Could it be.... Blue sky? Really?
YES!!! Then, no. The sun came out for fewer than 15 minutes, then the rain started again.
The good news so far is that my rain gear (other than my boots) has held up rather nicely so far. I have heard mixed things on rain gear-- some insisting that you have to pay a lot for true, breatheable waterproofing, some saying it can be done on a bargain. I chose to believe the latter, and bought an entire Driducks set for around $20. And even though the bottoms split at the seams before I even got here, I put my faith in the top. Fortunately, through several days of rain, it has faithfully kept me far dryer than last year's jacket did which soaked through after only a few hours.
Day 2 brought more rainy creek crossings, and not much else. Signs of wildlife, to be sure, but no actual wildlife (other than birds, snowshoe hares and arctic ground squirrels.) Here are some moose tracks next to some wolf tracks:
And here are some bear tracks! I was thinking grizzly at the time, but now that I think about the size of the prints, it was probably a black bear.
Would I rather encounter a black bear or a grizzly? Grizzlies are obviously much larger, and arguably more aggressive. However, they are not known to hunt humans for food, whereas black bears are. They also (at least according to conventional wisdom available on the Internet) are likely to call off the attack if the human plays dead, since the attack is probably a territorial show of force rather than one necessarily lethal.
(One more reason I preferred hiking above the treeline, as i did last year, is that I only had to worry about one kind of bear. Black bears don't tend to occur without trees to hide behind.)
Toward the end of day 2, I ran into this.
Suddenly, that thing I said a while back about always being able to walk on one side of the river was disproved by counterexample. Basically, at this point the stream curved to the right, and narrowed so the current was very strong. On the left of the stream is a cliff face, and to the right is a very steep hill. The hill is composed of head-sized boulders at the beginning, and abruptly switches over to muddy scree (going right to left... or in the above picture, going from below the pic to the middle. I'm standing in the boulder field.)
I had three options:
1. Laterally scale the cliff face on the left, hoping to find shallow water or a jumping off point to the right.
2. Climb the boulder field, hoping to get around the obstacle by going over it.
3. Jedi-walk across to the scree, slide down, and hope for good footing or a passable crossing at the bottom.
I decided to try option 3 first. Then I chickened out, climbed down, and went for option 1. I was able to hop across to the cliff face, at which point I lost my footing on the slippery rocks and fell in. Waist deep. I scrambled out like a cat in a bathtub and found myself on the left side, standing on a slippery boulder in a strong current, hugging the cliff face. To progress, I would have to leap from my current position to a an even slipperier looking boulder, beyond which, i could not even be sure i could continue. Bad idea.
So I climbed back up, steeled myself, and went for option 3 again. Then I chickened out again and talked myself into option 2. However, after a brief climb, I only succeeded in creating a rock slide, getting banged up by rocks and ending up right where I started, only now a little more shaken and bruised.
Nothing left to try but option 3. I Jedi-walked across the slope and was able to grab some plants to prevent sliding all the way down. Then I eased myself down slowly, using the plants as handholds (knowing that I would need to use them on the return trip as well). Unfortunately, I eventually realized that this path was taking me down to the slipperier looking boulder encountered above in option 1. So I gave up.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Brooks range, Alaska
No comments:
Post a Comment