As you can see, the road was rather slick thanks to rain. The forecast called for chance of showers, but rain all day it did. So I didn't stop much for pictures on the drive up, but fortunately I saw most of this stuff last year (see last year's Alaska blog entries).
I had two routes in mind, a difficult one and a more difficult one. The latter route was still in the forested area of the Brooks Range and began with a river crossing, and since I prefer not having bears lurking behind every tree and also being dry, I decided to keep trucking north, beyond the famously dangerous Atigun Pass, to the top of the range and then hike in from the north. The forecast in this area called for cold temperatures and possibly some flurries.
Well, when I got there, it looked like this:
It was flurrying something fierce.
Undeterred, I geared up, hiked a few miles toward the mountains, camped, slept, froze, and woke up to this:
Maybe it was the snow talking, but at this point, I was welcoming the thought of river crossings and bears lurking behind every tree, as long as the rivers weren't too high and the bears were nice and warm. So I backtracked to the car and drove south back toward the more difficult route. I can now say that I have driven up Atigun Pass in a snowstorm.
Shortly south of Atigun, the snow changed over to rain. It was still raining when I arrived at the launch point for the second route, so I waited in the car for a while hoping it would pass. Eventually I had to accept the fact that the rain was here to stay, so I geared up and set out.
Had to bushwhack a bit to get to the river crossing. Disclaimer time: due to the rain, I did not take nearly as many pictures as I should have, and those I did take suffered from the poor light. I wanted to put a picture of the river here, but this is the best pic I have. It was only about 30 feet wide and knee-deep, so definitely passable.
Side note: those of you familiar with the story of Chris McCandless know that one of the reasons he died was that he did not take into account the seasonal impact on the arctic rivers. This definitely weighed on my mind, knowing that this (and other) crossings may be more dangerous on the return trip.
Having passed the first obstacle, it was time to enter the spruce bog. This is kind of like tundra bog with the major difference being if there is a bear or moose around, you won't know until you're really close to it.
Does a bear shit in the woods? Well, this one did.
After sloughing through about two miles of spruce bog in the rain, I made it to what would be my trail over the next few days: Trembley Creek.
TO BE CONTINUED... with more foggy, rainy pictures!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Brooks Range, Alaska
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