Woody and Reynolds took the lead into a deep, narrow channel between trees that leaned in close. Reynolds took a sideways spruce trunk across a shoulder, fell overboard, and sank. While he groped for the side of his canoe, Oberlatz caught a spruce in the chest and was launched backward, splashing into the current. I could see Holter, his canoe-mate, stop paddling to search underwater for a glimpse of Oberlatz, who was weighted down by chest waders, heavy boots, and the loaded .44.
Then Oberlatz’s life jacket brought him to the surface. He gasped for air as photographer Corey Rich and I passed on his right, heading into a bend. That’s when I heard Rich scream. Directly ahead, midcurrent, was a 10-foot grizzly.
Better paddlers would’ve worked in sync to zip the canoe across the river, out of harm’s way, but all we accomplished was turning the boat broadside to the bear as the current swept us onward.
I began to yell, as loud as I could, “Bear! Bear! Bear! Fucking paddle, Corey! Paddle! Paddle!”
“Which way?”
“Left! Right! Shit! I don’t know!”
But just like that the bear jumped onto the bank. He reared up to sniff the air, then sprinted up a hillside and vanished.
I could hear Oberlatz and Woody laughing in the boats behind us, and I lay back on the gear to look up at the gray sky. I was asking where Rich had packed our bourbon when he yelled, “Fuck! There’s another one!”
The river was making a tight left bend, with the current forcing us hard into the right bank where a bear stood.
I started yelling again: “Hey bear! Hey bear! Hey bear!”
We both paddled hard again, managing to get a little traction on the current this time, but no matter: This bear ran off too.
—-
The pick-up plane appeared like an insect from the southern sky, a tiny 1956 Stinson. Low off the river, the pilot dipped a wing and waved at us. Then he circled and disappeared. We found the plane parked around a bend on a gravel bar, midriver. Somehow that pilot had landed in the space of a hundred yards. He said he couldn’t fly us out from right there — not enough room to take off with a load. So we paddled another two miles, stopping finally at a grassy airstrip near a hunting lodge. The plane was so small it took three round-trips to ferry us all back to Port Alsworth.
The following morning, after a good sleep and a long shower, I headed back to the airstrip for a second chartered flight to look at the mine site. Woody was there too, but she was climbing into a Bell JetRanger helicopter instead of joining us. She had identified a key weakness in the fight against the mine: Alaska law requires judges and juries to consider the “best available scientific evidence,” but in the case of the many remote creeks and rivers key to the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, there simply is no solid count of fish populations. For other waterways the only evidence comes from studies financed by the Pebble Partnership. So Woody had talked the Nature Conservancy into funding an independent survey. Waving goodbye, she lifted off in the chopper and headed back into the bush to count fish for a week straight.
For my part, I had our bush pilot circle the test site again, then set us down on the shores of the massive and pristine Lake Iliamna, annual spawning site for roughly 30 million salmon. As the pilot banked in low, he crossed Upper Tularik Creek, one of the greatest fly-fishing streams on Earth. No fewer than a dozen grizzlies hung out in the water, gorging on fish. We touched down right at the mouth of the creek. Spawning salmon were everywhere — hundreds upon hundreds of them — and down in the lake, where every loose salmon egg would drift, was an angler’s dream: monstrous rainbow trout so unfamiliar with humans you could wade right up to them and drop a fly on their noses.
It reminded me of what I’d felt while flying to the headwaters of the Chilikadrotna, seeing those first bears and the first big clots of fish: that Alaskans may see the Pebble mine fight as a conflict between gold and salmon, extractive industry and sustainability; but to the rest of us, who may get up here only once or twice in a lifetime, it looks more like a painful choice between economic development and the knowledge that there’s still a truly wild North America — like you grew up dreaming about and never thought you’d find — just a plane ride away.
This article originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.
Print this article
March 16th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Mr. Duane,
I am glad you had the chance to see some of the Great Alaskan Wilderness and realize what is actually at stake. Did anyone on your trip mention to you the $300 million a year the Bristol Bay fishery is worth? That doesnt even include processors/wholesalers, shippers to get product to market, grocery stores, restarants or many other outlets that utilize this resource.
Glad you might also understand that the final price of a leakage by the mine would not be just valued in dollars but as a costly loss of such a grand resource as our environment actually is.
[Reply]
David Otness Reply:
March 17th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Thanks for articulating to a larger audience what is truly at stake here.
I have lived in the Bristol Bay country and there is no way on earth Pebble can be developed without harming if not destroying a significant part of the salmon runs.
Trace amounts of copper disrupt a salmon’s ability to navigate, it has been proven; as has their ability to hide from predators when another salmon fingerling emits distress pheromones they can no longer discern, triggering an escape function.
It should also be considered that this is part of the North American Flyway and massive amounts of swans, ducks, geese and shorebirds transit this area two times a year, nesting in the watersheds of the Yukon Flats, the Kuskokwim and Bristol Bay.
They will want to land on the toxic lakes when bucking into the southeastern storms of the equinox.
They also must run the gauntlet of Tar Sands development in Alberta
twice a year. Same story, toxic lakes that use propane cannons to scare them away when most vulnerable and tired.
500 birds died in one sitting last year when the cannons were unattended.
We have choices, hard choices to make as we sit at the pinnacle of mankind’s achievements.
Will we fail ourselves and heirs to the earth or is this where we begin to make the choices we would wish to be remembered for?
Would you eat a gold fish or use that gold to buy a farmed salmon?
[Reply]
March 17th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
I visited Alaska in August 2008 and was totally overwhelmed by the raw beauty and magnitude of the wilderness. I now proudly display the “Stop Pebble Mine” decal on my car here on the coast of North Carolina. I flew to Port Alsworth, backpacked and drank water directly from the lake. Returning to Anchorage, I flew to Nondalton and saw the spawning salmon in the river below. We,as humans, have messed things up enough. Leave this area ALONE!!!!!!
[Reply]
March 22nd, 2009 at 4:29 am
What a spectacle? I wonder who else will be motivated to have a travel adventure up there now? Great eco-tourism opportunity, no?
[Reply]
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Good story. You did a nice job summarizing the issue with Pebble Mine and describing one of my favorite rivers in Alaska. The sad thing is that there are hundreds of wild rivers in Alaska like the Chilikadrotna, and nearly everyone of them faces some threat from development or human encroachment. Most of the great salmon streams starting at Lake Iliamna and continuing down the Alaska Peninsula lost their pristine character when fishing lodges were built on the big lakes that feed them. The only reason why Twin Lakes (headwaters of the Chilikadrotna) and Turquoise Lake (headwaters of the Mulchatna) were spared was because they are located within the wilderness boundary of Lake Clark National Park. I was very sad when a lodge was built just recently at the outlet of the Alagnak River on Kukaklek Lake as this was the last of the big lake and river systems that was not developed. The ‘wild and scenic’ status does not protect these rivers from this type of development.
One comment: you mention thousands of elk in Alaska. The only elk I am aware of in Alaska are the roosevelt elk that were introduced to Afognak Island near Kodiak and in southeast Alaska and the farmed elk near Delta.
[Reply]
April 9th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Having fished the Bristol Bay area 5 times now (looking forward to my 6th this summer), and investigated fishing opportunities for trout and salmon around the world, it is clear that this area of the world is unparalleled as a fishery. Losing it would harm not only the fish, and the fishing industry, but the entire bioenvironment of the region-everyting from the bugs to the bears would be adversely affected and the world would lose a tremendous resource. The problem I see as I visit each summer is that while people like us debate this issue and hope the mining project will not occur, the reality is that every day in this area there are helicopters in the air, and people and equipment on the ground moving forward with the implementation of infrastructure needed for this mine to be created. In other words, we’re talking while they’re working. Unless powerful people with the ability to stop this activity are engaged quickly, all of our words and worries will be wasted and our worst fears realized. If anyone knows how to get the right people to put a stop to this, please let the rest of us know. So far, postcards to congresspeople and local government officials have seemed meaningless.
[Reply]
Trudy Glass Reply:
April 17th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I have been in touch a friend who forwarded this to a former EPA regional supervisor. Hopefully that will be of some benefit!
[Reply]
October 13th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Thank you all so much for your positive comments, as well as the eloquently written article. As a Yup’ik Eskimo born and raised in Bristol Bay, it is especially concering because we depend on our fisheries and wildlife for subsistence food and commercial income. We’ve been carrying on our Native hunting and fishing traditions for thousands of years. It’s a David vs. Goliath struggle, and I hope that a pristine bountiful renewable resource that can be here for another thousands of years will be preserved against a short term toxic proposal like the Pebble Mine. It will last a few decades and leave generations upon generations a permanent scar. It’s a human rights issue, so thank you all for your support and please join us in protecting Bristol Bay!
[Reply]