Wolf pack hanging around
Last week I saw a pack cross the road maybe 200 yards in front of me, then saw them again this afternoon as I was taking the dogs down off the mountain for exercise. We were gone maybe an hour and coming back I stopped to say hi to a buddy down the mountain, and the wolves started howling. It was that deep penetrating howl that makes your arm hairs stand up, and I told him watch out, I’ve seen them twice in 2 weeks.
Pretty neat, we have new apex predators until the bears wake up.
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Did you really mean 92 feet of snow in your post the other day or was that 9.2 feet ? What part of Alaska are you in ? We have wolves here too but I haven’t heard them . Sw Montana .
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Wow. Startling to see them. Awesome to hear them howl.
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Yep 92 feet for the season, the ski resort got 68 feet in 94 days. Luckily it packs and melts as the season progresses or we’d be living in tunnels. Live near Anchorage, south central Alaska.
SW Montana, so you know all about deep snow. My grandad was head ranger in Yellowstone in the 30s and I have photos of him shoveling off the roofs in his shirtsleeves with 4’ thick slabs cut off lying beneath the eaves all around.
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People about 3/4 mile away have a Big huge white wolf chained up with a log chain and when coyotes start yelping that wolf will howl and the yotes shut up. I can just imagine them male yotes saying to each other, be quite, he might come up here and take our women away..
I feel sorry for the constantly chained up Wolf.
I could not keep an animal like that constantly chained.
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I took a Ski trip to Crested Butte, CO. in 1995. Stayed with former co-workers at their house on the Mountain, that now worked for the Ski Resort. (12,500') elevation. Their neighborhood had HUGE snow banks on either side of the road. Snow up to 2nd floor windows. We had pretty much a Tunnel/Chute if you went out the front door. Everybody pretty much went out through the back.
Crews working pretty much around the clock shoveling snow off peoples roofs, (Badly seeking more workers.) unless you were smart enough to have a really steep pitched metal roof so snow would slide off.
If you Ski, and you've never been there, you need to. Like Chugach, AK. They host the extreme Ski Competition/Championship all the time. No Off Limits/Out of Bounds. (The Banana Couliar) One of the toughest runs in the lower 48. Get off at the top lift, hike up to the top, carrying your skis (around 14'K) moguls the size of VW's, in a super tight narrow steeply pitched chute. If your a solid Black ◇◇ Skier - you've gotta try it at least once.
Extremely Humbling - I don't care how good you are.
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Here in Southeast Idaho, a pack started looping through near my sister in laws place this winter and she trapped a big black male and a grey female.
So proud of her.
Hoping she pinches the toes on a few more before March 31.
Mule
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Also, I see this morning in the ADN (Alaska Daily News) a slide got 3 guys in the Chugach.
Avalanche danger is super high here in the inter mountain West now also.
Mule
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Crazy thing, that was on Bear Mountain, out at Boy Scout camp. Not really even outside the city limits.
I teach emergency preparedness and outdoor survival and I'm constantly beating into the boys' minds the things to watch out for. Problem is, they hear stories like "just float on your back in the snow and do the backstroke and you'll survive any avalanche". So we had a BIG slide off of Bold Peak one winter up at Eklutna lake, it pretty much peeled the side of the mountain off and came clear down to the lake edge. In the spring I took the boys up there for a mtn bike ride and we stopped at the slide. The snow was gone and there were entire trees tangled and piled up maybe 50 feet high, and hundreds of yards across. You could see standing trunks everywhere broken off 40 or 50 feet up, pointing downhill. I asked them "you still think you're going to backstroke your way out of that?"
THAT made an impression.
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Smoke a pack a day!
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Un fortunately CO voted to reintroduce the Canadian wolf... the proponents spent millions of dollars (mostly out of state money) to make it happen... 😖
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Yeah those people have never gone toe to toe with wolves in the outdoors. These are not furry puppy dogs with big bushy tails.
We were coming home late one cold winter night and my wife heard "Arrroooo-whimper-whimper" in the woods beside the road. She was pretty sure it was a dog that got hit, and it was suffering. I thought otherwise. So we got home, I put on my deep snow gear and headed down over the side of the mountain. It was maybe 1/4 mile from our house. I got across the clearing into the trees and heard it again, "arrroooo-whimper-whimper" coming from ahead to the right. So I changed direction and went that way. Another 50 yards or so, waist deep snow, my headlamp wasn't seeing anything. Then I heard it, "arrroooo-whimper-whimper" to the left this time. So I turned back that direction, kept going, another 50 yards, nothing. It was tough going, then I heard the sound behind me. "Arrroooo-bark-whimper" and I turned to go back, and something caught my eye. I looked out to the right and my headlamp picked out all these big dog tracks in big arcs out there between the trees around my position. I looked to the left and sure enough there were a bunch over there too. The b@stages were herding me away from my house. So screw that, I backtracked where I'd already come, to make it easier going and all the while they were behind me going "arrroooo-whimper-bark" on the left, then again on the right. I got back to my garage soaked in sweat at -30F and those buggers stayed down in those woods all night howling and barking and chasing around.
They're smart animals. Probably smarter than me.
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Nanuq907: 31514918018971/comments/31514956484251
Yeah those people have never gone toe to toe with wolves in the outdoors. These are not furry puppy dogs with big bushy tails.
We were coming home late one cold winter night and my wife heard "Arrroooo-whimper-whimper" in the woods beside the road. She was pretty sure it was a dog that got hit, and it was suffering. I thought otherwise. So we got home, I put on my deep snow gear and headed down over the side of the mountain. It was maybe 1/4 mile from our house. I got across the clearing into the trees and heard it again, "arrroooo-whimper-whimper" coming from ahead to the right. So I changed direction and went that way. Another 50 yards or so, waist deep snow, my headlamp wasn't seeing anything. Then I heard it, "arrroooo-whimper-whimper" to the left this time. So I turned back that direction, kept going, another 50 yards, nothing. It was tough going, then I heard the sound behind me. "Arrroooo-bark-whimper" and I turned to go back, and something caught my eye. I looked out to the right and my headlamp picked out all these big dog tracks in big arcs out there between the trees around my position. I looked to the left and sure enough there were a bunch over there too. The b@stages were herding me away from my house. So screw that, I backtracked where I'd already come, to make it easier going and all the while they were behind me going "arrroooo-whimper-bark" on the left, then again on the right. I got back to my garage soaked in sweat at -30F and those buggers stayed down in those woods all night howling and barking and chasing around.
They're smart animals. Probably smarter than me.
Jeez they were definitely hunting you.
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That's a little spooky Nanuq.
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figured you took a gun to dispatch the " wounded dog " , why didn't you just shoot the wolves?????
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Nanuq907, your stories make my heart ACHE for Alaska. If I had any writing skills I would love to relay some stories of my life there. Alaska is not a place, it is a life altering experience.
I miss it daily.
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hillbille: 31514918018971/comments/31514956793499
figured you took a gun to dispatch the " wounded dog " , why didn't you just shoot the wolves?????
He never seen 'em.
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Exactly, never even saw an eye reflecting my headlamp back. Talk about smart.
A couple summers ago I was coming down off Mt Baldy with the dogs heading home and we stopped to catch our breath (at least I did). I looked back and saw two big wolves come down the same trail we’d just used. They stopped and stared maybe 40 yards away then dropped down into the trees below the trail. I glanced down at my two then looked back as 2 more wolves popped out. I glanced down and one of mine was gone. I looked around and she was flat gone. Must have gone down into the woods to check out the other dogs? So I trotted back up my trail to where they’d been, jacked a round into the Mossberg, and followed them down their trail. Pretty quick I heard snarling and my dog shrieking as they went by left to right down in the trees. Mine sounded like she was being eviscerated and I couldn’t see a thing, the woods are really close up there. The sound abruptly ended and I figured they’d got her, so I stood there listening hard. Then I heard something running toward me and caught peripheral movement, dropped and turned, bringing the Mossberg up level. It was my dog, she ran in between my legs, shaking uncontrollably, covered in slime and foamy drool. They set up that barking and howling again downhill from me, sounded like they were 40 feet away and I couldn’t see a thing through the trees. My dog is pretty small and agile, she must have been darting between trees trying to stay ahead, and they couldn’t quite get their jaws on her. She was a mess, missing patches of hair, and I kept that Mossberg leveled all the way back to the house.
That was 1/2 a mile from my front door. Damned wolves are going to find me in a disagreeable mood one of these days.
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