Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Woke at 5:00AM to patches of blue sky. But after falling asleep for another couple hours, the clouds stacked up again and rain poured down once more. So once again a lazy start to the morning. Matt, Krista, and Rob decided to go for a day hike and took off around noon. Not too much later Matthew, in the cooking shelter with us, noticed Matt gesturing wildly in the distance. We pulled out the binoculars and scanned where they were looking. A wolverine was near the river bed! Unfortunately, it was walking around near where Mat had already dug himself a cathole, poor Mat had to finish his business with everyone's binoculars trained on his direction! It was neat to watch the wolverine though, he forded the river to the opposite side, not an easy feat for a critter of its size, and bounded up the hillside and continued upstream. Those suckers move fast! Matt was especially happy as he'd never seen a wolverine in the wild despite all his years of experience.

Wild wolverine

The wind started to pick up and the temperature dropped. We retired to our tents to stay warm. The winds kept shifting, first from the east, then after we were in our tents, it shifted from the north and collapsed our cooking shelter. Mat jumped out to set it up again but then the winds shifted from the west so he just left it down, rocks in place, covering the dry spot of tundra. Krista and Rob made it back and got into their tents to warm up, Matt was still out exploring a side canyon. By 3:30PM, the temp had dropped to 38° (without windchill) and sleet started falling. We had to occasionally hit on the sides of our tent to knock the ice off. Soon it turned to full on snow. Only in the arctic will one get snow on summer solstice! Matt eventually returned and we all stayed snug in our tents waiting for the snow to cease. Each tent sent out a brave soul to fetch the stove and dinner and to sweep away snow from the tent. Since I had to pee and needed to put on my wet shoes anyways, I was the brave soul for our tent. We cooked dinner in our tents and spent the rest of the evening as the snow did not stop.

Snow storm on summer soltice

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