I had planned to take my son out for the youth sheep hunt, but that didn’t work out, so as the first days of August ticked by my brother and I made plans to try for a sheep on a tight schedule. I had to be back at work on the 14th and the season opens on the 10th. With weather a factor and a solid day of flying to get home, we hoped we could make some magic happen on a truncated timeline.
We flew into the mountains early on the 8th with a wet forecast looming over us. While we hoped to find ourselves alone, we weren’t terribly surprised to find a tent on the strip as we descended to land. The guide that has the concession for this area has been dropping off a resident here for years. We’ve gotten to know him on several trips into the same area, and we work around his plans and it’s never been a problem. We decided to lie low that first day and to get an early start on the 9th in hopes of finding some rams to look at.
It poured rain overnight, and that would become a familiar refrain. The trip was wet. Thankfully we got short breaks every day, but man, the rain came again and again and again - often falling harder than I’m accustomed to in Alaska. We caught a break mid-morning, though, and began to climb through rain-soaked alders and into the alpine above.
We crossed a ridge into the next valley over, one dominated by a rock-covered glacier. When we flew in, there were four rams on one side and three on the other. That afternoon we found that a couple had crossed over, and now there were six rams on the hillside above us and a lone ram on the far side. While a couple of the rams above us warranted a closer look, none was legal. The solo ram across the glacier had potential, but it was hard to tell for sure at a distance.
Camp the first night:
We flew into the mountains early on the 8th with a wet forecast looming over us. While we hoped to find ourselves alone, we weren’t terribly surprised to find a tent on the strip as we descended to land. The guide that has the concession for this area has been dropping off a resident here for years. We’ve gotten to know him on several trips into the same area, and we work around his plans and it’s never been a problem. We decided to lie low that first day and to get an early start on the 9th in hopes of finding some rams to look at.
It poured rain overnight, and that would become a familiar refrain. The trip was wet. Thankfully we got short breaks every day, but man, the rain came again and again and again - often falling harder than I’m accustomed to in Alaska. We caught a break mid-morning, though, and began to climb through rain-soaked alders and into the alpine above.
We crossed a ridge into the next valley over, one dominated by a rock-covered glacier. When we flew in, there were four rams on one side and three on the other. That afternoon we found that a couple had crossed over, and now there were six rams on the hillside above us and a lone ram on the far side. While a couple of the rams above us warranted a closer look, none was legal. The solo ram across the glacier had potential, but it was hard to tell for sure at a distance.
Camp the first night:
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