I'm a Rrrrob Bear

Finally, what you all have been waiting for...



Special thanks to Elder Matthew, for the manly man pictures from his personal magazine collection!

Return to the secret creek...

Autumn is here, green is fading, the island turns to gold...


Laura finally catches a beautiful coho (which she released- what a sportswoman!) She's so cute.

Even a bear...

Laura really got to do it all- this bear put on a show out by Salonie Creek.

The boat finally pays for itself...

Hogs! Went for a little subsistence trip to the Buskin River in my mighty raft. Laura was a natural- fighting off seals, grabbing salmon, and not falling out on the bumpy rides. Between this and the goat hunt, everyone will be eating happy this winter.


The cleaning station- the little green man is my dad- an expert fillet man- and I love Kodiak- as we are cleaning fish a woman showed up with her dog and she took all the carcasses to use for dog and cat food- zero waste!! I say that the boat finally "paid for itself" because after at the end of the day we had more than a hundred pounds of coho fillets- with a market value of more than I paid for the raft!


Salmon love.

Dad and Laura Fish trip

Catching coho at the secret crick- sweet action on the ultralight (and no other people).


Two generations of fishing madness...

Goat/deer hunt...coming soon

The resulting meat party. Stories, photos, and eventually a video will follow...

magic

This double rainbow appeared while I was passing fish, and I sat for an hour watching them approach, able to see both ends on the grassy field, with heavy downpour soaking me to the core, unable to move, it was magical.

And of course...

Fishing!! Here is Cassie with a halibut- she basically caught them all, and I caught nothing, until I pulled up this:


A nice, but worthless in an eating sense, skate. Finally, after a lot of work, and even more endless ridiculing by my crewmate, I had a hit- boom!... and pulled up this:


The only halibut I caught all summer long.

Pancho vs. The River Part II

After I showed the first rafting video to Nate, he apparently wasn't too impressed, and all he said was, "you didn't even go over the falls". So I pushed it "to the limit".

summertime

Uncle Rob owns the night.



Extreme mountain biking- hauling ten gallons of gas back to camp to try and fix the four-wheeler. Rob wasn't too impressed when I cruised up to his float plane at the lake and asked if he wanted a ride back to camp. Luckily we were able to fix the 4-wheeler and get our groceries to camp before the bears ate it all.



Afognak Lake just after ice-out.



Building a bridge on our driveway- this is my partner Cassie, a chainsaw master.



Sunset up at the lake.

Greenhouse

Breaking ground...





A little help from my boss Rob...



I ended up growing a lot of greens and radiches, with cauliflower, squash, peas, roses, onions, parsley, and other odds and ends mixed in there.



The little temporary covered bed held the transplanted rhubarb and wild strawberries, both of which should produce a lot next year.



Giving some love to the raspberry patch- I dug a few plants out of the flattened grass, and by the end of the summer they had shot up babies and created a huge patch, which again, will hopefully produce next summer.



Rose with the final harvest. I composted a large amount of dirt with seaweed, salmon, and sphagnum, and next year I plan to expand the greenhouse, hopefully triple the size.

Since I already had the drysuit on...

Pancho with his mighty walmart-special alpacka raft, custom designed river paddle, and glorious cg drysuit.

I have a crazy rafting friend who makes incredible films, a short example:



which inspired this:

Smolt trap

After the water level dropped we built the smolt trap (above), only to have an insane rain storm destroy it and wash it out. Below is me trying to save what was left. I fell in and filled my waders, and ended up donning the drysuit to remove the final pieces.

Spring friends

Afognak elk, feeding by the river.

First order of business...

...catch a fresh dolly to replace the one on the grill.

Return to LitnikLand

The first week of May we returned to our beloved Litnik and found the lake still iced up, several feet of snow on the four-wheeler trail, the river at extreme flood conditions, and...

this headed, but not gutted, dolly varden left in the grill from last fall?!? (my boss, Rob Baer, making the discovery)

Adios friends...

Leaving for the summer holiday- returning to Lovely little Litnik (see link on right side for an education on Litnik) until late August, maybe won't be back in the real world until September.



I wish you sunshine and love.

Pancho.



Pancho, ADFG
c/o Rob Baer
211 Mission Rd.
Kodiak, AK 99615

Island Trails Summit

Front page of the Kodiak Daily Mirror



My friend Patrick also presented on climbing this nine-thousand foot volcano in the Aleutians!

The gentlemen's walk #50

This is a rough idea of the trek to town...

Summer is here!

Camping last Sunday with my buddy Ron, we went up in a storm, setup the tent in rocking winds, and then rain and snow all night. But in the morning...



We were on snowshoe, so we made a big push back along some knife edge ridges (can't do this on skis, haha Patrick) and had a few hairy descents, the snow is really ready to avalanche, and Ron almost fell all the way down the mountain backwards. But we would hit pockets with no wind and it felt like 80 degrees, sweating like crazy, ate cheerios all day, then headed down through the valley.






Saw my first bear of the season, a little guy, and after we scared him, he ran down through the valley- the only way we could possible go- so we followed his tracks all the way down to the road, poor little scared buddy.

Fishing (and trying to)

Well, had a few nice days on the water, but a few really rough ones too, a wheel fell off the "new" trailer and so I got to learn how to change wheel bearings, crazy winds made me go home early too many times, and then finally I just went for it. Started as a nice day...



...and still looks like a nice day...



But that is only because I am huddled behind the protection of an island, big gusts coming right down the bay, sets of three foot swells swallowing me in my little boat, and I was pulling up a crab pot from 50 fathoms with one hand while at the same time as driving into the seas with the other.

But, one sweet (though freshly molted) tanner, and lots of little guys, who got to go back home.

preparation...

Last three days work: turning a rusty "trailer" (aka POS) into a nice usable trailer for the subsistence inflatable, this is a sort of before and after, except that it was actually much worse than the first photo when I originally bought it.






I got new tires/rims from the junkyard, got most wood and aluminum from a recycle pile, welded a support frame and wheel wells, planted the grass and wired her, ready for action!

sea-spiders?

Two dozen crabs in one pot! Whoo-hoo! Oh, wait, it's not dinner, it's a horde of... spiders!?

summer at the Point

Today we spent at Carlson Point, and oh, what a day! Variable 10, CAVU, almost summer weather- we hiked completely around the cape,


worked on my tan,


found treasures,


made a beachfire and cooked craisin-stuffed apples with walnuts, another winner from Rose, while we watched the sun sink to the west, while maybe a dozen whales played in all directions,

Rose had to watch out for whales on the skiff ride home (so they didn't flip our boat over. whales are apparently quite mischevious)


and to finish off a perfect day, a nice fat codfish for dinner