Tag: Mountain House

Into the Tundra: Part Five

Leigh, Travel

The following is an account of day five of our trip to the Arctic Circle.  If you missed day four, you can catch up in quick fashion with a recap found here. 

We woke up to a thin layer of frost on the tent, and a layer of ice on our coffee kettle.  Edgar discovered a supply of Swiss Miss in our food tub, and we enjoyed steaming cups of mocha while we waited a moment for the sun to reach camp.

We had planned to venture into the valley about three miles away, so we packed the necessities: almonds, mini Snickers, Reese’s, and beef jerky, as well as a knife, saw and other items we’d need to field dress the caribou once we got it.  Feeling confident, we tracked to Wader Hill and conducted a 360 scan.

I’ll pause here to explain that one of the many fun things about camping in the wilderness all alone and away from civilization is that there are no signs or names of things.  You’re free to make them up as you go. A small rise where one might drop their waders becomes Wader Hill.  The big rock that looks like an elephant eye and trunk becomes Elephant Mountain, and the bump with the two rocky formations is heretofore referred to as the Double Bubble.

So, Wader Hill.  We glassed there for while, before sneaking up to the next rise, where the view was great but we were still well-hidden.  Eventually, far away on the horizon, we saw a group of caribou making their way down into the basin where we were spotting.  They were so far away, all I could see were flashes of white where their chests caught the sun.  “Looks like two bulls in that pack,” Edgar noted.  I looked at him to see if he was joking.  He wasn’t.  I wasn’t sure if they were rocks or animals, and he knew their gender.

Sure enough, as the group made its way closer to us, I could finally make out that two of the animals were larger, and had more white on their chests.  The cows have antlers too, just a bit smaller than the males, so that alone doesn’t distinguish the sexes, but after staring at the group for a while, and allowing them to get closer,  I could see the difference in size, coloring and headgear.

After watching them for about an hour, Edgar decided to make his move.  It appeared that they were headed for the river bed and then the valley, and he’d have to move quickly to cut them off.  Our research told us that you can’t outrun a caribou, and it was right.  You can’t even out-walk them; they’re so quick on the tundra that gives humans so much trouble.

I watched the two in my binoculars.  To my left, a herd of caribou was coming on strong, and to my right Edgar was making quick tracks down to the riverbed.  Back and forth I checked their progress, until I saw Edgar stop.  Everything was quiet.  The shot seemed to take forever to get to me… a sound like I’ve never heard before.  Part shot, part echo, it reached my ears and kept going past me into the lake.  I saw the animal stumble but keep going.  A second shot.  He was down.

Edgar is standing at the spot where he took the shot. If you zoom in, you can see the white of the caribou way out there. No? Okay, hang on.
Look for the white speck, with brown attached to it that’s darker than the landscape. That’s the caribou.

Edgar had warned me that this is when the real work would begin.  Alaska Fish and Game are serious about harvesting the meat of the entire animal.  A hunter can’t just take the trophy antlers and be on his way.  The animal must be cut up and carried out, and the antlers need to be the last to leave the field.  Our outfitter also clarified what to do if you found yourself sharing your harvest unexpectedly. “If you come back to pack out a second trip, and a bear is on your caribou, you don’t need to fight a grizzly for your meat.  But you do need to take a photo of the grizzly as evidence he was there.”  We assumed this rule was an effort to kick some lazy hunters in the pants… don’t just say a bear was on it and leave half the animal.

Of course we had no intention of doing any such thing, so Edgar got going on the skinning and I headed his way with my pack and his waders.  He’d had to cross the river to get to the caribou, and the water was cold and the rocks slippery.  My waders were full-length and heavy, so his hip waders were better for transporting and sharing.  I was grateful to have them on the way over, and we traded off footwear for the multiple trips back.

It took a little more than an hour for me to reach Edgar and the caribou. I helped him cut up and bag the meat.  Hind quarters, shoulders, ribs and even neck meat went in the bags.  Once we had it ready to take back to camp, we started loading up our packs.  On the first trip out, all I had was my rifle, day pack and a heavy coat, and it felt like a million pounds.  Edgar carried the first sections of meat, attached to his pack.  Three miles later, we were back at camp, and creating a refrigerator out of a small brushy alder tree down the beach from camp. (re: in case of bears)  With the bright sun and the heavy packs, we no longer needed the layers of fleece over our wool.  We stripped down to our long johns for round two.

A male caribou can weigh up to 400 pounds, and its hind quarters are not light.  Prior to the trip Edgar and I had many conversations about how much weight I could carry.  I didn’t know, but I did know from years of lifting that I am more confident in my front squat than my back squat, and expressed an interest in having some of the weight in the front.  Enter the pack out bag. A couple of Idaho hunters invented this carrier with big pockets in the front and the back.  Edgar loaded me up and stood back.  “Too much?”  I took a couple of test steps.  “I can’t move quickly, but I can move.  I want to try it.”  So he grabbed a shoulder, all the loin meat and ribs and we set off.

I had trained for the trip for weeks by loading up a backpack with weights and walking on the treadmill at the gym, but no amount of fitness equipment can prepare you for carrying the hind quarters of a caribou through the marshy tundra.  I had to stop quite a few times to flatten my back and take a breath, but I never actually took the weight off, for fear I wouldn’t put it back on.

We sang a couple of songs and did our best to enjoy the scenery on that second trip back to camp.  We knew we had to keep moving, as the sun was going down quickly, and we didn’t want to be in bear country in the dark with meat on our backs, and in my case, my front.  We made it back to camp in twilight and added the second helping of meat to the fridge.  I felt a huge sense of accomplishment and relief.  We did it.  We tracked and harvested the animal, dressed it out and packed it out in only two trips, and 12 miles.  It was time to relax and enjoy some Mountain House spaghetti by the fire.

I’m pointing to the spot where the caribou fell. Give or take.

As we climbed into our bags for the night, we talked about where we might head the next day.  I could barely keep my eyes open for the planning, and drifted off in my comfy bag and 47 layers.

On day six we tried our hand at fishing for grayling and arctic char, and the Arctic Circle decided to show off its repertoire of changing climates.

Into the Tunda: Part Four

Leigh, Travel

The following is an account of day four of our trip to the arctic circle.  If you missed day three, you can catch up in quick fashion with a recap found here.

It was a chilly night in the tent.  We had a little propane lantern going before bed, and that helped to heat the area, and of course my bag was cozy, but the morning air was not.  I was happy I had splurged for a sleep sack, which boasted an extra 25 degrees of protection.  I don’t know about 25, but it was soft and well worth the extra layer to keep in body heat.

My penguin socks also came in handy as a secondary foot layer.

The provisions from the outfitter included a two-burner stove and a kettle; the latter we had filled with lake water the night before, and had it ready in the vestibule.  Edgar broke up the thin layer of ice that had formed overnight, and got coffee going, since one of us is not such a morning person (cough, cough, me, cough cough) and he kindly served it to me in my sleeping bag so I could warm up before I got up.

Once we were properly caffeinated, we greeted the morning at first light.  We couldn’t get over the beauty of our camp site.  The water was blue and clear, and clean enough to drink.  I’ve never been camping anywhere where we just took our water bottles down to the edge of the lake and scooped up a bunch to drink, but that’s what we did all week with no arguments from our digestive systems.  (Special thanks to my friend who gave me a life water tube to use just in case – I did try it out just so I’ll be ready if it’s needed on the next trip!)

My stomach wakes up slowly, but Edgar woke up starving and decided to have a Mountain House spaghetti for breakfast.  We didn’t know what to expect from the ready-to-eat packs, but we found them surprisingly tasty.  We poured a couple of cups of hot water right in the pouch, let it sit, and in no time it was ready to eat.

The guys who stayed at the camp prior to our arrival had killed several of their caribou after spotting them right from camp, so our binoculars were never far away, and we glassed in between making coffee, and packing gear.  It wasn’t uncommon for one of us to be making a sandwich, and the other to take a quick climb up the hill to see what we could see.

We decided to head to a small hill not too far away and put our binoculars to work.  The caribou seemed to be coming from the south and heading north into a valley.  We made some pb&j sandwiches, filled up our water bottles and layered up for the day.  We also packed meat bags, knives, a bone saw, and other items we’d need if we were successful in our hunt.

Once we found a comfy spot, we leaned against our packs and looked over the tundra, up on the hill, around the rocks and back to the tundra again.  At first my eyes deceived me.  Everything that dotted the landscape looked like a caribou.  I’d stare at a dark speck with a shiny side, slide off it and then move back over.  Did it move?  No.  Rock.   We did this for an hour or two, snacking on mini snickers, but eventually the sun warmed us so nicely that we found ourselves dozing here and there.  We woke up a while later to see a cow and calf crossing the tundra.  They moved pretty leisurely for a long time, before suddenly trotting away.

A while later we saw another cow and calf hanging out by the river… which was easily a mile from us but still in our view. We walked up the river bed for a closer look, and to get a better understanding of the best way to travel.  Prior to our trip, the one warning we got more than other wasn’t about low temperatures or grizzlies, but about the challenge of walking on the tundra.  The land is boggy; it sits on permafrost.  Trees can’t root down through it, so we saw grass and small shrubbery on top and some sort of plant that looks like a head of broccoli, called a tussock.  Sometimes when we’d step, we’d get grass.  Sometimes our boots would sink under mucky water, and sometimes we’d land on a bouncy tussock.  The river bed was mostly gravel, and much more inviting, and we traveled it whenever it was going in our general direction, even if we had to wind around a bit.

Just down river, no bulls were in sight, so we had to be content with enjoying the scenery, which was easy enough to do.  It was so quiet that at one point I heard a noise and couldn’t figure out what it was.  Eventually I placed it.  It was the rustle of a bird’s wings as it flew above me.

At dusk we headed back to camp to build a fire and enjoy a warm meal of beef stroganoff.  We made a plan to move into the valley the next day, where the animals all seemed to be headed.

In part five, our patience pays off along with our waders and pack out bag, and we hit our record for number of miles traveled across the tundra in one day.

Into the Tundra: Part Three

Leigh, Travel

The following is an account of day three of our trip to the arctic circle.  If you missed day two, you can catch up in quick fashion with a recap found here. 

The wind died down on Saturday morning, and we got the text we were hoping to see.  “Can you be ready in 15?”  Ten minutes later we were anxiously waiting for the van to take us back to the staging area.   We got our bags organized and in the van, and enjoyed a few laughs as the guys from Wisconsin seemed to be forgetting everything in their rush to get into the field… including a rifle!  We also noticed they were well under the weight limit, and we heard one of them regretfully admit, “I didn’t really bring any cold weather gear.”  I glanced down at my bag of coats, hats, gloves and wool long johns and felt a little bad for him.  It’s Alaska, friends.  It might be late summer, but it still gets cold.

We needed our waders for the boarding process, since the float planes were tied up close to shore, but still required a few steps in the water.  I got to sit up front next to the pilot, while Edgar took the chair right behind me.  Taking off on the water is unreal.  The plane glided for a while while we got up speed, and then lifted effortlessly into the Alaskan sky.  It was a bumpy ride for some of the 150 miles north to our camp site.  While my stomach lurched and dropped, our pilot was completely unbothered.  I glanced over and caught him sending a smiley face emoji to someone.  Edgar and I locked eyes and I knew we were thinking the same thing.  If your bush pilot is confident enough to text while he’s flying you out, he’s either unhinged, or there’s nothing to worry about.  We settled on the latter.

We saw caribou, and so much water.  It’s crazy how many rivers and lakes we saw from the air.   We knew we were being dropped off by a lake, so every time I saw a big one I was thinking… maybe we land here… or here… this one looks nice.  Finally the pilot spotted what he’d been after, and we landed smooth as silk on a good-sized lake.  A bunch of guys were gathered in camp chairs on the beach, and they greeted us warmly.  They wasted no time in sharing the layout of the camp, where they saw animals, which direction the caribou were going, and which meals they enjoyed the most from the Mountain House packs.  They also had a stack of leftover firewood, which was much appreciated.  There were six of them, so they’d had three tents, and left one standing and ready for us to move in.  Only half of them could fit in the plane, so the other three stayed back with us for a few more hours.  It took 90 minutes each way to ferry us back and forth from the staging area.

Fish and Game officials have serious rules about NOT hunting the day you fly.  But there is no law against getting the lay of the land, so once our new friends had departed we spent the next five hours of daylight getting to know the valley.  We saw a few caribou, including one rather large bull we nicknamed Mr. Wide.  He had really tall uppers, but no bez.  We watched him for a good while, and slowly got closer, until he’d had enough of us and headed back toward the canyon.

The visual judging of distance is deceiving.  These caribou were close to camp, but still about 200 yards away.  With our binoculars we could see for miles, so it felt like everything was so close, but the actual distance and the mushy give of the tundra made crossing the valley more time-consuming than it appeared.

The daytime temperature was comfortable – in my wool base layer, lined overalls and fleece I was plenty warm, but when the sun went down the temperature really dropped.  We got a fire going and each enjoyed a warm Mountain House meal before burrowing into our sleeping bags.  I admit it took some time for me to fall asleep that first night.  I heard soft, unidentifiable noises, that for no reason whatsoever I suspected might be a grizzly bear.  Once I was certain it was just the wind, I pulled my hat low and my sleeping bag high and drifted off.

On day four we established a morning coffee routine, had an unconventional camp breakfast, and devised a strategy for crossing the tundra.