I read John McPhee's "Coming Into the Country" and Joe McGinness's "Going to Extremes" in the late 70's. I hadn't even been there then, and long before the TV gold mining craze hit, but the two images that still prevail are the "ice fog" McGinness describes on a -40 degree day in Fairbanks, and the guy in McPhee's book who drove a Cat D9 up the AlCan to his homestead on the Yukon. Not a lot of hunting and fishing stories, but good writing and powerful descriptions. I've since fly fished it 4 times on the Alagnak R. and other and Iliamna drainages, but cant say I have any other knowledge of the state than that of a tourist, so I dont know if McPhee and McGinness were simply writing for the urban masses or whether their observations were accurate. Little of both, I suspect. Good reads, nevertheless.
