7/31/03 - Fly In
I love sleeping in tents. Marie and I have a warm, snug nest in two sleeping bags zipped together. (Marie may disagree - she was a little cold.) Every time I wake up it is light to some degree. After an early morning and travel in various conveyances I sleep well.
Up at 6:30. Perfectly clear. Beautiful light. Cold: 45 deg.
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We re-pack again, trying to make two loads where each team could spend the night separate. Sean and I fly directly to the Sheenjek to build the boats while Marie and Billie fly to Arctic village on a scheduled flight so that they have a shorter bush plane leg. We plan to take the two canoes in the first load so Sean and I can put them together while Kirk goes to get M and B. When Kirk shows up he immediately nixes the two boats in first load plan.
We take off and circle Fort Yukon. Kirk shows us the slough that will take us in near the airport.
We cross the Yukon Flats. This is where the last 5 days of our paddle will be. There are sparse, skinny trees with brush between. I can see signs of old watercourses all over the place. There are small meandering streams, there are crescent lakes, there are crescent meadows, and there are crescent stands of trees. Kirk says that all the flats have been a water course at sometime.
We fly several hundred feet up. Puffy clouds another hundred feet above us.
Ahead hills rise up toward the clouds. We fly over a broad pass about 20 ft above the trees and not too far below the clouds. Hills open up before us. I see some smoke and ask about that. It is the remains of a fire started by lightening a couple months ago. We then fly over the burn which covers most of a valley.
We now drop into the Sheenjek valley and fly up the river. It fairly small and braided. Looks very benign.
Kirk spots some caribou tracks, which he says is unusual for this time of year. L after he sees a bear and circles back around so we can get a look at it. A grizzle, very brown, running away from the plane.
When ever Kirk circles the plane banks about 40 deg. Or, depending on your frame of reference, the world tilts wildly. Out one window the ground rushes past and out the other clouds. The horizon is visible only looking straight forward. He does this again to show us an old grave site on the top of a hill.
We fly over a camp with three tents. Kirk tells us that he is going to drop another party on the Sheenjek 2 days after us. They are taking longer than we to do the same trip. We'll probably never see them.
The landing strip is a short gravel scar running up an alluvial fan. Kirk passes over it once then lines up and lands. before too long Sean and I are standing next to a pile of gear watching Kirk take off. The weather is none too good so I figure there is a chance we won't see Marie and Billie until tomorrow.
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Sean and I assemble my canoe then scout for a camp site. Before we start shuttling gear I stop to write Kirk a check (this is the most remote place I've spent money). when I'm just finish with that we hear a plane in the distance. A couple minutes later Marie and Billie are with us. Kirk is in a hurry to get unloaded and off before the weather closes him in. |
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Moving all our gear 1000ft to our camp site takes a couple hours. M and I walk down to the Sheenjek to look at the river proper. it's small and shallow.
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Rain sets in about 8pm as we go to bed. Rain through half the night. I sleep very deeply.