I have a mate thats been away for a while, guiding up in Alaska. I have a number of jurnal entries that he has been sending, I will post a few and if anyone is interested I will continue - so here goes. (If you guys don't find them entertaining just shout and I will drop the subject).

5/22/07
After thirteen hours of travelling the dog and I landed in the booming metropolis that is King Salmon. The town consists of two bars, a Wells fargo, two hotels, oh wait, no the Quinnat burned down last year...make that one hotel, a small grocery, a marine supply store, a boat yeard, a few airfrieght services and of course all the bush pilots you can cram onto said buildings. There are fourteen miles of roadway...you can drive from here to Naknek, about the same thing, only they have a few fish cannerys and more year round inhabitants.

Upon deplaning, I see no one to meet me...this is not surprising. I walk outside looking for a vehicle that belongs to camp. Nothing. I walk around town (not really much of a hike) and still cannot find a vehicle. I walk back to the airport to retrieve my belongings and animal and I'm about five minutes from pissed when my ride shows. This is also typical.

One might think that after thirteen hours of travel, my boss would escort me to the house we keep in town and let me rest, or possibly eat, but that's not how we roll. Within half an hour of arrival I am hanging off the back of a tractor scavenging a 500 gallon fuel tank our of a ditch. From what I can gather, the owner of said fuel tank was short on funds and ran into our lodge owner in the bar. A hundred bucks changed hand and now we have a new fuel tank. Charlie went back to the bar a few hours later to find the guy drunker and once again broke, and got another fuel tank (this one half full of diesel) for another hundred bucks. I opted not to go to the bar to watch let's make a deal, but try and sleep instead

Back at the house I find myself stuck alone with the new guide. Seems like a nice enough kid, who's got no idea what he's just thrown himself into. The whole experience of the first day has him wired into a fit of nonstop chatter. After an hour of him talking non-stop I excuse myself to get some needed sleep

5/23/07

We missed the morning tide. That gave me a chance to run back to town and pick up some essentials, namely beer whiskey and porn, all of which are absolute necessities when spending four months in a remote camp full of men. The proprietors of any and all establishments know this and the prices reflect my desperation. Twenty bucks for a twelver of Oly cans, thrity five for a bottle of wild turkey and twenty five for a Chic. Several hundred dollars later, I am ready to depart.

We take the evening tide out which means we didn't leave the dock until eight, didn't reach camp until eleven. Passing through the desolate mud hole of Bristol bay is not the senic trip one would imagine. Skeletons of abandoned cannerys scatter the shores. Rotting corpses of edifices that look like perfect backdrops for any horror movie. The lower river isn't much better. Spring has not yet infused the tundra with sufficient moisture, so the ground remains frozen and the foliage brown.

Moving into the upper river the water clears and the landscape changes. We move from a muddy slough into the beautiful freestone river I will call home until September. Along the way we see cow moose so pregnant they can barely scamper away from the roar of our chey 350 inboard jet, a lone grizzly, young and emaciated, river otters, beaver, eagles, the pine trees begin to dot the banks. The water is low yet, they couldn't even get john boats up to camp until a week ago, but it's coming up quicly and we only graze a couple of gravel bars on our 53 mile trek up the rive system.

5/24/07

A cluster****.

We were up at five, trying to catch the morning tide to get more supplies from town. The boat I was driving broke down at the mouth of the river and the tide waits for no man so I was left. Such is the way that it goes. For six hours I sat in the boat, alternately trying to fix the engine and sleeping under a tarp. At two I decided the winds were too bad to cross the bay and they had left me. I had the boat running (kind of) and so I started upriver toward camp. I didn't have enough gas to make it. I tried, but failed. I was preparing to spend a long night under my tarp in the rain, anchored in a slough, but my fearless compatriots came through for me. They braved a low tide and forty mile per hour winds accross the bay and saved my ass. We put gas in, and started back up, but I broke down again, and we had to ditch the boat, we'll tow it to town at a later date and see if we can fix it. After sixteen hours of dicking around in the boat I made it back to camp, stuffed my face and passed out.

5/26/07

Building in the rain and driving back and forth to town is about all we do here until the clients arrive the seventh of June. The past two days have been simpy the former. I have no changes of clothes, no fishing gear, no pillow, no sheets. Things were so ****ed up on our last trip to town (and I was stuck in the river so I couldn't do anything about it) that they didn't bother to unload any of my gear into the boat. I have nothing, and will not recieve anything for at least four more days. I packed only an overnight bag when I first came to camp thinking that I would return the next morning. Luckily I have my xtratufs, work gloves and a rain jacket. I also have no camera, hence the lack of photos. I don't have my own sleeping quarters yet because we're not done building it (I'm sharing with the new guide at least until tomorrow). I have not wet a line (actually I haven't done anything but work and it hasn't stopped raining. One might question why any sane person would do this job, much less return for more knowing what it is like. All I can say is that it is the wildest place imaginable, and every hammerfall gets me one step closer to the season.