It will be just over an hour flight to reach the drop point. Andra seemed a bit concerned about me making it to the camp and as it turned out neither Rob nor I would.

The small plane had such great lift we literally took off in about 100ft of runway. Everything looks good, but it just wasn't meant to be. As Rob and I approached the mountains, the clouds came right down on top of them. There was just no way to get through. We turned around and headed back to the airport. Imagine Andra's surprise when I walked through the door of the lodge after just over two hours. We waited two hours and made another attempt, but failed again. After several more hours, we made a third attempt. It looked good at the start, but as we got within just a couple of miles of Dave and George, the clouds were closing in. Rob just couldn't believe it. In every direction we looked, the weather was great, with one exception.

Before giving up, Rob wanted to follow the Aniak River and see if we could hop over to the Kipchuk. The valley holding the Aniak had only a few wisps of clouds, but we were concerned the clouds would close in on us. As we continued up the Aniak it didn't look hopeful, but when we got within one mile of the drop point, we could see a semi clear spot across a small valley to the Kipchuk. Rob turned into the narrow valley and within less than a minute we could see the gravel bar with Dave and George out fishing. Rob said "I hope they see us," as they were standing on his runway. Dave and George quickly reeled in their lines and got clear as we dropped in to land. Rob told me to be prepared to jump out and unload quickly. He was concerned the weather would close in before he had a chance to bring Andra out. We had all the gear out of the plane in minutes and Rob disappeared back through the small gap in the clouds. The weather on the Kipchuk River was actually significantly nicer than the surrounding area.

Now it was my turn to wait more than 2 hours for Andra's arrival.