The Illiamna Hunting Trip

We left Cooper Landing around 1:30pm on October 1st. We flew over most of the Kenai Peninsula and over the town of Kenai and then across the Cook Inlet. We crossed the mountains through a pass called Lake Clark Pass. It was absolutely beautiful with glaciers in every direction.

The hardest part about putting this page together was deciding which pictures to throw away. I am limited to only 1 MB with my provider and that is why I shrink the pictures down to a small size too.

It was about an hour and a half flight over the pass and down to Lake Clark. It is another glacier-fed lake so it is that beautiful torquoise color.

Once over Lake Clark, we landed in a VERY small community or village named Port Alsworth. There are about 40 people who live there year round. The only way to get there is by plane. They have a descent sized runway so planes a little larger than a cessna can land there.

This area is very volcanic and this mountain is a volcano. Alaska has alot of volcanos. In fact, we flew near Redoubt Mountain which errupted in 1989. Also, Augustine Island is a volcano that has errupted every ten years and is now two years past due.

This is right after we landed at Port Alsworth. It is a quiet little village with float planes tied up along the bank (until it freezes) and small little cabins lining this small section of lake.

This is another volcanic mountain. This was looking from our camp to the East. I was hunting with one other guy. The area is all above treeline and therefore doesn't offer any wind break or trees to hang food in to keep the bears away. Also, this area has some of the biggest bears in North America.

This is what our food cache looked like after the big brown bear decided he liked the same thing I like. He destroyed most of my food and some of the other guy's food too. This required us to rashen the remainder of our food to one meal a day.

In addition to losing most of our food, the weather took a turn and we were stranded for five days. This is a large brown bear sow with two yearling cubs. They were about 200 yards away and we observed them for about an hour.

We had 50 mph winds and the temps didn't get above 25 degrees the entire trip. We used his tent and it blew down once during a snow storm. We didn't know how long we would be stranded, but we were finally rescued last Wednesday by another pilot from Illiamna.

Once in Illiamna, we caught this commercial airline with ERA to Anchorage. A friend picked us up and then drove us 100 miles South back to Cooper Landing so we could begin the celebration.