Alaska Day #5

Today our whole group jumped into the lodge's two beavers (float planes) and flew to Lake Kijik (key-jick), a beautiful glacier lake that feeds into the Kijik River. This area is one of the few places in the world where artic graylings can be caught. A grayling is usually about the size of a rainbow trout. The Kijik River was full of graylings. There were so many that as we stood in the stream to fish we could see them all around us. Altogether our group caught over 150 fish. J.J. was "en fuego" showing his Fryer roots. He alone caught over 30 fish and had another 15 or more on his hook that got away. Today the sun came out so we could finally fish without wearing a coat. However the water was very cold and we constantly had to get out of the water in order for our feet to get warm even though we were wearing two wool socks in a 1/2 inch neoprene sock in a rubber boot.

In order to get to the spot on the river where the fish were located we had to hike on a bear trail along the banks of the Kijik River. The trail was littered with fish skeletons and bear poop. We walked through grass that was about 4 feet high and knowing that there were bears in the area made the hike a little bit spooky. We made lots of noise and fortunately we didn't see a bear. We do have bears come into our camp area almost every night. I haven't seen them but some of the others in our group have - as close as 20 feet away.

One of the more interesting parts of this trip is flying on the float planes every day. They are a blast to ride in and the scenery is very beautiful. Dropping down over a mountain onto a lake or a river in what appears to your senses to be a crash landing is quite thrilling. I have included some photos of the planes and a little bit of what we see when we are airborne.