Crosswinds… Almost Didn’t Happen

Kevin and I planned our annual burbot fishing trip to Crosswinds to start on March 12. The end of April and start of March was when the Covid seriousness kicked in. On March 4, I was pulled from daily duties as the Manager of Accreditation and tasked as the Liaison to all state-wide Tribal Health Organizations (THO) for Covid-19 Preparedness and Response. The next day, I was requested to deploy to California to staff an incident command for incoming international flights. Luckily, my new assignment as the state THO Liaison meant I was “mission critical” to ANMC and Alaska, so I was effectively deemed unavailable to deploy.

The deployment would have certainly resulted in our annual Crosswinds trip being cancelled, however, the trip still occurring was questionable due to my new Liaison role just beginning. Luckily, the Incident Commander was very kind by allowing me to get a backup trained and to fill in during the trip.

Kevin understood that the trip had a chance of getting cancelled. We didn’t know for sure that it was going to happen until the day before. His wife is a USPHS Officer too, so he knows about my potential conflicts with disasters and deployments.

Crosswinds happened… thank goodness. I needed a break from the crazy amount of stress and hectic work schedule (more about that in the next entry).

This year we made it to the parking lot without any truck issues.

The trail into crosswinds was in the best condition we have ever seen. The bumps and heaves were almost nonexistent, which made for fast traveling. This was likely the result of the large amount of snow we got over the winter. Speaking of snow, this was also the deepest we have had to dig to get to ice for the base of our tent. If you want a good workout, try digging a 12 foot by 12 foot area of snow that is three feet deep!

After setting up the tent, we put up our burbot jigging tent and tip ups. I had the idea to try and create a tip up alerting system. I rigged a trip wire system to fireworks hoping to hear and see a spectacular alarm that a fish was biting. Well, the system worked great in the garage, but they failed miserably in the field. Back to the drawing board!

After everything was setup, it was getting close to burbot jigging time. We settled in for a night of drinking and fishing. We weren’t disappointed, the fishing was good and beverages were tasty!

The days were spent looking for lake trout. We seem to do this every year, with new lures, tactics, and hopes, but continue to fail to connect on a lake trout of any size. I’m beginning to think that only stunted lake trout live in Crosswinds Lake.

The weather on this trip was not too good. It was often cloudy, windy, and rather cold. Temperatures were too cold to keep the burbot from freezing. Ideally, we would catch the burbot, prevent them from freezing whole, and then fillet them in the field. That is not possible when the temperature drops well below zero. The poor weather also meant cloudy skies the entire time. This made northern lights gazing impossible.

I recently added an underwater camera to my ice fishing arsenal. When it’s used in clear water, it’s amazing! Ideally we could drop it down to the lake trout fishing depths (up to 80 feet), but unfortunately it gets too dark and dirty that deep. We were limited to using it during that day at our burbot jigging hole. Regardless, we were able to capture some really cool footage of burbot and lake trout. The format of these videos is a little odd, so if the videos aren’t included below, it’s because I couldn’t figure out how to convert the format.

Kevin and I both ended up with our desired amounts of fish. Little did I know at the time, but social distancing recommendations would result in the annual April fish fry not occurring.

On the drive there we saw 8 moose in a group by the river. This was my attempt to take a picture from my phone while driving. You can see four of them.

Matanuska glacier on a sunny, winter day.

The crater we had to dig.

The reason for the crater.

Funny story... Kevin woke up and looked at the corner of the tent and saw this... it's my coat hanging up. In his morning daze, he though I was standing there just staring him and he asked me what I was doing. After I responded from my cot, he freaked out and then realized it wasn't me.