I saw more caribou, wolf, and bear tracks than human. Besides being easy walking, river bars are great for finding tracks. It's a major wildlife highway. Here's some wolf and bear tracks. 
I found a nice campsite and took an afternoon nap (which coincided with an afternoon rain). I got up around 1930 and went walking down river some more. I went another mile and a half or so before I got hungry and came back to camp for grub. I was happy to find my BRFC (bear resistant food container) unmolested and my fuel can unpunctured by curious bear fangs. The rain had held off during my post nap hike, but it started coming down while I was cooking. In bear country, it's not like you can sit all warm and dry in your tent with the stove in the vestibule. I was 200 yards from my tent, cooking on the river bar without any shelter so I had a good 360 view of any approaching grizzlies. I didn't see any bears and I ate some lovely, warm, Pad Thai. I crawled into bed by 2300 hours or so and slept peacefully all night. I noticed it was a little chilly and in the morning the mountains had a fresh dusting of snow on the tops. I know, it's July. I was lucky the snow wasn't on my tent!
The weather the first day might have been drizzly and damp, but I woke up to only partly cloudy skies. I had to strip to a t-shirt during breakfast because the sun was making me hot. My boots were only damp from all the river crossings of the day before, but I'd taken three pairs of dry socks, so I was ready for more.
I had a lovely hike back and it didn't cloud over again until I was almost home. And the mosquitoes Alaska is famous for? I saw two last night. And I killed them both.
2 comments:
Very nice. And apparently a touch warmer than when we were there that one night.
You definitely look like you are enjoying yourself up there! :) Love the pics of the tracks in the river bed mud.
Ah, yes...the mosquitoes....you can literally comb them out of your hair after an evening walk during the summer. lol.
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