Destination- Hatcher Pass

The Little Susitna River coming down from the Hatcher Pass area

Looking down on the Mat-Su Valley

 

                                                    We're right up in the mountains

Ben  on the mountaintop at sunset

              Trying to catch one of the slippery little jerks that kept biting but not getting hooked

                                                               Success at last!!

Summit Lake in September

My granddaughter Abby with her two Japanese friends. Not sure why they closed their eyes

              Two foreign exchange students trying their hand at fishing.

                                                  Abby commandeered my chair

The first fish! It doesn't matter that its on Grandpa's pole

The Little Su again    

Hiding in the bushes taking a leak

 

Several times over the past week, I've had an opportunity to go up to Hatcher Pass and go fishing. While its not quite as exciting as fishing for cohos in the Eklutna Tail Race, it was a lot more profitable, in that I actually caught something.  Actually, I only caught two in two different trips up. 

The first trip up, I took my granddaughter, Abby and her friends who are Japanese foreign exchange students up to the pass to try out Summit Lake. I had been there a few weeks before with a family friend, and we'd had some success, even though it was incredibly foggy all the way up the pass to the lake. We were fishing by the hot spot, when we started hearing noise. I looked over and the entire cross country team from Colony High School in Palmer was standing thirty feet away, boys and girls. All of a sudden, the girls started taking off their tops. I guess they had sports bras or swim suits or something on, and before we knew it, they were wading into that frigid water. Pretty soon the boys were stripped down and they went in too. Needless to say, fishing pretty much ended right then. Fortunately we had caught our limit of rainbow trout and it didn't bother us as much as if we'd just gotten started.

My oldest son Ben is up visiting from Ketchikan, doing some more flight training.  I don't think you can have too much training if you're going to go flying around in Alaska. Yesterday was one of those drop dead gorgeous days that we sometimes get in the fall up here. While it's fairly warm down at ground level, by the time a person goes up the 3800 plus feet to Summit Lake, the temps are considerably cooler. I had told both groups of people who I took up there to dress warm, and bring an extra coat. I was assured that they were going to be OK.  Of course that wasn't the case. We could have fished a little longer, especially with Abby and her friends, but they were freezing their buns off, and it's no fun fishing when you're uncomfortable, even if the fish are biting. In any event, both excursions were so much fun. I fear that it won't be long before the Park service will shut off the road leading to the lake because of snow, so I was really happy to have a few great days of weather to make a fall trip up there. When the winter winds are howling and I'm sitting in my easy chair trying to recover from blowing the snow from my driveway, I can look back fondly at these pictures and remember that better days are ahead.