8/5/03 - Windy Day.
Over cast in the morning but there is a band of clear sky north of us. After breakfast the wind rises from the north and soon the clouds are all pushed south.
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Winday day on the gravel bar. |
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It is a tail wind. If it was a head wind we may not be paddling at all. But any wind, even a tail wind, makes maneuvering difficult. And with all these bends any wind is inevitably a head wind at times.
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| Beautiful light all day. We stay in the canoes fairly long and make good progress. We camp on river left, in the forest above a high bank. The forest reminds me a lot of the forest north of Lake Superior where my Grandfather had a cabin on lake Kabenung. Sparse trees, floor covered with moss and lichen. There is not much flat ground to finding tent sites is difficult. We tent near a lake and kitchen in a meadow. No bugs so we are just out in the meadow in glorious light. |
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8/6/03 - Long Day
Up at 7, on the river by 9:30. Cold day with steely gray sky. The river drops a lot through this section and there are many Class I "rapids". Nothing tricky, but we have to have the canoes in the right part of the river or we'll hit rocks or ground.
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Hot lunch at 1. We are in a short section of river that crosses the corner of a map which we do not have.
Reach the junction with the east fork of the Sheenjek at 4:20. It is a clear flowing river. We paddle briefly in it's water and enjoy seeing the bottom.
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Not far south of the confluence a small channel departs the main river to the left and we take it. It is fast and somewhat shallow, but more intimate. At one bend I see a small creek entering from the left. We paddle up that a short distance to a beaver dam.
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The side channel goes much further than I expected. It forks and we take the smaller left branch. Now this is the limit of what we really can float and we both run aground several times. We have to line canoes over shallows to get back into the main channel. But it was much more interesting than the main channel.
We camp on a gravel bar a little further on. We are maybe 4-5 miles up from Eagle Creek.
We have been pushing for longer days so that we don't fall behind. We are all worried that the lower river is going to be slow going and hard work. We still have a long ways to go. I could use a rest day, but no one wants to take one until we know we have the time to spare.
So we are moving pretty fast. We were in the upper valley a couple days ago, now we are not. This section is very beautiful too - gentile sloped hills covered with pine forest. But tomorrow we'll be gone. I'll never come back to any of these valleys and part of me hates to leave them. I felt the same way on the Noatak
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Canoeing is a different way to see the land. Always moving, covering a lot of ground. A pace somewhere between walking, which is quite slow, and the car, which is much faster. I have to get used to the idea of being in the canoe, on the river, watching the nature of the land change around me.
8/7/03 - Chutes and Ladders.
The day starts out with more sweepers and rapids than yesterday. We stop for lunch and afterward find that the difficulty has gone up again. Now the river has many fast chanels from which we must choose our route, often very quickly.
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8/8/03 - Down Hill
We see wolf, black bear, then wolf. The river is more mellow but constantly droping away from us with plenty of powerful bend.
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Dinner is Lentils & rice with cheese bread.