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5 weeks in the Alaska bush

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3K views 32 replies 19 participants last post by  Trapper 
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#1 · (Edited)
Many of you seem to enjoy my photo essays, so here's one I just returned from. I took a fly rod and flies and there were plenty of grayling and dollies in a nearby stream, but the weather was so crappy, I never even fished one day.

If you are anti-hunting you may want to pass on this thread as some photos show guys displaying animal antlers.

I cooked for 5 weeks in a restricted use sheep, moose, caribou, and bear hunting camp east of Denali Park on the Yannert River. Instead of riding in on a horse as I usually do, this was our ride.



The camp itself was very protected from the wind and in a beautiful setting. When it was clear, I could see Dall sheep and moose through a spotting scope.


But it rained or snowed every single day except 4 days in the 5 weeks I was up there.



So I lived in my muck boots and layers of fleece even in the cook tent.



I made 4 loaves of bread almost every day. I also cooked a bunch of sheep, caribou, and moose. My favorite was a dall sheep and caribou meat stew. I called it my Rambou stew. But other times I cooked loins as steaks or baked with Parmesan topping. The photo shows the guides trimming up a couple caribou tenderloins for me.



This caribou will easily qualify for the B&C book.



The moose were huge. If you are 6' tall and were standing next to one of these bull moose, you would not likely be able to see over their back.





Most of the hunters donated most of their meat to a Veteran's charity. A guy flew into camp and flew the meat out for processing. He told me that they would end up giving away well over 2,000 lbs of boned and processed meat to needy Vets.

The views were incredible.









It rained. It snowed. So I just busied myself making pies, cakes, cupcakes, breads, and all sorts of food. I had an oven, a couple DOs, and this little jewel. It weighed as much as a short block Chevy engine, but was great.



All in all it was a good adventure. It was a great crew. The weather sucked, but everything else was great.

We broke camp last Saturday between 2 winter storms. Three guys led the stock out 30 miles while two other guys and myself flew most of the camp out on the plane which made trips in and out all day.



My friend Matt and I drug pine trees down the makeshift runway so the pilot could land the plane. Matt was the last guy out of camp and said it was a really rough ride out as the next storm was moving in.

We then drove the horse trailers to the trailhead to meet the wranglers, loaded the stock, and headed 4 hours south toward Anchorage.



A hot shower in a motel room was too wonderful for words.

Trapper
 
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G
#4 ·
I started cooking when I was still in grade school. I had some great teachers including an Italian-born neighbor and my Mom who was a great baker.

I learned outdoor cooking in DOs from my mother and grandmother as that was how we vacationed when I was a kid.

I never attended any sort of formal culinary school and never worked in a restaurant of any sort.
 
G
#6 ·
That is bad ass, how long have you been doing this?

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
I guided fly fishermen for many years and each year did a lot of 5-day float fishing trips on the Smith River and others where all the staff pitched in to cook each day. Also many years ago during my own hunting and fishing trips, I got tired of eating PB&J or frieze dried back packer food, so I raised my hand to do the cooking.
 
G
#13 ·
I get a lot of offers to tag along, but I wonder how many people would really enjoy 4 - 8 weeks in the bush at one time. While I enjoy it, I know what I'm getting into. And while I do generally have time to saddle up a horse and go ride or go fishing, much of the time I'm working hard cooking and baking for groups of 12 - 15 people.

The cooking isn't the hard part. Most camps I've got firewood and water chores. This one was easy because the guides and wranglers got the firewood cut and stacked and I pumped water from a spring with a Honda sump pump into tanks next to the cook tent. That was an incredible luxury.

In most camps I help with the stock when I have time. Catching, feeding, grooming, and saddling. This camp we had plenty of staff, so I didn't do that very often, but when I did I was standing in 8" of wet sloppy muck. (Aside: "Muck" in this environment is a combo of mud and horse/mule shit.)

And then there's my least favorite chore; the latrine. Does anyone here have any idea just how much poop 15 well fed adult guys generate a week? Trust me. It's a LOT!

Let's see. How can I put this delicately?

Everyone is built pretty much with the same plumbing so what comes out tends to drop onto the same spot which quickly becomes a rising brown Mt McKinley. Someone has to take a stick and knock the peak to the sides. I call this "conquering the peak".

Any volunteers now? :rolleyes:

Trapper
 
G
#15 ·
Having an extra person in the cook tent would be great. One of the biggest challenges of doing this is getting enough sleep. The cook is the first one up and the last one to bed. I'm typically up 1.5 hours before everyone else making coffee, lighting woodstoves, and prepping breakfast. Then after supper everyone goes to sleep and I'm still up cleaning.

I always thought if I shared the cooking duties with someone else I could sleep in every other day and trade breakfast with them etc. While I do get a nap some days, many days I don't. I've cooked in camps when I didn't get to sleep until 10 or 11 PM and was up again at 2 AM.

The reason this doesn't often happen is cost. On this trip, the outfitter paid to fly me up to Alaska, hotel stay in Anchorage, puddle jump plane ride into camp. Then again on the way out. It would be a rare outfitter who was willing to cough up even the expenses of an extra person.

Cooking in a wall tent is very time consuming. Everything takes longer to prep and cook/bake. Simple things like needing some softened butter. At home most people just put the butter in the microwave. Washing dishes without running water, sink, and a warm room is time consuming. Under winter conditions the woodstove is always calling you to feed it. That often means putting on your coat and going out to the wood pile.

Trapper
 
#30 ·
Having an extra person in the cook tent would be great. One of the biggest challenges of doing this is getting enough sleep. The cook is the first one up and the last one to bed. I'm typically up 1.5 hours before everyone else making coffee, lighting woodstoves, and prepping breakfast. Then after supper everyone goes to sleep and I'm still up cleaning.

I always thought if I shared the cooking duties with someone else I could sleep in every other day and trade breakfast with them etc. While I do get a nap some days, many days I don't. I've cooked in camps when I didn't get to sleep until 10 or 11 PM and was up again at 2 AM.

The reason this doesn't often happen is cost. On this trip, the outfitter paid to fly me up to Alaska, hotel stay in Anchorage, puddle jump plane ride into camp. Then again on the way out. It would be a rare outfitter who was willing to cough up even the expenses of an extra person.

Cooking in a wall tent is very time consuming. Everything takes longer to prep and cook/bake. Simple things like needing some softened butter. At home most people just put the butter in the microwave. Washing dishes without running water, sink, and a warm room is time consuming. Under winter conditions the woodstove is always calling you to feed it. That often means putting on your coat and going out to the wood pile.

Trapper
you are the man
 
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#16 ·
My hats off to you trapper, I usually hang out in the back of the lodge when on fishing adventures because I enjoy the quite of the back porch where all the behind the science action gos on. I have discovered that most people have no idea what it takes to make the clients warm & fuzzy. Just the cost alone of getting supplies & people to remote camps is a staggering cost & I can fully understand why a weeks stay cost what it does not to mention all the bullshit a guide has to put up with from lousy shooting clients & unskilled fishermen that are in way over there heads. I know I don't possess the patience to be a guide.
 
G
#17 ·
I agree that unless you've done it, you'll not likely fully understand just what goes into making someone's day on the water fishing, or a week in the bush hunting happen.

When I first started guiding I thought the anglers I took out would be very experienced and highly skilled. For the most part, that wasn't who showed up. I adjusted my thinking after realizing most people didn't have my experience, skills, or knowledge. I then saw myself as something of a coach.

I didn't resent the fact that people didn't have my skills, but started to realize that most showed up wanting to improve their knowledge and skill. My job then was to remove as many obstacles as possible so they were free to focus on their goal.

What I found was, for many folks, functioning in an unfamiliar environment was a challenge. Things that I had done all my life were new to them.

After I retired from guiding and focused on the back country or remote cooking work, I realized the very same type of guys were in camp and my job changed a bit, but in many ways, was the same. Things I considered common were very foreign to most. So I didn't expect them to even know I was up early to make those sourdough biscuits and red-eye gravy from scratch. I didn't expect them to walk into the wall tent and understand that I was the one who cut the firewood, split it, made kindling, and started the fire in the woodstove, so they could eat and drink a hot cup of coffee in a warm comfortable environment. I didn't expect them to know that the horse they rode had to be coaxed into letting me put a halter on him, then groomed, and then saddled with tack that made my back ache when I carried the saddle from the tack area and threw it up on the horse. I didn't expect them to know that all the bridles hanging by the wood stove on cold mornings were there so the horses didn't resist the bit.

I have a very good sense of direction in the mountains, but the most lost I've ever been was driving a bunch of one-way streets in downtown San Francisco at night in the pouring down rain.

When I'm in their world I'm just as lost . . .
 
#19 ·
Hi Trapper,
Let me echo the thanks of others for sharing your pictures and your stories of your backcountry cooking adventures. You have a gift in camera and in prose of allowing us to see the place through your eyes. And you are very insightful that we are all creatures of habits and that while comfortable in our own environment, we are "fish out of water" when we are immersed into a different environment.
Steve
 
#28 ·
Beautiful photos, Trapper! And yes, back country cooking's a ton of work! I usually do elk camp for about 5 of us, and it's a snap compared to the hordes of clients you've cooked for. as for actually knowing what they're there for, I recall the one and only guided elk hunt I went on, when my guide asked if I could shoot. Seems his previous client took 8 shots from his `06 to actually hit an elk! He was, shall we say, relieved, when I explained what it was I did during my second tour.
 
#32 ·
Trapper, Trapper, Trapper! There is an old saw about one "Oh shit!" cancelling out 25 "Attaboy's!" In your case it is exactly the opposite. One of your photo enhanced post cancels out dozens of: "Do you wear a buff?", "Which shirt/jacket combo should I wear to round out my fly fisherman ensemble?", "What is the best fly rod under $250/over $800?" and 30 other inane noob questions that could be answered with just a few keystrokes on their part.

It's really nice to see evidence of some real camping, not just a weekend with a $45,000 SUV going down a dirt road with cell phones, Wi-Fi, 750 watt stereo and prepared food from Costco and Safeway. I was glad to see you puncture the glamor balloon also and point out what a hell of a lot of work it is to make things work in the back country. As a young man I hiked around the Sierra high country, much of the time alone, and you have to be super aware of your surroundings-and your next step-to pull that off.

Thanks for the descriptions and excellent photos. We look forward to your next adventure.

Ive
 
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#33 ·
I don't own a buff. I didn't even know what it was called until a few months ago. I guess I'm just pathetically old school. I did however, acquire an iPad last fall with plenty of advice from people on this forum. It's a great little tool for me. I even took some photos that are in my original post with it!

If I were posting this sort of thread 50 years ago, everyone would be saying "yeah. so?" Because it wasn't uncommon. Now, few people seem to venture out into the wilds even though there is plenty of it out there still.

As far as the hard work that goes hand in hand with spending time in the back country, I just assumed everyone knew that living without electricity or running water meant more work. It never fails to amaze me when people ask me "What do you mean you can't use a 4-wheeler or chainsaw in a wilderness area?"

Trapper
 
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