Branch River Banya

I love planning trips. If you're going to eschew the aid of guides and other manservants, you're going to need to do some planning. You may as well enjoy it. And the better you plan, the safer you'll be; yeah, I kayak alone, which some people consider insane, but I do it with maps and charts, with scads of prepared waypoints, with pages of information gleaned from multiple sources, with EPIRBS, flares and paddle floats, and so on . . . .

Surely that is a tune I've played many times before, so let's go on to the twist in the plot: Kayak Sonata #2 included several episodes of real, honest, spontaneity. I took my exquisitely tailored plans, and disregarded them, more than once. Yipee! For instance, refer to this list of lawbreaking:

Planned: Start out from Brooks Camp early on 7/1
Actual: Hear bad weather report after two-beer dinner, and head out at 7:00 p.m. on 6/30

Planned: Camp two nights at Idavain Creek before moving on to portage to Colville Lake, Grosvenor Narrows, and beyond.
Actual: Get to beautiful camp at 1:30 a. m. in the morning on 7/1 and stay there NINE WHOLE DAYS

That's right, I found a lovely camp and pretty much made it my home for the entire Naknek Lake portion of the trip. Partly the severe winds kept me pinned in, but partly I just didn't want to move. On the third morning I set out for the portage, and struggled through some serious wind to get across the lake. I took a good look at the portage, saw a long, muddy, strenuous ordeal of questionable value, and immediately started back. Oh was I happy to see my happy home after that 21 mile day. But laziness wasn't my only reason. This video, taken on my first fishing sortie from that camp, explains one important factor in my decision-making:




I was pretty excited about that fish, but I'm afraid it didn't last too long . . . because I almost immediately found myself compelled to get overly excited about another fish:




Over the course of nine days, using that chartreuse kwikfish, and 20 and 30 foot diving planers, and large striper flies, I found a dozen or so reasons to stay around that were roughly 30 inches in length. If you're used to getting excited about 15 inch trout, that's a pretty convincing length. The poundage was probably in double digits. So yeah, I hung around. Every once in a while I would get a real surprise by catching a fish shorter than two feet long, and also I got a few of these funny lookin (but quite tasty) fellows:




The one night that I spent away from my Trout Heaven, I spent in Pike Heaven. Fish, after fish, after fish . . . maybe you'd like to see some bigger ones, but a three-foot pike is a handful no matter how you hook it:




90% of about 90 pike came to flies (bunny leeches and clousers), but every now and then I took a break and tossed out a spinner, like on this beautiful morning:



The second attack of spontaneity wasn't all my fault; I have to thank my rafting partner Mike, and a great guy named Matt. On the sixth day of the Alagnak River trip, Mike and I were pleasantly picking off chum after chum on a nice sandy run in the lower river when a motorboat came chugging by upriver.

"How's it goin' guys! Hey! You should stop at my place and spend the night under a roof tonight! Got a sauna and everything! Just downstream on your right!!"

I hope Matt can forgive me for initially thinking that he must have been some kind of lunatic. But as the drizzle intensified, and the lack of campsites downriver started looking gloomier and gloomier, Mike and I decided to stop and see about the madman's sauna. Referring to Mike's riverside reading material, I called it an instance of "On the Roadish Spontaneity." And without a doubt, it was one of the best nights of the trip. Proving it's a small world, we immediately established that Matt was a direct relative to my friend Ben's wife, and the rooms we were going to sleep in were once part of a lodge where both Ben and Matt had guided real (unlike us bums) fishing clients.

For no charge, Matt set us up with all kinds of hospitality in the form of breakfast and whisky and motorized chinook fishing; but for me, the highlight had to be the banya -- a sort of backwoods sauna common in the history of Alaskan bush-travel. Picture a small shack heated by a large barrel woodstove with huge pots of heated water on top of it and a generous ladle for spooning hot river water over yourself . . . picture spooning water onto the rocks on top of the stove, and soaking up a big hit of superwarmed steam, after which you sit back and stare out the little window onto the midnight sunset tundra with an unbeatable physical, mental and moral sense of well being. If I ever try heroin in my old age (and yes, I am planning that for about age 70, when there's not much left to lose), I will measure it up against the sweet euphoria of a Branch River Banya.