We broke camp in the rain and fog and packed our bags for the long trek to the lake. Because everything was wet and we had the meat to pack out, our packs were quite heavy. By 6:30 AM we were on our way. After stumbling, and sliding our way down, we made it back to Camp 1, the base camp.
From there it was a jump in the lake, a change of clothes, and a scramble to get all of our gear organized and loaded at the beach for our pickup. It is always a crap shoot if we will get out on-time (or at all) but we were lucky and a few minutes before 2 PM, we heard the sound of our plane coming up the valley.
We loaded the plane and strapped in for the hour-long flight back to Ketchikan, we were in excellent spirits and ready to hit Prince of Wales (POW) Island to hunt deer. JJ was our pilot and he told us that weather in Ketchikan was deteriorating, so we got up and out of there quickly.
Video of us taking off from our remote lake (1.4 mb)
It was a a long flight through rough weather, but we landed safely in Ketchikan and organized our gear for POW Island. After a long hot shower and a hot meal, we hit the laundromat to get the rank out of our clothes and gear. At 1:30 AM we boarded the POW ferry for the nearly four our boat ride to Hollis, Ak. Tomorrow would be questionable if we could get up to high country to hunt deer. We would need to rest up and plan around the weather.
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