Alsek River 2014

Day 11, Friday, July 4

When I later mentioned to Amalia how this day was for me, she said it sounded like the diary of a house cat. I guess I could not agree more. Probably the most non-traditional July 4th I have ever spent. It was raining when we got up, albeit not hard. We had a nice breakfast of eggs and hashbrowns. Such provided me with sufficient energy to walk back to where our tents were set up and take a few photos on this very gloomy morning. The cloud deck was only a couple of hundred feet above the lake surface. Not much scenery was visible, except a few icebergs floating off the beach. Sarah suggested to Susie and I that we could sit back to back in our tent, to prop each other up so we could sit and write or read. We tried it for a while, but the body mass differential (I weigh nearly twice as much as Susie) was too great for it to work long term. Sam came by the tents and indicated that he was leading a “Helly Hansen Hike” to the top of the knob soon. An HH hike means you are going to be brush busting, and sufficiently wet that you will want to climb in your Helly Hansens. My thought was that the top of the knob is ca 500 feet above the surface of the lake, and could easily be in fog by the time one got up there. We respectively declined, read, wrote notes, and snoozed until about 2:15 when those folks who did make the climb returned. Paul was able to get some photos of how choked with icebergs our side of the lake was.

Lunch was around 2:45 pm, for which I managed to get out of the tent. Wonderful grilled cheese sandwiches and broccoli cheddar soup. The hot food really hit the spot on a wet, cold day. Back in the tent soon after, we wrote, read and slept until 6:45 pm. We got up, chatted with folks, and had a tasty dinner of burritos with all the fixings and a red velvet cake at 8:45 pm. We could not have real guacamole because the avocados were confiscated at the Canadian Customs check north of Haines, because, like any vegetables or fruits with seeds, you can’t bring them into Canada. Yeah, like avocados would grow well anywhere in Canada. So we had “avocado-flavored” dip. Since this was our last night on the trip, I honored our tradition of taking portraits of everyone (except Jim, who does not like his picture taken). After dinner, Sam explained that the next day, we would be on a schedule, as their target for getting to the take out spot was 10:30 am. So breakfast would be early, and the goal would be to be packed up and on the water by 8:30 am.

Susie and I were in the tent by 10:10 pm on this rainy night, so yes, it had been a real housecat kind of day.

Additional Photos and videos can be found here: The Alsek Days 9 - 12 album on our SmugMug Photo Album Site

You might enjoy reading a different perspective on this same trip: Sarah Boomer's Report on the Thermophile.org website

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