The last weekend in April Luke and a couple friends headed up to the north side of the Brooks Range to hunt caribou. The group included Scott (an old buddy from my days in college working at Afton Alps who is now a backcountry ranger at Denali Park) and Brian (a cheesehead transplanted to AK, like me). It had to be kind of a quick hitter of a trip as Scott had training and didn't arrive in Fairbanks until about 8pm on Thursday night and I had to be on a 6am flight to Anchorage for training on Monday morning. Mix in the fact that it's about an eight hour drive to where we start skiing for our hunt and that our legal hunting area began five miles from the road (the hunting regs require that rifle hunters must be 5 miles from the road); it looked like we'd be burning the candle at both ends. We decided to sleep for a few hours on Thursday night and depart at 3:30am on Friday morning. After a "truckers delight" brunch at
Coldfoot Cafe we were fully fueled up for the ski in.
We started skiing with our
pulks in tow under partly cloudy skies around noon. After about an hour of skiing a thick fog descended upon us. It was a little disorienting as we were unable to differentiate between the snow on the ground and the foggy horizon. Visibility was definitely under 50 yards and often seemed like about 10 yards. We plucked some coordinates off the map and entered them into Scott's GPS and were able to get ourselves pretty close to where we wanted to camp. After setting up camp we skied around for about an hour "hunting" in the fog. Given the conditions, a caribou would have had to stumble up and practically kiss us if we were going to see it. We ate dinner and decided to hit the sack and hope the fog lifted for us on Saturday.
If you wondering what we eat on adventures like this it's generally a steady diet of pre-cooked bacon and bratwurst, Hostess Fruit Pies and candy bars for breakfast, lunch and snacks. We typically eat freeze dried backpacking meals for dinner. It's a diet that Brian relied on during the 2008 Winter
Wilderness Classic a 150 mile race through the Alaskan backcountry that he competed in and finished this last winter. Another staple of the trip was a constant dialog of quotes from the Coen Brothers movie The Big Lebowski, which we can find a way to make apply to most situations and get a few laughs out of.
We woke up on Saturday morning and most of the fog had lifted. We had clear skies and a bit of wind. The temperature was probably around 10F. We skied around a bit and didn't see any caribou during the first hour or so. We decided to ski up the mini-mountain near which we had camped and maybe get lucky and surprise some caribou, which we actually did do. Fortunately for us it didn't work out like we had planned as the group of three spotted us first and took off running. Luckily for us they ran and hunkered down less than a half mile from our camp (and closer to the road). It worked out pretty good as we had some topography to hide behind to get into position for a shot. After the dust settled we had two caribou down and the work was about to begin. We got the caribou quartered up and put into game bags and skied back to break camp and make our way back to the truck. As Emily mentioned in an earlier post she was up in the area conducting snow surveys for her job. Just as we were breaking camp Emily and a colleague rode up on snowmachines. It worked out great as they were parked near us and we were able to ski in their snowmachine tracks all the way back to the truck (about 6 miles). We arrived back to the truck about 8pm.
We drove through the night, with another stop at Coldfoot for a hearty meal, and made it back to Fairbanks about 5am on Sunday. After a few hours of sleep we spent the rest of the day getting the meat processed and put away. The first kabobs have been spectacular! We plan to make some caribou sausage this weekend.
Our camp during whiteout conditions (pic by Brian)
Scott skiing in the distance behind a caribou antler (pic by Brian)
Luke and Scott in the fog (pic by Brian)
Luke glassing for caribou (pic by Brian)
Brian with the Brooks Range in the background
The men in white pajamas (pic by Brian)
This last weekend Brian and I made sausage out of some of the caribou we harvested a couple weeks ago. Ed, a colleague of ours at work, has been kind enough to take us under his wing and show us some of the secrets of making sausage. We ended up with a nice haul of bratwurst and garlic sausage (Ed's specialty). Ed threw the garlic sausage in his smoker for added flavor. So far the spoils of our labor have been well worth it.
Turning the casing inside out prior to stuffing
A good looking ring of garlic sausage
The two wurstmeister's apprentices at work
The wurstmeister showing Brian the proper technique for stuffing
