Looks like a cool bar with lots of character....probably characters too.
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Looks like a cool bar with lots of character....probably characters too.
Since there are more men than women in AK, I'm surprised there aren't boxers and shorts on the chandelier instead of bras. You girls are letting them off easy, if you ax me.
We all know Rick's hong would be up there just for the (not) asking.
It's in the mail. What? If I can't be there in person the least I can do is mail it to them.
Seriously, if you send me a hong in the mail I will come down there and smack you! Hahhaha.
Yes lots of characters. Since it's an old road house, mostly tourists do not find it, so lots of locals.
Anyone know how to recall snail mail? No seriously. Anyone?
Don't make me come down there!
http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townn...review-300.jpg
Fairbanks family recounts grizzly encounter on Table Top Mountain Trail
Sam Harrel/News-Miner
Grizzly bear encounter
Quote:
The Wyatt's, clockwise from left, Pearl, 12, Alina Chris and Eli, 10, pose with their dogs Mistletoe and Holly on Wednesday evening, Aug. 21, 2013, at their home above Farmers Loop. The family encountered a grizzly along the Table Top Mountain Trail during a recent overnight berry picking trip.
Posted: Sunday, August 25, 2013 12:03 am | Updated: 9:24 am, Sun Aug 25, 2013.
Tim Mowry/[email protected] | 25 comments
FAIRBANKS — It was 12-year-old Pearl Wyatt who saw the bear when it returned for the third time.
“There he is,” she said loud enough for her father, Chris Wyatt, who was packing up camp, to hear.
Pearl and 10-year-old brother Eli, along with their mother, Alina Wyatt, were standing lookout on a talus slope above him as Chris hurriedly disassembled their camp.
The bear, a sizable grizzly, had visited the family twice in the hour or so since they had set up camp near the top of the Table Top Mountain Trail in the White Mountains National Recreation Area north of Fairbanks on Aug. 17, a Saturday.
The first time, just a few minutes after they had set up camp, Alina had spotted the bear.
“We had just got some macaroni boiled up for macaroni and cheese and my wife saw the bear approaching from the east, coming down from the very top of the trail,” Chris said.
The family’s two loose huskies, Holly and Mistletoe, spotted the bear, too, and gave chase.
“They met the bear about halfway down the rock slope and the bear turned around and all three of them disappeared over the top,” Chris said.
He took the pot off the stove and was getting ready to investigate when the two excited canines returned. The bear was nowhere in sight.
“We thought that was going to be the end of that,” Chris said. “The bear’s seen us and got scared away.”
Favorite place
After getting a late start, the family had started hiking up the trail about 5 p.m.
The Table Top Mountain Trail, located about 50 miles north of Fairbanks on Nome Creek Road 10 miles off the Steese Highway, is one of their favorite hikes.
It’s not too far out of town, but it’s far enough to make you feel like you’re in the wilderness. At only 3 miles, it’s short enough for the kids to handle but still climbs above tree line and offers spectacular views of the White Mountains. It’s also prime berry picking country.
“We spent the night up there this time last year with another family and had a real good time,” Chris said. “You kind of have the place to yourself.”
As they hiked up the trail, they took mental notes where the thickest berry patches were located so they could return on Sunday to fill their buckets.
Big bear
Twenty minutes after the dogs had chased the bear off, it was back.
“This time, he was coming from the south,” Chris said. “He had circled us out of sight 90 degrees.”
The fact that the bear returned was not a good sign, both he and Alina knew. They are both geologists who have spent enough time outdoors to know this wasn’t typical bear behavior.
“My wife and I knew this was a different game now,” Chris said.
The bear was only about 50 yards away and closing. At one point, when it was about 20 or 30 yards away, the bear stood up on its hind legs to get a better look.
“I’m six feet, and he was bigger than me,” Chris said.
Chris, 45, told his wife and children to climb up a talus slope behind him so they could get a better view of the bear while he stayed in camp.
“I started making noise and held my pack above my head to look big,” he said.
The bear continued to come closer, and it was at that point that Chris decided to fire a warning shot with the .44-caliber handgun he was carrying.
“I fired a shot over his head, and he didn’t even flinch,” Chris said.
The grizzly continued to come closer as the family continued to yell and make noise. Then, for whatever reason, the bear turned and headed back in the direction it had come from.
At that point, both Chris and Alina decided it was time to pack up camp.
“The second time it came back we said, ‘OK, we’re not staying here,’ ” Alina said.
Chris started packing up camp — “Just cramming stuff in bags,” he said — while Alina and the children kept a lookout for the bear.
“I gave them each 180 degrees to watch,” Alina said. “I said, ‘You look this way and you look this way.’ ”
Even at that point, the situation wasn’t all that scary, she said. The bear hadn’t acted aggressively. It hadn’t charged them. It seemed more curious than anything else.
“It was more like a stray dog than it was a bear,” Alina said. “It just kept coming back. The fact it came back from a different direction each time it came back was a little unsettling.”
Chris started ferrying gear up to Alina to pack into her backpack and tearing down camp as the kids kept watch. Not wanting the bear to get a taste of any human food, Chris even packed up the macaroni they had boiled and the water they used to boil it by pouring it in their berry containers.
“Just as we get it all packed up and I’m getting ready to put my pack on, my daughter says, ‘There he is,’ ” Chris said. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
Bold bear
This time, the bear was coming from the west. It was about 100 yards away, moving toward the family.
“Let’s go,” Chris told his wife and children.
Before leaving, he fired another warning shot at the bear. But, like the first one, it had no effect on the bear.
The bear was coming down the trail, so Chris decided to go straight down a hill that intercepted the trail and would put them farther ahead of the bear. They headed down through thick brush with what Chris figured was a 200- to 300-yard lead on the bear. The kids had the dogs on leashes.
Chris figured the bear was going to check out our their camping spot to see if there was anything to eat, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, the bear continued following the family down the trail. They could see the bear through thick brush coming toward them.
“He was moving fast in our direction and there were no trees up where he was so you could see a long way,” Chris said. “I said, ‘Man, this bear doesn’t get it.’ ”
When Chris caught up to his wife and children, he told them to continue down the trail while he stopped and pulled a second ammunition clip out of his pack. He also decided to let the dogs off their leashes, thinking if they chased the bear off once they might do it again. Chris was unhooking one of the dogs and adjusting its pack when he heard his wife scream.
“I turned around to say something to him, and it was right behind him,” Alina said. “I just screamed.”
Close confrontation
Chris whipped around and saw the bear coming down the trail toward him. It was moving fast, as if it wasn’t looking where it was going. The bear stopped when it heard the family making noise and appeared surprised, he said. At that point, the bear was only about five yards away.
“By the time we saw him and he saw us, he was that close,” Chris said.
The bear didn’t charge or act aggressively.
“He turned around real fast for a split second and stepped off the trail looking at us,” Chris said.
He told his wife to head for the trailhead with the children. A frightened Alina hustled the kids down the trail.
“I turned around and told the kids, ‘Go, go,’” she said.
While the grizzly hadn’t necessarily acted aggressively, its behavior, he knew from training classes he had taken, was strange enough to give him concern.
“I kept trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but how do you know when (the bear’s behavior) transitions to aggression?” he said. “He kept coming back and kept coming back.”
Deciding he’d had enough, Chris pulled out his .44 and fired two shots at the bear.
“I shot at it once, and it moved a few more feet to my left, and I shot at it again,” he said. “The second time I shot, it made this weird turn, and I thought maybe I hit it.
“I’d never shot a bear before and didn’t know what to expect,” he said.
Alina heard the two shots as she was hustling down the trail with a 50-plus pound pack trying to keep up with her frightened children.
“I yelled back and said, ‘Are you there?’” she said.
“Yep,” Chris responded.
The bear, however, was gone, having disappeared into the brush after the second shot.
“That was it,” he said. “We never saw it again.”
No berries
When they reached their truck at the trailhead, it was getting dark. They scribbled a note about an aggressive bear on the trail and pinned it to the bulletin board before driving down the road to the Mount Prindle Campground in hopes of finding a Bureau of Land Management ranger to report it. Not finding one, they drove back to Fairbanks.
The next day, Sunday, Chris called both BLM and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to report the incident but got recordings at both agencies. He ended up calling Alaska State Troopers, who put him in contact with BLM Ranger John Priday.
http://www.newsminer.com/news/local_...a4bcf6878.htmlQuote:
The ranger checked the trail Sunday after speaking with Chris and didn’t find any sign of the bear but still closed the trail based on Wyatt’s report. Priday returned to the scene with Chris on Tuesday and found some flagging Chris had tied to the stump near where he shot the bear. They searched the area in the rain but found no sign of the bear or that a bear had been killed or wounded, such as a blood trail or birds scavenging a carcass.
Priday praised Chris and his wife for doing an “exemplary job” in dealing with the bear, noting that they packed all their food out even though the situation was tense, left a note at the trailhead warning people about the bear and called it into troopers as soon as they got back to town.
While the bear never displayed any real aggression, Priday said its behavior was “concerning” and that Chris had cause to consider it a dangerous situation.
“It wasn’t afraid of warning shots. It wasn’t afraid of attempts to haze it. It was intent on interacting with them, and that would have concerned me,” the ranger said.
Whether it was the same bear that uprooted a pair of bear-proof garbage cans at the Ophir Creek Campground a couple miles down the road in June is impossible to tell, Priday said. Nobody ever saw that bear, but it was a sizable grizzly based on tracks found on the road.
“It’s definitely possible,” he said.
Alina said the bear seemed more interested in their food than them.
“I don’t think he wanted to eat us,” she said. “I think he wanted people food.”
Both Chris and Alina praised their children for their courage in what was a scary ordeal. They did what they were told, didn’t panic, kept the dogs under control and helped pack up camp.
“They were really solid and helpful,” their father said.
The worst part, Alina said, is that they went home without any blueberries.
“That was the whole point of going up there,” she said. “We didn’t get any berries.”[/SIZE]
http://www.adn.com/2013/08/26/304424...omplacent.htmlQuote:
By NATHANIEL HERZ — [email protected]
ANCHORAGE — Jim Tuttle knew the bear that mauled him.
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Its nickname was Buddy. Tuttle and the hunters he guided often spotted the small female grizzly in the rolling tundra northwest of Anaktuvuk Pass.
They joked that it was the most photographed bear north of the Brooks Range. It had even snuck into camp, stealing the hanging chunks of caribou meat that Tuttle would save for dinner.
The hunters would toss rocks or clap their hands to scare the bear away. But it had never been aggressive -- until two weeks ago, when Tuttle, walking alone along a creek, heard a grunt and turned to see Buddy charging straight at him, snapping her teeth.
He hoped it was a false charge. It wasn't.
"It's only 20 or 30 feet away, and I have two or three seconds," he said. "I can remember the sickening feeling when you realize she's not stopping."
The attack left Tuttle gushing so much blood from his left arm that he had to tie a tourniquet to stop it. His cheekbone was cracked; he remembers spitting out broken teeth. And he was still 36 hours away from a rescue.
But after a flight in a National Guard helicopter, a surgery, and dozens of stitches, Tuttle, 52, is now back home in Anchorage, recovering from the mauling.
His left wrist is in a cast, fixing his forearm in place so that it can grow back a missing chunk of muscle. The swelling on his face has gone down, but nerve damage from the bear's bites remains, as do wounds to Tuttle's groin and knee that have left him temporarily hobbled.
In an interview Sunday, with small strips of tape still patching the wounds on his face, Tuttle was upbeat, saying he felt lucky to have escaped from the attack, and grateful to the National Guard crews that flew through dense clouds and darkness to rescue him.
But he also had some regrets, saying that 16 years of guiding in the area had dulled him to the risks of working in bear country. When the mauling occurred, Tuttle said he was walking to a caribou carcass by himself, armed only with a pair of trekking poles.
"I am partly to blame. I got complacent, and I paid for it," he said. "I guess I should have had a gun in my hand, safety off, ready to shoot."
Tuttle had flown into the hunting camp in early August. It was 15 miles away from the base camp run by his outfitter, Arctic North Guides, and Tuttle planned to remain there for two weeks, as small groups of caribou and bear hunters rotated in and out.
Grizzlies were a common presence in the area and would feed on meat scraps the hunters left behind, said Chris Carrigee, a Texan who had stayed in Tuttle's camp with his son before the mauling.
Carrigee, 46, was familiar with Buddy, and even photographed his son and Tuttle in front of the bear with their coffee and oatmeal.
"We didn't feel that there was any danger at all. It was almost like our entertainment," Carrigee said. "We weren't going to shoot this bear -- it wasn't a challenge."
Carrigee and his son each left the camp with two caribou. On Aug. 14, Tuttle was working with a new pair of hunters with one day left before they all flew out.
The group had killed a caribou in the morning, three-fourths of a mile away from their camp. They carried some of the meat back, ate lunch, and then Tuttle returned alone to the carcass.
He was walking along a creek bed, through waist-high brush, when he heard the bear coming from his left, just behind him.
"There were no options," Tuttle said.
Tuttle said he swung his trekking poles into the bear's face as it plowed into him, but it still knocked him over, then bit him on the arm and hand before it started walking away.
"I thought maybe I'd get lucky, and she'd leave. No, she turned right back around, and then really chewed and got into where she could bite my face," Tuttle said. "I said to myself, 'You're dead.' I thought that was going to be it right there. Then, she stopped."
The attack took less than 15 seconds, Tuttle said, leaving him "a mess, that fast."
He climbed up a nearby embankment, trying to calm his breathing to slow the blood he could see flowing from his left arm, then used a piece of rope from his backpack to tie a tourniquet.
After 10 minutes waiting to make sure the bear didn't return, Tuttle limped back to his camp, where an assistant with first-aid training dressed the wounds and stopped the bleeding.
The hunters called Tuttle's girlfriend with a satellite phone to request a rescue. But after two weeks of good weather, fog had descended on the camp that morning, making a flight too difficult.
The following morning, during a brief break in the weather, the owner of Tuttle's hunting outfit flew in with a single-engine plane, bringing a retired paramedic and medical supplies from the base camp. They left Tuttle where he was, since they didn't think they could fly him all the way out to a hospital.
At that point, Tuttle said he was stable--just uncomfortable from lying immobile on a cot, and worried about how long it would take for rescuers to reach him, given the potential for his wounds to become infected.
"I've seen the weather up there," Tuttle said. "That can last for a week."
Finally, at 3 a.m. that night, Tuttle heard the sound of an airplane, then a helicopter--the National Guard coming to rescue him. They loaded him into the helicopter and flew him to Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks where he was transferred to an ambulance and rushed to a hospital. He was released two days later.
Buddy is now dead; she was shot by one of the hunters in Tuttle's group.
What provoked her attack is hard to say, said Harry Reynolds III, a retired biologist who worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for more than 30 years.
"They're wild animals, so you can't ascribe motives to them, as you would to a human," he said.
Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/08/26/304424...#storylink=cpy
Dang, they even name them. I'll bet the bear had a name for him too....prey.
Well, just a wild guess here, but...could that caribou carcass have had something to do with it?Quote:
What provoked her attack is hard to say, said Harry Reynolds III, a retired biologist who worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for more than 30 years.
Why kill Buddy after the fact (not in self defense which would have made it OK) for doing what a bear does--protect it's food source?
This from the interviewis a reminder as to why Sourdough says he won't even go to the outhouse without firearm.Quote:
But he also had some regrets, saying that 16 years of guiding in the area had dulled him to the risks of working in bear country. When the mauling occurred, Tuttle said he was walking to a caribou carcass by himself, armed only with a pair of trekking poles.
"I am partly to blame. I got complacent, and I paid for it," he said. "I guess I should have had a gun in my hand, safety off, ready to shoot."
Because once they figure out what a human is and how easy they are to eat, they become much more dangerous.Quote:
Originally Posted by BENESSE
Ugh, by the time I got my settings figured out again, the main show was over. So I dinked around getting these until my battery was about dead, then headed for home. At which point, they came out again! Ugh.
Big Dipper in the background.
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Great pictures.
I could kick myself because it took me 20 minutes to remember to change my f stop from 20 to 1.8. Ugh, the simplest thing to do!
Are you kidding me? If I saw that beautiful sight, not only would I forget to change the f-stop, I'd forget to take pictures altogether. lol
There is nothing wrong with those pics. :)
I do sometimes just sit and watch. Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by pete lynch
Went up to do some work on Mile 101 this weekend in preparation for the Yukon Quest. When the race starts in Fairbanks, they are still pretty bunched up by the time they get to us so we have to have room to park them all.
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Peter, the checkpoint manager, Mike runs the dog yard, Alex is actually the race manager.
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I stacked the left over wood up again the cabin so we can still find it after it snows. I forgot to take an after picture.
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Fall colors.
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After we left, I drove up to the top of Eagle Summit. The drive up was a 4 wheeler trail and quite scary, but my 4 Runner made it just fine.
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I played the ghosts a few songs.
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Quite a beautiful and peaceful area. I'll bet that during the race it is a wee bit more hectic.
Here is what it looks like full of mushers and media.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wqmB...layer_embedded
gorgeous photos, 1stimestar, Alaska is marvelous.
Hey, when you thinking of coming up?
I'm thinking for that Halloween Party! I'd have to ask for Saturday off, the first of November, though, cause won't be no driving with THAT kind of a hangover....:batman:Quote:
Originally Posted by 1stimestar
any other suggestions? We're real slow now at work, so...ask and you shall receive time off, I'm thinking (how can this be, the more time I have off, the more I want!) heheheeee
I would put this in the Pic a Day thread but I can't find it. Too early in the morning.
Sept. 18, first snow.
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Ah ok, guess that means I'm spending the night at home afterwards then hahahhaha.Quote:
Originally Posted by thefemalesurvivalist
ah, If you're hooking up with some Devil, I can figure lodging out, no worries :devil:Quote:
Originally Posted by 1stimestar
Hahhaha no no, just kidding.
as the guys lean forward in their computer chairs, wondering...
what will those Two Do????
gotta get a costume, whadda ya thinking would be awesome?:pirate
Well I'd show you mine but there is new concern on the board about posting sexy pictures...
I'll just say my guy friend is going as a gambler.
hahaha! wow, the visions of Loveliness! how many red petticoats does one need to pull that off?Quote:
Originally Posted by 1stimestar
Oh many, many frilly, girlie petticoats.
I'm thinking....Cat Woman? could probably get me a cape etc....:ban:
first Alaskan Halloween Party...I better be cautious, don't want to have to shoot my way out of there!
Lol. And just so you know, it will be COLD in there.
Ya'll lost me somewhere between you two spending the night together and the first snow being Sep. 18th. First snow? That's just not right.
Hahahhah. Love it.
Look, Rick, you have to practice the Quantum Leap thing.....stick with it, eventually you MIGHT understand femalesQuote:
Originally Posted by Rick
Not gonna happen. Nope. Not gonna happen.