June 13: We arrived at Wright Air's office bright and early to catch our two hour commuter flight to Fort Yukon. The morning was partly sunny and cool in Fairbanks, minimal winds, a perfect day for flying. In Fort Yukon we met our bush pilot, Kirk Sweetsir of Yukon Air, for the last leg of our flight into the north eastern portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Two hours later we were being dropped off in the middle of the Brooks Range far from anything that suggested civilization. Since Kirk's plane only fits 3 people plus gear it took him two round trip flights to get everyone to the starting point on Joe Creek. Once everyone arrived and the plane was out of ear shot, not to be heard from for 8 days, the realization of how remote we really were started to sink in with folks. That tends to be the moment where even the most serious adults on the trip expose the little kid curiosity and wonder in them they thought disappeared decades ago. You can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voice, everything lights them up. It is one of the main reasons I thoroughly enjoy guiding. 
A long day of flying can be very exhausting so we only hiked two miles and set up camp. A light rain set in shortly after dinner.
June 14: Woke up to light rain but thought nothing of it. Had breakfast, broke camp, and started hiking up the drainage to the pass. A few miles into the hike we came to a mandatory creek crossing. Folks were wet from walking in the rain for a few hours so we stopped for lunch so folks could rest, get refueled and warm up. That was a convenient reason to stop. The real reason I wanted to stop was because I wanted to buy time to figure out our options. In my head I was thinking, "How the hell are we going to cross this thing safely?" The water was knee deep, fast and as cold as it gets without freezing. Since we had time built into the trip for layovers we went ahead and set up camp early to wait out the rain and let people warm up in their sleeping bags. An hour later the rain stopped and the sun came out. An hour after that we could see a noticeable difference in the water level as it dropped.
June 15: We woke up to a beautiful sunny morning, cool and calm. Over night the creek went from a knee deep raging torrent to a shoe lace deep mellow meander. After breakfast we crossed to the other side by using one rock as midstream stepping stone. No wet boots. From there we followed the almost canyon like narrow drainage up to the pass for several miles. Along the way we crossed the creek over 30 times, fortunately without needing to take our boots off. After several hours of climbing we reached the high point of our hike and broke for lunch. The rest of the day was spent walking down the new drainage.
June 16: There were a few caribou around camp last night but not the herds of thousands this area is famous for. During breakfast most of the group caught a quick glimpse of a wolverine which is very rare to see.... vicious little buggers. Around lunch we noticed a group of 100+ caribou. Naturally we dropped our packs, pulled out our cameras and watched the herd move around for 30 minutes. Right as we started to put our packs back on I noticed a large brown spot moving around on the creek bed. We could not make out what it was but I assumed it was a grizzly bear due to its size and movement. A closer look through the binoculars showed it was a muskox. I almost wet myself with excitement until the person beside me said, "look, I see 9 more!"... That's when it was no longer an almost. We dropped our packs again and watched the muskoxen for another 45 minutes. 
June 17-18: As we moved down the drainage to the Kongakut over the next few days the herds of caribou got larger and larger until, at one point, there were easily several thousand in the valley around us. During this time we also started to notice tiny day old calves wobbling through the tundra. 
June 19: This was our last day backpacking and our largest river crossing of the trip. We made it to the Kongakut around lunch, skies were clear but it was a bit windy and temperatures were around 55F. For the crossing we took our boots off and put on our river crossing shoes. There were 4 braids to the river, each about thigh deep and moving fairly swift. Did I mention it was ice cold. I don't mean ice cold as in just cold and uncomfortable, I mean ice cold as in this water was coming from ice fields and glaciers less than 24 hours ago. One little slip into this water would quickly make a person hypodermic. The crossing went well. On the other side I noticed a person far off in the distance, the first person we saw since getting dropped off by Kirk 8 days ago. To make a really long story short, it ended up being my wife, Becky. She ended up doing a base camp trip with a photographer in the area. It was not preplanned that we would run into each other. Complete surprise! She doubled back to warn our group about a grizzly sitting on a caribou kill. Good thing too, she saved our bacon on that one. Ask her sometime to tell you the story.
June 20: Backpack clients flew out around noon on the same flights the new rafting clients came in on. Old trip ends, new trip begins. On to the Kongakut from here. More on that soon.
