Broiled Salmon Spine with Roasted Vegetables on Farfalle: Getting The Most out of Ever Fish

Posted by Jack & Barbra Donachy on August 17, 2017
Posted in: cooking. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Close to the bone, salmon meat near the skeleton is lean and tasty. Salmon spines (salmon carcasses with some meat still attached) are perfect candidates for the broiler. Add some vegetables to the broiling pan and you’ve got a gourmet meal for two.

No sooner did we return back home in Chignik Lake than we began turning our attention to filling our freezer and smoker with salmon. Wild salmon are precious, and every last bit of salmon meat is delicious. I don’t always get the fillets off the bones as cleanly as I’d like. That’s where this dish comes in. While the photos depict a Sockeye salmon, other species work well, too, and of course a fillet works as well as a spine in this recipe.

1. Position your oven rack to the second level below the broiler. Place a broiling pan on the rack and turn on the broiler to preheat the pan and the oven.

2. Chop up some of your favorite vegetables. Pick ones that are hardy enough to withstand a few minutes under the broiler. Whole garlic cloves roast up soft, slightly charred and delicious in this recipe. Fruit such as pitted olives work well, too.

3. To serve two, measure out about two cups of Farfalle pasta. Other types of pasta are fine.

Mise en place: whole garlic cloves, bell peppers, Brussels sprouts, fresh oregano, sea salt, pasta and Kalamata olives. You’ll also need a good extra virgin olive oil, a broiling pan, and, of course, the salmon spine or fillet. 

4. Toss the vegetables together in a bowl along with sea salt and olive oil. Fresh or dried thyme or oregano are good herb choices.

Sprinkle salt into the vegetables to taste, add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, then mix together. As an additional option, a tablespoon or so of mirin – a light, sweet cooking wine – adds a hint of sweetness and helps the vegetables brown and char.

5. Next, rinse the salmon in cold water and dry and clean it with paper towels. There may be some dark matter running along the spine inside the skeletal cavity. That’s the kidney. If there’s a lot of this, you can use a knife or even a spoon to scrape it out. It can be further cleaned up with a stiff brush. A toothbrush works well for this.

6. Place the salmon spine on a cutting board and give it a fairly generous sprinkling of salt.

A good sea salt (we like gray sea salt) really brings out the flavor of salmon.

7. Take the preheated broiling pan out of the oven. Use a brush or spatula to coat the surface with olive oil. Arrange the salmon and the vegetables on the pan.  It should be sizzling hot. Place the pan back into the oven and broil for about 8 or 9 minutes.

8. While the salmon is broiling, prepare the pasta according to the maker’s directions.

Colored bell peppers and Brussels sprouts char and caramelize beautifully under a broiler.

9. After about 8 or 9 minutes, remove the broiling pan from the oven. Transfer the salmon to a cutting board and use a fork to pull the meat off the bones. You want chunks of a good size to go on a fork along with a bite of vegetable and a bit of pasta.

10. Finally, plate up the pasta. Add the salmon and vegetables. Finish with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and a couple of grinds of freshly cracked pepper. Serve hot with a bright Willamette Valley Pinot Gris.

 

The Ordeal – Part III: “Sweeper!”

Posted by Jack & Barbra Donachy on August 10, 2017
Posted in: writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 14 Comments

Grizzly Track

After stripping off our waders, deflating our rafts and securing our gear to the racks on our bikes and in our panniers, we had before us a ride of a few miles up a dirt road and then down an ATV trail to a place on the Tazimina River where we would again launch our rafts. Seeing how late it was, we questioned whether this was the best route. Walter assured us it would be. “The bike ride is just a few miles and that shouldn’t be any problem, and then the float down the river will be pretty easy,” he said.

Following the shoreline of the Newhalen River, we pushed our bikes a short distance over wet, soft sand imprinted with numerous moose tracks probably made by a cow and her babies. We reached the gravel-and-dirt haul road and fairly effortlessly rode the few miles to the ATV trail. The road cut through open country, and as we climbed a gently sloping hill we had a sweeping view of tundra and kettle ponds and the white spruce forest in the river valley below. However, upon reaching the ATV trail we could see that it was going to be too deeply rutted to ride with loaded bikes. So we got off and pushed. No big deal as we were still making good time.

Disconcerting, though, was our observation that Walter was trying to figure out where we would depart the trail in order to bushwhack through the dense tangle of alder, willow and spruce between the trail and the river. Bushwhack? Walter hadn’t previously mentioned anything about dragging, pushing and carrying loaded bikes through overgrown thickets and over fallen timber. As we pushed through this boreal jungle, whippy alders and grabby spruce bows tugged at every buttonhole, shoelace, and bicycle spoke.

The brush was so thick that I lost sight of Walter – a fit, ex-marine several years younger than me – who still was not grasping basic concepts such as staying within visual sight and effectively communicating. On a couple of occasions he charged so far ahead he couldn’t hear me when I called out, leaving us to guess at whether or not he had actually found a trail to the river, whether we should stay put and wait for him to yet again backtrack, or whether to attempt to follow. Twice the bushwhacking ended at what turned out to be the shallow, swampy, mosquito-infested, remnants of old beaver ponds. As Walter consulted his GPS, the sun continued its descent.

By the time we made it to flowing water I was hungry and thirsty. We stopped for a snack on a gravel bank and then inflated our rafts and strapped our bikes back onto the bows. I was wet, cold and nearing exhaustion. We still had to float an indeterminate distance down this river and then paddle nearly a mile back across the lake. I refused to look at my watch. I was worried how late it might be – among other things.

Walter had been ignoring my terse admonitions to keep us in sight. Now we needed to float a river in the near dark, vigilant for boulders, logs and trees fallen across the river known as “sweepers.” There is probably nothing more dangerous on these rivers than a large tree down across swift current, particularly if the nearby banks are steep. Sweepers occasionally trap and drown rafters. As we began our float, the sky beamed the brilliant oranges and pinks of sunset, dramatically silhouetting the spruce forest stretching before us against the colors of the sky. The water was cold and clear and in places beautifully caught the day’s last light.

Bald eagles, silent sentinels, were perched in trees along the river, watching. A cow moose and her twin calves crashed off into the forest as our rafts approached. And everywhere that the water was deep enough, fish began to surface and roll and even jump. These were the largest trout and grayling I’d ever seen, and the numbers were amazing. I had my fly-rod with me, and it would have been fantastic to fish there. It was too bad I couldn’t enjoy it. I was too cold, too tired, and too worried. These are the kinds of conditions where mistakes are made. Bad ones. Sometimes even fatal ones.

From his position in the lead, Walter began calling out directions in the gathering darkness. “Go to the left! Downed log!” Jack would relay the directions back to me, and I’d repeat to confirm that I’d heard. As the sun sunk below the trees, everything turned to a dim monochrome. I could barely make out the shoreline. Wondering how far off the mouth of the river might be, I was trying to find a working rhythm to take my mind off my tiring shoulders and back.

Suddenly, Walter’s urgent shouting pierced my thoughts.

“Sweeper! Get out!”

There was no mistaking the serious tone in Jack’s voice as he repeated the message, which I’d already heard loud and clear. In the dimming light, I could just make out Jack immediately veering to his left toward the bank, and although I tried my damnedest to do the same, my raft felt sluggish and unresponsive. I dug in hard with my paddle. Was it the raft? Had I lost strength? Jack made it to shore just before the sweeper. My heart flew into my throat as I felt my raft picking up speed with the current. “I can’t get to shore!” I cried out.

While Walter, apparently in a state of confusion, stood doing nothing, Jack had already anticipated my call for assistance and was striding up the bank with his paddle in hand. I could see the sweeper, a huge downed spruce, its branches ominously combing the river’s full force of swift, cold water between two steep banks. I fought back a vision of getting pulled under that tree. But Jack was there. He stretched to extend his paddle to me and told me to grab it. I quickly set down my own paddle, grabbed his and hung on as he pulled me safely to shore.

With the river disappearing into thick vegetation beyond the sweeper, we now needed to portage. Rivers in this part of the world are often braided. Back upriver a ways, a channel had forked off to our left. It was possible we’d be able to pick up this fork and float it till it rejoined the main stem. Ever mindful of bears and of equally dangerous moose mamas with their young, we stayed together as we scouted. Fortunately, we found the channel a relatively easy 100-yard hike away. We carried our gear to the new put-in and within a short float rejoined the Tazimina’s main flow. From there, it was a straightforward float to Six Mile Lake.

Meanwhile, although it was late May, ice was still forming on puddles in the early hours of the morning; temperatures had dropped into the low 30’s. I was heartened to see the distant, twinkling glow of lights in Nondalton. The winds were light, but even the very gentle current made paddling a chore as we headed across and slightly up the lake. In the darkness, I couldn’t tell if I was making headway. Jack assured me we that we were gradually reeling in the far shore line. “Find a light and focus on that,” he advised. Having a specific focal point helped. As we reached shore, my arms were throbbing, my body was shivering and my teeth were chattering.

We wearily dragged our bikes and rafts up to the house. Inside Walter’s warm house, I gratefully changed into dry clothes. By the time we had mugs of hot cocoa spiked with bourbon in our hands, it was after three AM.

When I got up later that day, I made a phone call to arrange for a flight to Homer. Two days later, back on “the mainland” with a blank slate and months ahead of us, we had an opportunity to create a new plan for another epic summer in Alaska.

Alaska’s Aleutian Mountains as seen on the flight from Nondalton to Homer

At 10,197 feet (3,108 meters) Mount Redoubt, also known as Redoubt Volcano, is the highest peak in the Aleutian Range. Our bush pilot dipped low to give us a look at an actively smoking side vent. Redoubt most recently erupted in 2009.

The end. But stay tuned for coming posts about great food, wildlife photography and Alaska travel!

The Ordeal: Part II (But wait, there’s more…)

Posted by Jack & Barbra Donachy on August 9, 2017
Posted in: writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 10 Comments

Sleet Storm

Looking back on the day (and night, and those small hours of the following morning) of our trial run, I can laugh. I can even find value in aspects of the day. But on that day, I was pissed. Really pissed.

Walter was so confident that the route he had chosen would take only “a few hours” to complete, we didn’t get started till sometime after lunch. We inflated our rafts on the shores of Six-Mile Lake in front of his house. Attaching a bike to the bow of a raft was a new thing for us, but after some fumbling we finally got them secured – though I remained a little uncertain as to how secured. We donned our fishing waders and we each climbed into our one-man transports. And then we began paddling along the lakeshore toward the Newhalen River. At this point, I was feeling surprisingly confident. Our Alpacka rafts had clever tie-downs and comfortable seats. The bikes seemed secure. The paddling was more comfortable that I thought it would be. The sun was shining and the wind was calm.

As we began our float down the Newhalen, we could see fish finning in the clear-green water beneath our smoothly gliding rafts. Occasionally one would jump – handsome, broad-shouldered grayling and rainbow trout. The river moved gently, allowing me time to get used to navigating and maneuvering my little red watercraft. It was lovely.

As we neared a bend a little over an hour into our journey, we were met with the sight of a young blond grizzly who inquisitively checked us out from a sandy sloping beach and then dashed into thick vegetation and disappeared. Confident he had left the area and in need of a break to stretch and to empty our rafts of water that had trickled in from the paddles, we beached our boats. Walter called over to us as he passed by (he had lingered back a ways to get in a few casts) to make sure we were OK, but rather than stop and join us, he then proceeded downriver. As we climbed back into our rafts and resumed our journey, we no longer had our guide in sight. We didn’t know where the take-out point was. Walter himself had been uncertain, other than to go by directions someone had conveyed to him. We hoped he would be waiting up ahead to give us directions.

Still on the first leg of the run, the sun was already noticeably edging toward the horizon. The wind was beginning to pick up, as it often does in afternoons. It was coming straight at us, making it difficult to paddle our light little boats even with a modest river current pushing us. We decided we would make more progress if we got out and walked along the shoreline while towing our boats.

It was about this time that Jack, with Walter nowhere in sight and already having proven himself to be a questionable guide and traveling companion, suggested cutting our losses, turning around, and slogging back to Walter’s place. In retrospect, I should have agreed with him.

Walking downriver, we came to a big, arcing bend. Although we didn’t know where the take-out point was, we did know it was on the other side of the river. This would be as good as any place to cross. As we paddled, we noticed that there was a large, shoal island near the opposite shore. Should we go left or right of the island? We weighed our options as the sun continued its golden descent. Both of us were frustrated at this point. It was now apparent that we had set out too late in the day and that in his tentative grasp of our route that Walter had significantly miscalculated the mileage we’d be covering. Although it was late May, ice was still forming on puddles in the early hours each morning. With only a few snacks and a water filtration kit but no tent and no change of dry clothing, we were not prepared to spend a freezing night in the wilderness. Left or right was a guess. We chose left.

As we neared the island, the wind pushed against us. We noticed a black bear foraging on the beach across a narrow channel separating the island from shore – a reminder that, relying on Walter’s side arm, we weren’t carrying bear spray. Paddling into a steady headwind, I was struggling, each stroke seeming to get me nowhere. As I finally neared the island, I thought I had come to a place shallow enough to step out of the raft. I eased my left leg over the gunwale, my foot searching for solid bottom while I still held onto the raft and the bike with my hands so they wouldn’t tip. Of course, I lost my balance and fell in. And of course, the water was deeper than I’d anticipated. So I swamped my waders with icy water.

Although I have been practicing “mindfulness” principles, this soaking did not facilitate a calm, thoughtful reaction on my part. Feeling essentially abandoned by our guide, unsure of where I was supposed to meet up with him and anticipating that we were in for a much, much longer trek than Walter had described, I was angry. As I pulled my loaded raft to shore, I surveyed the scene for the bear or other creatures. Way off in the distance, on the shore beyond the island, I detected movement. Walter. Calmly sitting with his deflated raft strapped to his bike, ready for the next leg of the journey, not even motioning to us. My blood was boiling. Had we opted to approach the island a little differently, we likely never would have seen him.

Upon reaching Walter, I let him know I was not happy. As our guide, it was imperative that he remain within hearing and visual range. Jack told him I had swamped. He looked at us slack-jawed and sheepishly offered a pair of dry socks, which I, of course, took. What I really expected was an apology and some sort of recognition from Walter that he needed to modify his behaviors. When none of that was forthcoming and he instead blew into explaining the next leg of our trek, I made up my mind that at the end of this trial run we’d be parting ways. As Jack and I headed back down the beach to pack up our rafts, out of Walter’s hearing range he again suggested we take a few cues from the obvious and simply walk back up the river to Nondalton. With wet clothing and evening fast approaching, I’m still not entirely sure why I vetoed this suggestion…

Stay tuned for Part III: Get out! Sweeper!

Oh, the places we didn’t go, or Another Epic Summer: Part 1

Posted by Jack & Barbra Donachy on August 7, 2017
Posted in: Travel. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 12 Comments

We’re back!

We’d planned The Trek for months, poring over maps, reading up and double-checking gear. Our friend Walter (not his real name) convinced us to join him on a foot-powered fishing adventure exploring lakes and rivers in Southwest Alaska using our pack rafts, bikes, and backpacks. We were simultaneously intimidated, apprehensive and excited about a series of remote treks way off the beaten path Walter was suggesting. In the end, we decided that we were all in, eager to take on the challenges this trip portended.

To prepare, we practiced loading our bikes for excursions lasting up to two weeks at a time – tent, sleeping bags, stove, fuel, food, clothing, fishing tackle, maps, etc. We then repacked everything in our backpacks in the event we’d need to carry our gear and supplies. In early May, we shipped our bikes as well as totes filled with food and gear to Nondalton, where we would begin the journey. The plan was to mail food ahead to other villages we’d be passing through. Walter had the maps and had planned the routes (or so we thought – insert obvious foreshadowing music here).

A friend picked us up at the boat pad near Chignik Lake. From there we traveled down the Chignik River to Chignik Lagoon for a flight to Homer where we had a pre-summer task to attend to before flying out to Nondalton on the shores of Six Mile Lake.

As the plane that carried us neared Nondalton, the weather whipped up a brew of freezing rain followed by wind-driven snow – May in Alaska. Warm layers of clothing? Check.

We had a few days before the fishing season officially opened on Lake Iliamna, so we took the time to nail down the details of our trip and to sort out food and gear in chronological order according to our itinerary. This entailed reigning in some of Walter initial plans – which would have taken us to far flung locales – and to focus instead on the Lake Iliamna region. Our packs were quite heavy, but our spirits were light. We even had a couple of free days in which to get a taste of the fishing in lower Lake Clark and the nearby Tazimina River – a renowned destination for rainbow trout and trophy-sized grayling.

Then, on a day of brilliant sunshine and temperatures climbing into the 70s, we decided to do a shakedown run. Jack and I hadn’t used our pack rafts before, let alone floated a river with bikes affixed to the rafts. Walter mapped out a “short” circuit of “a few miles” which he felt would be perfect to test both the bikes and the rafts and to get in some quality fishing on the side. The plan was to launch our rafts on Six Mile Lake at Nondalton, raft down the Newhalen River to a point where a dirt and gravel road met the river, ride our bikes to an ATV trail which led to the Tazimina River, float the Tazimina back to Six Mile Lake and paddle across back to Nondalton. “Should take us just a few hours,” Walter guessed.

We put our full confidence in our friend and guide, trusting that he had accurately assessed the trial run.

Maybe we started too late in the day. Maybe Walter didn’t really know where he was going. Maybe it was lucky that the day worked out the way it did… sparing us an inevitable tragedy later in the summer. What was offered as a “short” run of “a few miles” that we would be able to cover in “a few hours” turned into a 19 mile slog – a series of missteps, poor communication and bad guesses we have named “The Ordeal.”

To be continued…

Eight-Weights: Alaska Peninsula Summer Trek – Going Off the Grid for Salmon, Trout, Char, Grayling and Pike

Posted by Jack & Barbra Donachy on May 17, 2017
Posted in: Fishing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 13 Comments

Early last Friday morning we put the finishing touches on packing for this summer’s (potentially epic) fishing-centric trek on the upper Alaska Peninsula. Two Salsa Fargo bikes equipped with semi-fat tires, to be loaded with Big Agnes Rattlesnake Mountain Glow tent, down sleeping bags, Alpacka pack rafts, tenkara rods, fly rods, freeze-dried camping food, cookware, compact stove, minimal camera gear, blank writing journals, waders, rain gear, and (for me) just one extra pair of underwear. We then borrowed a pickup truck drove the gear to Chignik Lake’s airstrip and loaded it onto a Lake Clark Cessna headed for Nondalton.

I’ll turn 58 on this trip and I’m a little apprehensive – not as sanguine in my physical endurance and strength as I was in the old days. For the first time in my life, I am aware of physical limitations in a way I’ve never before felt those limitations. But I want to get out there and try this and see if I can handle it. I think I can handle it. If it comes together all right, this trip will set the stage for the next several summers. Fortunately, Barbra has greeted the prospects this summer holds forth with unbridled enthusiasm sufficient to douse my doubts. “Pace yourself,” a friend advised, and although that two-word phrase is anathema to the way I’ve gone about things most of my life, I have to concede that on this series of treks, it’s probably the most prudent recommendation I could receive.

Iliamna Lake is the epicenter of the world’s most prolific Sockeye Salmon nursery.

Nondalton is a perfect starting point. The Newhalen River threads together some of Alaska’s (and by extension, the World’s) most storied fly-fishing waters, including Lake Clark upriver and legendary Iliamna Lake downriver. Along with their nearly innumerable tributaries, the entire watershed constitutes the world’s greatest Sockeye Salmon spawning grounds and nursery. Oh, there are kings, silvers, pinks and chums, char, grayling, white fish and pike, too – and at the right time and place lots of them and large ones. But the keystone species is the Sockeye, and it’s because of these millions of spawning salmon and the ocean-borne nutrients they carry upriver each summer that the watershed is home to some of highest numbers of large rainbow trout found anywhere. Trout 18” and up are common. How far up? The Kvichak River, which flows out of Iliamna and into Bristol Bay, gave up a 23-pounder in 1999, and while there don’t seem to be as many super large trout as in the past, fish well over 20 inches are still abundant, as are large Dolly Varden Char, Arctic Grayling, Northern Pike and Lake Trout. In fact, when I ticked off a list of modestly-sized personal bests for the species we’ll be targeting this summer, our friend Jerry, who talked us into this trek, kind of laughed and replied, “You’re gonna break all those records right here on Six Mile.”

After exploring the Six Mile Lake area, the possibilities are practically limitless. Virtually every lake, stream and river in this part of the Bristol Bay watershed is a world class angling destination. So it’s almost a given that we’re going to catch a lot of fish. And camp, and hike, and pick wild berries, and raft, and swat mosquitoes and see bears and moose and cap an especially good day with a bourbon toast from a small flask a fair distance from anything that looks like civilization.

But it’s not all gonna be blueberry patches and easy trout. We might have to bush-whack into some places, and we won’t use guides or take float planes in to the best water. We’re determined to make the fishing our own, and that will mean fishless stretches at times as we explore, and it might mean tough going at times. That’s the price for getting off the beaten path.

If we each get a few personal bests this summer and have a few fish-after-fish-after-fish days, a few memorable wildlife sightings, a few meals of freshly caught fish… If we learn a few things, experience a few new things…

It’ll be a great summer.

JD

And with that, the staff of CutterLight is off on vacation for blessed weeks on end with no phone service, no computers and no news. Look for accounts of our adventures when we resume publishing toward the end of the summer. 

Ink and Light: Chickadee Flamenco and thoughts on art and spring from Su Tung P’o

Posted by Jack & Barbra Donachy on May 15, 2017
Posted in: Ink and Light. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 3 Comments

Chickadee Flamenco

What a wonderful talent – that can create an entire Spring
from a brush and a sheet of paper. If he would try poetry
I know he would be a master…
Su Tung P’o – On a Painting by Wang the Clerk of Yeng Ling, c. 1080

Also known as Su Shi, Su Tung P’o (1037-1101) was a Song Dynasty writer, calligrapher, painter, poet, statesman and noted gourmet. The dish “dungpo pork” is named for him.

May 1 Plane Crash near Chignik Lake: A Tribute to our Bush Pilots

Posted by Jack & Barbra Donachy on May 2, 2017
Posted in: Alaska bush. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 16 Comments

A nine-seater from Grant Aviation cuts through the mountains just after leaving Chignik Lake this past March.

They’ve been called Alaska’s cowboys, and life without them would range from difficult to impossible for those of us in the remote parts of Alaska that make up most of the state. They’re our bush pilots – the men and women who navigate the trackless wilderness between population hubs and the isolated communities we and thousands of other Alaskans call home. They bring us everything from mail to grocery staples to visitors (when we’re lucky enough to have them). With skill and confidence, these men and women navigate through weather that can change in a blink (it alternately was sunny, rained, snowed, hailed and rained again as I wrote this morning) and through winds most of us wouldn’t even want to take a walk in. We complain a little among ourselves when the planes don’t fly (earlier this year we went for over a week with no mail as our Brussels sprouts and other groceries languished in King Salmon) and we grumble when grounded flights mean truncated vacation time or a delay in friends reaching us. But we understand – safety first. And we know that if it’s possible to fly, the pilots serving Southwest Alaska – our pilots – will be in the air.

Yesterday we lost one.

By mid-afternoon word had swept through the village that a Grant Aviation plane – a Cessna Grand Caravan, the nine-seaters that are fairly standard in the bush – had gone missing. It was en route from Port Heiden to Perryville (see map at end of article), scheduled to arrive at 2:15 PM. At 2:00, just 15 minutes out of Perryville, the plane’s Emergency Locator sounded. The pilot, making a cargo and mail run, was the vessel’s only passenger.

This photo was taken near Perryville, a coastal community about 28 miles southwest of Chignik Lake. The Aleutian Mountain Range sprawls across the Alaska Peninsula. It’s breathtakingly rugged country where high winds can spring up out of nowhere. The name Chignik means “Big Winds.”

Soon afterwards, a Coast Guard C-130 and an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter began combing the mountainsides, tundra and lakes around Chignik Lake. In fact, the chopper landed here to take aboard volunteers to serve as additional pairs of eyes out the helicopter’s windows. At 5:49 PM, 3,000 feet up on a steep mountainside at a place known as Windy Pass, the wreckage was spotted. A rescue swimmer was subsequently lowered to the crash site where he confirmed that the pilot had died. Given the difficult terrain and cloud cover, recovery of the pilot’s body and the cargo he was carrying will be challenging.

Gabriele Cianetti, 54, the pilot of the downed Cessna 208B, touched many lives, including ours. Our thoughts and condolences go out to his family and friends as well as to his extended family at Grant Aviation. Additionally, our deep appreciation is extended to the men and women of the United States Coast Guard: Semper Paratus – Always Ready.

The Chignik Lake airstrip at dawn. The pilots who serve our community and Alaska’s other bush communities are true heroes in a land where air travel is not a luxury, but a necessity.

The above map includes Port Heiden, where the plane departed from and Perryville, where the plane was heading. Chignik Lake is marked in red.

Additional details for this article were pulled from KTVA news and Alaska Dispatch News.