Fall 2008

Well, we're finally getting around to posting a blog update on our fall 2008 activities. Above is a picture of a 30" rainbow I caught the first weekend of October on the Kenai River. It was pretty awesome to land a rainbow that big. Emily and I spent the weekend staying in Cooper Landing at a nice B&B. I fished the Kenai on Fri, Sat and Sun. Emily didn't feel like fishing but served as an excellent guide rowing me into perfect position when we floated the Kenai between Skilak Lake and Bing's landing. The highlight of the B&B stay was our first breakfast that featured bacon wrapped breakfast sausages that were baked in maple syrup.

Emily rowing across Skilak Lake

Working backwards in time the next fall 2008 highlight was a weekend moose hunting on the upper Chena River with Cam. I got drawn for an antlerless moose permit for the upper Chena River and we were able to get out and hunt the last weekend of the season. We did see a couple moose but we weren't able to get a good shot on any. Emily wanted to join us on the trip but she had a class that GIS weekend and couldn't make it.

The next highlight was running the Equinox marathon as a team with Brian and Jeff. Our team name was Boners in Sweatpants (BISP). We actually had uniforms picked out for the race: green and gold zubaz (remember the tiger-striped pants from the early 90's?) and headbands. Unfortunately, the zubaz didn't make it by race day so we had to go with only the head bands. We still looked good, real good. Our strategy was for Jeff to come out strong on the first leg and be leading at the top of the hill about 400 yards from the start. We knew that the newspaper photographers usually hang out at the top of the hill and we figured that if Jeff was leading up the hill his picture would be in the paper. Just as planned Jeff came roaring out of the gate and lead the whole field up the hill. He was yelling for Brian to take his picture while leading as he approached the top. Also just as planned Jeff's picture was prominently featured in the Sunday newspaper leading the field. We were off to a great start.

Jeff leading the 2008 Equinox field (picture courtesy of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner)

Brian took the next leg that ascended Ester dome. In the excitement of the hand off between Brian and Jeff I was unable to get a good picture of Brian running. Nonetheless, he smoked the second leg running uphill most of the way. The weather conditions going up, and on top of Ester Dome, were pretty nasty: windy and sleeting, probably about 35F. It's a good thing he was wearing all cotton. Brian definitely carried the brunt of the load for the team. On the top of the dome Brian handed off to me for the last, mostly downhill leg.

Here is a good time for a quick aside: Brian is a really good runner - he got 10th in the overall entire marathon last year - although he last ran in May due to a house building project and Jeff is in excellent condition from his biking exploits and had been running a couple times a week leading up to the race, I however, was about to embark on the longest run of my life (I ran 10K once many years ago) and my training consisted of running about five 11-minute miles once in July. I figured that it's only 9 miles and I can always walk some if need be. I had also received numerous warnings from experienced Equinoxers that the last leg was a killer: the downhill aspect seems like a good idea in concept, and it is from a cardiovascular standpoint, but it beats the crap out of the runner's body. In fact, Jeff suffered a stress fracture of his tibia when he ran the entire course a few years ago.

Brian tagged me in and I was off. Running on the trails on Ester Dome was great. The leaves were golden, I was feeling pretty good and was happy to have gravity on my side. Emily rode her bike with me for most of the way to UAF providing encouragement. The first 6 miles went pretty well but when I started having to climb some small hills I was suffering. Perhaps I should have heeded Jeff's advice to throttle it back a little on the downhill part to save a little for the end. I'm really not sure it would have mattered. By the time I got to the ski trails at UAF (about 1-1.5 miles to the finish) I was pretty blown up. I had some cramping in my calf and hamstring and my foot was starting to hurt pretty bad. I gave it everything I had and finished as strong as I could. Our team ended up 12th overall in our category. As Jeff pointed out: if we can do that good on almost no training, then training would have just been a waste of time. Luckily, my foot quit hurting last week (three weeks after the race).

I've had a few inquiries on how the rest of the sheep hunting season went - here's a synopsis of my adventures on that front: Emily and I were set to go in over the Labor day weekend when my back locked up on me. Not good times. I actually had to micturate in a jar for a day as I wasn't able to get up. I've been doing twice daily exercises and yoga twice weekly and I haven't had another flare up since.

Two weekends after that Brian and I went in on Friday night and hiked in with headlamps in the dark. It was extremely windy (the weather service reported gusts up to 45MPH) and we were pretty tired. While setting up the tent it got ripped out of our hands by a gust and blown down the mountain. Luckily we found it the next day on the way out - about 3/4 of a mile from where it was last spotted. We spent a sleepless night under a tent fly with rocks stacked on it and woke up (actually we didn't sleep more than an hour) to a ram making his way down to by where we were camped. Due to the wind glassing was tricky and we were going back and forth on whether it was a full curl, even at ~450 yds. Before we could make a final ruling we were crouched down behind some boulders and I went to put my hood over my head and he must have seen the movement as he took off burning back up the mountain. That was a pretty big bummer after what we'd been through the night before. We hunted our butts off the rest of the day in the wind (it really was brutal, neither of us had experienced anything like it before) and ended up pulling out that night.

Brian and Luke's sheep camp (we're thinking of offering guiding services)

I had planned one more trip in the last weekend of the season but the forecast had gusts predicted up to 55MPH, along with some rain/snow. After our experience the previous weekend I didn't want to play that game again so I had to call it a season. I guess I'll have to wait til next year to give it another run.

In mid-September Emily had a work trip up to the north slope.

Last weekend Emiy and I installed 4 of 5 new triple pane windows in our house. It went pretty smooth. We still need to install the last window and a new on-demand hot water heater after we get back from visiting Emily's sister in Wyoming this weekend. I also included a picture of the meal we had last night. It was spruce grouse (two of eight that Jeff and I harvested about a month ago) with lingonberries and Hasselbach potatoes.

Luke with a dolly varden

The big rainbow with the bead in it's mouth

Cam soloing the canoe across the Chena on the moose hunt

Luke at the finish

Team BISP at the finish

Emily with the spruce grouse with lingonberries and Hasselbach potatoes

Lake Creek

Last week I did a five day, fly in/out, float trip with my friends Justin and Adam to fish for rainbow trout. We had planned to float the Talachulitna River but due to low water on the Tal we ended up floating Lake Creek instead. It was an excellent trip: extraordinary fishing, exciting whitewater, great scenery and all with a couple of great friends.

The trip started out with a three hour weather delay due to low clouds at our put in on Chelatna Lake. The delay did give us time to visit with the characters at the air taxi service (Tiffany - who has a bright future in customer service, Steve - the pilot - who has great people skills and the ability to get multiple F-bombs into all sentences, Buckshot - a well behaved 1 year old German Shorthaired Pointer and Willow - a very old choclate lab with top notch muffin stealing skills). Other than the delay the only bummer about the low clouds was that we would miss the awesome scenery on the upper portion of the creek of Mt McKinley, Mt Foraker and other Alaska Range peaks. Although, as we were soon to find out, the fishing generally left us no time to think about anything else.

Lake Creek is a clear water stream that starts at Chelatna Lake and flows 54 miles to its confluence with the Yetna River. It starts out pretty calm right out of the lake but quickly turns into class II and III with large boulders that we were continously dodging. The whitewater ensured that no one was left out of the fun as we took turns oaring Justin's 16-foot self bailing raft while the other two fellas fished. The creek flows through a canyon section that includes two tricky stretches of Class III+ whitewater. We had planned to scout both sections of trickier water prior to floating through but ended up taking them unscouted, forunately without incident. We had choice campsites at every stop and the weather was perfect save for the first afternoon and a couple hours of showers one evening.

As mentioned earlier the fishing was excellent. We started off catching real nice rainbows in the upper section fishing battle creek and cotton candy flies. Adam landed a good looking silver salmon the first night which made for excellent eating. Lower down in the creek we switched to beads to replicate salmon eggs and had excellent luck as well. We also caught grayling, one sucker and battled with chum, sockeye and pink salmon on our 5-6 weight flyrods. The rainbow fishing slowed a little through the canyon but for the last 6-7 miles it really heated up. We estimated we each landed over 50 trout during the last full day of fishing. What a trip!

Justin and Buckshot waiting for the weather to break

Justin and Adam with the vessel at the put in on Chelatna Lake

The Alaska Range in the background on the upper section

Adam with a nice silver salmon

Silver salmon coming up!

Justin with a nice rainbow

Luke with a rainbow

Luke with a grayling

Luke playing a fish in front of a canyon wall

Where's the line?

Running the rapids


Squeezing the boat under a tree

Steve coming to get us at the F-ing Island

Dall Sheep/ Caribou Hunt

I'm getting packed up to leave on another adventure tomorrow night floating either the Talachulitna River or Lake Creek to do some fishing. I wanted to quickly do a post on the dall sheep/caribou hunt I did with my friend Eric last week.

I got drawn for a coveted dall sheep hunting permit in the Tok Management Area. Eric agreed to come along and hunt with me. He registered for a caribou tag as we thought that if we saw a nice caribou it would be nice to have the option to harvest one. We hiked a couple miles up a creek south of the Alaska Hwy and set up camp on the night of the 8th. It rained most of the day on the 9th so we decided to wait to move the camp up valley closer to sheep country. That night we saw a group of bull caribou up valley from us and thought that Eric may try and take one if they were still there the next day (the 10th was the opener for both sheep and caribou).

Sure enough we ran into the same four caribou bulls the morning of the 10th as we were walking up valley moving camp. Eric made a great shot on the biggest bull from about 70 yards and we spent the remainder of the day butchering the caribou. Since the temperatures were in the 40's we decided to store the meat under my tarp tent and continue hunting dall sheep. The next two days Eric and I hunted sheep and saw a few legal rams (the rams need to have full curl horns to be legal to harvest). One of the rams we saw in the nearby drainage looked to be a nice full curl so the plan for the 13th was for Eric to pack out the first load of caribou meat to the truck and I'd try and find the ram we had seen on the evening of the 12th.

As it's been said before: "the first casualty of every battle is the plan". On my way over to the nearby drainage I ended up seeing a group of 10 rams in the drainage we were camped in. I had spooked them a little but they didn't run off too fast so I decided to try and get above them and see what happened. I did get above them but the fog rolled in and reduced my ability to navigate. I didn't end up getting a shot but it was very exciting to get above the rams and watch them. The season ends September 20th so I'll have a few more chances to get out to the area and give it another try. We spent the 14th hiking out with the 2nd half of the meat, the antlers and camp.

Looking up valley

Eric and the bull caribou

The men in white pajamas return

Luke on the way back to camp from a nearby drainage

Rams hanging out for the afternoon

Eric with the caribou antlers wrapped in Tyvek to make walking through the brush easier

Family Visits

We've been pretty busy lately with summertime activities (fishing, hunting, berry picking, house projects, work, etc) so we haven't kept up too well with our blog posts.

In late July we went back to WI and MN to visit family. It was the first time ever that all the three Boles siblings (Luke's dad Joe, and his sisters Liz and Kathi) along with their children were all together. We had a great time visiting with everyone and enjoying summertime activities in the upper midwest. Here are some pics:

Liz, Kathi (Luke's aunts) and Joe (Luke's dad)

Dinner with The Boles', Halls and Linda (Emily's mom) and Tina (Youcha family friend)

Molly and Allegra (Luke's cousins)

Miles and Bernie fishing (Luke's cousin and uncle)

Miles and a sauger he caught

Luke at RJ's Meats in Hudson, WI buying sausage

Luke and Bella (Molly's new puppy)

Huck, Gus, Ruby (Luke's nephews and niece) and Emily fishing

Emily, Ruby and Della (Luke's mom) in the kayak

Emily and Luke making faces in the boat

The following weekend Emily flew to Omaha for the Rosenberg family reunion (Emily's grandma Florence Rosenberg's (Dad's Mom) family). It was great to see her immediate family (Victor, Linda, Jacob and Anika) and to meet/catch up with a bunch of her cousins.

Rosenberg Reunion

Tangle Lakes/Delta River

Midnight fishing on the Tangle Lakes

Over the 4th of July weekend we canoed the Tangle Lakes/Delta River. We were accompanied by our friends Mike and Arrianne (who live in Brooklyn and were visiting AK for the first time), Jen and Scott, and Jeff and Heather (who also brought along Hadley and Harriet, their two dogs). It was a Jim Dandy of a trip. We had excellent weather except for the last day, although for the last section a light drizzle beats a headwind eight days a week and twice on Sunday!

Emily and I left Fairbanks Thursday afternoon and drove down to the Tangle River Inn to launch. The plan was for Scott, Jen, Mike and Arrianne to stay at the camp ground near the boat launch Thursday night (they'd be arriving pretty late after driving the Denali Hwy from Denali Park) and catch up to us on Friday morning. Jeff wanted to get a training ride in in preparation of defending his title in the Fireweed 200 bike race taking place the next weekend so he was planning to ride from Fairbanks to Delta Junction (about 120 miles from his house) where Heather and the dogs would pick him up. They planned to then launch Friday afternoon and try to catch us Friday night or Saturday morning on the float.

UPDATE: Jeff won the 200 mile race and set a new course record. Congrats Jeff!!

Emily and I had a nice tailwind on Thursday night so we decided to head down to one of the lakes and camp where we camped last year after our wedding ceremony. We got up the next morning to great weather and lounged around camp waiting for the rest of the gang to catch up. The wind had switched directions so we figured it may take the crew a bit longer to make it to us. I paddled around awhile casting for lake trout but didn't pull anything up. We decided to make an apple crisp in our dutch over as we figured they rest of the crew would be hungry after battling a headwind across the lakes. Deciding to give the fly rod a rest I casted a spoon from shore near camp and caught a nice lake trout. It was a pretty nice lunch of fried lake trout and apple crisp when Scott, Jen, Mike and Arrianne arrived.

We decided to stay another night at the lake camp and hope Jeff, Heather and the dogs would catch us later that evening. We dined on caribou hobo dinners and more lake trout (Mike's first laker). After dinner Mike and I headed down to the lake to cast for lake trout and and watch for Jeff, Heather and the dogs. Although we didn't see the rest of our party the lake trout action turned out to be pretty hot. Before too long everyone came down to watch or join in on the fun. The picture above is of me catching a 25" laker on my eight weight fly rod. We landed over a half dozen and kept one more that Mike caught (a 24-25 incher) to eat the next day. It was far and away the best lake trout action I'd ever experienced.

Jeff, Heather and the dogs caught up to us the next morning and we headed down the lakes towards the portage. The portage went well. We even passed a group that wasn't exactly packed for portaging (at least 2 large coolers, a 24 pack of 20oz Gatorade bottles, etc.). The rapids after the portage went off without a hitch and we headed down river to one of our favorite campsites, the beaver camp. At Beaver camp the water is calm for watching the beavers cruise and the fishing is good. We had an excellent dinner of venison fajitas, sat around the campfire and mixed in a little fishing.

The last morning we had a steady drizzle but, as we said earlier, that definitely beats a headwind in the final section. After a breakfast of cornbread from the dutch oven we set out on the final section. Despite the weather the scenery was excellent. Fortunately the weather broke by the time we got to the takeout so breaking down the boats/gear was a dry enterprise.

Another great trip down the Delta!

Mike and Arrianne

Scott and Jen

Jeff, Heather and the dogs entering the rapids after the portage

Emily at the lake camp

Yukking it up at the Portage

A quiet night at Beaver Camp

Mike and his first lake trout

The first laker of the day from the honey hole