Arctic Adventures

   On the Mountains I took a ride with Mike towards the Kivalina trail shelter cabin. We were heading out in search of the caribou that were moving through the area. Its about 20 miles from town. There still is hardly any snow here so the trail was pretty rough. I had a hard time keeping up on my machine. After bouncing along for about an hour I pulled over a small rise where Mike was waiting for me.  My back was soaked in sweat from trying to soften the jarring blows of pounding over the "munnocks" or tussocks on the tundra. Wolves! A black wolf was racing up the mountainside, and another one in the willows. That means caribou. Sure enough, right after the wolves took off we saw a herd go racing off scared from the wolves. The connection on the sled that I was pulling fell off when we were going through the last rough section. I hadn't realized it until we stopped, so I had to turn around a go get it. Mike said he was going to head slowly up the mountain. I c

 Sunrise  Trout  Trout and Grayling  Oren's Fired Up About His New "Hat" Our Christmas Tree I went out fishing on Saturday. Had a stellar day. Ten trout and a pile of grayling. There still isn't hardly and snow here. It snowed about an inch on Friday night, and I was really hoping that we were going to get dumped on. Sunrise is somewhere around 11:30, and sunset about 3:30. It is light out for much longer that that because the angle of the sun is so shallow. We are getting in the Christmas spirit over here with our tree and lights up.

   Up on the Hills We had some visitors for our Thanksgiving Break. Karl and Ingrid made the trip from Fairbanks. I was hoping that we would have snow so that we could get out and see some country, but no such luck. We went fishing on Thursday and Saturday, and on Friday we took a ride on the Kivalina trail to the first set of hills. I know I have said this before, but it is awesome to be able to gain some elevation. The tundra seems to last forever, providing a spectacular view of the surrounding country. Wolf Tracks On our ride on the Kivalina Trail was a lot smoother trail than I anticipated. We saw a couple set of wolf tracks close to town. The recoil rope broke on the green Honda when I tried to start it up after a pit stop. We had to tow it back to town.  Moon Over Mountains Fishing Thursday was slim pickings. We went to the spot below the pit again, but there wasn't much of anything going on there. You could see a few trout swimming around, and they just

The Winner   Rey-Rey Sharing with Oren  Helping Scrub the Floor  Oren Loves Fish  Fish Kisses  Practicing for the Plane Rides  Not Too Bad  Fog Noatak hosted the elementary and middle school wrestling tournament. It was a busy weekend here. We watched on Friday night. I went fishing on Saturday. It was a slow day, I manged to hook 6 , but I was out for most of the day. I shot a pair of foxes too. I have a rabbit call that just brought them in from all directions. At one point I could see 5 foxes. It was too cold for the .22 to be really effective. Seemed like every other shot just clicked. I almost ran out of shells. I had to put the last of them into my mitten so that they wouldn't get too cold. I set a couple snares for fox, and a couple for otters. The long weekend will be nice, but we really need some snow to be able to get out and go. Oren loves to go for sled rides and bbbbbb! Honda rides. Once he gets his hands on a fi

   Mayumaruk Winter is here. We woke up to the first below zero temps this week. Daylight savings time really takes a bite out of limited daylight in the afternoon.    Oren walking around in Mom's shoes giving high fives  My fishing hotspot has been calling for weeks, and this weekend I was not disappointed. The Michigan football delayed my trip, because I decided to watch at least the first half. Well, the game just kept getting better, so I ended up watching the whole thing. Then the neighbor helped me get my boat up, finally.    Trout I didn't make it out fishing until about 3:30, but I made the most of it. This particular spot has been taunting me for quite a while. When I heard that people were catching trout at the pit I knew that being just downriver around the bend from the pit would be even better. I spudded my holes and got to fishing right away. The trout took a while to get there, but once they were there the action was fast until dark. I ended u

 Oren's New Sled Trapping season opened on the 1st. I headed out onto the lakes to try my hand at catching muskrats. I set traps on Thursday. I planned to check them Friday, Saturday, and then pull them on Sunday. Friday evening I went out after work and checked my traps. I caught 5 muskrats.    Muskrats Saturday I went out fishing in the morning. We drove down to Ikpiks by Honda. The trail was a lot smoother than I thought that it was going to be but it was still pretty rough. We spudded a couple of holes and started fishing. I walked around an did some exploring. Caleb got a couple trout right away. I started fishing. I saw a couple of big trout and had one try to bite my egg. I missed it though. I tried a few other places nearby, with no luck. A skunk just snuck up on me. I was purposely avoiding whitefish trying to get trout when they came by, next thing I know it was time to head back. I didn't end up catching anything. It was a nice day to be out though.  

Glass  I had been hanging on hoping that I might get another chance to take the boat out one last weekend. (two weeks ago now) I was stymied by low water, ice, and a potential trip to the Wulik River. A couple of guys had been planning on taking snowmachines across the tundra and creeks about 50 miles to the Wulik to load up on trout. Unfortunately the trip didn't happen, but I am not ruling out a winter, or springtime trip.   I Need A Skate Sharpener (can actually go fast across this though) The first day I went ice fishing was the 8th. We are finally able to drive the honda's across. Caleb, Zachary, and I headed to the slough with visions of catching sackfuls of trout with rod and reel. It wasn't happening though. There was very little open water and all of it shallow. We tried chumming the shallow water, but nothing much showed up. We went out onto the ice, and used our casting rods to jig. I caught one whitefish.  Scared of the Vacuum I used one of

It has been tough sledding here this past week. The weather has been brutal so far this year, and this week was no exception. I took the neighbor, and Caleb out on Tuesday right after school. On Monday a whole bunch of caribou crossed and a couple boats caught 10 caribou each. It was raining steadily, and the wind was whipping out of the south. There are decent sized waves on the river when it is whistling out of the south. Made for a rough ride. We braved the elements and went anyway. I was only planning on going maybe as far as Sugar, but we ended up going up to Evelynn's. About an hour and a half at full throttle. There were a couple of other boats watching the far bank so we pulled up to them. They said they hadn't seen anything. We waited there for about a half hour and headed back down, idling with the current. I should have just cruised back. We idled back down to Sugar which put us at 8:30 and and hour of cruising to go with daylight fading quickly. Needless to say I ab

  Its Snow!   We didn't do much this past week during the week. The weather has been brutal all week. North wind and cold. Today it snowed hard for about an hour, and then it all melted.   Oren Likes to Draw Yesterday the neighbor Kyle and I took a ride upriver. We've been hearing reports of caribou crossing the Red Dog Road by the thousands. Apparently they had to shut down the road for a while because there were so many. We got a late start, took me almost two hours to get ready for a longer ride like that. We headed out around 11:30. It was extremely nice when we left Noatak. The sun was shining, and it felt about 40 degrees out. Once we got out of town the wind picked up and it clouded over, I felt like I should have worn my parkie. It took us about an hour to get up to Sugar. We saw a really blonde grizz eating fish on the bank, so we drifted by it to snap a few photos. I briefly contemplated shooting it, but that would have meant the end of our caribou hun

This past week really flew by. On Tuesday evening three biologist from the Dept. of Fish and Game that did a presentation on their trout research. They are doing tagging studies on the Noatak and Wulik Rivers. Some of the Dollies that they have tagged in the Noatak and Wulik have shown up as far away as Russia. I took them out on Wednesday evening to seine for trout. We didn't catch anything in the couple of spots that we seined in. We also tried rod and reel at the gravel bar hotspot, but we only got salmon there. Saturday neighbor Kyle and Caleb and I went on a moosehunt. I thought my tag expired on the 22nd (which was Saturday). I checked the regs quickly before we were heading out and I realized that my tag had already expired on Thursday. So much for me shooting a moose. Caleb had a tag and one of the other teachers had a tag that he said we could use if we got one. We started out drifting a side channel to the main river. We stopped and called a couple of times, and walked

   Out Fishing We have been taking advantage of some beautiful weather to get out on the river. Last Monday we headed downriver to a spot to set a net for salmon. There were so many fish that we ended up being very selective when it came to cutting the fish. Phil was giggling the whole time.  He kept saying, "I can't wait to see John Koski!" Setting the Net (floats are bobbing already!) Oren Giving Directions to Doris    Picking the Net Ready to Cut     Eating Fish Eggs Like Blueberries This past Friday we headed downriver to see if we could find any cranberries up on the tundra by Katourok Creek. There were hardly any berries but we walked a little ways out on the tundra anyways. After the tundra excursion we went back out to the main channel, and built a fire to cook steak and potatoes. Stan and Doris stopped by and had coffee a little while later.  Getting Firewood On Saturday Kayla, Oren, and I headed up t