bench lake

Monday, January 9, 2012

Bench Lake Christmas 2011

Kate and Caleb were kind enough to come north from Anchorage to spend Christmas with Betsy and I. We happened to be lucky to be roadside, having secured a week of housesitting for some friends around the general neighborhood. In exchange for watching a few dogs we got access to central heating, television and a fully stocked and heated shop for an entire week. On Christmas day we made the commute, via dog power and snowmachine, back up the trapline to the lake to do some fishing. The lake had four inches of overflow on it but we persevered, managing to drill two holes by hand. Temperatures were frigid of course, and everything got quickly covered with ice, but the fish were faithfully willing to hit our bait almost immediately(summer sausage chunks) and we got to put our Christmas gifts to good use.
Betsy and I view fishing as something to do to get fresh food, and the sport of it is secondary to that, and consequently our fishing gear was in the 'scrappy but adequate' category: not too pretty or high-test but still managing to secure big fish nonetheless. However, several rounds of real fishermen have visited the lake and were not able to fully contain their disbelief that we were resorting to such squalid gear, and because of that we are now supplied with no less than four ice fishing rods and three casting rods for use in the ice-free months. Thanks fishermen!
We ate two substantial trout for our Christmas dinner and I went to sleep very early, stuffed to the gills and ready for bed at 8pmthanks to some kind of brown ale supplied by Caleb and Kate.
These pictures sum up the 2011 Christmas Bench Lake experience pretty well.

Kate is a fisherwoman...

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Fall 2011: filling the freezer

It was inevitable that Betsy and I start to provide ourselves with a little food, living as far from the store as we do. My whole life has been spent buying food from various supermarkets, but the farther you get from the supply chain the more you realize how tenuous it would be if everything wasn't working as it should.
Personally I can't think of any downside to the whole concept of providing for one's own food, and it did prove to be very novel the first time we filled the freezer to capacity. The freezer above runs off of our battery bank quite successfully, leaving ample power left over to run our modern web of electronics we have accumulated at the Yurt (rechargeable batteries for everything, computers, electric lights, iPods, wireless internet). Betsy found it online, and although it was a good expense and had to be hauled in on a snowmachine, it makes much more sense than a propane or generator powered model. It is true that for about a month in the dead of winter we have to use our Honda generator to charge the battery bank, but the time ends up being only a few hours of gas power every other day, and the sun comes back quickly after the solstice.

We got two caribou this year. I remember after I shot the first one and it was on its way to dropping for good, I exclaimed to no one but my self 'holy shit, I got one.' I had packed hurriedly as I sighted the caribou before I was ready to hit the tundra and had only a few minutes to pack everything I needed, but in the rush I had forgotten the directions I had copied from various internet sources in the car. So I stood over the downed animal and remembered my friend Tim's advice, which was something like 'you know what meat looks like, and if you don't care how pretty it is you'll be fine.' So as darkness fell I laid out my knives and accoutrements and got to work. I remembered a few things, like 'don't puncture the guts' which I almost managed to avoid but it turned out to be minor. At times it was like a B horror movie but for realz, but I got the meat back to the car at midnight and was back at the Yurt with a load of meat just over 36 hours after I had left. A day later it was all in the freezer.
The picture above shows the second caribou, a small bull Betsy and I got in early November. We packed up for a weeks' time in the field, ready for alpine conditions, but ran into a blizzard and 40mph winds. After a lunch near Paxson we decided that, because we were only a few hours from home we could wait out the bad weather in the comfort of our home instead of packed into a 2-person alpine tent. My tolerance for staying outside when I have better options seems to decrease year after year. Just before we got to the southern most boundary of the hunting grounds a smaller caribou crossed the road right in front of us. Betsy exclaimed, almost under her breath 'well would you look at that', although later she claimed to have no memory of uttering the phrase. The fresh snow made tracking a no-brainer, and forty minutes later I shot the inquisitive animal at a distance of no more than 30 meters. I take a little pride in the fact that both caribou I harvested were heart/lung shots and didn't suffer more than was necessary. Hunters often make the point that caribou are the easiest animal to hunt, as they are very curious and will approach you in an effort to see if you are related to them. Stalking a moose would have required more finesse, and as I have shown in my limited past, finesse is something I can't always call up when the brush is thick and the light is low.

Instead of taking the meat home we got a hotel room in Glenallen, and due to their inflated price and lack of amenities we didn't feel bad using the shower to rinse and clean the meat. It is funny/disturbing to think that we smuggled in the carcass wrapped in a tarp through a side door (the Caribou hotel, coincidentally) and no one said a word. It could have very well been a body, but we had no trouble.

Besides caribou, Betsy had a very successful dipnetting excursion on the Copper river, bagging 50 lbs. of salmon (post-processing) that we vacuum-sealed and threw in the freezer as well. On top of that was some kale, caribou and salmon stock, and potatoes from various gardens. We also learned to can things, and during a visit to Montana we took full advantage of an overflowing and neglected tomato garden, making tomato sauce and anything else that could be derived from that wonderous fruit. Betsy's mother also had some apple trees, from which we produced several jars of applesauce.

We made a sincere effort to recover as much of the caribou as we could- the second one was more utilized than the first. All we left was the gut pile, the hooves and the head. We boiled all the bones into some powerful stock (with floating chunks of spinal cord, which we fed to the dogs, along with the bones themselves once they were exhausted) ground the heart into hamburger, froze the liver and Betsy tanned the hide to be used in the future for various projects. In retrospect we had left the tongue and cheeks, which apparently are a delicacy. Next time I believe I'll recover the entire carcass save the guts, as the brains can be used for tanning, the hooves could be dog treats and the skin of the legs can be used for mukluks because of the natural bend. Betsy knows more than I on the subject.
This was the first year we gathered some food for ourselves, and I already look forward to next season as I learned so much this year and we still have so much to learn. Maybe a bigger caribou next year, some honey from the hives, blueberries, a moose (!), a bigger yield from our growing garden ambitions......time will tell.

Friday, December 9, 2011

11/28/11 Hicks to Chickaloon

It seems a shame to drive up and down the valley and bypass 30-40 miles of prime ice skating without eventually giving it a go. Living just off the Matanuska river lets me check on ice conditions nearly on a day-to-day basis, and after years of dreaming and saying 'what if?' finally everything lined up. Despite it being an obviously good idea, for some reason the concept of ice skating from Hicks Creek to Chickaloon blew people's mind. Despite the naysayery I was able to easily recruit Sherrie for some low grade adventure. The river was solid, the weather was free and clear, and Sherrie was excited and had time off. The next day was forecast for snow so I convinced her to bypass our original ice climbing plans for something a little more adventurous. It was maybe 0 degrees F and we couldn't expect any sun on the valley floor due to the Chugach, but that didn't matter. Sherrie had figure skates and I had Almgrens with skate boots

Photo: Soltis
Right off it seemed like the best idea ever, as it was fast and solid conditions and proved easy to make 15 mph. I predicted three hours travel time to Chickaloon, a distance of 20 miles. Sherrie proved more skeptical, predicting '4 to 12' hours. Her skepticism proved to be realism in disguise.

Photo: Soltis
Every once in a while the ice braids would run out and I would feel smart and detatch the skates, and just walk on over. Sherrie had to walk over on her skate blades, and I figured that was just another reason why men don't wear figure skates.

After a few miles the river began to educate us in the seedy underworld of cross-country ice skate travel. I started off thinking that I had found the best thing since whisperlite stoves as it was easy to go 15, 20 mph but after about a half hour it became apparent that a) the ice quality is extremely hard to gauge at high speeds and b) the overflow was more devious than I would have thought. I was the first one to hit the overflow at about 15 mph, which had the annoying quality of quickly freezing as soon as it oozed out over the older ice just enough to give the impression of solid, perfect ice that would be beautiful to glide over. Thankfully it was still fresh enough to be more liquid than solid and I was able to power through in a low defensive position, primed for any falls (a technique I learned last year ice skating Caribou Creek). Immediately after I realized my feet were wet and immediately after that the boots froze to my feet. This meant that of course I would have to walk over rocks with my $100 skates frozen to my boots. Soon after the first episode both Sherrie and I began to enjoy faceplant after faceplant into the overflow despite an educated eye and a newly cautious attitude. Sherrie was the first to full-on bellyflop as you can see above, but she weathered the trial with a great sense of humor. Some people slowly get ground down by painful adversity, but Sherrie seems to perk up.

Photo: Soltis
Because I could not reasonably expect to remove my boots and the bindings' release mechanisms were hopelessly iced over, off-ice rockwalking was my only option to bypass the inevitable section of river that sported deep overflow. Walking on the river rocks quickly dulled my skates but I had no other option that wouldn't take forty minutes to complete. In all realism I could have pried my boots off my feet but the would have immediately frozen even more solid once the warmth of my feet was taken away. Whatever anyway, my gear serves me, not the other way around and all of a sudden figure skates sounded like a great idea.

The Awesome Valley, third down on the left after Gravel Creek, with the beautiful Awesome peak saying hello. A most excellent area, with just enough remoteness to keep the casual mountaineer in easier accessed areas. Not that crowding is a problem in this part of the valley, of course.

Photo: Soltis
And then the blade fell off my skate as I was walking through ankle-deep overflow. I believe that ice built up between my boot and the binding, and the free-heel action eventually bent the frame and popped the blade off before I could say 'goddamn it!'. We were ten miles in, but had a nice bail point pre-reconned that would only require a relatively short bushwack up to the road. I levered the boots off my now numb feet and put on my backup boots and began a jog to where the side valley reaches the river. By the time I exited the river bottom I had rethought my decision to bail, maybe I could use my hot tea to deice the skate bottom and get the blade back on there.....I did it easily enough, but after patiently manipulating my boot to lever my feet back in there blade popped back off as soon as I applied weight to it. $100 for something that is only suited for Westchester Lagoon, lesson learned.

Photo: Soltis
So after again thinking that ten miles on one skate would be a huge pain in the ass, Sherrie and I did our usual routine of convincing each other in small degrees that continuing was going to be just fine, and after a few minutes we set off again. It really wasn't that bad, but my left leg cramped up every few minutes. But it was quicker than walking so we went on.

It really was about 90% excellent conditions, and 10% overflow and bad ice. Good odds, really.

The hardest thing to bear was the high-speed wrecks. I had thought to bring a bike helmet and elbow pads, and would have had knee pads on but I forgot them at home, but Sherrie was brave and had on only a climbing helmet. I took the first hard fall, smashing my head on the ice and taking a good amount of impact on my beloved elbow pads. Sherrie quickly outpaced me in the fall department, taking repeated all-points-off aerial sojourns that would leave her crumpled on the ice like an old paper bag. The above picture showcases the anatomy of a high-speed skating fall- you can see on the bottom right where her blades hit some bad ice and could only manage a few stutter-steps before her momentum got the best of her. I turned just in time to see her outstretched in the air, horizontally like Supergirl, a moment before she hit the ice hard enough to knock the wind out of herself. I got the picture before she had moved at all, and before I had checked to see if she was even conscious. Classic. She slowly regained her feet, jerkily, like I'd imagine an ice skating zombie would, and immediately skated on down the river. You can't teach that kind of perseverance. She later deadpanned 'ice is hard!' as if it was a brand-new revelation.

Sherrie was my scout for most of the second half of our trip, so that meant she broke through and fell into the water and I didn't have to.

We picked up the road where the Chickaloon river comes into the Matanuska and jogged the last two miles to the car at the King Mountain Lodge, which of course could be avoided by parking closer to the takeout. But I was never the type to shun pointless exercise. The river from our takeout to the King Mountain Lodge was a mass of pulverized ice and couldn't have been traveled on, not in any reasonable fashion anyway.

Photo: Soltis
Our packs look really big, but leaving the packs slightly expanded provides a little more cushioning. In this picture I had my skate boots in there with the ice skates still frozen to them.

Photo: Soltis
We got the crap kicked out of us, both sustaining whiplash from our falls and Sherrie had sore elbows and iliac crest on her left side where she had collided with the edge of a collapsing ice shelf. But sometimes it seems that the more sore you are, the fonder the memories; in an area where mountain exploration lurks up every side valley it was great to find that some good adventure existed in plain sight, often with the road in the distance.

Next time I'd wear hockey or figure skates with plain old laces, bring several extra pairs of socks, maybe even with a VBL, and wear the entire rollerblading armor getup (easily procured at Salvation Army) save the wrist guards. A bike helmet is designed to protect the side and back of your head much more than a climbing one. A nice thermos of tea helps to deice your feet if you need to get out of them post overflow encounter as well. Having a puffy jacket of course is warm, but when in the backpack also cushions the back for the all-points-off reverse fall. I hope more people do these things, see you out there.