Arctic light up the drainage into the Aichilik- this drainage has no name

River walking in the drainage to the Aichilik

About a mile down, our drainage met another, larger drainage with braided streams on a wide bed. Neither of these drainages or creeks have names, part of the Arctic landscape untouched and nameless. Instead of scaling the steep slopes on either side and wrestling our way through miles of tundra, we dropped into this wider river bed, donning gaiters for the small fording we would do.

Caribou tracks

Semipalmated Plover

[caption id="attachment_533" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Common Redpole"][/caption]

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Female Harlequin Ducks

We made our camp on a small tundra section of a wide gravel bar, surrounded by active birds. As the evening set in, the temperature dropped especially precipitously. We scrambled for river baths and jumped into fleece and down. By midnight I had given up watch of the Arctic light for the comfort of the sleeping bag. Peter, bundled head to toe, remained outside in his Crazy Creek reading. And saw the wolf.

Peter rinses in the Aichilik

[caption id="attachment_517" align="alignleft" width="100" caption="Mark writes in his trip journal"][/caption]

Elegant Paintbrush

We retraced our steps the next day to an area we’d marked on the GPS as being especially full of birds, another boggy and willowy spot in a large gravel bar. For each camp Mark and Peter scouted extensively, looking for recent bear sign, ensuring we weren’t camping anywhere in someone- or something else’s territory. Old bear scat was all we found. We camped in peace other than the continued cold north wind. The next day we would ford the Aichilik and make our way over a saddle to the Leffingwell Fork.

We camped the night before heading into the bush on the side of the dirt airstrip at Fort Yukon, the Gwichin vilage where Kirk Sweetsir operates his two Cessna 185s for Yukon Air. An old painted sign on a rusted metal shipping container says “Welcome to Ft. Yukon North of the Arctic Circle. Population 687.” There are no roads to Fort Yukon, but it is a port on the mighty Yukon River. Otherwise only bush planes service this tiny population. Despite this, Fort Yukon was the furthest west outpost of the British Empire in North America-first established as a Hudson’s Bay Trading Company outpost in 1847…back when it was still Russian…continuing until expelled by American traders in 1869 following the purchase of Alaska. It is also the final resting place of London born and Kings College educated Archbishop Hudson Stuck, co-leader of the first successful expedition to climb Mt. McKinley (Denali)- sadly the only thing worth mentioning by Wikipidia- but who also served the native community of Alaska for over thirty years, famously traveling thousands of miles by dog sled in his missionary work. When he died of pneumonia in Fort Yukon, he requested to be buried in the native cemetery.

Zipping up my fleece against the relentless mosquitoes in the nine PM sunshine, I leaned over our map Kirk had spread on the container floor. Peter and Mark, my husband and a friend of ours, huddled in. “I was going to drop you off here. Caribou are west now though.” “What about the Jago?” Peter asked, looking at the next major drainage over. “Sure, we could do that,” Kirk said. “You guys can cross over one of these passes to get the Aichilik…” He pointed to an area where the contour lines were amply spaced in the mountains between the two rivers. “Come down this drainage- this is where the wolves den- and you can head south from there. Wolves have been working this whole bank here-” he gestured to parts of the Aichilik. “Had a black one come right into Robert’s tent last week and steal a cabbage! Never seen anything like it in my life!” Kirk was referring to Robert Thompson, an Inuit guide out of Kaktovik. “I don’t know if you’ll see caribou, but this valley is beautiful. I think you’ll really like the terrain.”

As Peter and I lay down for the night in our new tarptent, a lightweight mesh tent with a single layer of nylon, I pulled a t-shirt over my face to keep out the midnight sun.

Kirk loaded us on the plane the next morning. “Just be sure the bear spray is packed in your packs,” he directed. “You guys are lucky,” he continued. “June’s had the worst weather we’ve seen in years. It’s just now clearing up. Gotta drop you guys off, and go pick up some guys on the Jago coastal plains. Sounds like their plane crashed on the way to pick them up!”

These three guys were friends of ours- Mark and Andy Moderow and Paul Denklewater had pack rafted the Jago River the previous week in 35 degree weather and howling, 60 mph winds, sleet and rain. They had been sitting at the coast accompanied by grizzly bear for the past two days.

Kirk is not your typical Alaska bush pilot, though he’s been flying the Alaska bush most of his life. Born in Ruby, Alaska, an Athapaskan village of 100 on the Yukon, Kirk started to fly, and then went back for a Masters in Geology at Cambridge-the one in England. He met his wife there who was getting her doctorate in criminology. They live in Fairbanks in the winter and Ft. Yukon in the summer, from where Kirk flies people to the bush, and his wife advises the British government on policy decisions.

We take off and head north, the endless Yukon flats eventually swelling into gentle hills and then proper mountains of the stormy Brooks Rage. Low clouds block several valleys and passes, and Kirk navigates his way through them seemingly without effort, and with one deep turn where the g-forces press us into our seats. We fly over a high plateau area in the approximate area of the continental divide; that term is used loosely and has little meaning here, he explains. Essentially it determines which rivers flow south and which flow north. We fly over the Sheenjek, where we are meant to arrive in 11 days and where the Muries famously camped in the mid-1950s, revisited only a couple of years ago by George Schaller.

As Kirk picks his way in and out of valleys further north in the range, he finally opts to fly over the foothills and avoid the passes all together; as the Cessna floats over the open and rolling tundra landscape, tiny brown shapes become visible. “There’s a group of caribou,” Kirk notes, as several hundred of these shapes make their way east spread loosely across the foothills. Another group, then another become visible, all moving slowly in the direction we are flying.

We swing into the Jago River valley. We are minutes from landing, but the fingernails I have dug into my palm for the last half hour have lost their effectiveness. I lost my breakfast in a plastic bag, quite humbly as the one other pilot on the plane. Bush flying is a long way from straight and level. Kirk nicely ignores my breach of protocol, and comes in for final on a long tundra strip. Across the river from us are maybe two hundred caribou. “Looks like you guys got lucky,” Kirk said. “They’re all moving toward this valley!”

Dropping our backpacks and shotgun, Kirk waved, turned the plane around and disappeared against the open mountainous landscape with astonishing abruptness. The only sound now was the wind, the mosquitoes and our own small voices.

Route from the Aichilik River to the Upper Sheenjek

We hope to be able to enter voice blogs from occasional calls on our SAT phone, assuming multiple connections work in the equation. My brother has offered to help upload these blogs, so we’ll try for at least a couple of times a week- stay tuned!

This trip will be in the Refuge proper. In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act (ANILCA) designated all of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge- except for a critical 1.5 million acres of coastal plains to the immediate north of our trip area- wilderness. This area under debate is called 1002, after the section of ANILCA under which it was set apart. Section 1003 of ANILCA indicates that “production of oil and gas from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is prohibited and no leasing or other development leading to production of oil and gas from the [Refuge] shall be undertaken until authorized by an act of Congress.” Hence the source of the debate, as studies continue.

The concerns are many. The mass migration of animals by land and sea, as well as millions of birds from around the world, to the Arctic coast each summer are indicators of what biologists understand as an area of remarkable biological diversity. Because the Refuge and coastal plains encompass six distinct ecological regions, and in Area 1002 especially the distance from the mountains to the sea is compressed, these ecological regions are compressed into an exceptionally valuable wilderness area. This part of the coast is only 3.2% of the Arctic coastal plains and 4.5% of the Arctic foothills region in the state, a seemingly small amount to permanently protect given it’s tremendous environmental significance.

Check back with us every few days for a short voice blog on how the trip is going! We will give you a written report and photos when we return the second week of July. In the meantime, please check out the pages we’ve put together on climate change, migration, and our public lands. A couple of other interesting sites to check out: Necessary Journeys, Karsten Heuer and his wife’s trip following the Porcupine Caribou herd, and the Fish and Wildlife site on the Refuge. If you really want to get into it, an oldie but goodie…Arctic Dreams is fascinating, and truly brings the mystery  and complexity of the Arctic into focus.