day 2-4. - Floatplane, cabin in the wilderness

July 6-8th, 2005.

We had to get back to Moose Pass, a small village in the middle of Kenai.

We booked a float plane at Scenic Mountain Air to take us to Upper Paradise Lake

They weighed all the luggages and passengers before separating them into two flights..

Here's our float plane

He will be the pilot

Two passengers of the first flight

Then the enigne roared..

and the plane was soon in the air

You can download a video of the taxiing!!! (avi, 5.6M, 0:21)

Video of the take-off !!! (mpg, 13M, 1:16)

Everyone got a headset

What do you pay to turn back?:)))

Second flight

Luggages

"Tiny" glacier

After 20 minutes we arrived to Upper Paradise Lake
You can see the cabin and the guys in the boat

We unloaded the plane and it took off.. She will come back in 2 days

Upper Paradise Lake

We rented the US National Forest Service's Upper Paradise Lake Cabin
for 2 days. You can get there after 12pm and you have to leave the cabin before noon. The cabin costs $45 per day but
there's no electricity no telephone, just bunkbeds and a stove. Real wilderness:))
You can only get there by floatplane, there are no paths coming up here. May be you can get out here in a couple days if
you walk.

The cabin

Inside

Look towards the house from the beach

The toilette (no flushing) with fantastic view:))

Here's the view..

They can not wait to start fishing

They caught grayling
It's lucky that in this lake one can find only grayling, but no salmons...
This means that the bears are not really interested about the area..

Cloudy evening

Next morning

There were clouds on the lake, but

they disappeared later..
[Very different light conditions existed, thus the panorama photos are not the best.]

Peaks in the other directions behind the cabin

Fishermen went for the graylings early in the morning

They were pros:))

And we had a good lunch..

After lunch we went for a hike, but we had to paddle to the other side of the lake (there are no paths anywhere)

Our original plan was to hike up to the saddle

We were ready to go after reaching to shore. We mounted special bear bells to notify the bears that we (food:))) are around

It was really though bush-whacking

We turned back halfway up, because the weather started to get really bad..

Hikers in the wilderness

Szabi showed us how to eat your sandwich with a head-net on:))

We got the expected rain on the way back

They caught grayling again

We had to swim in the lake next morning, though it was very-very cold.

Our floatplane arrived exactly at 12 pm

Lower Paradise Lake Cabin

The pilot fueled at his base and returned to pick us up

Meanwhile the new residents arrived. She told us that this is her 12th time there..

Moose Pass and the base down there next to the bridge

The pilot told us that there was a fatal accident on the previous day with a floatplane (the pilot was an inexperienced floatplane pilot)

A video showing the landing!!! (mpg, 17.5M, 1:43)