One of the first hikes i did with Fisher was to this place called something like Gold Cord Lake. It's a pretty lake near Independence Mine that is not hard to get to. The second time i went there, i brought my dad. We were caught in a violent mountain thunderstorm while we were at the lake. We found one large boulder with one side leaning out just far enough to protect you from the rain if the wind was in your favor. It wasn't comfortable though, because in order for it to just barely protect you, you had to cram your back up against it and hunch over so our heads were nearly on our knees.
No shelter up here in a storm.
There was heavy hail and lightning all over the peaks around us for about 25 minutes. Fisher had never seen lightning (or hail probably). He was only two years old at the time, and lightning used to be a very rare occurrence in Alaska. It scared him to death, and he kept trying to burrow under my butt, backwards, to hide from it. He was permanently traumatized, and on the way back, lightning was still striking down the valley where the storm had moved. Every time it struck he would freeze in his tracks, drop his head and look back at us terrified. A side effect of that trip was that he absolutely hates fireworks, and will fight them to the death.
Here he has found a groundsquirrel burrow. Nowadays he has to lay down and try to dig it out with just one paw at a time.
Fisher had his leg removed in March, and by July he was doing much better. I was really depressed about not doing any hiking with him but by July i thought i'd give him a test and take him back to that lake as a sort of a "new" first hike together. It gains a couple of hundred feet of elevation but is only about 1/2 a mile, so i figured he could handle it, and handle it he did. He was pretty stressed, and although a new trail had been built since our last visit he still kind of sketched out on a couple of the uneven stacked rock areas. He made it to the top though, and after laying down to rest for about 10 minutes he got up and started hunting down groundsquirrels. It had been hard but he had a good time.
Over the next two months Fisher's strength, endurance and agility increased remarkably. By the second half of September i decided to take him to the mountains once more. This time we went up Archangel Valley to one of my favorite spots called Lane Hut. It's about two miles of hiking gradually up hill, requires a small stream crossing, and is a rough trail at times. We were surprised to get there just as the skies cleared after a snow storm. The whole second half of the hike was through fresh muddy snow, but this time Fisher did great. Even though he ran well off the trail to sniff out prey, he still had plenty of energy at the end of the hike. At only one point did i have to help him, up rocks that were high enough to require even a human to use all four appendages.
September snow in the mountains.
That was a very uplifting experience because Fisher proved he could return to the mountains and have fun in his favorite environment from time to time. I still wouldn't trust bringing him across a river where he'd have to swim in a current, as he has enough trouble crossing shallower boulder filled streams. Plus, Maree says he can't swim in a straight line anymore
Just a few miles downvalley it was still a beautiful fall day. He still has potentially dangerous problems when trying to cross rocky streams full of wet boulders, deep water and strong currents.
Another month and Fisher had learned to run fast again. I decided to take him for another first. I took him up to the snowy valley where he spent his last day with four legs. We had the eighth coldest October on record (yay!) and that morning it was 10 degrees. As we walked down a secondary trail towards the bottom of the valley we spotted a large furry dog coming up the trail a ways off. Upon a second look though, i noticed some weird things about the dog. It seemed to be hobbling down the trail with it's tail tucked way between it's legs and it's rump hunched over. It had extreme body posturing and i didn't understand why it was doing it. The dog veered off the trail as Fisher approached from 40 yards away. Something was just really weird about the way that dog was acting. Then i had a massive revelation about what was going on in the world that cold sunny day, and i started screaming at Fisher to come back. The other dog wasn't acting like a normal dog because it wasn't a dog, it was a wolf, and it was luring Fisher into a potentially deadly trap.
We had a particularly long cold winter with very little snowfall (at least very little snowfall until the end of spring, when we had insane amounts of snow) I had no idea, but wolves bodies are shaped for cutting through deep snow. Normally down this far south they prey on moose during the winter months. They go find a moose and chase it around in the deep snow. A big barrel chested animal like a moose uses a ton of energy plowing through snow, and the wolves take advantage of that fact, chasing the moose until it's exhausted enough that they can take it down. With no snow the moose can run away for longer and is more likely to be able to fight them off. Lack of snow last winter put a lot of stress on the wolves. But wolves are smart, and they developed new methods for finding meals.
Taken on October 28th, Fisher is looking quite healthy again and his fur's grown back.
Last winter i read of several instances in the paper of wolves setting traps. They would find some thick cover near a human trail, then have one member of the pack go out as bait. When someone came by walking their dog, the bait wolf would get it's attention and lure the unsuspecting pet into the bushes, where it would be quickly finished off by the hidden pack.
I feared that the wolf was luring Fisher into just such a trap. It was "overacting" to appear nondangerous and submissive, hobbling along in a way that just looked fake to me, and also always managing to maintain it's lead over Fisher. It had many options but was choosing to lead him right into a particularly thick grove of dwarf mountain evergreens. The trees were off the edge of a switchback, so lurking wolves would have a good view both up and down the trail.
When Fisher got about 6 feet away he must have realized he wasn't dealing with dog, and assuming a defensive stance started barking viciously at the wolf. The wolf turned on him but when i caught up it darted into those trees. Fisher was alright, i never saw them make contact. I had an eerie feeling about that trail, so we turned around. Plenty of other places to go.
