Pics From the Earliest Days of Heli Ski/Fish in the Tordrillos

More than a decade and a half ago Mike Overcast started the Kings and Corn adventure trip with Tommy Moe, Jeremy Nobis, and eight friends who just couldn’t get enough of the outdoors. A lot has changed since then, including the name.  We’re now calling it Cast & Carve because of trademark reasons.

Here’s a letter from Mike that he wanted to share with the Tordrillo Mountain Lodge guests.

From Mike Overcast: It’s been 15 years since we started the Kings and Corn adventure trip. It all started with 8 friends, Moe, Nobis, and myself. The idea (and that’s all it was) was to fly out to a remote lodge and find corn snow to ski and kings to slay with a B model jet ranger. The price was 2500.00 p.p., and that just paid for the machine and the lodging. We had 8 barrels of fuel and a lot of motivation. It was a great trip and marked the first heli skiing ever in the Tordrillo mountains. The next summer we came back with an A-star and really got busy with it. The discovery continued as we pioneered much of the terrain to the north and the south of Finger Lake (Winter Lake Lodge). All told, Moe, Nobis and Myself guided 6 years of “Kings and Corn” from this location and logged 50+ runs in the surrounding mountains.

It was 2004 when we were skiing way out from the lodge that we looked down upon Judd Lake and knew we needed to look into what was below us in the distance. What we found was the Judd Lake Lodge. We bought it! We gained the ultimate location for the range. Not only was it central to the best terrain for Alaska heli skiing, it was the headwaters to the best king salmon fishing in South Central Alaska. Looking back at all the years we have run the trip, the best things about it are our guests. Some have returned for the pilgrimage numerous times and many have ventured out with us in the winter. To all of our guests – thank you! Thank you very much!

The Tordrillo Mountain Lodge (our Lodge) has officially named the trip “Cast & Carve.” It’s all the same crew as the trip formally known as Kings & Corn, but trade mark issues have forced us to rename our annual trip. We look forward to the coming sessions. We have great sponsors for equipment and great guests on the roster. Another king run is on the way and the corn snow should be excellent considering all the snow we received this winter. Here’s to another 15 years!