We had set the alarm for 6:00AM in preparation for a long day of hiking to the landing strip and we awoke to rain falling hard. Clouds came in overnight and it never stopped raining. We ate our breakfast in bed and the rain let off enough to allow us to finish packing up by 8:00AM. Unfortunately, the river wasn't much lower than yesterday. We attempted to cross the river twice but it was too high and swift for the tallest of us. We decided to go up river to find a safe place to cross. The fog moved in and it started to rain again as we trekked 2.5 miles upstream to a great low and slow place to cross. Our last obstacle was done, now to pound out 15 miles!!
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| Rain while we break camp |
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| A safe place to cross 2.5 miles upstream |
It rained hard all day and the clouds had socked in to the valley floor so we really couldn't see the mountains surrounding us. The temperature was in the low 40s so we couldn't really stop hiking if we wanted to stay warm. There were many side streams to cross, one or two of them rather big, but all were doable. The walking was quite easy, some spots of muskeg tussock but most of the time it was a firm tundra; the pretty little cream flower called Mountain Aven grew in these areas and was the best indicator for solid tundra walking. Didn't see any animals except for the occasional arctic Tern and a brown songbird. We did come across a set of caribou antlers which had a gnarly front tines, very cool looking.
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| Matt, Krista, and Rob walking along a swollen Jago River |
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| Crazy tines on this caribou! |
We finally came upon the landing strip around 5:00PM, rain still pouring down. We set up camp quickly then settled in to warm up. The rain stopped as soon as everyone was inside their tents. The clouds even lifted a little allowing us to see scraps of the mountains surrounding us. We rigged up a communal clothesline to allow our stuff to dry out in the cold breeze as we ate. Called Kirk around 9:00PM, he said two other groups in a different drainage have been waylaid for a couple of days so he's planning on picking them up first before attempting to pick us up. We are to call him about 11:00AM tomorrow to check in with an update. That's fine by us, the original plan was to be picked up at 6:00AM so we were more than happy to sleep in after our long day! We'll see though, the clouds seem awfully thick to be clear enough for an early pick-up.
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| Finally made it to camp along the airstrip |
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