In late October of 1963, Don Hunter Sr. and Nick Andrew Sr. were coming back from a seal hunting trip on the coast. They had 13 seals on board the boat. The two had to get back to Marshall fast because it was cold and the river was just about to freeze up.

"Right below Mountain Village we had to go through some 20 foot high waves and it was scary because all we had was a little plywood boat," Nick said. "We had to climb the biggest waves to look for the smaller waves because on top of the big waves we were able to see all over the river.

Another problem Don and Nick had to deal with was ice building up on the bottom of the boat. The temperature was around freezing and the river had some ice floating in it. Whenever ice built up on the bottom of their boat they had to ride over some floating ice to scrape the ice off from underneath.

By the time Don and Nick were around Takchak there was even more ice on the river which made it very difficult for them to ride on the river.

"We were lucky there was a bunch of people on the beach below Marshall. They pulled the boat up as soon as we landed with everything in it, including Don and me. If they hadn't been there we would have had a hard time unloading the boat and the ice would probably have pulled it down the river before we could've done anything about it."

By: Nick Andrew

Interviewed by: Chris Fitka