Slept in until 10 AM, much needed sleep as we only slept four hours the night before. Gotta love night shift and it’s perpetual jet-lag. But the skies were blue-bird and the day was promising and warm! We were packed up and back on the highway by 11 AM, setting up our packs to look all pretty when the first pickup came around the corner. I stuck out my thumb and the truck immediately pulled over. Two hunting guides had just dropped off their client after a successful Dall sheep hunt and they were heading back to camp. Which milepost where we looking to get to, they asked. I hadn’t thought about what milepost number we were starting at, I knew the name of the creek but not the milepost number. I scanned the map for a quick guesstimate, about milepost 228. Their camp was at milepost 223, they would drive us to 228.
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| Crossing the middle fork Koyukuk River |
We hopped into the back seat and chatted with the two interesting guys, one from Seward and the other from Gunnison, Colorado. They showed us a picture of the massive Dall sheep their client had shot followed by a photo of the huge caribou the Colorado man had shot himself with his compound bow a few weeks earlier. We also talked about the fact that Grizzlies of the north are smaller than their salmon-fed cousins of the south but are more aggressive. Hmmm. We eventually reached milepost 228 when I realize we were being dropped off at the mouth of Koyuktuvuk creek, seven miles south of my original planned entry. The guides were generous enough to drive us five miles past their camp already, therefore, I didn’t want to ask for another seven miles, especially with the cost of gas up here. We were also just really anxious to get started. So we gladly took the drop off point knowing it would add seven miles of hiking to our initial itinerary. We started hiking at noon, immediately getting our feet wet crossing the Middle Fork Koyukuk River. (Our shoes never dried out for the rest of the trip.)
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| Hiking up Koyuktuvuk creek |
Walking up Koyuktuvuk Creek we immediately started seeing caribou antlers scattered around as well as many bear and caribou tracks. Wolf tracks were the most numerous ones, going in all different directions. Clouds started to gather on the peaks throughout the rest of the afternoon, occasionally spitting a raindrop or two. By 6:30pm we found a flat spot in the tundra across from the low pass we originally had planned to come over from the highway. We enjoyed dinner along the river below our campsite.
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| Hiking up the Koyuktuvuk creek |
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| Camp |
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