It was a beautiful Sunday morning in King Cove, Alaska. I had some chores to do so I got quickly to them because I wanted to go down to Belkofski Bay in the afternoon to see the sights and fish for silver salmon coming from the ocean up into the various rivers that snake through the grassy flats and alders on the opposite side of round hill. I finished with the starter on the suburban at around 4:30 and decided I had enough time if I hurried. I knew that Paul D. and some others had gone down earlier on their four wheelers so I figured I could hook up with them on the beach and ride back with them after fishing. I rode from King Cove to the water tower and wound my way down to the air strip. At this point there are three different trails you can take to get to the beach. I had told Cherie that I was going to take the top trail because it seemed to be the fastest due to less swampy conditions. My ride down was uneventful I was enjoying the beautiful scenery of Mt. Dutton with it's snowy capped peak jutting high in the Alaska sky. I saw many large bear tracks in various areas but did not see any of the large bruins. When I reached the beach I noticed there were quite a few four wheeler tracks but no one was in sight. I decided to go down to the waterfall and checkthere for the others. It was low tide sothe going was easy as I wound my way down the beach with high grass on the left and lots of fresh bear tracks. I got to the waterfall and stopped to drink some water and take in the amazing scenery. From this spot you can view Indian Head, across the bay to Belkofski Villiage ( a ghost town) and up various canyons with unknown names. Everything is green and lush with a hint of fall in the air. I decided to stop for a few minuets and look into some tide pools for some star fish or trapped ocean fish that seem to get stuck in low tides. I was having a great afternoon, it was quiet and serene and perfect weather with an aromatic sea breeze blowing in from the pacific. I always like to go by myself and have been doing so for a good twenty years into the woods fishing, hunting and hiking. I thought at that point I would ride back to the river and see if any of the others had returned or left. On arriving there I noticed no one was there but there were several fish carcasses and sea gulls feeding on them. I knew that Paul and the others had been fishing there and had left. I pulled out my pole and quickly hooked a very large silver. These fish average 8 - 14 pds and fight very hard, they are the funnest fish that I have ever hooked. The fish was around ten pds and fought very hard until I landed it. I decided that he was a big enough fish and it was getting late so I packed up my few belongings and took off. I had a hard time finding the turnoff for the upper trail because I had never reached it from the beach and you have to navigate up the river a ways to find it. I tried but did not succeed and decided to take the middle trail which was right next to where I had caught my fish. I found the trail easily and began riding alon the beach in high grass. As I was riding some sand gave way and put me and my four wheeler on our side. No dig deal it was soft sand and I quickly had the bike back on four wheels and ready to go. I rode about mile up the bike trail when disaster struck. As I was heading through a deep hole the machine coughed, backfired and died right in the middle of the swamp. I worked feverishly trying to start it because of the thick swampy muck I was in. I pulled the air filter and spark plug and found a fouled plug. I quickly replaced it with a dry one and fired up the machine. I thought everything was cool until I tried to move forward and nothing happened. I looked down to make sure I was in gear and saw that I was in four wheel drive and all wheel were spinning. I had fallen ito one of the bottomless holes Alaska is famous for. I quickly jumped back into the cold muddy water and proceeded to push, pull, dig and yell at the four wheeler and my current bad luck. I didn't have a shovel so I took my shotgun apart and used the barrel for a makeshift pick and the stock for a shovel. The going was slow because of the heaviness and greasiness of the mud. I have never seen anything like it. This stuff pulls your four wheeler down and gets ahold of your boots and won't let go. At one point I had to lay down in the swamp to get my feet out and got soaked up to the waist. At this point things started looking grim. It was almost dark, and I was soaked. The lighter I brought was wet and the wind began to blow. Those of you who are not aquainted with King Cove wind need to know that it comes out of nowhere and blows 60 miles per hour with hurricane force gusts. In the one canyon the wind was clocked at one hundred fourty six miles per hour. To add insult to injury I noticeda bear down the small ravine about eighty yards away who was checking in on my progress. I abandoned my four wheeler and ran to the creek to unplug my shotgun barrel and throw the stock and action parts in the river to clean off the mud. I accomplished this just as the sun went down. I took a long look around and took stock of my situation. I had no food, I had no water, no way to make a fire and I was soaked and it was starting to snow. I quickly turned on the atv and set the idle high for light and proceeded to take off my shoes, socks and pants. I wrung them our standing in tall grass with snow blowing all around. After putting my clothes back on I had a panicked feeling and almost took off running thinking I cound just run back home. I had a force myself to be rational and think with a cool head because I was getting worried. I thought of different books that I have read about survival situations and decided that if I took off I had a one hundred percent chance of surviving the night. I went to my four wheeler and looked at my supplies. One knife, one fishing pole, a bunch of wet grass, a reel, seven shotgun shells and an empty smashed beer can and a camoflauge rain poncho I had thrown in at the last minuet just in case it rained a little on the way back. Things were looking worse. I remembered a story about a guy in a similar situation who had sung and paced most of the night to keep the bears away and keep from freezing to death so I began my solo singing and pacing all the while hoping like hell my wife would have someone coming back down the trail before I became bear meat. I kept up my ritual for about two aours talking to myself, singing and shivering my ass off. All of the sudden I saw lights on the hill above the airstrip a long way off. But it gave me hope because I figured that my friends were probably already looking for me. This is the way in King Cove, when someone needs help everyone drops everything and helps until things are right. They are some of the best people that I have ever met outside of my family. For the next two hours I watched in frustration as four wheelers cruised up and down the labarynth of trails that make up the Belkofski trailsystem. At night it's almost impossible to find certain trail. My trail was one such trail, I was situated in a low bowl and even though I flashed my lights many times my rescuers never saw me. The weather grew worse, it began to rain, hail, sleet and snow all at once with winds at sixty miles per hour with gusts. I had to give up on the light flashing gig and run up into the alders, rap myself in my poncho and fall down in the deep grass from the blizzard. I felt foolish, scared, worried and sick to my stomach for the worry I was causing my poor wife, family and friends. I saw a few lights come and go again but they were a long way off again and then they left. I knew they had gone to Lenards Harbor to look for me there which ment that I was capital F..... At this point I started saying to myself that I always scoffed at the people whogot in a situation like this in the wild. I talked to myself because of lack of current company and alway have. Trace, my son always catches me doing this and laughs about it. But I remember vivid memories I thought I had long forgotten. Mostly childhood memories riding horses and backpacking. I recalled one time when my dad ran ito a tree limb and cut his head so bad he had to have a bunch of stitches on his head after loosing alot of blood. He had to hike alot of miles back to the truck with a rag on his head which he would ring out periodically. Thinking of these things I decided that there was no way I was giving up. I had to survive the night because it damn sure looked like my spot in the weeds was home for the next eighteen hours. I propped my shotgun up on the stock so when I nodded off the barrel would fall down and hit me on the head thus waking me up and keeping me from going to sleep and freezing to death. I was so thirsty I could hardly stand it but feared drinking any of the water and besides the creek was past the light and there was a bear close, a rather large bear. The costal bears here are the largest in the world because of their protein rich diets and abundance of food. Most are ten feet tall and tend to stand on their back feet alot which makes them look monstrous. Their tracks are amazingly huge. They look like big foot. One of these days I'm going to place my hand print next to the tracks these bears make to give readers an idea of how big they really are. The locals are extremely cautious and respectful of the bears and all have had close encounters with them. One guy told me he shot at one to scare it and it turned around and casually covered a great distance right at him. He and his partmer took six shots to put him down. All shots connected in the vitals. After mulling over some of the precautions told to me and looking over my measly shot gun. I decided I would rather die from freezing to death than getting chewed on from the feet up by a grizzly. I dozed off and on listening to the howling wind and the bear or bears to the left of me, occasionally I could smell them. They were awful smelling like a sweet and rank smell of spoiled fish and re meat together. I began to think I may have cashed in my chips on this one. I started shivering uncontollably and came to the conclusion that the body does this to warm itself up. I quickly deducted this because I had never been cold enough to observe my body shaking like freaking crazy until it eventually warmed up. I was getting delirious and thinking of my arms and legs as extensions. They were awfully cold and I had to force myself to stand and move around. This seemed to take me an awful long time with so much pain I thought I may pass out. As soon as I had warmed myself up again it was time to wrap back up in pancho and find my spot in the grass. It seemed like it only took a few minuets to start shaking again and for an eternity I repeated the process looking for my bear friends who sounded like large dogs sniffing and snuffling at me to see if I was tasty. For the first time in the woods since I was seven I was scared shitless. This time there were real monsters right there. I began to say my goodbyes to my wife and kids, telling them how great my life had been with them and appologizing for my carelessness for leaeving them at this point in our lives. I didn't cry, I let this knowledge sink in and told myself that after countless stips in the mountains sometimes people catch one in the butt and sometimes they don't survive. I was greatly humbled by the power of the earth's powerfull forces which we have no control over. The wind was playing tricks on me now. I heard children's voices like my second grade class. And I could have swore there was a baby cry once. I fell asleep and a great warmth came over me. I felt so damn good, like sitting in a hot tub that is the perfect temp. after skiing all day. As I slept I had a good long conversation with my two daughters that live in St. George. We laughed and they told me jokes and held my hand and they smiled with big warm smiles at me. I woke myself up because of my laughter and noticed I couldn't feel my feet very well. I thought it kind of funny and giggled over the sensation. Soon I knew that if I didn't stand now I was a goner so I stood up and yelled in the wind that I wasn't going to give up. I wasn't going to freeze no matter what. I hell asleep numerous times and was awakened each time by my daughters telling me jokes. I finally woke up all the way all the sudden and looked at the sky. There was a small grey streak behind the clouds and it was raining lightly. The wind was blowing a steady twenty miles per hour. My four wheeler suddenly ran out of gas and the lights were quickly going dim. I looked around for brother bear and all I saw were tracks . It was steadily growing lighter and I knew I had to get up but my body wouldn't respond. I figured to hell with it I was going to walk out of here now that I could see, so after a couple of tries I stood up and damn near cried out because of pain. My legs and arms were cramped so tight that I couldn't staighten them and I'm sure I looked like a gimp trying to do some jumping jacks. Personally I didn't give a rat's ass what I looked like I was amaed that I was alive standing there. I pulled my pancho over my head and stuck out on wobbly legs thankful to be moving. I was so thirsty I was thinking that I was going to drink the swamp water regaurdless of how sick it may make me later. I was dehydrated and hypothermic big time. I could only climb short distances and stop for rests. I walked this way for about three miles through alders which are like willows but thicker and they are twelve feet tall. I'm here to tell you it sucked man, I got scared all over again because believe me you can feel eyes on you from out of those trees. I knew my night time compadres were tracking me. I got to a spot were the alders are really close together and decided I didn't want to go that way. I backtracked a small way and saw that I had no choice because of cliffs on both sides. I slipped my right hand glove off and started whistling and singing with my shotgun ready to rodk n roll. Walking through there was the hardest thing I've ever done but I had my little sojourn in the swamp overnight. As I topped the rise I saw a coast guard helicopter and it looked real cool. It didn't have landing gear just a big belly to land in the swamp. At that time I spotted a guy on a four wheeler below me, he was turning around and heading down the trail I was on. I started yelling and waving my arms and gun like a mad man. He spotted me even though I was covered with mud. He drove up to me and asked me if I was the missing school teacher, I told him yes and I was really glad to see him. My eyes watered up knowing that I was going to soon be home and my family wound not have to worry any more. I had left the house the the previous day and when Pat W.; the Aleut local hunter and trapper that found me rolled into our driveway it was 9:30 the next day. It took me 2 days to be able to use my arms . The were so wasted and I had horrible dreams. I was lucky and fortunate to have survived the hardest night of my life. I am thankful for a second chance and I can't wait to go riding again. But never by myself.......
