HOT HOT HOT

It is always amazing what I fail to think about.  I just never considered that Mary Louise and I would be literally sweltering in our tent above the Arctic Circle deep in the mountains in the Brooks Range.  But we were last night - until midnight, in fact.  We had been under the spell of a mountain ridge to the north of us while up near the Arrigetch mountains - which blocked the sun and dropped the temperature about 9 p.m.  Not here on the river.  We sweated in our underwear on the top of our sleeping bags until midnight.  By morning, Mary Louise was cold inside her lighter sleeping bag.

I can't say how the day dawned because the sun never set.  But we woke up to a glorious sunny day nearly free of any clouds.

The Alatna River is a pretty river draining a section of the Brooks Range.  It has a "Wild and Scenic" designation and eventually drains into the Koyukuk.

We were "floating" a four day section where the mountains of the Brooks Range disappear.

The river carried some silt, but it was still pretty clear and it didn't fill up our water filter with gunk.

We stopped for lunch on this sandbar to keep company with a caribou backbone and antlers.

We saw lots of animal signs: moose tracks and poop, wolf tracks, bear tracks and poop, beaver chewings, rabbit tracks.  But this was one of our most exciting visual confirmations - a lynx that we caught walking along the riverbank.  When he/she saw us, it took a good eight foot leap up off the water.  Then it just sat there looking at us as we drifted past.  Fun.




In the afternoon, the wind came up and it was tough paddling.