A new strip is christened

The story begins a few years ago when mike and I were toodling around over by Mt. Spur.  We were both in the 150's and mike found a marshy spot near the mountain to land.  He set down and mentioned it was a bit wet so I couldn't really muster the nerve to follow him in.  While circling around I found a little rollover nearby that looked nice and dry but the daylight was slipping away and my confidence wasn't really high that late in the day with a cold night ahead if the landing went poorly.  Fast forward to last Monday.  It was a splitter day with a light breeze and full views of all the big mountains.  I had a full day of cabin work planned but when I stopped by mikes cabin it was hard to resist a day of adventure when he proposed it.  After dumping off supplies at my cabin we winged our way north to the same spot as before looking to do some hiking.  Again mike landed in the marsh but found it was about twice as deep as it was last time.  As he struggled to get off the ground again, I went back up to check out my old spot.  The hill looked good and with a nice little headwind I touched down and rolled out to the other side to have a look at the length.  After mike freed his plane from the marsh he came over and joined me and we set off uphill toward Mt. Spur.  We followed drainage's up the slopes jumping ptarmigan and finding petrified wood at almost every step.  If you look above the planes in the picture you will see the right side of one of the knobs looks just like a gorilla face.  Gorilla strip is born.  Just like the Wrangells I can't stop thinking about this place, truly wild country.