I had flown west through Merrill Pass on my way from Anchorage, Alaska, to the Stony River country and needed to set up a tent camp on one of the small gravel bars along the Swift River, a tributary of the larger Stony. The camp would be used during an upcoming trophy moose hunt for one of our German clients. After making an exhaustive survey of the river’s meager bars, I finally found one that was suitable for the campsite. After landing and setting up the tent camp, I took off and was flying along the southern slopes of the Neacola Mountains, trying to spot a really large bull moose.
As I was flying around the north end of Caribou Mountain, I spotted a big bull coming down a wide draw above the isolated peak. He would move out of that draw, and it was now up to me to find a place to land on Caribou Mountain and to erect a spike camp, one from which we could hunt in a couple more days. The only place I could find on the low, tundra-covered mountainside was a relatively steep ridge marching up its northern slope. With the large 25-by-11-by-4-inch tundra tires that the Super Cub wore, I knew I could safely put it down in the deep moss, tundra and grass of that ridge.
