Katmai

Katmai National Park and Brook's falls was mindblowing good. I flew out on a float plane through the misty morning to land on a glassy Naknek lake. When I arrived at Brook's falls I couldn't stop smiling for half an hour. A dozen brown bears sitting in the river, moving about, catching salmon, fighting over salmon, the salmon attempting (mostly in vain) to jump up the falls. It was insane! Possibly the coolest thing I have ever seen. Park ranger Kate gave me lots of interesting info about the bears. They eat about 90 pounds salmon a day and gain 5-6 pounds a day to prepare for the long winter hibernation.

I climbed up Dumping mountain and got completely drenched from the waist down by the tall, wet grass. I was wearing jeans and a pair of thermal underwear. My wool socks and Gore-Tex shoes got soaked too. The hike was three miles round trip and I was alone in bear country the whole way. I sang songs I knew and made up songs to warn the big fellas of my approach.

"Sometimes you gotta get wet
sometimes you gotta get wet
if you're gonna see the valley, from the mountain's top
sometimes you gotta get wet."

The view was well worth the drenching as you could see out across the park in three directions.

Here Fish!

An adventure is interesting enough in retrospect, especially to the person who didn't have it; at the time it happens it usually constitutes an exceedingly disagreeable experience.

- Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Aggresive. Grueling. Tough. Sleepless. Fast. These are some words that somewhat describe fishing in Bristol Bay. Imagine 250 boats, 32 feet long, all trying to set 1500 feet of gillnet as close as possible to an imaginary GPS line that is guarded by Fish and Game. All USCG rules of the road go out the window. Tempers flare. Middle fingers fly.

Once your skipper feels that the net is suffieciently full of fish, you begin to reel it in on a hydraulic powered drum. As each section of net comes in you have to "pick" each fish out of the net. Sliding your fingers up under the gills and popping out $4.50 (only $.45 was mine). Sometimes the net would have three or four thousand pounds of fish in it. They would pile up a foot high on the deck. Other times there would be only two or three. We did this routine of setting and picking hundreds of times. The first week your hands swell and go numb. The second week they just go numb. By the third week they feel fine.

Fishing was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Would I go back again? Absolutely.

There were many good times too. I met some cool people, saw a unique kind of beauty, and became stronger in many different ways.

I am back in Somerset, KY right now. I hope to add a couple more posts soon with pictures of bears from Katmai National Park and the Kenai peninsula.

Peace.