Nature Pictures from Trout Streams, Page 37

Packed up and ready to go. This was a great way to transport the meat. It stayed cool, didn't stink up the car, and didn't even get dusty at all from the dry road.

Riding out 2

Retrieving the last load of meat. Multiple groups of hunters had seen a pack of at least three wolves in this area the previous day, and a few days earlier. So I was a little bit nervous about leaving part of the meat overnight, and relieved when we found it untouched. It may have helped that a group of hunters had camped on the road not far away.

Fireweed. This is what Alaska's iconic purple flowers look like once they've gone to seed

Moonrise over Mt Sanford. An unusually clear view of this mountain from 90 miles away on the Denali Highway

View west across the Maclaren River valley from Maclaren Summit. The Clearwater Mountains make up the highest part of the horizon near the sun.

Grizzly bear in the Toklat River channel

Crossing part of Windy Creek. Most of Windy Creek flows under Valdez Road through culverts, but in a couple places it just washes over the road when it's high. It was a bit tricky riding the bikes through the flowing water over some rough cobble and trying not to get wet.

First two quarters bagged up. I normally cut off the basically meatless lower parts of the legs before bagging up the meat, but in this case I kept them for carrying convenience -- an extremely good decision in retrospect.