More Alaska Pics

[NightTrain]

It's been a few years since I posted some of my pics from around the State, so I figured I'd upload a few.

I work for a telecom company and we frequently bounce all over in helicopters building & maintaining cellular networks, microwave networks, satellite shots, repeaters, that sort of thing. It's a fun job just because I'm always going somewhere new - a desk job is my version of hell.

That's not to say that there hasn't been some hellish jobs in shitty areas that really sucked, but on the whole we have fun and enjoy it.

Many of the sites are on mountaintops or remote islands with nothing but raw wilderness all around for many miles. We'll set up a camp and do our thing, sometimes for a few weeks, and when we're done the helicopter will come pick us up and take us back to civilization.

We're always heavily armed, because we like bacon almost as much as bears do. While we're prepared for it, rarely do we see any bears and they usually keep a respectful distance. Shooting .375s and .460s when we set up camp seems to work wonders for alerting the critters in the area that coming into camp would be a bad idea.

When I'm not working, usually we go to the cabin, 20 miles up the Talkeetna River from the town of Talkeetna, which is accessible only by jet boat or snowmachine, depending on the season.


This pic was taken about 10 miles from my house, that's me. The German Shepard on the left is our dog, Frost. The chocolate Lab is Truffles, a friend of mine's dog. They're both wickedly smart and great dogs. There's some good trout and salmon fishing behind me, this is Jim Creek.

[NightTrain]

This was taken up in Hatcher's Pass, 15 miles away from my house. That's me on the right and my oldest son on the left. We were just screwing around that day and panning for gold in a little creek up here. We found a few flakes, nothing to get excited about but the kids all sure got excited about "getting rich!!!".

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This was taken out of the picture window of our cabin in early morning. The kids really love going here.

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All of the kids lined up & ready to head up to the cabin.

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This is above our cabin at Disappointment Creek, we caught about 100 salmon that day. Me with the rod, and my brother on the right.





This one was taken on Heney Ridge, it overlooks Cordova. We spent a week up here.... nice views, but we were ready to come down.



The end of the road - literally! The Copper River washed out the bridge and it was never rebuilt, so now the only way to Cordova is to fly or take the ferry. Cordova is a cool little town, though.



This was at Shoup Bay, which was my first microwave hop from Valdez going to Cordova. The helicopter pilot, Leah, was having depth perception issues as she was coming in bringing us loads of equipment from Valdez, so she asked us to paint around the area to help her vision. This is Helga, the Camp Wench. Since it was May, she melted soon after this was taken.

[fj1200]

Black sand? Volcanic?

[NightTrain]

This was taken on Kodiak, we were doing a job for the State.



Our cabin from the air after a huge flood. I was glad to see it still standing and was fearing the worst.



We lost power in my buddy's boat, and ended up against this sweeper. It was hairy at impact, because when we hit the log the stern almost went under water - and that could have been deadly with 8' of water at the stern and the current running at 16 MPH. We got it out after a couple of hours.



Not a bad day fishing in Talkeetna. Reds & Silvers (Sockeye and Coho)



Having a beer break on the trail to the cabin.

[NightTrain]

This was a fun trip off Kodiak. We were parked over a nice halibut hole and the commute to the top of the mountain took about 2 minutes. We spent 10 days here, enjoyed every minute of it.



My Uncle Mike and I enjoying a great afternoon fishing on the Anchor River out of Homer.



My sister, me, and Uncle Mike at our favorite camping spot down on the Kenai Peninsula near Clam Gulch.



Now for some southeast pics...

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Wrangell... I'm not sure what the whole story is behind these wrecks. I took all of these in January of this year.




Misc. scenery out of Wrangell.





From my hotel room in Wrangell one evening.

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I'll add a few pictures from the museum in Wrangell. I have a ton from here, it was fascinating. If there's enough interest I can make a thread devoted to that.

These beads were powerful trading stock when it came to trading with the Indians.



Anyone that would attempt this is a badass, in my book... and they did it all the time back then.



Tlingit totems. Pronounced : Clink-it... don't ask me why.



Ye olde Firewater.



U.S. Army 12-pound mountain howitzer. These didn't get used against the Indians very much, but there were occasions here & there.

[NightTrain]

The town of Kake, as seen from the ferry in early morning fog.



On the way to Valdez at the top of Thompson Pass.



As we were coming back in to Valdez in the chopper, I saw this fishing boat that just didn't look right. So I asked Leah to get closer.



Yep, that baby is high-n-dry on a rock! This guy was having a real bad day. You can see their campfire on the beach as they waited for high tide again after abandoning ship - no one knew if the boat would break in half or not, so they got to shore in the skiff.

[NightTrain]

Another salmon fishing boat making his money.



The Rodeo in full swing.. these fishing boats are ruthlessly competitive and won't think another thing about running over someone's nets or ramming boats out of their way. They have a very limited time to get their fish during the opener and the more aggressive you are the more money you make.



Here you can see a skiff running the nets out in a big arc - they've spotted a school of salmon and are racing to encircle them.


The view from our camp on Heney Ridge, overlooking Cordova. We spent a week here.

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Heney Ridge camp, two of my coworkers.



Overlooking the delta where the Copper River empties into Prince William Sound, shot from Heney Ridge.



Way down there you can see the airstrip that we were operating from. It was handy to be able to keep an eye on our trucks while we were up there - not that we could have done anything about someone stealing from our rigs.





And a shot from the airstrip in Cordova. Heney Ridge where our camp was, is directly behind the helicopter.

[NightTrain]

A little black bear beside the road coming into Valdez.



The kids and a waterfall we found as we were exploring different 4x4 trails in the Suburban.



My bedroom on Hinchinbrook Island, out in Prince William Sound. I don't mind the fans from the equipment when sleeping so I figured I'd camp out inside. There are legendary bear maulings that have happened on this island by some very large and aggressive Brown Bears. We kept a sharp eye out while we were camped here for a week but never saw any.


One of my coworker's hand cannon.


Setting up camp on Hinchinbrook.

[NightTrain]

Black sand? Volcanic?

No, this is glacial silt. It's extremely fine (much more fine than sand) and it's what gives glacial-fed rivers the blueish-grey color. The silt dunes here are kind of unusual and I haven't seen any others this big anywhere else. The kids like to play in it because it's very soft... kind of our version of going to the beach.