Arriving at Soldotna airport for our flight across Cook Inlet, we're greeted by a snuffling boxer named Alvin Junior. AJ belongs to Tim and Janet Pope, who own and operate Natron Air, the charter service that is flying MILEPOST field editor Marion Nelson and myself to Silver Salmon Creek Lodge for the day.
Silver Salmon Creek Lodge is one of two lodges located on a 160-acre parcel of private land within Lake Clark National Park on the west coast of Cook Inlet. The area holds a special attraction for sport fishermen and brown bear photographers, who make up much of the lodge's clientele. Silver Salmon Creek Lodge offers everything from 1 to 7 day adventures that feature bear viewing and sport fishing, along with bird watching, sea kayaking, clamming, fossil exploring and hiking. We're going over to sample a few of this area's attractions with Silver Salmon Creek Lodge. The third passenger in our plane, Dana from Mississippi, is headed for the area's other lodge, Alaska Homestead.
With the luggage stowed and all 3 passengers aboard, Tim quickly taxis the Cessna down the runway and takes off. Soldotna falls away to our right as we gain altitude and head west towards Cook Inlet. To the north we see the white dots of fishing boats at the mouth of the Kenai River. Through our passenger headsets, we hear Janet radio Tim pickup times for the clients waiting for him on the west side, before signing off with "Have a good flight, I've got to go get fish eggs."
After about 30 minutes of flying through hazy skies, mostly over water -- with the exception of huge Kalgin Island about midway -- we reach the west coast of Cook Inlet and turn south towards Silver Salmon Lakes. Tim points out the large local clam beds below as he banks the plane in a 360-degree loop and we descend for a gentle beach landing. David Coray, the owner of Silver Salmon Creek Lodge, and his guide, John Hohl, meet us at the plane with a 4-wheeler and trailer, which we climb aboard for the short ride back to the lodge.
A huge grassy meadow crisscrossed with bear trails lies between the beach and the lodge. This is where visitors do most of their bear viewing. Although it's only mid-morning, not prime time for bear viewing, we immediately spot a brown bear and John brings the 4-wheeler to a stop. David hops off, asking, "Do you want to get closer?"
David Coray grew up in bush Alaska, the son of schoolteachers, and has spent much of his life in bear country, including 21 years here at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge. John has been a guide here for 6 years and holds a degree in wildlife biology. Both men seem to know most of the bears by sight and often their history. They identify this first bear we see as a sow who lost her two cubs to a boar earlier in the summer. Because of this they say she is a little "edgy." A general rule of thumb here is to approach only non-stressed bears in the open. This sow decides for us by moving off into the distance.
At the lodge, we take a tour of the facilities and meet David's current guests: John from Boston, Jim from California, and Dolores and Tony from Wasilla. The main house has a common room with fireplace. Guests gather here to read, talk and show their slides, or watch one of the lodge's slide shows, which range from local subjects -- like climbing Mount Iliamna -- to exotic destinations visited by David (the Galapagos) and John (New Zealand). For fly fishermen there's a fly-tying table.
Full-service guests are housed in bedrooms in the main building, which includes a dining room upstairs and a common bathroom on the first floor. Suites with private bathrooms are also available. Do-it-yourself housekeeping cabins, clustered around the main building, are available for a slightly lower cost per night.
Before lunch we walk down to Silver Salmon Creek. John tells us this stream will be solid with silvers in another two weeks, the late July to September run attracting bears as well as visiting fishermen. We surprise a sow and 2 cubs, but only catch a glimpse of them in the tall grass and shrubs as they stop, turn and stand, trying to catch our scent, before they disappear into the trees.
Another notable feature of this area is the absence of beetle-killed spruce trees, so prevalent elsewhere in Alaska. John tells us the trees here are a hybrid of white and Sitka spruce, apparently not as attractive to the spruce beetle, who have come down the west side of Cook Inlet but skipped this spot.
Back at the lodge, guests John and Jim are returning with their guide after fishing one of the nearby streams. Next to the main house there's a fish cleaning station, freezers and a weigh scale. John the guide shows us where they had to dig a deeper hole under the scale in order to weigh a 182-lb. halibut. According to John, halibut fishing on this side of the inlet is more accessible than on the east side: the drop-off to deeper water here is just 10 miles offshore.
For lunch we have halibut sandwiches, clam chowder made from local clams, and a salad courtesy of the lodge's flourishing garden. We're told the garden flourishes because there are no rabbits and the bears scare away the moose.
After lunch, five of us guests are outfitted with mud boots for our boat trip up the coast. The lodge's boat is a 24-foot, welded aluminum charter craft. It does not have the deep V-shaped hull that other inlet boats have, allowing it to get in close to islands for bird watching and photography. The boat has two new Yamaha 90 4-stroke outboards, which David says make it sound like "a sewing machine."
There's no deep-water port here, so the lodge boat is beached up a small channel until the tide comes in far enough to float her off, which is about 2 p.m. in the afternoon.
The inlet is glassy as we head north to our first stop, the mouth of the Johnson River. Here, about two-dozen seals are hauled out on a spit of sand and rock. Those of us with long lenses and a quick shutter finger get photos before all of the seals slip into the water, scared off by our boat (even though we sound like a sewing machine). Dark heads pop up here and there in the chop as the seals come up to take a look at us.
The scenery grows ever more impressive as we continue up the west coast of Cook Inlet. The coastline here is layered bedrock, thrust up at angles, multi-faceted and pitted by erosion. On the mainland, it looks like temple columns have been carved into the mountainsides. On the rocky seawalls of Chisik Island, colonies of kittiwakes, puffins, cormorants and murres have found the perfect home.
John and Jim click away with their long lenses as the boat idles near a kittiwake rookery. The overcast -- actually smoke from Interior forest fires -- offers good light for the photographers.
Far off to the west, looking ethereal in the thick haze, is snow-covered Mount Iliamna, a 10,000-foot volcano. David tells us on clear days you can see fumaroles on its slopes. The volcano is monitored and local residents recall at least one eruption alert. Although it turned out to be a false alarm, the possibility of a volcanic eruption certainly exists. Iliamna's sister volcanoes in the Aleutian Chain have erupted recently: Mount Spurr in 1992, and Mount Redoubt in 1989.
At the north end of Tuxedni Channel, on the south shore of Tuxedni Bay, is Fossil Point. My first impression of this small, gray, rocky beach is that it is not unlike a million other small, gray, rocky beaches. But it is different. Fossil Point yields 140-million-year-old examples of cephalopods, clams and mussels, remnants of an old seabed buried until more recent upheaval exposed them. And you don't have to hunt for the fossils: Rocks with these ancient impressions are scattered everywhere along the beach, and more slough off every day from the embankment.
After an hour of fossils it's back in the boat and on to our last stop, a small, sphinx-shaped island on the east side of Chisik Island. Here we find a seabird condominium development, inhabited by gulls, murres, cormorants, kittiwakes and puffins. The puffins in particular are so prevalent that David and John refer to this island as Puffin Island.
With their white faces, bright orange beaks and penguin-like stance, puffins are a favorite with photographers, and our boat is no exception; three digital cameras click nonstop. Although clownish in appearance, the puffins are no creampuffs. David recalls that Exxon Valdez oil spill workers hated handling puffins because the birds would latch onto their rescuers' fingers with razor-sharp beaks.
It's late afternoon and the wind has come up, so David asks John to head back to the lodge. We see whitecaps as we make our way back. This is also when we see the advantage of the deeper V-shaped hulls, which cut through the chop. We slam into the waves. Dolores declares that this is not a boat ride for someone with osteoporosis.
By the time we reach the lodge, the tide is on its way out, so John gets out to pull and David gets out to push the boat up into the channel. They could beach the boat outside the channel, but then someone would have to remember to come down and move it up the channel at high tide. While the boat is being positioned, we watch a brown bear that is half-draped over a log on the bank above the beach, looking out to sea. After the boat is secured and we're all on the beach, David tells us to stay together in a group and move slowly towards the bear so we can get closer. But no sooner have we gone a few steps then the bear turns her head in our direction, looks slightly startled, and vanishes so quickly it's like a bear magic trick.
Back at the lodge we sample the evening hors d'oeuvres -- fresh clams, breaded and deep-fried -- before heading back down to the beach to catch our Natron Air flight back to Soldotna. As the 4-wheeler pulls us up to the plane, John points to a spit of sand some 50 or 60 yards away: a brown bear prowls the tide line, looking for anything edible that might have washed up onshore, while nearby a bald eagle sits and waits to see what the bear might turn up for their dinner.
It feels a little otherworldly on the west side of Cook Inlet. Perhaps it's a combination of things: the idyllic setting between mountains and sea; the brown bears grazing on the grass and walking the beach; and the handful of human visitors that move through the landscape in Alaska's version of the golf cart. Whatever it is, when we get on the plane back to Soldotna, we're already planning a return trip.
