Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Every summer for the last six years, our coworker Matthew has done a trip up to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This year, our coworkers Matt & Krista and Dr. Rob Montana wanted to go with him. The plane can only fit three people, though, so they needed two more people to minimize the amount of money each person pays. We were the lucky people! Half our group has the same name, though: Matthew, Matt, and Mat!

The crew on the upper Jago River

The plan was to drive up to Fairbanks where Matthew, Matt, and Krista would catch a commercial flight with Warbelow Air to Fort Yukon and Rob, Mat, and I would catch a commercial flight with Wright Air to Arctic Village. From there, Kirk Sweetsir of Yukon Air Service was to pick up the Fort Yukon group, drop them off on the Sheenjek River, then fly back to Arctic Village to get us and fly us out to join them. From the Sheenjek River on the south side of the Brooks Range, we planned on hiking north over one of two possible passes on the continental divide and dropping into the Jago River drainage on the north were we'd get picked up after 11 days of hiking around. We were hoping to catch the big Porcupine Caribou Herd migration were all the caribou move south over the Brooks mountains from their mosquito-infested birthing grounds of the north slope. The migration time and location is hard to predict so we'll see what happens!

Caribou on the upper Sheenjek River

We went to bed around 9:00AM after a busy night of traumas, woke up at 1:00PM and got ready. We met with the group at Eagle River Fred Meyers, then took off. Matt rode with us. The day was bluebird, hot, and crystal clear; we had views of Denali the entire drive up. We stopped at Denali south viewpoint, then made our way to 49th State Brewery in Healy for dinner. Afterward, Krista joined our car so Matthew and Rob could get to their hotel in Fairbanks as fast as they could. We made it to Fairbanks around 10:30PM, dropped Matt and Krista off at their buddy's place and toured his awesome cabin before heading over to Kristy's place. She's leaving Alaska for a bit so we wanted to catch up a little while we repacked our gear. Fell asleep around 1:00AM.

Denali out in full force on the drive to Fairbanks

Main                                                              Next >>