whipped us…. it was time. We found a nice shelf to glass from that looked like it would be within shooting distance of the rams. It wasn’t. When we finally saw them, the rangefinder would not read them, although it would read a rock at 750ish yards. They were well beyond that, and we were out of cover. They had a perfect view of the low route, there was no direct route, and the high route would have put us in loose rock, fog, and cliffs. The good news was that all four rams were together, and we were pretty sure that one was legal. We eventually bailed back to the tent, again having hit our “turn back” time. There were several creek crossings on the way back and at one of them Josh trusted a rock that he shouldn’t have. It rolled, spilling him downstream and dunking one leg in the water up to his knee and his other nearly as high. I have to give him credit though, he stayed on his feet somehow – I’m not sure how. From there it was a pretty brisk march to the tent. The SL5 tent was awesome. Room for two guys, two giant packs, boots, rifles, gear, and some left over room to cook. Nice to be able to keep wet raingear outside the “nest” portion as well. When you are soaked, the ground is soaked, the vegetation that you pitched the tent on is soaked, and everything else is soaked, you’ll get condensation.

Day 4
Socked in – we woke up to see a ceiling of about 200 feet. It hadn’t stopped raining from the day before. All we could have done was made a bunch of noise and chased the rams out of their home, so we stayed in the tent. Did I mention that the tent is nice? I like being able to sit up, being able to sleep more than an inch away from someone else, and cooking in the tent.

Day 5
Socked in, part deux. We started counting hours - we eventually hit 58 hours in the tent, leaving only to use the bathroom, which was conveniently located just down the hill, or to get water from the glacial stream which was located about 400 yards away. Josh dried the liners from his koflach boots over the jetboil to get most of the water out, then put them in his sleeping bag for the rest. The rain had caused the creek to swell considerably, and what had been crappy glacial water was now mostly mud. I should have taken some pictures of the creek at full flood stage, but I was trying to keep the camera dry. The water filter slowed to a crawl. I backflushed it, but it was back to a crawl shortly. It still worked though, which was nice as I don’t enjoy rock milkshakes all that much.

 

[cwh]

Day 6
The ceiling was a little higher, and the rain had slowed down. We headed up the mountain, weak and wobbly. A day in the tent can help you recover toward the end of a hard hunt. 2+ days just causes atrophy. We went up canyon, spotted rams, picked a cut, and went high. We ended up in the fog, which makes navigation and hunting difficult. Same as before, we crossed cut after cut, hoping to come out within range of the rams. We cliffed out, backtracked, and aimed for another nice shelf to glass. We thought we were within range of the rams, but we’d played that game a couple times before and were starting to get tired of it. We glassed for 30 minutes before the fog lifted enough to see the rams. They were about 850 yards out, I only got one range, as the fog rolled back in and blocked our view. We decided to wait them out – they had been sitting up high in the day, coming down to the vegetation in the late afternoon and then heading back high before night. The big one would only eat for 30 minutes, and then climb a couple hundred feet above the others, bed down, and watch.

We caught a break in the fog again, and saw one of the younger rams moving down. The only visible vegetation between them and us was within range – 410 yards on the low side, to 550 on the high side (I had a lot of time to range that, and could call out ranges for most any obvious rock or grassy patch). The other rams got up and started heading down as well – its happening! We quickly set up shooting spots, got rifles in place, and the spotter moved. The rams dropped into a small cut between their rock pinnacle and where we hoped they were going to feed. We waited, alternating binos/spotter/rangefinder/riflescope. We kept waiting. 30 minutes, and we could see nothing. There must have been food in that cut. We got restless, went back to the packs and ate a bit, checking every couple minutes. We put on warmer clothes. Still nothing at an hour – we talked about trying to sneak up high and around to their cut, but that would have meant fog, noise, and a very real chance of falling. We started to get discouraged… outsmarted again. But we kept checking, and eventually saw something white. Sheep! They were feeding down to the vegetation patch we were set up on. We got back into our shooting nests. Mine consisted of a lot of bowling ball sized sharp rocks, which I had tried to re-arrange without making too much noise. It wasn’t comfortable, and I had to hold myself up by doing sort of a diagonal pullup with my left hand. Josh’s wasn’t much better. It was grassy but small enough that his lower half was on a 60 degree slope, and he had to dig his feet in to keep from sliding off. We watched the sheep until all 3 of the larger rams were within sight. Then it was a matter of being 110% sure that the big boy was legal. It took about 40 minutes to get “the look”, but it happened. Josh was set up – this was his ram, and I was shooting backup. I ranged one more time and hand signaled/lip synced: 424. I dialed in, got set, and waited. It was almost another full minute before Josh shot, but he made it count - the ram went down. Then he got back up, so I shot, and he went back down. His shoulders were broken, but he was still kicking with his back legs, and inching toward the cliff. I put one more in him to try and anchor him, but I failed. He fell out of sight. The other rams ran to the cliff looking for him. Ram down!

So, now we had to get to him… we pulled off the insulation layers and tried to find a direct-ish route. We didn’t see anything that looked good, even though we didn’t have to be quiet. We decided it would be safest to descend out of the rocks to the shale slopes, sidehill over to the cut the ram fell into, and climb back up to him. It took us 2 hours and 20 minutes to cover that 400 yards. Slow going, and we were loaded light. We took some pictures, and started cutting. I worked on meat while Josh concentrated on the cape. We left the bone on all the quarters, as we were in a hurry – it was getting late. But caping an animal is one of those things you don’t really want to rush.

It was dark by the time we had him in the packs, but we both had good headlamps and backups – lesson learned from last year’s snafu. We walked down the loose rock in the cut until we could sidehill. We had found a point in the creek previously where it choked down to a waterfall with vertical cliffs on both sides. We wanted to avoid that, so we sidehilled as far as possible, staying high but still heading down canyon.

There was an almost full moon and broken overcast, which made the whitewater in the creek shine white if you turned off your headlamp. It was one of those sights that you never really forget, but probably don’t fully appreciate at the time when you are a long way out of camp in the middle of the night with a heavy load on your back. We stumbled a few times, but nailed all of the creek crossings, didn’t twist or break anything, and made it back to camp a little after 2AM. We got a tarp set up and got the meat, cape, horns, etc under it. Then a mountain house, 2 shots of whiskey, and a sleep.

 

[cwh]

Day 7
Clear and sunny, with a nice breeze. Everything we had was soaked – either sweat or rain or creek water, or all of the above. We had a yard sale and dried it out the best we could, filtered some more water, and generally procrastinated getting back to base camp. Eventually we loaded up the ram and spike camp and started walking back to the river. We scouted our crossing pretty carefully. Our packs were heavier than before, and several days of rain had raised the water level a bit. We took a little time out to glass in the river bottom before crossing. The crossing was still good, and we made it with no melee. We did some camp chores – Josh finished caping out the skull, and then cut several pounds of miscellaneous tissue off the skull. Good thing he was packing that… I did some more futzing with the water filter, backflushed it and filled up every water container we had. I built a crib out of dead willows and we got the meat on that to allow air circulation. There were no trees big enough to hang meat from. We covered the meat with the tarp to keep it dry.

 

[cwh]

Day 8
The hunt is on for ram 2. We had seen two sheep on a shale slide about 5 miles down a big valley across from where we had been chasing sheep for the last few days. Our rams had been fogged in, and we were glassing around. We couldn’t tell if they were rams or ewes, but they were sheep #5 and 6 that we had seen in 7 days, which made the decision easy. As we were flying in, the pilot had pointed out several areas up that particular valley that might work as a landing strip. We packed up the rest of our food and spike camp and headed up the drainage. We were looking up the drainage, and hadn’t really planned a route, but hoped to stay out of the river, as crossing had become somewhat difficult for me. We busted brush for a mile or two, eventually climbing up a bank about 100 feet into… more brush. On the way up the creek, we jumped a small caribou bull, and he did the sneak and peek with us for quite a while, getting into easy bow range at several points. Still no tag… bummer. On the way up the bank, I looked back to see a really nice bull looking at us. He wasn’t a booner, but he was a really nice bull. Did I mention that the caribou tag is free? I just needed to pick one up. We were expecting to go to a different area where caribou were closed, but tags actually weigh very little… anyway…

We ended up crossing the river a couple of times and crossing a beaver dam a third time eventually setting up spike camp about a mile from where we had seen the sheep a few days before. It was a nice flat tundra spot, and far enough away that we figured the sheep wouldn’t care. As a bonus, there was a spectacular blueberry patch about 20 feet from the tent. We had walked quite a ways, and were eating dinner and glassing when we saw sheep. A ewe and lamb had started feeding a few hundred yards from where we saw them in the shale. We ate and glassed, and eventually saw another ewe and lamb. Then we saw a ram, and eventually another ram with him. The rams were together, about 300 yards above the ewes and lambs. Josh went to bed as the light dropped. I set my sleeping pad and bag out on the tundra, and glassed the rams until they bedded down, hoping to have a target for the morning. It got really cold that night, and frosted hard. I probably should have layered inside the bag a little more.

Day 9
We got up and glassed, and could see sheep - both good and bad news. Good in that they were still there, bad in that if you can see sheep, they can generally see you. We had a mile of open country to cross before rocks and moraine would cover our approach. We ate breakfast and dropped into the creek hoping the banks would cover our approach a bit. It might have helped some, but you can’t really hide two guys moving in a valley when the sharp eyes have the high ground. We made the moraine and were both pretty exhausted. I guess the previous days hike had taken more of a toll than we thought. We climbed up through the boulders, and over the top, trying not to expose ourselves too much. This glacier had pushed out a huge bowl that meant we actually had to cross two moraines and a good sized creek in order to get to where we could start climbing. Josh lead most of the way, and we crossed under a very impressive waterfall and started up the mountain. We had looked at a route on hard rock that I wanted to try – the glacier had cleaned the loose rock from several places, and from the tent it looked like you could walk right up it. With the right mindset, you could, in places. The rock was clean and not loose, which was great, but it was steep, and anywhere it was wet was slick. I took a little scouting trip up and decided we should give it a try. We made it up several hundred feet, but the exposure was big – if you slipped, you’d freefall 300 feet before you took your first bounce. We turned the corner at the top hoping to take a slot that would top out right next to the glacier. It almost did… instead, the slot went inverted, so you had a choice of playing cliffhanger on the side you wanted to be on, or topping out on the glacier side and trying to get back to the rock side playing on ice sloped at 40 degrees. We downclimbed and tried the next approach on around the cliffs. It had a lot of loose boulders, but it was doable, and we climbed up. We were in the kitchen – about 3-400 yards below where we had watched the rams bed down the night before. We found some good landmark boulders and dropped packs, taking rifles, a range finder, binos, and the spotting scope (and a headlamp, because I’m a pessimist). We snuck up through the boulders to a small bowl with vegetation where I had watched sheep 15 hours earlier. Nothing. We climbed through that bowl, up and over all kinds of beautiful sheep food. Nothing. We looked over the other side at the shale slides… they were empty. We split up with one guy going high and checking the glacier side of the knob we were on, and the other checking the various cuts and crevices below the knob. Both of us came up empty. The sheep had evaporated…. we had made some noise on the way up, but not much - the shifting wind made us wonder if they had caught our scent.

We took a nap in the sun, and were woken by falling rocks above us. You had to climb some serious steep, loose, mossy rock to get up there, and neither of us was willing to do that. It was one of those places where if you shot a ram and he didn’t fall to the bottom and turn to burger, you’d die trying to get him out. We took cover in some boulders and waited to see if the sheep would come back down. After about 45 minutes the sun went behind the mountain and we were suddenly very aware of the fact that we were very close to a giant ice field. Our insulating layers were back at the packs, so we descended to there and layered up. It was downright cold with the wind coming off the glacier. We watched up high as long as we could stand, and then decided to try to get off the mountain while there was still some daylight. Going down is always worse than going up, but we made it without any falls, crossed the boulder moraine, the creeks, and the other boulder moraine. I kept glassing, and eventually saw sheep – an ewe and a lamb way up high in the pinnacle where we had heard the falling rocks. It was good to know they hadn’t left for good, but frustrating to know that we’d f’d something up in our stalk, but didn’t know what. We made it back to camp right at dark, and did the usual mountain house, whiskey, and bedtime.

 

[cwh]

Day 10
We got rained on hard that night, and the wind kicked up pretty good. In the morning, we looked out of the tent and couldn’t even see the moraine at the base of the glacier, let alone the mountain. It was pouring rain, and we were both beat from the previous two days, so we slept in. We got up later and made coffee and breakfast in the tent. The mountain stayed socked in all day. We glassed a little from the tent, and saw another monster caribou – really nice with huge top points. The jokes about forgetting a tag started to get old. At one break in the rain, Josh went to check out the outhouse, and I was glassing just to do something besides sit in the tent. I found a grizzly about 500 yards away across the river as Josh was coming back to the tent. He was upwind of us, and eventually crossed the river to our side. We were not excited about having a bear that close, but we just kept an eye on him. Around dark he was headed away from us, and we lost sight of him in some brush. We went to bed hoping that he stayed on course.

Day 11
Well, he didn’t stay on course. He stayed right where he was, about 300-400 yards from our tent, all night. When we got out of the tent, there he was. He was eating berries, and fed to about 200 yards out when we decided that was close enough. We made sure we had plenty of ammo available and headed toward him with rifles, yelling and waving. He looked up and went back to eating, so we continued to about 120 yards from him, where he looked at us with a confused look that said: “Should I run away from that, or eat it?” He ran in an arc with the wind trying to get our scent, but coming toward us. He stopped at about 60, then made up his mind and bolted. That was a relief, as neither of us wanted to shoot that bear. Unfortunately, he was last seen headed straight toward our base camp where the meat and horns from ram 1 was cached.

With the bear gone, we got back to glassing for our sheep. We saw them quickly, as they were headed down the hill. We watched for a bit, as young rams would try butting heads with the bigger rams and they are just fun to watch.

We threw together day packs and moved out, hoping to catch the rams down low. It took us probably close to an hour to cover the 1.5 miles to where they were. Boulders and moraines slow down progress a lot, even loaded light. When we got there, the sheep were gone…again. We kept working through the shale, to the next ridge, and the next, hoping to at least spot them and plan a next move. We were about as far as we were prepared to go when I looked back and saw sheep about 300 feet below our elevation behind us. We sat down quickly in the shale, which was steep and loose, and sharp. Most rocks were about the size and shape of a toaster. We froze while they climbed up. It was a ewe and a young ram, and they saw us, but didn’t seem alarmed. I ranged them at 320 yards. As they climbed up, we stayed still and they eventually got to our same elevation and I ranged them at 200. They bedded down and just watched us. The wind was blowing 90 degrees between us, so they hadn’t smelled us. It was really cool to watch them dig out beds in the shale and listen to them snort and eat. We tried not to spook them, hoping the rest of the sheep were with them and would be climbing up any minute. I really regret not getting any pictures, as it would have made no difference, but at the time we were still hoping the rams would come walking in any second. They never did. Finally I had enough of freezing and my feet falling asleep and stood up. The sheep moved slowly up the shale as we continued on to check one last ridge. Nothing. We came back the same route, and the sheep were still there, just 300 yards up the hill. We sidehilled right under them.

 

[cwh]

Day 12
In a satellite phone conversation with the pilot, he said he would not be able to pick us up on the original date we had planned, and we should probably be back at camp the next day. We were reluctant to leave early, but we were also worried about the meat back at base camp. So we packed up spike camp and planned a route back to base camp, hoping to stay out of the brush and away from the bear. We ended up sidehilling most of the way back, but it was a fairly direct route with limited brush and only a couple of big ravines to deal with. We made base camp at around 7, dealt with water, and went to bed early. The pilot had planned to pick us up early the next day.

Day 13
We (well, Josh) got up and checked the weather at 6, which consisted of looking outside the tent and not being able to see 40 yards due to fog. Not good flying weather. We called the pilot to let him know not to bother leaving the ground. When the ceiling was at 500 feet or so, we glassed around a little and saw a decent caribou bull with a cow above our camp about a mile out. The weather cleared around 5, so we called and let the pilot know. He showed up as it was hinting at getting dark. He took Josh with half the meat, and dropped him about 30 miles away and came back for me. The plan was that a buddy was going to pick us up there in a 180, so he could get us both out that night. That didn’t happen – the pilot must have figured he couldn’t make it there and back before dark, so we spent another night in the tent. We had some MH raspberry crumble for dessert – not a bad way to top things off. I’m not sure why I packed it to hell and gone before we ate it, but it was good. We even came up with a plan to add some instant oatmeal to make it basically a cobbler. After two weeks in a tent, you run out of things to talk about…

Day 14
“Airplanes are awesome, but waiting for them to show up sucks.” We had breakfast, drank some coffee, and…. waited for weather to clear, as was becoming routine. We packed everything up except the tent and got ready. Then we got back in the tent and sat around on our packs when it started raining again. Eventually we heard a plane, then saw it, and started knocking the tent down. We got all of our gear in a pile about the time the engine was shut off, and the trip was over. A nice 10 day hunt, stretched into 15 days worth of total time.

 

[Ronster]

Excellent writeup! We were fortunate to not see any bears on our trip up north which was fine by me. Glad you guys got on the ram that you took down. How old was he? Looks to be a solid 8 to me but its hard to tell. Congrats.

 

[Huntr]

Congrats on an awesome hunt and great writing!

 

[colonel00]

Epic

 

[Shrek]

Cool story. That is some rough country. I have to marvel that the sheep can survive the winter in such an inhospitable environment.

 

[black525]

Great read! Bucket list hunt for me. Congrats !

 

[realunlucky]

Great write up and pictures felt like i was right there. ?..maybe some day

 

[tstowater]

Great write up, as always. Gotta enjoy the "excitement" of crossing those glacier fed rivers.

 

[fillthefreezer]

wow

 

[Matt W.]

Way to capture it. Congrats!

 

[paddlehead]

Great Story!! Makes me wish I was an Alaskan Resident.

 

[Matt Cashell]

Very nice. Great write up.

 

[Maah Daah Hey]

Great write up. Love the pictures that go with it.

 

[luke moffat]

Great write up man....I know its a lot of work to put together stories like that so I really appreicate the effort. However, if you are like me you do it as much for yourself to put into an ever expanding compliation of hunting stories so that many years from now you can crack up the book and relive all the "good old days" when you were young enough to run to the tops of the mountains to chase critters and haul them down.

Well done on a great hunt....Really enjoyed the read sir!!!