Outdoors/Adventure

Photos: Salmon return to Chester Creek

Downstream from Wellness Drive in the heart of Anchorage's busy and ever-expanding University-Medical District, the city's most abused creek was showing signs of healing itself this fall.

In the greenbelt behind the Providence Alaska Medical Center, where Chester Creek was left intact and undisturbed within its natural channel, coho salmon seemed to be everywhere. By threes and fours or half-dozens, spawning fish worked the gravels in the riffles at the ends of the many deep pools where the clear water meandered through the cottonwood and spruce forest.

Blown-down trees reminiscent of wilderness Alaska creeks hung across the swirling water in many places and woody debris filled a creek between banks untrampled by human feet. But the volume of litter in the woods and the human flotsam on the water made it clear this was not your normal Cook Inlet tributary.

Read more: Silver salmon stage a revival in urban Chester Creek

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