It's over. We're in the Okpilak Valley, our gear is all spread out. The stove is cranking and the Stroganoff and mushrooms is on the way. A few mosquitos, but with just a little repellent they are not a bother. Our only obstacle now is crossing the river again to get to basecamp. We may actually survive this trip. Amazing.
Let me catch up with events so far . . .
We left basecamp August 1st about 4:00 pm with very heavy packs. The few supplies we didn't have with us we left in the food cache. Our first problem was crossing the river. We spent an hour or so trying to find the. most shallow spot. Finally we found a spot. It was still too deep and swift for my preferences but it was the best we could find. I had tried another spot just a few yards downstream that was more narrow but I had to turn back half way across because the water was too swift.
I went across first. I had my tennis shoes on and my boots strapped to my pack. I waded out about 15 feet without too much difficulty to a spot where the water was only a few inches deep. From there I had planned to angle downstream but now that route looked too swift. I decided instead to head slightly upstream to a small boulder I saw on the other side. I kept my eyes on that boulder because to look down toward my feet or at the water made me instantly dizzy. I go halfway there and the water was just over my knees and splashing to the top of my thighs. My feet were numb from the cold. I had trouble placing my ice ax due to the current. I started humming "feets don't fail me now." In a few minutes I was on the other side. And glad of it. I walked across the gravel bar and up on the grassy slope and watched Jack and Mike cross.
We hiked up the river about 3 miles and set up camp on a dry grassy spot near a clear stream. I slept like a rock.
We slept late on August 2nd, then got up and fixed some eggs and reloaded our packs. We hiked 8 miles to the fork of the Okpilak. I was bone-tired when we got there. Packs were just too heavy.
The walk from basecamp to the fork was very pleasant. Generally flat and grassy, without the large marshy areas we were accustomed to below basecamp. There are two major side streams. One is about 4 miles from basecamp and another about 3 miles from the fork. The first spreads out into several channels on a broad alluvial fan and was no obstacle to cross. The second stayed for the most part in a single channel and we spent a good deal of time crossing it.
We saw the same lame caribou that we had seen earlier as well as a calf. At the fork we saw another caribou as well as another animal from a long distance away. I think it was a bear. Mike thinks it was some kind of cat.
A few miles below the fork, the river narrows and cuts a canyon into the granite 40 or 50 feet deep in places. The gravel bed is not present. At the fork, the east fork has a narrow gravel bed and the west fork continues in a granite canyon, though only 15 or 20 feet deep. The gras is green and the. mountains are fabulous at the fork. A genuinely beautiful spot.
The wind blows from the north during the daytime in the valley and from the south in the evening. There is a period of an hour or so both in the morning and. in the evening when the wind is calm. This is the period when the mosquitos are their worst and it always seems to coincide with dinner time. In the late afternoons a flow level of clouds often moves in from the north. At basecamp this level looks to be 1,000 feet above us, but it gets close to the valley floor as you travel upstream until at the fork the could are only 100 feet or so off the river. The clouds pile up on the ridge between the forks before splitting and moving up both rivers. On the evening we arrived at the fork we watched a huge bank of fog come racing up the river towards us. We watched it move 4 miles in about 5 or 6 minutes and then continue just above our camp. At was quite an awesome sight.
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