 Expedition Journal--July 28Alex PerryI'll begin by saying I missed writing yesterday for a very good reason. To make up for lost mileage caused by the extreme weather conditions the day before, we decided to attempt hiking nine miles to the originally planned camp spot. We all got up at 6 a.m. and broke camp around 8:30 a.m. We had two large stream crossings which I thoroughly enjoyed, and to add to the fun, the river and the streams had all risen 6 inches to a foot due to the storm, which in turn made the fording all the more hairy and exciting. I felt that we made extremely good time, arriving (very tired and hungry, but happy nonetheless) in camp about 5:30 p.m. We ate Italian pizza, which Cleve helped me to make: It turned out wonderfully. We fell asleep about 11 p.m., after having cooked on wet wood--which is a time-consuming process--and Cleve taught us some great tips on how to keep fires down to a minimum impact. Aside from the fact that I am in one of the only remaining true wilderness areas in the world, nothing really eventful took place. Oh yeah, except for stumbling across a recent grizzly kill of a moose. And perhaps Jess sighting a black bear. Right now, we are on a huge beautiful gravel bar in the middle of a gorgeous basin carved by glacier and marked by the convergence of three large bodies of water. As we trekked through forests of alders and spruce, we saw an infinite number of moose, caribou, grizzly, black bear, and even Dall's sheep tracks. This place is magical, filled with the myriad signs of life this ecosystem supports. I love this place.
Rachel Flood We were very lazy this morning and didn't get out of camp until noon. Right away we had to do a stream crossing that left us all with wet feet. We had planned to stay low and walk along the river. This was not possible as the river was too deep to walk in and the shore was steep and rocky. Once again, we were in the situation where the only place to go was up. This is becoming a way too frequent predicament. I would classify this particular incline as the most difficult yet. It was so steep that when I stood up straight, the face of the mountain was right in front of my nose. I did not stand up straight often though because the weight on my back had a tendency to make me lean back a little more than I was comfortable with. It was very scary. I don't think it was something that my mother would be pleased to see me doing. Once we got up that, things improved a lot. The rest of the day went smoothly. When we reached camp, we dropped our packs and went around to check things out. When we came back to the gravel bar there were bear tracks on top of the tracks we had made our first time through. No run-ins yet. Then again, how could there be? We are so noisy yelling "Hey Bear" that we scare everything (including the bears) away. I suppose this is good. It is safe. Yet part of the reason I wanted to come to Alaska was to see some wildlife.
Vanessa Bacher
|
