Flying through Lake Clark Pass in a four-seater Cessna 206 (the fifth seat had been removed to make room for baggage), I felt like I had cheated some long-established rule: Visit a National Park on Memorial Day weekend and you’re required to sit in traffic hell for hours. But there are no roads into Lake Clark […]
Flying through Lake Clark Pass in a four-seater Cessna 206 (the fifth seat had been removed to make room for baggage), I felt like I had cheated some long-established rule: Visit a National Park on Memorial Day weekend and you’re required to sit in traffic hell for hours. But there are no roads into Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Boats and planes are the only way in. Mine was a 170-mile flight from Merrill Field, Anchorage’s municipal airport, to the town of Port Alsworth.
Lake Clark was declared a National Park in 1980 as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, in an effort to protect “multiple values,” including the waters that flow into Bristol Bay, site of the world’s largest salmon fishery, said Megan Richotte, Lake Clark National Park’s program manager for interpretation. The park is a veritable greatest hits of Alaskan landscapes and wildlife. It would take many lifetimes to hike all of Lake Clark’s glaciers, mountains, volcanoes and tundra; paddle all of the park’s lakes and shoreline; and spot the wide range of wildlife large — bears, lynx, eagles and wolves — and (very) small — collared pika and tundra shrew — that claim the area as home. And Lake Clark is also a culturally rich area, home for thousands of years to the Dena’inaAthabascan indigenous people.
Neither Tara, a frequent adventure buddy, nor I pack light. When traveling by bush plane, that will cost you. We overshot Lake and Pen Air’s 50 pounds-per-person packing limit by 50 pounds each. It came out to an extra $80 — and ended up being totally worth it. We were heading to the only public use cabin in all of Lake Clark’s four million acres — bigger than the state of Connecticut. All that space for about 23,000 visitors per year.
There are plenty of spots to camp in Lake Clark’s backcountry, as well as established campgrounds and more than a few lodges. But as soon as I found information online about the Priest Rock public use cabin, I knew it was where I wanted to stay. Alaska is peppered with public use cabins — most, like this one, for just $65 a night. They offer protection against cranky weather and nighttime bear worries (real and imagined). But unlike most cabins around the state, this single cabin in Lake Clark National Park had a backstory.
Outside of Alaska, the park is most closely associated with Richard Proenneke, who filmed himself while building his own cabin in 1967 and 1968. The 16-millimeter reels were later turned into the “Alone in the Wilderness” documentaries, which are frequently shown on public television. Though he was the only one who captured his cabin life on film, “there were many cabin-builders of that era,” Ms. Richotte said.
The cabin at Priest Rock “was built to be a home,” she said. “It was lived in and loved by the Woodwards for many years.” Allen Woodward, a pilot in Anchorage, built the cabin — his second at Lake Clark — in the mid-1970s. His wife, Marian, started spending summers there with him in 1986.
Public use cabins are not Airbnbs. Nobody leaves a tin of granola for you. You bring what you need and pack it out too; nothing left behind. Tara and I are both avid backcountry cooks, so we brought cookware, stoves and even a collapsible kitchen sink, along with real food, including the ingredients for a shrimp-heavy paella and garam masala-seasoned chickpeas and tomato. I also brought a backup meal of dehydrated pad thai, in case Alaska’s often unpredictable weather delayed our pickup. Tara had two fishing rods and her waders for catch-and-release fishing.
Our Cessna climbed away from the gridded layout of Anchorage and across Cook Inlet, the greenish aqua and silty river waters that feed it bumping up against each other. It was sunny and warm at the start of the 90-minute flight. A short time later, we dipped back into winter as we flew through the pass between the Neacola and Chigmit mountain ranges. The temperature dropped. Snow ruled the landscape.
We soon landed in Port Alsworth, which is more a busy hive than tourist destination, though there are several lodges. The town has a year-round population of 156. There are no restaurants or shops. On summer days, there’s a food truck that sells hamburgers and thick shakes. There’s also a new school, a Bible camp and a retreat for wounded veterans run by the evangelist Franklin Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse. And, of course, Lake Clark National Park’s headquarters.
