Adak Adventure

Geoff had a great opportunity this past weekend.

He and his boss went on a hunting trip to Adak.

Here they leaving from the Anchorage airport on Thursday. They got back Sunday night. 

Adak is a 274 square mile island way out on the Aleutian chain. It's about a three hour flight from Anchorage to the tiny airport on Adak which was built for the Navy back in the 40s.

It's so far out it's in a different time zone. They were an hour behind us here in Anchorage.

Only a handful of people live there now that the base is closed down but back in the day it had over 30,000 people. Most everything is sitting empty and abandoned now but it has a pretty interesting history. You can read more about it here.

Everything has to be flown in so you can imagine it's pretty expensive to get a new vehicle out there so you use what you have as long as possible.

My favorite story that Geoff brought back was about the truck that didn't start unless you rolled it down a hill. So every time you parked you had to be sure to be at the top of a hill. Well the truck stalled at one point and the guys had to push the truck up a hill to get it started again.

I'm so glad Mike took the time to snap a photo of that adventure! :) 

 

So why would anyone want to go out to this remote and beautiful place? The hunting and fishing!!

With no large predators on the island the caribou are large and abundant. 

Unfortunately the large and abundant wildlife managed to evade our mighty hunters so they didn't come home with any caribou.

They were able to get some fishing in too and did come home with some halibut.

Geoff said they saw whales one day while out on the boat and the island was home to many eagles and puffins. The streams where full of spawning salmon. You can see them in the two videos below.