When analyzing the weather forecast before heading out, I noted the worst weather was expected for Sunday night and Monday. We set up camp early last night to prevent pitching a tent in a downpour and we were expecting to spend the entire day in the tent today. It did rain hard all morning, allowing us to sleep until 11 AM. But by the time we fully woke up, the clouds had lifted higher and the rain had let up. We decided to make some miles while we could, considering we were already behind schedule with our unsuccessful evening of hitching and our unexpected seven-mile addition. We started walking by 12:15 PM, no grizzly bear in sight. We hiked another mile downstream before determining Itkillik was full enough to float. One-mile-per-hour walking or Four-mile-per-hour floating???? We put our setup together and were floating by 2:30 PM, reaching our take out three and a half miles downstream within the hour.
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| Looking back towards Itkillik from our climb towards Summit Lake |
At this point in our trip, we were hoping to make a side foray to check out Thunder Valley by floating a few miles downstream then backtracking to our route. However, the clouds were still socked in the mountains with rain on and off and, already being so behind on our itinerary, we decided to pass and come back another time. Instead, we pulled out of the creek, packed up our gear, and started walking up the valley towards Summit Lake and the headwaters of the North Fork Koyukuk. The clouds started to part, allowing for some sun to shine through, enough for us to dry out some our gear during a snack break. There were many, many large caribou antlers littered across the valley floor, sticking up out of the ground like white boney hands or fingers waving as we slowly made our way by. There must have been 50 or so in this valley alone, some of them 4 feet in length!
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| Mat is 6'2" |
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| Caribou antlers |
We crossed back over the continental divide at Summit Lake. We noted a small cabin along the lake edge but it looked rather decrepit and it wasn’t raining so we decided to hike a little bit more and pitched the tent below a pack a Dall sheep high up on the slopes. We had a nice breeze when we stopped at 7:30 PM so we set out all our gear to dry. But quickly a thick, damp fog rolled in and got a number of our gear wet again. Oh well, time for bed.
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| Approaching Summit Lake |
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