Joseph Manduke in Alaska

On the Travels….
Joseph Manduke
Alaska

You will never know how small you truly are on this world until you visit and really tour Alaska. I am not talking about a posh cruise to southeast out of Vancouver or Seattle; sipping wine and watching the glaciers melt away. I mean the interior. Fly-in fishing, camping off the trail. The real wilderness.

Just before I graduated from Temple University’s Geology program in 1980, a few of the seniors had a chance for exotic field camps. Our standard field geology class was, that summer, to be coastal New England and maritime Canada. The Canadian portion was like a trip back in time for me, having been a traveler there in the 1950’s with my family.

Well my friend Kate had a departmental scholarship as I did and we got to pick her choice of field camps. She picked the University of Alaska’s class and we were all envious. I decided just to go to Canada, not wanting to be away from family that long.
It was 3 years later, after I had found my dream environmental job with the state of Pennsylvania, and my high school sweetheart had taken off with a good friend, that I needed a serious fishing trip. I called Kate and her boyfriend, who lived just North of Fairbanks in Fox, and said I wanted to visit.

I landed in Fairbanks, after a plane change in Anchorage, on June 20, 1983 at midnight in the bright glow of the low summer sun. Kate worked for the environmental chemistry lab in Fairbanks and her boyfriend was starting a motorcycle rental business for tourists. He had bought a used BMW enduro, which, along with an old stake body truck, were mine to use for my 2-week visit. I would ride the BMW up the pipeline haul road towards the Arctic Circle and chicken out. With the old truck I ground its non-synchronous transmission and just looked around locally.

Kate lived in a log cabin in the woods with no running water or other facilities. The mosquitoes in the outhouse were as thick as dust in a sandstorm. It was very cold at night even with the fire going. Kate was mad that a cow moose had eaten most of her cabbages. I was an arctic neophyte and had never seen a cabbage that huge. The never setting sun grows some HUGE vegetables.
I found Fairbanks to be a rough town. I was still young, and then a bit squeamish. Some places were just best avoided. The pipeline boom had really changed the town I was told. There were new millionaires everywhere to be met. Folks from New England who opened pizza shops, or tool rental places, or brothels..Oh yes, real brothels, at least so I was told. We went into town to take our showers at the YMCA and had dinner at the Chena Pump House, a good then nouveaux local eatery.

There were a lot of young people there with a lot of money. Pipeline boomers. As a lowly and young state geologist, I felt a little put out of place. I remember that everyone was using 100-dollar bills there. Back home, this was rarely seen then. I mentioned it, and a haughty (and pretty) young lady just said if I couldn’t afford it here, just go back where you are from.
I found similar attitude years later in Arizona. First moving there, the summer heat can be truly shocking in the low desert. Later you learn to enjoy it, as tourists complain, not knowing that they are but 2 hours from a ski slope and the cool mountains.

The Chena River there was mostly glacial silt, so I didn’t do any fishing there.

A high point for the motorhead in me was a drag race in town. In those days, the Al-Can, or Alaska Highway that runs thru and to Fairbanks was closed down on a Saturday for drag races. A corvette rolled and there were serious injuries. The race wasn’t held again. What an amazing thing to witness that would never happen today with insurances, torts, and lawyers.
So went my first short introduction to Fairbanks and that area of Alaska. After leaving Fox and saying farewell to my friends, I had a few days with the rental car and I wanted to drive back to Anchorage and fly back to Philadelphia after seeing the Kenai Peninsula.
Then, the Steese highway from Fairbanks to Anchorage was a muddy, torn-up disaster in many areas. Otherwise it was a good road.

The weather had been amazingly clear, and Denali, or Mt. McKinley jutted up above the rest of the Alaska Range like giant white triangle. I would learn only later that just to see "the mountain" is often a rare privilege. I would come here many times over the next decade, with friends and family, never seeing Denali out of its clouded top.
You see, the mountain is just so damn tall that it creates its own weather systems. It becomes cloud enshrouded for days and even weeks in mid-summer. It takes luck to the "Great one". (Denali’s translation) People die climbing it often. Flying out of Talkeetna, a rustic tourist town to the East, in an attempt to succeed in one of the most dangerous climbs on earth.

Fairbanks is a long day drive from Anchorage. I pressed on down south of the biggest city and found a campground along a little stream called Portage Creek. It was a rugged camp spot, not far from the highway. The valley between Portage glacier and the WWII base and town of Whittier is a wall of waterfalls. This is the best sound to fall asleep to, under the midnight sun and smell of pines and bogs.

A car carrying rail line connects the road at Portage to Whittier and the Ferry to Valdez, across Prince William Sound.

My out of state fishing license was very expensive, and I was anxious about my first real life encounter with a salmon. I had grown up with a coffee table book called "The Treasury of Angling". It was a book club item, filled with pictures of exotic things to a 10 year old. I memorized this book. Things about King salmon and Arctic Grayling. Well thanks to God, and a good education and friends, here I was. The best fishing on the planet.

I took a drive up the dirt road about half a mile to a better pullout and stream access. The stream looked just like any eastern trout stream, but with one difference. There were huge fish lined up taking turns, it seemed, at swimming up the riffle there. A few ladies, native American, were doing their always-excellent job of snagging salmon. So too were the Black bears ponderously loping along, just like us, but picking at dead fish. I also the learned that Eagles, such a big deal back home, were just the crows here. Flocked together at fish carcasses like and as numerous as crows, our national symbol is just another simple scavenger here.
Intentionally snagging a fish would have been illegal for me as a non-native fisherperson. (Most of the natives fishing here were women and girls) But since the Pinks, which were now the run in the stream, I had to try and convince a strike with a big nasty spinner.

Well, a 5 poundish fish, a big hook-jawed male seemed to attack my lure, at least it was in his mouth and I with great difficulty netted the salmon that almost broke my light spinning rod. I know Alaskans and other experienced fisherman now balk at Pink salmon, sometimes called erroneously "Dog salmon"’ as it is and was sled dog food. The same is true of the Grayling, which my Alaskan friends have considered the Carp of the north.
Well it was my first trip and I cooked that salmon with oil and a cornmeal coating and ate about 3 pound s of it. It was great.

Of course, then, I hadn’t had fresh King or even better Red or Sockeye, nor Grayling.
I didn’t return to Alaska after that two-week trip until 1985. My wife to be, who was not an "outdoorsy" woman, came with me to fish and camp, her first time doing those things. Wow-what a great place to start in those pursuits. Unfortunately, she was terrified to sleep in our tent, as there were bear warning signs all around. She did manage to catch her first, and close to only ever fish. I met a guy named Jeff King who was a Kenai River guide. We chartered a day out with him in the combat zone, at the town of Kenai.

My lady caught and released a nice 45-pound female King salmon that July. We finished our visit with some touring and stays at Anchorage’s nicer hotels. She would return with me a few more times, but usually stayed at the hotel while I was out fishing or camping alone.
She did take a beautiful long hike with me into the Kenai Mountains. We went about 10 miles off the road in the rainforest and found a small lake. It was brimming with Grayling and I caught my first of many Grayling there. We made a small campfire and shared the cooked fish. It is one of my fondest memories of that relationship with the mother of my two beautiful children.

By the way, the Grayling isn’t so bad. Its scientific name, Thymallus, refers to the thyme-like scent of its flesh, which is soft, white, and sweet. Its better that any stocked eastern trout, I assure you, a beautiful and exotic creature. Later, I would find them again at the highest elevations, stocked precariously in little known places on Arizona’s eastern rim.
Later I would bring my father in law, friends, and my second wife on a trip that I had down like a tour guide. We would fly into Anchorage and rent a car. I usually planned our arrival on June 21, the longest day in the Northern hemisphere. That means no night at this latitude.

Then we drive North to Denali park. Inside the park I had found a mining camp that had rooms and all the comforts deep in the national park near Denali and Wonder Lake. Wonder lake is a jewel-like place often seen on postcards. The Snow capped mountain reflected into the mirror of this pristine lake is one of the most beautiful experiences and witnesses of my life. The entire road back into Kantishna, along the park access road is almost 100 miles of incredible scenery. One shirks and seems to fall away into nothing while viewing distant braided rivers at Polychrome Pass. There is a visitor center at Eielson, the last civilization, at least back then, until Kantishna.

Kantishna is was a gold mining camp. I befriended Roberta, the owner, shortly after she broke up with her gold miner husband to start a tourist accommodation, the "Kantishna Roadhouse". I would return every summer here as the camp grew and Roberta prospered. Eventually it seemed that only Japanese were visiting, so I stopped going there. Not because of the foreign tourists-it had just become too commercial, and very expensive.

A new dining hall and motel were built, the bears and moose, caribous, marmots, eagles (of course), foxes were all there. But not me nor but not me. Nor my tour group.
When I took that very first trip too Kantishna with my first wife, it required a special travel permit to leave the main park road. It got you away from the ubiquitous buses of summer photo seekers, who were often approaching and getting mauled by angry grizzly bears. It was a wild ride then, and I miss that Kantishna.

The next stop was Homer. It is a town on the Western coast of the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage. This incredible place is perhaps the most beautiful town on earth. At least if you drive up the hill behind Homer, and view its fishhook like peninsula over the Cook Inlet. Here we would always charter a trip for Halibut. This was a great opportunity to get seasick on the usually cold, rough, rainy inlet and catch a truly giant flounder. My biggest was only 108 pounds. It really was carnage back then I would have been happy with a 10 pounder for a nice big fillet dinner, but we all had to stay on the boat until the limit was caught. We fished at a spot called "Magic Mountain". This underwater feature was the hot spot then. I can assure you bringing up a 100 pound plus fish from 300 feet was like towing a Volkswagen beetle with a coat hanger. My arms like rubber bands and forearms numbed.

But it along with the rest of the catch butchered, packed, and Fedexed back home was fish for an extended family for a year. I don’t eat halibut anymore. I haven’t since I gave away the freezer I especially bought topo hold Alaska fish at my home in Mechanicsburg, PA. I gave away the freezer and fish, and my entirely used and experienced collection of halibut cookbooks before I moved to Arizona in 1994.

The breath-taking ferry ride from Whittier to Valdez is better than the over priced cruises. The 10 hours or so as I recall then was a start at a warm, nice little port with cars loaded on. The food was fist class then at first, but that changed over time.
I was always amused later as the ship progressed that the be-shorted and be-tee-shirted neophytes would soon be scrambling inside as we approached the glaciers and icebergs. I always brought my parka so I could stay out on deck and watch for whales and seals aplenty.

As great as that ferry ride is, the drive out and UP from Valdez (pronounced VAL-DEEZ) and the oil terminal is truly awesome. Writing about this, one truly runs out of dramatic adjectives. None really do it-language fails, go there and see it for yourself.
I remember taking this drive out of Valdez with my second wife for the first time. She is outdoorsier than wife one (not a lot). In the cool morning fog, she shrieked at seeing the absolute wall of snowy rock we were driving towards away from the pipeline terminal. It had no top in the fog, and we crossed across beautiful pond-pocked tundra and down my next traditional accommodation at Copper Center.

This rustic little motel was always my stop over place. It was quiet and comfortable and great to stop after a sleepless night on the ferry and the drive over the huge mountains.
The Denali highway goes east to west from the area just north of Copper Center back to Denali Park. This completes the round trip back to the park and back to our starting point, Anchorage. Along this dirt road, the Denali highway traverses amazingly interesting glacial terrain. Geology buffs, like me, get to ride on eskers, top kames, and see all kinds of moraines. Also, along her are a plethora of "ditches" containing vast quantities of Grayling and Dolly Varden trout. "Dollies" as they are called, are held in the same "esteem" as grayling are by Alaskans. But for those of us from "outside", as they say, Dollies may be another new species to catch. The mid-point for me along the Denali highway was a place called "Denali". Then, it was a support camp for the adjacent gold mine. They had small rooms and a restaurant in a small metal Quonset hut. The food was ample and hearty-the miners were good company for a geologist. It would have been better on those trips to leave the wives home. In the "Sluice Box" café, there are dollar bills everywhere with names of visitors, as well as any other paper currency you can think of. Telling the assembled miners I was an Alaska licensed geologist, the miners offered me 5 ounces of gold to fly up in the chopper with them for a day and look at their placer mining and make suggestions. I couldn’t go along, not wanting to leave my wife alone nor be late for our return flight to Baltimore.

On my last trip to the Kenai River, at Kenai, my wife and I both caught 50-pound class July Kenai Kings. I had an old friend along who hadn’t fished too much. He asked me, "Joe, how will I know when I have a fish?" Back trolling on the wild rushing river is a heavy feeling to the rod. I said, "You’ll know". It was about then he hooked a rocket of a 45-pound doe, tail walking and I think almost scaring my urbanite friend out of our boat. Jeff, our guide, started to call me Jonah Joe.

This one of my favourite biblical tales, but that is not why he called me that. There were many years I spent good money to combat fish the Kenai without catching anything. The fish my young wife caught was obtained while I was sleeping, fished-out and being out too long the night before with friends at Charlie’s place in Kenai. Charlie’s was a lot like the Pine Tree Tavern was in my youth in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. Except the owner honoured the entertainment needs of the salmon fishing season and had a uniquely entertaining place. Maybe it’s burned down too in the years I have been away, like the Pine Tree Tavern did near the Yellow Breeches..
A freshly cut steak from just behind the head of such a catch is divine, Mesquite grilled with a good bottle of wine, moose in view by a little cabin on the river is where I want to be-right now.
Oh, I like the Jona or Jonas story because for me it meant there is no way to hide from God or to avoid a divine journey. And when your done, you might just be angry, and get into an argument with God and destiny. This is an argument you shall ultimately lose.

I had promised my son a trip there for his graduation from high school. We will have to wait and see. As time has passed, and my priorities have changed, the trips are less frequent. But we will go again. I still have one of my earliest credential in Geology-A state of Alaska geology license. I only ever did one project there, in Juneau around 1993. It was an underground tank removal. Juneau was a neat town, but a bit touristy. There were salmon in abundance there and a nice glacier. It is a unique capital, as you can’t drive there its on an island. I know about living on an Island.