The year was 1970 and the purpose of our trip was to participate in a march from the place called Cooper's Landing through the winding valleys of the Resurrection river all the way to Seward, through some
of the roughest terrain in Alaska. The distance on the map, as the crow flies, was 40 miles but the actual mileage was about double.
The purpose of this walk was to maintain the physical fitness of this unit, the 172nd brigade's mountain rescue team. We were instructed that we will, for the most part, follow the river's course and use the existing animal paths. There were no roads or human trails.
First we were to reach the Russian Lakes, where, every year, the millions of sockeye salmon come to spawn. No surprise that these lakes were are also favorite gathering place of large Alaskan grizzles.
The planners of this trip obviously did not know much about bears. Every member of this fifty-men team had a M-16 assault rifle but only the sergeant in charge had ammunition. Just in case we ran into a problem bear. These bears are lightning quick and since we traveled in dispersed groups of 3-5 men, every man should have had ammo for his protection. I am the first one to admit that I was totally ignorant at that time about the behavior of these animals. I thought of them as slow, lumbering teddy bears that were mostly harmless. Ignorance is bliss, I felt no fear of them. If I knew then what I know now, I would have climbed the tallest tree and stayed there till somebody came to rescue me :-)
Recently the local cinemas were showing the movie "The Grizzly Man" a film about a man who lived with grizzlies and ended up being eaten by them. I highly recommend this flick, it's based on the guy's own film which he recorded among bears.
Loaded with 70-pound backpacks we were making our way up to the Upper Russian Lake. The next, we would follow a dozen of streams draining out of the lake, which would eventually form the Resurrection river. We were traveling in small groups at fast pace and I always had 2 - 3 men in my field of vision. Making my way through the incredibly thick brush was extremely difficult, it was sometimes easier to walk along the bottom of an ice cold creek.
At one point I look around and I don't see anybody around. Immediately I assumed that I was too slow and that I needed to speed up in order to catch up with the rest of the group. I kept speeding up as much as the terrain would let me. There were some tough hombres in that group, Army Rangers and a couple of Special Froces guys. I thought I was not fast enough to keep up with them. We were given no food, it was to be dropped to us out of helicopters at different points of the march and we were taught survivor techniques. At least there was more than plenty of water around for drinking.
To make it a shorter story, the unit realized quickly that I was missing and began a search party. This took place in a pretty nasty, swampy area. All this time I was convinced that the guys were ahead of me and I continued in an attempt to catch up to them. The result was obvious. The distance between us grew.
Thus I spent four nights in a grizzly infested wilderness, saw at least two sows with cubs and plenty of moose. A lot of meat on the hoof ! At one point I lost my useless M-16 as I was crossing, the deep river. I had to cross this stream a number of times since the terrain frequently prevented me from walking along the bank, a sheer rock or such. It's hard to believe but I did not have matches, relied on the other guy to carry them, I suppose. No fire. Even though the nights were only some two hours long in June, they were very cold. The stream continued to get bigger, till it became a raging river rushing over huge boulders. For a while there were
stretches of calm water, so I tied a couple smaller logs together and used it as a raft. It worked like a charm till I came to a rather vicious bend in the river. It was nice while it lasted, perhaps some four mile.
Early in the morning, on the fifth day, I crossed a dangerous creek when I saw somebody's head pop up behind the huge boulder. The uniformed man was shouting at me, asking my name. When I told him, he
responded: "You are the guy they have been looking for five days! They have two choppers in the air looking for you." Shortly afterwards, I followed this beautiful, paved road all the way to the local US Army R&R camp in Seward. I remember thinking, thanks for civilization, the wilderness isn't exactly what it cracked up to be. There were many places where I had to crawl through the brush on all my fours with the backpack getting caught on branches.
The food never tasted so good as it did that time in the Army mess hall. On the
third day of my hike I hastily killed a porcupine, hoping to cook it. Then I realized I had no way to make a fire and I was not hungry enough yet to eat the raw meat.
As a matter of fact, the hunger was not such a big thing. The fear of drowning was more of an issue than hunger, I had to cross that damn river way too many times. They had aircraft looking for me, once the helicopter was so close to me that I could see the pilot. I was on a sandbar butt naked drying my wet cloths and before I had a chance to wave my shirt, the guy was gone. I still can't believe how unprepared I was for this "adventure". It definitely was a learning experience. When I hear people talking about back to nature wishes, I wonder if they know what they are talking about.
