The Alaska State Parks maintain a bunch of remote cabins that you can only get to by snow machine/cross-country skis in the winter or by canoe/hiking in the summer. We reserved a small cabin out at Red Shirt Lake last weekend. We got a late start and made the 10 mile trip into the cabin in the dark. We loaded up the sled with firewood, camping, and fishing gear.
The cabin was right on the lake, so when it got cold you could go in and warm up by the fire.
The accommodations were pretty primitive, a wood stove, an outhouse, and some plywood bunks.
One of Ryan's Christmas presents from Santa was a pair of lighted "tip-ups." These are baited hooks that you set and forget - until the flag pops up and lets you know that a fish has swam off with your bait. At night there is a little LED light that starts flashing when you get a bite. We were fishing for monster pike so we used big herring for bait. The fishing was pretty slow during the day, but as it got dark the action heated up. We sat in the cabin by the wood stove and drank wine.
Once the light started flashing we quickly donned our boots and jackets and ran out to reel in our catch. The problem was that we got outsmarted by the pike. When we got to the tip-up, the pike were still peeling off line, but we just couldn't get the hook set...and they all got away.
We used a gas powered auger to drill 10" holes through the 24" thick ice. It would've taken a lot of work to drill those holes by hand.
Great view of the Alaska Range across the surface of the lake to the north at Sunrise (aka 10:00 am). Red Shirt Lake is up the Susitna River Valley towards Denali National Park, about 70 miles north of Anchorage.
No comments:
Post a Comment