We slept in fairly late but the sun was out shining between the clouds. We packed up and immediately got our feet wet crossing the river. Apparently, we camped right along a nice wide braid in the river, the best spot to cross! We spent the day walking up the Teklanika river bed, keeping an eye out for bears. We spotted one caribou running up the river bed. It smelled us, ran a huge loop around us, and then continued running up river. Towards the head of the drainage system, we spotted our first grizzly bear, a single bear about a quarter mile away grazing in the grass and willow thickets. It was upwind from us so it didn't know we were there. We watched it a while until it disappeared into the thickets and we continued on our way.
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| Morning river crossing |
We came upon the unnamed little creek that we needed to ascend to our pass into Refuge Valley. It was a steep little creek gorge without much room to camp or flat sandy spots. Although it was 1:00 PM, we decided to set up camp on the open, flat, sandy slope where the creek met the Teklanika. It worked out well because as soon as we set up our tent the afternoon clouds that were building all day decided to open up and drop rain. We took a nice afternoon nap while it rained and woke up to partly sunny skies again.
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| Teklanika river valley |
We decided to take an exploratory stroll up the main branch of the river to see what we could see. There were glacial moraines and exposed rock everywhere making for some interesting land features. As we neared the glaciers, we spotted two caribou heading down towards us. We were definitely walking along a caribou path as there were many tracks below our feet and, since we were downwind, we decided to hide behind a rock and see if they'd pass right by us! Well, the wily caribou gave us the slip, disappearing behind a large moraine mound. They must have headed up the other glacier to another pass. We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening lounging around camp.
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| Camp |
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