Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska White Privileged in Remote Alaska

So it's gotta be nice when you have the coin to buy one of Alaska's most premier remote commercial lodges just to turn it into you private playground.

This guy is located on Mikchalk Lake right in the middle of Wood TikChik Park, it's nice but a little hard to get to.
There are a 3 barely navigable rivers that few have the skills to run along with miles and miles of open lakes between him and any road system.

So when he wants to get a new snow machine in there and maybe a couple boards to nail up hows he go about it?......



I've always figured guys like this would be too challenged by the rapids and rollers in those rivers to even attempt a stab at running them...

But maybe they try, this is the first river between that nifty lodge and the road system and I see they have a method figured for scouting out the channel...




Who says money can't buy happiness?

The lodge they circle to the top of the Agulowak River is yet another commercial lodge turned private rich mans play ground.
Its owned by GCI, the two big log structures at the far end of the development use to be owned by Neil Burke (Mark Air) now GCI owns it all.

Golden Horn is miles up the lakes from there.

Bush Air Cargo‘s (Anchorage and Palmer, AK) pictured Douglas C-47B-DK (DC-3) N777YA (msn 25634) “Arctic Liner” made a hard landing at the Nixon Fork Mine in McGrath, Alaska.

According the the FAA initial report for the November 22, 2015 incident, the crew of N777YA “on landing struck a snow berm and the landing gear went through the wing at Nixon Fork Mine in McGrath, Alaska”.

There were no injuries to the two crew members on board but the fate of the “Arctic Liner” is probably not good.

This is the only DC-3 in Alaska that is certified to operate with skis and land on frozen lakes.

I get your point about large cash sequestering playgrounds, we all experience that, I don't get the white part, why bring racial content or privilege into the issue?

Cabin fever has set in on the Ak forum of the campfire.

When you find yourself at a loss of what to title a thread you default to "click bait", don't get your panties in a wad...

Green eyed monster.....

It really looks like some extravagant spending a black NBA player would blow their money on.

Never thought I'd see so many DC 3 hauling hunters and wheelers etc.. into an airstrip as I saw at Farewell this fall. Evidently money isn't limited to only a few... LOL

Those lodges likely get more than their share of "snow." I hear it is white...

Wtf homeboy got scotch taped to the wall? A turkey beard?

landing on snow like that in the blazing sunshine must be interesting

i like how that first cabin is situated in the second video

Yeah, I suppose it could be blinding.
The hard part for me would be putting my plane in the trust of the guys down on that lake telling me the ice was thick enough to land on.
I seen little Piper Cub's put a ski through the ice because the guy that called him in didn't know WTF he was doing.

The cabin on the lower river there is nice, he's got it all to himself.

I lived on that river for about 3 years, every day was quality time....
Water moves quick enough there that it don't freeze completely over in the winter.
I was up at the top of the river..

pretty common..i'll bet the crew is familiar with those on the ground and don't have to worry too much about the reliability of information they are getting

Iduuno why but I've never been able to feel completely all warm and fuzzy on the ice.
Never had no incidents or anything but just never been able to feel 100% confident..

Same and same. Especially moving water.

Like the stuff you get flushed under the moment after you break through?

And the stuff that might be perfectly safe in one spot, but just a skim toward the bank? And might change year to year as bars move and change? Or might have overflow on top? Or the water might have dropped out under it and left a big shelf to break through? Yeah, that stuff. Don't trust it.

Lots of places where is is perfectly safe, and I get that. I just tend to proceed with caution.

Now I gotta tell ice stories.......

These are from the years in the Tik Chiks
We'd had about 4ft of snow then it warmed and stared raining, typical coastal Alaskan crap..
I had this kid show up from Montana to visit for a while and he gotten there just as all that powder was turning to slush.

We'd been hold'ed for like ten days waiting for the now 2 ft of water on top the ice to cap over so we could get out.
Finally about 2 to 3 inches of ice developed and we headed out one morning..all was well, great day..

I had a Skandic at the time but I'd put him on the old trusty Tundra that should'a been dead years prior..but they just don't know when to quit.

On our way home, about a 1/2 mile out we had to cut across a large lake. It'd warmed considerably as the cold morning had now become a 40 degree afternoon.
The ice was still OK but it was slick as cat schit, no way you could even stand up on it.
I was about 100 yards from making the shore when my track broke though that skim of ice along the edge of the lake you mentioned.

I was probably doing 40 or so and my skis were keeping the front end on top the ice, I'd nailed it and made my way to shore blowing the ice up behind me all the way...
Under that few inches we'd been riding on there was still 2 foot of water on top of at least 3+ foot of good ice...
It didn't pose a real hazard to me but the kid on the Tundra that'd been faithfully following me all day dove straight into the 5 foot wide channel my track was blowing out of that skinny ice. It was so slick he could neither turn or stop before he just plopped right in.

I got shut down once on solid ground and hollered out to him asking him if he was OK as he sat there in the overflow on the swamped Tundra. Said other than being wet all he needed was to change his underwear.






I was caribou hunting above the TikChiks with some native guys, we'd left from Aleknagik and had traveled about 125 miles north searching for the herd.
This is early 90's, the Mulchatna herd was 200,000 strong back then, we'd typically get into 20 or 30,000 head at a time.

Being the token white boy, I always brought up the tail of the pack when we traveled.
These Native guys come outta the womb running snow machines, they are really experienced or what may appear to some as being quite insane.

We always traveled together but alone.....we'd all know our destination, and arrive at the same place but we might show up an hour or better apart from each other.
In other words, nobody was waiting around for you and they weren't gonna hold each others hands in a hard spot.

We'd been running hard for a couple of days and gotten into nothing for Caribou so these guys were getting a little edgy and really making time.

I could see a couple from my group a ways ahead of me milling around a river bank, they crossed and were gone before I caught up.
I get up to that spot and I'm looking at this busted to hell ice where they'd crossed. It'd been the only ice bridge in sight, the rest the river was open. All that was left for me to get across on was a triangle shaped shelf of ice about 10 inches thick sticking out from the far bank and hanging about 4 foot above the water, it was about 20 feet away.

I could see about a 1/4 mile ahead of me one of the Native dudes had stopped and was turned around watching me.
He knew they'd left me schit for a crossing......keep in mind, we're all hauling sleds full of gas and gear, we're not just hot-doggin around on high performance machines..

I was on a high bank, the point of the triangle was about 20 feet out there and below me, I'd have to jump for it. Bank to bank was around 50 feet, there was 20 feet of air and water between me and the ice and no doubt it was going to break as soon as I hit it.

I turned around and built up some speed as I headed back to the crossing, I launched off that high bank at about 45 or 50, the ice broke and fell as soon as the weight of my machine came down on it, now it was a ramp, I got air but landed safe and sound on top of the other bank...

It threw me forward pretty hard, just as my face was eating windshield I could see the Native dude go rippin' off.
I'm sure he was chuckling at my antics.....silly white boy...

We got our Caribou, we always did....

In 2006, myself and one other guy ran those rivers and paddled the lakes from Lake Kulik to the little town of Aleknagik in a 16' canoe. The only problem we had was on the Wind River just below Milkchalk Lake where there was a fisherman blocking the main water channel. We had to paddle into the chop to get around his boat. Our canoe was full of two guys and two backpacks. That was kind of thrilling.

I think a Zodiak with a jet-drive outboard (or any small boat with a jet drive outboard) would have no trouble negotiating the way to Golden Horn Lodge. He would have to take a lot of gas. But I don't know about anything big enough to carry a snow machine.