Downpours and Lake Adventures

About a week ago I was on my bed, laying on my back, having just completed my morning shift of tours when I was shaken by what sounded like a gunshot in my backyard. I jumped from my bed and pulled the shade back to find my backyard as I'd left it, but shrouded with dark, ominous clouds. A storm was coming in. I'd never heard thunder like that. In California thunder and lightening are two very different weather occurrences. Most of the time you don't see the lightening that caused the thunder to boom, and the noise comes rolling in, growing in decibels as it travels across the valley. The thunder that had disturbed me from my rest was completely different. You could HEAR the crack of the lightening. It didn't shake the windows or the structure of the house, it cracked and moved across the surrounding valley and reverberated off the surrounding mountains, probably rolling on through the canyons and on up the highway for miles and miles. I was beside myself with excitement for the storm that had descended upon us. I ran downstairs and outside to where our tours are launched to find Travis, having just launched one of our evening tours, grinning from ear to ear and this beautiful rainbow


I told Travis I was going down to the Lake where it appeared the rainbow met the ground for a good picture and a better view of the lightening storm. By the time I made it to the lake, about a 200 yard walk from my front yard, the rainbow had gone, and had been replaced by sparse light that was burning its way through the still very active clouds, draping the hillsides with gold and green like something out of a picture book. I snapped this picture, not knowing that seconds later I'd find myself in the thick of the storm.

No more than 5 seconds after taking this photo I heard a loud noise on the water to the left of me. I snapped my head around expecting to see a moose in the water, or some folks motoring about in a boat, but was faced with a wall of water swiftly moving across the lake. The storm was coming on top of me and I knew I had less then a minute to find some shelter before I was drenched. At this point I had wandered down the bank of the lake some ways and knew there was no way I could make it back to the house in time. I took off at a full sprint hearing the splash of the rain on the lake growing louder and louder as it came bounding on top of me. I made it to where the trail begins that leads back to our house and dove beneath a black spruce just as the downpour began to pound everything around me. The small spruce surprisingly provided good shelter and provided me with 5 blissful, dry minutes to finish my smoke and enjoy the show mother nature was providing. This is single handedly my favorite memory so far in Alaska and no words or pictures will EVER do it or the feelings I felt at that moment justice.

I figured I'd wait a few minutes for the hard rain to pass and make a run for the house when it calmed down. That moment never came, and the spruce that was my shelter from the storm became saturated and was no longer keeping me dry, so I made a run for it through one of the biggest downpours I've ever experienced. I made it home out of breathe and with no words to describe the what I'd experienced to my friends sitting with their face to the windows watching the storm I'd just come sprinting out of, only my picture of the calm before the storm, my drenched clothes, and the biggest smile I've ever had.

Later that week, after the storm had passed and after another morning shift, Travis pulled into our driveway and pulled from his car a big battery. Last year Travis found a boat on the banks of Otto Lake and bought a small electric trolling motor from our only local guide, Sterling. The battery was the last necessary item to put the boat in working order. He said, "We're going out on the lake, lets go," and Chris, He, and I set off for the lake. We dragged the boat down to the bank and assembled the modest engine set up and Chris shoved us out into the water.

After figuring out that we had the charges backwards which was making the motor operate in reverse and quickly righting that we were off (albeit at a slow speed) on our first boat adventure of the year. I named Travis my first mate, and Chris the wench, and of course myself the Captain.


We trolled on down to the South side of the lake where we encountered a beaver flapping through the water using his tail as his propeller. Or at least I think it was a beaver, Chris swears it was too small and thinks it was a muskrat. For the sake of a good story we'll maintain that it was a beaver. We took to chasing him around the lake and he proved to be a formidable chase, disappearing under water and emerging back on the surface on the other side of the boat. At one point he even returned to the surface and came swimming full speed ahead right at our boat in a game of chicken, ducking below the surface only 10 feet before we overtook him. After about 10 minutes of this cat and mouse game he finally had enough and took to the reeds that make up the southern bank of the lake and disappeared from sight.

Travis steered the boat to a break in the reeds, no wider than 15 feet and into a channel no deeper than a foot and a half as the mountains beyond the water were drenched in the alpenglow from the midnight sunset. I used the ore to check our depth every 15 feet or so and we slowly entered a cove I'd never noticed from our side of the lake, or even from the overlooks on our tours.


As we rounded the corner and entered the cove we came upon a small house and a moose standing on the bank munching on the tall grass. As we got closer to the moose we realized it was a bull moose, with a modest rack, being that its still early in the season. This was my first bull moose. Travis named him Roosevelt.


We circled around that cove a half dozen times, Roosevelt never taking his eyes off us and chewing on his dinner all the while. We came within 30 yards of him several times and he never moved an inch. The sunset grew more and more incredible with every passing moment until the entire sky was burning with vibrant shades of pink and red and blues. It was the greatest sunset I've seen this year and probably will be unmatched the rest of this season.

It was getting to be late, about 1:00 a.m., and a bit cold on the water so we decided to make our way slowly back home. We said our good byes to Roosevelt and he kept chewing on the grass, as unmoved by our departure as he was by our arrival. As we exited the cove and rounded the corner to the final stretch home the sunset continued to burn.