The Rise Up Ride: Day 101, Bunking in at Fish Camp
Date: 1 August 2021
Start Location: Homer, AK
End Location: Dean Osmar's Fish Camp, near the mouth of the Kasilof River in the Kenai
Distance: 100.3 km
Time: 6:12
Total elapsed: 8:32
Elevation: 659 m
There aren't that many roads in Alaska. But when they do cut a highway through the wild they give it a proper name. I'm currently cycling the Sterling Highway, up to the Seward Highway. In two weeks I may be off down the Denali Highway and then the Richardson Highway to Valdez or up to the Alaska (Alcan) Highway down into the Yukon. Outside of the major cities there are no freeways, just heavily trafficked two-lane roads, most with decent shoulders. On a summer Sunday the Sterling was busy with campers, trucks hauling fishing boats, and far too many rental RVs making the long drive back from holiday through Anchorage. Although the road runs north along the coast, it's inland just beyond sight of the Cook Inlet. Without the distraction of a rugged coastline I put my head down and rode towards Clam Gulch, a camping option on the beach where the Alaskan clammers would come to feast on razor clams, harvesting about a million clams per year in the fishery between Homer and Kenai.
At a roadside coffee stop I struck up a conversation with the owner when a weathered fellow and his team of guys poured out of a truck. "Let me introduce you to a legend in Alaska. This is Dean Osmar, who won the Iditarod in 1984," he said. This is a big deal in Alaska and his arrival got everyone's attention. Dean studied my rig, understood long-distance solitary adventure, and was as interested in hearing how I'd gotten to the Kenai as I was keen to hear about his dog team. When I asked him about camping in Clam Gulch he invited me to camp at his salmon fishing camp on the beach and even offered the possibility of a bunk and salmon for dinner. He suggested that I might want to tell his team of guys some stories from the trip. Although the camp was about 14 km off route, when a world champion dog musher invites you to his salmon fishing camp near the mouth of the Kasilof River during spawning season you don't hesitate to accept.
It doesn't get much more real than it was at fish camp. Ramshackle bunkhouses, a common kitchen, with boats, buoys and fishing gear strewn everywhere. Ben gave me the tour. "Outhouse for shitting, brown grass here for pissing. You'll bunk with Jonathan, who has space."
The salmon fishery had been closed down the day before while the State biologists decided if there were enough reds and kings heading upstream to successfully spawn. My crash course in the political battle between local small-scale artisanal fishers and the sport-fishing lobby had begun. It was a conflict that I had seen before working with small island communities forced to share natural resources with tourists. The area was full of guys from the lower forty-eight spending big money at lodges along the river who came to catch salmon, clean and filet their haul on a "slime line", vacuum pack and ship it home to Florida or Texas. The sportfishers and lodge owners lobby and spread enough money around to get a huge politically-determined allotment of salmon each year, leaving the locals using nets at the mouth of the Kasilof River with annually decreasing quotas and a shrinking season each year. Dean is on the phone with the biologists every day trying to get them to keep the season open just long enough so that the locals can get their piece of the salmon cake.
Yes, we had salmon on freshly baked bread for dinner. The filets came out of their local subsistence allotment and I've rarely eaten a finer meal. Although I could have stayed up with the crew, carousing into the long, slow gloaming past the late sunset, but after eight hours of cycling I headed to the darkness of the bunkhouse, knowing that I had a long ride the next day (including a return to the Sterling Highway.) Interestingly, most of the cabins I've stayed in this far north have blackout curtains or boarded up windows, or else everyone would go crazy from lack of sleep during the summer when it's bright enough to read outdoors throughout the night.
Tomorrow I have a reservation at a NFS campground about halfway from here to Seward. Leaving fish camp and this little slice of nice on the Cook Inlet will be tough.
