AK Troutbum
WKR
So, after only 3 years of putting, my now 15 year old son Dalton, in for one of the more difficult sheep tags to draw here in Alaska, he scored an early season (Aug. 10 opener), DCUA tag. When the results came out earlier this year I immediately contacted Gary Hall (Mt. Hayes Air), out of Delta Junction and booked a flight into one of the only two strips that you can legally use to access this area. I wanted to get a early jump start, in the hopes of having several days to hike back in prior to season opener. My plan was to leave in the early morning of Aug. 6, make the 6 hour drive to Delta and get flown out in the afternoon, weather permitting. Well, weather didn't permit, so we ended up spending the night in a campground with the hopes of flying out the following day. After spending the morning of the 7th waiting for conditions to improve we were finely able to get airborne that afternoon. Two Super Cub flights and a couple hours later, we were pitching our base camp tent and settling in for the night.
We awoke early the next morning, ate breakfast, and headed out, leaving our base camp pitched and surrounded by an electric bear fence. Our first line of business was to hike the two miles or so over to a glaciated creek and once across the creek, we would be in the DCUA. Knowing that this creek could easily get blown out with heavy rains (which we had almost every day of Aug. up until this time), and become too dangerous to safely wade across, I had asked Luke Moffat if he would loan me one of his pack rafts, which he graciously did (thank you very much Luke and Becca).
I initially paddled across the creek, then tied the raft onto the middle of a 100' cord and then tied a rock to one end of the cord and threw it back over to my son (if that makes sense). My son would then put a pack into the raft and I would pull the raft over to my side, unload the pack, and then my son would pull the raft back over to his side for the next pack, and so on. Once all the gear was across the creek, my son jumped in the raft and I pulled him over to my side. This whole process took a little more time than I expected, but it was the safest way of getting across the creek and worked perfectly.
We were only able to make it about 7 miles from our base camp and up into the drainage, but we found a fairly nice spot to pitch our spike camp at 3100' and settled in for the evening. Dalton spotted three rams about 1 1/2 miles further up the drainage from our spike and ended up watching them until we lost light.
Day 3 (Aug. 9), started with continuing up the drainage another 3 miles to a spot that I had originally studied on topo's and what looked like a good place for camp and possibly getting on some sheep for opener. We watched several rams from this local but they were all too far away to determine whether or not they were legal. Some rams were definitely sublegal but a couple that were boarder line, were just too far away to tell for sure. We opted to stay put and not move camp to get a closer inspection since the terrain didn't look all that inviting.
More to come...
We awoke early the next morning, ate breakfast, and headed out, leaving our base camp pitched and surrounded by an electric bear fence. Our first line of business was to hike the two miles or so over to a glaciated creek and once across the creek, we would be in the DCUA. Knowing that this creek could easily get blown out with heavy rains (which we had almost every day of Aug. up until this time), and become too dangerous to safely wade across, I had asked Luke Moffat if he would loan me one of his pack rafts, which he graciously did (thank you very much Luke and Becca).
I initially paddled across the creek, then tied the raft onto the middle of a 100' cord and then tied a rock to one end of the cord and threw it back over to my son (if that makes sense). My son would then put a pack into the raft and I would pull the raft over to my side, unload the pack, and then my son would pull the raft back over to his side for the next pack, and so on. Once all the gear was across the creek, my son jumped in the raft and I pulled him over to my side. This whole process took a little more time than I expected, but it was the safest way of getting across the creek and worked perfectly.
We were only able to make it about 7 miles from our base camp and up into the drainage, but we found a fairly nice spot to pitch our spike camp at 3100' and settled in for the evening. Dalton spotted three rams about 1 1/2 miles further up the drainage from our spike and ended up watching them until we lost light.
Day 3 (Aug. 9), started with continuing up the drainage another 3 miles to a spot that I had originally studied on topo's and what looked like a good place for camp and possibly getting on some sheep for opener. We watched several rams from this local but they were all too far away to determine whether or not they were legal. Some rams were definitely sublegal but a couple that were boarder line, were just too far away to tell for sure. We opted to stay put and not move camp to get a closer inspection since the terrain didn't look all that inviting.
More to come...
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