Alaska Fish And Fire: Alaskan Outdoorsman, Biologist, Fishing Guide, and Fire Chief

PERSPECTIVE

CHAPTER 1

WATER

There are things in life that fascinate us all. For me, from an early age, it was water and what lurked within. There is nothing more pleasing and refreshing to the inner soul than watching, hearing, smelling, or standing next to a clear bubbling stream or brook. And if there is any possibility that there might be a fish within, it calls to me like a mythological siren. When I was seven years old and lived on Elmendorf Air Force Base, I remember tying white kite string to a safety pin and dropping it down into the darkness of the sewer drains near our military quarters. I never brought anything up out of the water from that sewer drain, but I was sure that I had bites! I kept multiple large aquariums most of my life, from grade school until I graduated from college, full of platys, mollies, zebra fish, and gouramis, and silver salmon and Dolly Varden from Chester Creek. I could tell a crappie from a largemouth bass at an early age, just by the smell. I can tell a cod from a halibut just by the taste and texture of the flesh. There is nothing prettier than a brace of rainbow trout neatly tucked in a wicker creel on a bed of green grass.

In 1980, I was Dall sheep hunting with Doug Bue in the Tonsina Management Area near Chitina, Alaska. On the second morning of our hunt, we encountered the headwaters of O’Brien Creek seen here. O’Brien Creek, high in the Chugach Mountains, is the epitome of pristine aquatic beauty.

I love water and it has called me to it over and over through the years. I once won a bet that I could not swim, in 40-degree-Fahrenheit water, from the mouth of the Agulowak River to the other side of Lake Aleknagik … over one full statute mile. I never got to drink any of the twenty cases of beer that I won. You still owe me, George Hornberger! I remember throwing the red berries that grew in my grandfather’s yard into South Prairie Creek, which was closed to fishing, just to see the large trout rise and take the fruit. Oh, how I wanted to cast a fly in that creek! I remember the GIs on Elmendorf Air Force Base used to cut extremely large holes in the ice at Green Lake with their chain saws. I still remember standing around a 6-by-6-foot hole in the ice with several other ice fishermen, staring down into the darkness of the water, waiting for a trout to sink my bobber. There is a mystique and intrigue about water and fish that captures some of us weak souls and holds on to us throughout our lives. We must be missing a chromosome … or maybe we have too many? I still stare with wonder and awe down into my ice-fishing hole as my lure disappears into the depths. I still watch intently and am mesmerized by the sonar targets on my depth sounder, whether on the ice or in my boat, knowing that there is something down there but never sure what that something is. Bait fish? Salmon or pollock? Air bubbles? Plankton? Thermocline? Dolly Varden or rainbow trout? I still stick my head out the window of the Miss Shirley cruising at 5,500 rpms and 28 mph while on my way back to the tractor launch, so I can listen to the keel crease the green waters of Cook Inlet and hear the splash of water beat against her aluminum hull. I can still hear the hypnotic waves lapping at the shoreline as I lay warm in my sleeping bag inside my tent on the shores of Kenai Lake. I still remember the northern pike sleeking through the dense aquatic sedges and horsetail vegetation of Lake Aleknagik as I leisurely snorkeled along trying to photograph them underwater. I remember the very brave and brightly colored male stickleback who saw me as a threat to his recently hatched brood and attacked me by darting at my mask and hitting the glass over and over with his tiny jaws. I weighed 180 pounds and stretched over 6 feet in my wet suit. The male stickleback was less than 2 inches in length and weighed less than an ounce.

There were days in my youth when you could look any direction across Resurrection Bay and see at least two or three silver salmon in the air, all at the same time, during the Seward Silver Salmon Derby. Silvers are crazy jumpers! For days, I witnessed sockeye salmon swimming nonstop upstream, twenty abreast and six fish deep in the Kvichak River, for as far as the eye could see. In the end, they numbered fourteen million. There is no water prettier than the clear, cold blue fluids that drain from Lake Iliamna into the Kvichak River. There is no purer water than the spring-fed waters of the Delta Clearwater in the Tanana Valley, with all its beautiful arctic grayling and whitefish. The epitome of solace and serenity provided by Alaska’s waters were the times my wife and I spent paddling our 17-foot Grumman fiberglass canoe up and down the waterfowl, muskrat, and grayling inhabited Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge near Tok. For years my obsession with clear clean water has tempted me to build a moat or artificial stream around my house in Ninilchik with a little bridge to drive over into my yard. A strong water pump, a good water source, and a willingness to pay a high electricity bill are all the commitment I need to make a babbling brook around my house a reality. I’m still contemplating it, and yes, of course, I would plant fish in it! I currently have five boats in my yard, and yes, despite what my wife says, I need all of them.

My fascination with water and the life it supports has been lifelong. Alaska has over 30,000 miles of coastline, over 3,000,000 unnamed lakes, and 12,000 rivers with many thousands more creeks and streams. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now. When I arrived in Alaska in the spring of 1957, I had come to the right spot. Alaska’s water has been my life and herein I give you my life story.

This is a story about Alaska’s fisheries and my life as a fisheries biologist. A story about my years as a fishing guide. A story about my life experiences helping to regulate and manage those very fascinating and dynamic resources under Alaska’s waters. And finally, this is an account of how the water within a simple IV bag of saline and the water in a 1½ preconnect fire hose, under 150 pounds per square inch of pressure, helped me to help others during what sometimes was the worst day of their lives.

CHAPTER 2

IN THE BEGINNING

I was born in Tacoma, Washington, at Madigan Military Hospital on November 2, 1951. I was the oldest of four siblings—two sisters and one brother. When I was less than a year old, Mr. Thomas pulled me from a house fire in Buckley, Washington where we first lived. I have no recollection of the fire, but I was told that he saved my life. My mother suffered from second-degree burns in that fire and was treated for shock. My father, John Chihuly, married my mother, Harbetta, and entered the United States Air Force at the very early age of seventeen. He served in Korea until I was about two years old. After Dad returned from Korea, he was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base and we lived in the little town of Reardan, Washington. Though I was only three and four years old, I do remember the little one-gas-station/one-store town. I remember the miles of wheat fields that surrounded Reardon that were typical of eastern Washington, and I remember Dad shooting pheasants and rabbits out of our pickup truck window. I remember living close to the railroad tracks, where the coyotes howled almost every night and I remember digging potatoes in the frozen ground behind our first house. I remember my father and mother getting into an argument in Reardan that resulted in my mother’s throwing and breaking a lot of dishes that my dad had brought back from Korea for her. I remember sneaking into the open-air butcher shop in town which had blocks of salt lying around on the ground, some broken into small, fist-sized hunks. I frequently snuck over there and stole salt with my young partners in crime and then we licked salt all day.

My mother, Harbetta, is shyly looking from the doorway of our gray house in Reardan, Washington as I venture out into the winter snow all bundled up … circa 1954.

The last winter we lived in Reardan, three of my aunts, one uncle, numerous cousins, and my grandpa came and stayed with us at Christmas. It was a total surprise to Mom and Dad. They drove over with no prior warning from South Prairie, Washington which was west of the mountains in local jargon, and just showed up at the front door. I remember it was a lot of fun. Lots of kids to play with and lots of new toys for all. Auntie Barb and Uncle Swede had eight children of their own. Grandpa drank his moonshine from a jug and when bedtime came, bodies of relatives were scattered all over the floor of our little pink house in Reardan, which couldn’t have been more than about 800 square feet. We were a poor, enlisted military man’s family.

My mother and I - she is holding my sister Catherine in 1955 in our pink house in Reardan. Reardan was a very small, one-gas-station town outside Davenport, Washington. My father, John Chihuly, was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base and commuted to work from Reardan.

Our relatives from South Prairie, Washington, showed up in Reardan in 1956 to celebrate Christmas and see the new baby, my brother Mark. In the top row standing tall is my Uncle Swede Anderson. Second row left to right are my aunt Sally Chihuly holding my sister Catherine, my aunt Barbara Anderson holding my brother Mark, and my Aunt Teresa Chihuly holding my cousin Steve Anderson. Bottom row left to right are cousin Leonard, cousin Annette, and I with my head turned looking at my father, John, holding my cousin Patsy.

The military rotated us in 1957 and Dad got his assignment … Alaska! Dad loved to hunt and fish and couldn’t wait to get there. We took a ship from Seattle to Whittier and a train to Anchorage, and then Elmendorf Air Force Base. I remember the trip up from Seattle. At one point on the boat trip, I was sobbing and crying. Mom and Dad put life preservers (PFDs) on all of us kids and then donned PFDs themselves. People with apparent authority were shouting orders over the ship’s loudspeaker communication system. I didn’t understand what was going on. We all went out on the deck and I thought we were going to abandon ship and jump overboard. It was terrifying for a five-year-old who didn’t understand. Turns out it was only an abandon-ship drill but it made a lasting impression on me. I also remember well going through the Whittier tunnels on the Alaska Railroad on our way to Anchorage. They were long, dark and scary. I was very happy to finally arrive in Anchorage in the spring of 1957.

Initially, we moved into some low-rent district housing on Government Hill. The buildings were two stories with basements that contained laundry rooms and parking. As I recall, they had about a dozen apartments in each complex and there must have been at least eight complexes. They sat on the edge of the bluff overlooking Anchorage to the south. I could walk out the front yard and look over the entire industrial area along Ship Creek below us. I also remember that we had a bunch of people staying in apartments next to us who wore no shoes. I don’t know if they were members of Krishna Venta and the WKFL Fountain of the World group or some other following. I just know they wore no shoes—even in the snow and frigid winter temperatures of Alaska. At the early age of five, the sight of them walking around in the snow with no shoes made an impression on me. We had a small ice rink out in front of the apartments in the winter and I remember the barefoot people donning ice skates with no socks and skating with us.

There were a lot of families with kids living in those complexes so they were easy prey for the ice cream truck. I remember playing out in the lawns around the buildings with other kids and we would hear the jingle-jangle song of the ice cream truck. He was the Pied Piper of Government Hill and the children flocked to him. The trick was to run as fast as you could back home and try and convince Mom to give up enough money to buy a popsicle or Fudgsicle before the truck left your block. Sometimes it worked. When we played outside in the summer around these complexes, many of the windows were open and the music of the time wafted about the neighborhood. Elvis was belting out his rendition of Hound Dog and I was particularly enthralled with a song by Jimmie Rodgers, Kisses Sweeter than Wine. I still pull that song up occasionally on YouTube and listen to it. I always have liked it and it takes me back to a time.

After Dad finally secured housing for us on the base, we lived in what was called the quads and they were close to the movie theater and the Field House. The quads were also large building complexes with three groupings of four apartments—a total of twelve apartments in each huge complex. There were eight of these large complexes laid out in a rectangular fashion with parking and playground areas inside the fort, so to speak. Base headquarters for the air base was a pukey green-colored building only a block away from our apartment. Only military brass (officers) and administration personnel worked there. The enlisted men all called it the green latrine. I went to Mt. Spur Elementary School for the first, second, and third grades. I remember all my teachers well. I swam for the Elmendorf swim team and I remember competing with the Fort Richardson kids and the Anchorage city swim team. The team name escapes me but their pool was located down in the area north of West High School and it overlooked the Chester Creek Valley. I won a number of first-, second-, and third-place ribbons that I still have tucked away in a footlocker somewhere. My forte was the backstroke. I was decent in the breast and crawl but I never did master the fly. I walked to school and everywhere else I went on base including the Field House.

Dad worked down on the flight line in Personal Equipment. He packed parachutes and managed all the clothing, equipment, and supplies for the pilots. He also taught arctic survival. They had what they called the cool school at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks. This was the ultimate test of a soldier’s ability to survive in the cold arctic environment. Dad and the other instructors took these airmen out in the boreal forest of Interior Alaska and dropped them off. Using the survival equipment provided by the military on the aircraft they piloted, they had to build shelters, snare rabbits for food, and survive for several days in order to pass. All the pilots were commissioned officers and higher in rank than my staff sergeant father. Nonetheless, they had to toe the line and survive the cold and hardships like everyone else. It was my Dad’s job to teach them how and also to make sure no one got seriously hurt or suffered frostbite.

These two aircraft are F-102 Delta Daggers that were designed to intercept Russian strategic bombers during the Cold War. This photo was taken on the flight line on Elmendorf Air Force Base during Armed Forces Day, circa 1957. My father worked in Personal Equipment, packing parachutes and survival gear for the pilots that flew these very birds.

My father’s military job on Elmendorf Air Force Base was to service the pilots and flight crews that flew these Boeing B-52 Stratofortress long-range bombers. They were jet-powered subsonic birds that could carry up to 70,000 pounds of weapons. This aircraft was on display on the flight line at Elmendorf during Armed Forces Day, circa 1957.

Dad worked for the base Wildlife Office in addition to his personal equipment job on the flight line and he took me everywhere he went. I remember that the base had stocked ring-necked pheasants on both military reservations and we frequently drove the route that went by Green Lake and around Six-Mile Lake to keep an eye on how they were faring during the winter. There were a lot of poachers on Ship Creek in those days. I often went with Dad and sat in the car while he was chasing violators on the creek. These poachers were snagging big king salmon in the upper reaches of the river that were closed to sport-fishing and then stripping them of their eggs. While living on base, we often drove down to the end of the flight line and parked to watch the T-33 trainers, F-102 fighters, H-21 banana helicopters, and the C-124 and C-47 cargo planes land, take off, and do their maneuvers. There was a place on the west end of the runway where we parked and sat for hours. Mom would pack a lunch. The planes came right over our heads loud and close. It was pretty cool.

I am straining to hold up a very large king salmon that may have been my first king that I caught in Sheep Creek circa 1960. This photo was taken in our military quad apartment on Elmendorf AFB. My sister, Catherine, is on my left and my brother Mark is on my right.

While living in the quads near the green latrine, I was only a three-minute walk from a twenty-five-cent movie at the military theater. I remember well watching the movies Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments, both starring Charlton Heston. A popular song that also marked that time of my life (1958) was the Flying Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley. Ricky Eubanks was one of my black buddies that lived in an apartment upstairs from us and we sang that song all the time.

My brother Mark, my sister Catherine, and I, standing on the lawn next to our military quarters on Elmendorf AFB. The street to the right is the very road President Dwight D. Eisenhower drove by in his motorcade, waving at us in 1960.

Alaska achieved statehood in January 1959. As a young grade school boy, I don’t remember much about it other than a lot of celebration. I had no idea what all the hoopla was about. However, two events occurred while I lived on Elmendorf in the 1957-1961 period that stuck in my memory for all these years. The first was the launching of Nike Hercules missiles from silos at Arctic Valley high on the hillside of the Chugach Mountains facing Anchorage. I remember the military doing this during the day when we were in school. They let us out into the playground area so we could watch. The military sent up some kind of dummy unmanned missile or aircraft and then shot it down with the Nike missiles from Arctic Valley for all of Anchorage and both military bases to see. This was a typical show of force by our military during the Cold War era.

The second event happened when President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Alaska and Elmendorf AFB in August 1960. He stayed in what they called the Chateau which I remember being pink in color and it was only a couple of blocks away from our housing unit. That is where all the dignitaries and top brass were housed on base. His open black limousine, with accompanying motorcade and entourage, drove right past our quad unit. We knew he was coming so all the enlisted men’s families living in the apartment complexes were standing out on the lawns in front of the buildings to wave and cheer. I still remember standing there waving at him not fifty feet away from his limousine and he waved back. My dad had an old Konica 35mm camera he got in Korea and he took lots of photos over the years. He must have been there with us that day because I remember watching slides of President Eisenhower driving by our apartment with my brother and sister and me waving in the foreground. Unfortunately, those thousands of slides he cherished and shared frequently have managed to disappear since my father’s death. I used to get bored with his proverbial slide shows and the stories that accompanied them, but I would give anything now to have them back.

Dad fished all over Alaska in the late fifties before statehood. He floated the Gulkana River for king salmon, rainbow trout, and grayling more than once. We often drove down to the Kenai Peninsula and I remember a lot of the road to Ninilchik was still dirt then. We camped along Deep Creek and the Anchor and Ninilchik Rivers, setting up large five-man military tents to house our family and the families of Dad’s fishing partners. We hung our kings in the trees and wedged their stomach cavities open with sticks. Dad then black-peppered them generously to keep the flies off. We had no way of freezing fish in those days so we just hung them, dried them, and kept them as cool as possible. I remember once we had taken the whole family up to the slide hole on Deep Creek. On the way back while we were walking in single file on a narrow trail along the river and Dad had fish in both hands, my sister Catherine slipped and fell in. The raging current would have swept her away for certain if it hadn’t been for my dad’s friend Mr. Havard. He jumped in and got ahold of my sister as the current was trying to pull her under some sweepers. She was only four years old and it happened in a heartbeat. Our family has talked about that event forever. Everyone remembers when Cathy fell in the river and Havard saved her. Incidentally, the slide hole has hardly changed since I was a kid in the late fifties. The river still runs against that same steep bank with coal seams protruding above resting salmon and steelhead, and it remains the most famous and definitive fishing hole on Deep Creek to this day.

Havard, the man who jumped in Deep Creek and saved my sister from drowning just downstream from the slide hole in 1958. I knew him only by Havard. I do not remember if this was a first or last name. Note the rod and Winona reel that belonged to my father. This was Dad’s trademark fishing reel. I have never seen another fisherman in Alaska who used this type of reel.

The military had a number of recreation (rec) camps for their personnel for fishing and other activities at various locations around the state. Dad often took advantage of these facilities and one particular time I got to go along. I was eight years old at best and loved to fish!

My dad and I, along with Bob Jones, his father, Art, and Merrill Wilson sat in our parked car at the little town of Willow waiting to get on the Alaska Railroad. We were headed for some king salmon fishing at the confluence of Sheep Creek and the Big Susitna River. In those days you couldn’t drive there and no one was taking boats there either. We got on the train and traveled for about thirty minutes before my dad pulled on a cable running the length of the railroad car to let the engineer know that we needed to stop and get off. Dad knew which milepost it was. I was just along for the ride. The train stopped much like it still does today for adventurers who need to get off at places other than communities and scheduled stops. Waiting for us just off the tracks was a large military six-by-six driven by an enlisted man of low rank whose job it was to drive us overland to a cabin that the military had high on the bluff above the Big Su. I was in the front seat of the beast while driving in, and I couldn’t help notice how hot the dash was. You couldn’t touch it without burning yourself. The airman told me that the dashboard was where he fried his eggs. I believed him.

Some of us slept in a cabin while others pitched tents at the rec site. There was a big fire pit there for cooking and warming. In order to get to the fishing hole, we then had to walk what I remember was a very long way along the high bluffs above the Big Su until we neared its confluence with Sheep Creek. Then we had to negotiate a very steep muddy trail down to the river, where we could fish. Sheep Creek was backed up against the Big Su and consequently it was deep and slow moving at that location. The kings piled in there in great numbers, jumping and milling around, making them vulnerable to sport-fishing and providing an excellent place to fish. There was one major problem, however. Just yards away the Big Su stream rolled along at an alarming rate of speed. The turbid waters of the Big Su run deep and fast during the summer months. If you hooked a big king and he got out in that current, you could kiss your fish, and at the very least your terminal tackle goodbye.

Merrill Wilson fighting a king salmon on a float trip with my father along the Gulkana River in 1960. Merrill Wilson was a good family friend, gave me my first job in 1964, and was a pallbearer at my Dad’s funeral in 1978.

The beach near the mouth of Deep Creek on the Kenai Peninsula circa 1959. Our family traveled frequently to camp and fish for king salmon in Deep Creek and the Anchor and Ninilchik Rivers. At this time, most of the Sterling highway was still unpaved.

We fished two or three days and there was no lack of hookups for Dad and the men, but few kings were landed. One day my dad left me a fair distance up the river to fish by myself while he and the men went on farther to fish uncharted waters. Dad did this to me a lot in my younger years. I still haven’t decided if it was a good thing or a bad thing. I often found myself on my own over the years while fishing and hunting. He would be off somewhere doing his own thing. My brother and I have talked about this often since Dad passed away and we have wondered what he was thinking? Was this a way to make us tough and self-reliant, or was he just so intense about fishing and hunting that he sometimes forgot about us? At any rate, there I was standing on the bank of Sheep Creek by myself casting a spinner with my spinning rod and Mitchell 300 reel. To my surprise, I hooked a king and the battle began. I was not mobile because there were trees on both sides of me that I could not get around. All I wore was a black pair of Converse tennies so I couldn’t wade out into the water. I was also scared. I just stood there and reeled and reeled for what seemed like an eternity. It was a big buck with a hooked nose and it was just starting to color up a little. What I would call a ‘blush pink." Anyway, to my surprise I tired the thing out and had it up against the bank. I wasn’t big enough to drag it up on the bank and I was half scared of it anyway. Finally, Dad came along and helped me lift it out of the water. It weighed 30 pounds and was a pretty impressive catch for an eight-year- old. This was my first king salmon.

In the process of fighting this fish, though, I had gotten pretty wet. My tennis shoes were soaked along with my pants up to my crotch. I was also getting cold but my dad was not about to quit fishing. Fortunately for me, Merrill Wilson, a good friend and fishing partner of my dad’s, was headed up to camp so he agreed to take me along. We got up to the cabin and Merrill started a nice big fire. We ate some military C-rations and then we got the bright idea to put each of my tennis shoes on the end of a stick and plant the stick in the ground so the shoes were suspended over the fire to dry. It seemed like a really good idea at the time and Merrill went to great lengths to make sure they were solid in the ground. We were pretty tuckered out by this time, so Merrill stoked the fire and we decided to take a nap. We were out like a light for a good hour. When we got up, there was nothing left of my tennis shoes except some melted rubber around the edge of the coals. I probably would have gotten my butt whupped pretty good if this had been just my doing, but since it was