After visiting relatives in Soldotna and enjoying an amazing meal of fresh Kenai-river sockeye, we burned our way back to Anchorage and hired a bush pilot to drop us off way back in the wilderness, to begin our packrafting adventure.

Back in Anchorage at the Hood Lake Seaplane Base, we looked for a pilot.  The first couple of pilots wouldn't let us go out there without guides.  Then we finally convinced somebody to fly us out there by ourselves, even though they strongly recommended against it.  But they couldn't leave for SIX HOURS.  We told them we'd be back in six hours, and kept looking.  Then we found a guy with a float plane, and he said he would fly us out there, and pick us up on the Skwenta a week later. But he had to leave in 5 minutes! We frantically threw our gear together and piled into the small plane.  Without warning, we shot off into the air and watched the wildlands slip by underneath us.

Our pilot took us to the mouth of the Skwentna River, where we buzzed over a huge pod of snow-white Beluga Whales, which were headed up the river to chow on salmon.  Then, we passed over 50 miles of treacherous boglands.  Finally, we flew over the Taluchulitna on our way to the dropoff point at Judd Lake. It was some wild, thick, untravelled country.  There was nothing down there but trees, bogs, moose, and a winding ribbon of water which would hopefully carry us home.  Then a lake came into view, and the pilot lurched the plane into a steep diving turn, and before we knew it we were gliding across the choppy gray surface of Judd Lake.

 Once we got the plane hauled to the shore, we chucked all of our gear onto the beach.  Our pilot helpfully informed us that he was a bear hunting guide, and this beach was his best spot to find a big bear.  Big dark clouds were headed in our direction, so our pilot jumped back into his plane and gunned it back into the air before we could even wave goodbye.  Soon, he was a rapidly disappearing speck on the horizon.  Then he was gone, and it was very quiet.

It's a lot to absorb all at once.  This is what makes unguided adventures real, and guided adventures completely fake.  There you are, with whatever gear you brought with you.  You hope you prepared well, and you hope you're up to the task.  But there's nobody there to bail you out.  No satelite phone, no emergency help, nothing.  If something goes wrong, you can't complain to a guide, you just have to be a man and deal with it.    We had no idea what difficulties we would face, but we had the guts to face them anyway.

We had the following:  A pair of Alpaca one-man rafts about 4 feet long with paddles, a small two-man tent and sleeping bags, a little bit of emergency food, clothes, waders or hip boots, a packable MSR stove and two bottles of fuel, a first aid kit, fishing tackle, and a .357 magnum revolver with 60 rounds of ammunition. NOTE:  Thanks for the emails about the ammo supply.  Yes, 60 rounds was a bit excessive.  Yes I carried all that weight downriver for nothing.  I stand by my decision.

So there we were. No going back now! We had to cover 58 miles of rough, trackless terrain far from civilization in 7 days. Once we got the rafts inflated, we repacked and rigged our gear for travel. That's when I found out that my raincoat was missing.  This was grim news.  With the constant rain we had faced for the last six days, and no shelter except for a tiny tent, I was in big trouble; I would be constantly fighting hypothermia for the next week with no way to stay dry.  But we had to soldier on anyway.  I took the yellow raft, and Andy the green one. Our cousin Tyler had loaned us these amazing backcountry inflatables, which he uses for cross-country trekking in the Alaskan wilderness. Although they might LOOK like pool toys, these "Alpaca Rafts" are the best packable waterborne transport that money can buy, built to withstand all the punishment you can dish out and keep you alive.

Our first task was to make it across the clear, cold, windy lake. We made it easily, and entered the creek. It became obvious right away that, contrary to our expectations, the creek was far too low to float. We had hoped for low water, since that meant nobody could take guided trips down the river in their big cata-rafts. This meant we had the river to ourselves. But the water was too low for even our packrafts. With no way forward, we would have to proceed on foot. We re-rigged the rafts for pulling through extremely shallow water.

 
Finding a pool full of salmon, we fished for awhile as we rested. At this point, we were still pretty excited when we saw a pool like this. After awhile it became routine - every pool in the river was like this.

Andy caught a fresh sockeye. We probably should've eaten it. These sockeyes were very fresh and hadn't turned red yet.

And a beautiful Dolly Varden for dinner. We packed the bare minimum as far as food, only a few bags of noodles, some venison jerky made by my dad for energy during the day, and some dehydrated apple rings.  We had to eat a lot of fish as we made our way down the river, or we would go hungry. Catching dinner was always a priority! But travel was very tough, we would make it a few hundred yards before bottoming out in a riffle and having to get out of our rafts and walk.  After the first twelve hours of travel, we had only made it about two miles. 

Andy spotted an aggressive Chum Salmon in a current break and got him to take a big pink fly.  Alaskan salmon cannot resist a big, pink, goofy-looking fly.  Of course, Andy and I, being Great-Lakes Steelheaders, had armed ourselves with all kinds of crafty subtle lures that can be used on pressured fish.  But if you want to catch fish in the remote areas of Alaska, you might as well chuck some crazy gigantic fluffy gay-looking fluorescent sparkly thing with big buggy eyes.  Trust me, it works.

A king swam up and crushed my fluorescent pink bunny leech, and I layed the beef to him. With a limited supply of flies, you really didn't want to break off, but if you didn't fight these fish tough from the get-go, they would walk all over you.

I won the battle, this time.  I was casting my fly at a big, ugly-looking chum and all of a sudden this huge king charged up from twenty feet away to engulf my fly.  

Here is our gear.  This is everything we had.  Two rafts, fishing poles, a couple of dry bags, and our paddles.

All of the guidebooks said that "you must never make camp where there is any bear sign."  Well, every square yard of ground within 100 feet of the river was plastered with bear tracks, and every sandbar had a dozen huge piles of grizzly bear crap on it.  We had to make camp right on top of bear sign.  In fact, we actually had to clear away the piles of bear crap in order to make camp.   

We hiked and dragged all day, but fished a lot, and only made it a couple of miles to the mouth of Chicken Creek, where we made camp. We had a long way to go, and it looked like rain.  Andy set up our tent, and started laughing - my raincoat was balled up in the corner of the tent.  I was extremely happy. 

The next day, Andy got our first Taluchulitna rainbow on an egg imitation.

Another nice sockeye.

And finally, a beautiful chum for my lifelist!

Andy caught a big, beautiful Dolly Varden for dinner.

We hiked, dragged, scrambled, waded, and occasionally floated for several more miles to The Forks, where the Taluchulitna River joins Taluchulitna Creek. Here, the river almost doubles in size. We were hopefully that we could start floating it from here on out.