River Trip Stats:

Posted on August 12, 2017 by Keely

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Freight Canoe Lyra traveled 800 miles on the Tanana, the Yukon and the Chandalar.
Daazhraii, Geoff and I spent 26 days on the water and ran the engine for over 100 hours.
Our fastest speed was 15 mph, and our slowest was 2 mph.
We navigated class II rapids, carried, at most, 45 gallons of gas, and climbed 1500 feet in elevation, mostly in the last hundred miles.
On Wednesday, I shot 2 different guns and cut down 1 tree.
School starts in 2 days. We made it just in time.

When my computer arrives (it is currently stuck in Fort Yukon) I will post my journal entries and pictures from the Chandalar.

River Trip Journal 9

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Keely

7/18/17

Everyone in Beaver was very helpful. We met friendly little girls named E and R whose grandma made calls so we could get gas on a Sunday. Paul Jr. was not around, so we gave up on our plan to stay and, after we got fuel, boogied on, none the richer in junk food, alas!

As we were leaving, I drove over a barely-submerged log. It was completely undetectable, but rolling over it felt like hitting a whale or a manatee or a sea-monster! The deck buckled and warped, then sprang back into shape. I’d hate to do that in a fast skiff: it would rip the bottom right out.

At this point, I want to mention that we have been eating with skewers for chopsticks this whole time. We have no silverware to our names. I am looking forward very, very much to eating a salad with a fork when we get back on the road system. The plan is to leave the boat in Fort Yukon and spend a few days fishing after all.

The night of the 16^th we spent on an island with a clear slough and lots of bear tracks. We had a beautiful sunset. Last night, we camped on a dry slough sheltered behind a ridge of willows. It felt great to finally get out of the wind that had been taunting us all day, blowing spray over the engine onto the helmsman’s back.

The river is really wide now. The Chandalar pours in just up from here. It’s shallow and seamless-looking. Very tricky. We are running aground pretty regularly now in the flats. We step out into the ankle-deep water and Lyra floats free, for the most part. It’s hard to tell shoals in the wind, though.

I was divebombed by an arctic tern this morning while availing myself of the facilities. Scary, but very cool. They are really beautiful, graceful birds. Audubon’s tern is not an exaggeration: the terns are every bit as swift and sharp and dramatic as he paints them.

I took a bath today off a steep bank. I had to hold the end of the bowline, which was staked to the shore, so that I wouldn’t slip and be swept away in the powerful eddy. When I dunked my head, I could hear the silty water whooshing by my ears.

The horseflies are as bad as ever.

Our dog food from Yukon Jeremy at the Bridge is still holding out.

We are camping tonight on Inservice Island, just up from Fort Yukon. I just crept up on a couple of beavers swimming up our slough. When the first beaver finally caught sight of me, he slapped his tail and dived dramatically, then came up only a few feet farther away.

We got to town around ten. Lance wasn’t in Fort Yukon and we passed Tony on the river. So far, we are not having much luck figuring out how to leave the boat. Better luck tomorrow.

(editor’s note: we made it happen after a rough start with a flat tire and some plane troubles. The Kenai was great! We are heading back out in the next few days. Arctic Village, here we come.)

River Trip Journal 8

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Keely

7/15/17

I love the lessons in succession that are so evident in the flats. One bank is cut away and the other grows. Trees fall into the river, sandbars build, grasses take hold, then willows, then cottonwood and spruce.

Today, we weathered a nasty thunderstorm. Geoff built us a temporary shelter by sticking a log into a pileup of driftwood and staking a tarp over it. Before the storm, we had a strong tailwind and, for a while, a “following sea” on particularly long, straight stretches of river where there was fetch enough to build up white caps. We surfed a little and wallowed in the troughs between waves. The smoky haze from distant fires lent the dark clouds some camouflage, so the storm almost crept up on us. Lightning scares me, and the sound of thunder on the river (when we can hear it – usually the engine has to be off). This storm with its wind and heavy rain scared me. We built a fire under our tarp – there was plenty of wood – and watched the rain froth in the river and bounce off the beach. Our fire was just enough to make sure that we never felt the lightning was the brightest thing in the world.

Now we are camping with a group of canoers. There are nine of them. They stopped in this slough to shelter from that same storm. We continued on from our temporary shelter and stopped here to chat after the storm. They are making a documentary and are currently one month into their two-month trip.

River Trip Journal 5

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Keely

7/9

It’s beautiful here in the mountainous section of the Yukon. We’re in sort of a canyon, and the walls tell an impressive geological story.

We stopped last night to see a friend of Geoff’s from years back when Geoff worked a summer kids’ camp with him at his fish camp. We were going to stay, but it didn’t feel quite right. We pushed on up the rapids at an impressive five miles per hour. The rapids weren’t all that rapid or rocky. I had been nervous, expecting something more formidable, but it was no sweat. There were lots of fish wheels, but I still have not actually seen one catch a fish.

Just at the end of the rapids, we were greeted by a really lovely family. Geoff was acquainted with the older man from his time working that camp in the rapids. There were two smart, funny, personable middle-school-age boys and their parents, whom I liked a lot. He was happy-natured and friendly, and she was a badass musher and homeschool mom. She had three seven month old pups and let Daazhraii play with the pack. They were lanky sled-dogs, and they made him look short, stocky and clumsy.

We ate dinner with this wonderful family last night, and they fed us breakfast this morning and sent us on our way with king backs for the dog and canned king for ourselves. This is the first year in a while that kings have been open for subsistence. Folks are pleased, but it sounds like they’re not getting the numbers they were hoping for.

I like the way drying fish looks, hanging on racks in long evening light, all pink and translucent. I like the smell of smoke and smoking fish. It’s a lovely thing. People talk about greasy hands and hair and joke about the endless work, but that’s nothing I couldn’t handle. I can see spending a summer or summers on fish someday, if I’m lucky enough to have the chance. The snack breaks are pretty great, and the view beats any corner office I’ve ever heard of.

River Trip Journal 4

Posted on July 30, 2017 by Keely

7/8/17

The sign hanging above the post office in Tanana says “Tanana, Alas.” The “ka” must have fallen off. It’s a misrepresentation, though. Tanana is pretty, lively, and welcoming. The washateria has great showers, and the water is good. The library at the school opens a few times a week in the summer so that folks can read and use the internet.

We met a Norwegian family that had rafted downriver from the bridge and a French couple in a canoe. Geoff met some folks he knew from the old days, and everyone I talked to was curious about our trip. The girl who was working the counter at the store let us bring Daazhraii in while we shopped and chatted with me about where we were heading. Tanana is accustomed to floaters, so strangers are kind of commonplace and come with a ready-made explanation. It’s a different vibe from villages that I’ve visited before.

Shade for people

Shade for dogs. Daazhraii had dug this nice, cool hole to chill in. Smart boy.

The weather was screaming hot and clear when we were in Tanana, and Geoff and I were both getting sunburned in our shadeless sandbar camp. The sand got so hot around midday that you couldn’t walk across it barefoot. We stayed an extra day at the confluence to go through all of our gear and sorted out a good amount to mail back to Fairbanks to make a little more room in the boat. It was sweaty, miserable work, and we spent most of the afternoon after we finished it sitting half-in the river, arguing and burning, making ourselves miserable and knocking chunks off of the bank to hear the splash and see the splatter and vent a little frustration. We buried our feet in a stratum of icy mud beneath the surface and glared at the shivering hot air rippling above the white sand of our island. Ice cream sandwiches back in Tanana took the edge off the heat a little.

We got to town and mailed out our extra gear. The store-owner was chatting with me about our plans and Arctic Village. “Well, make sure you’re putting on sunblock, girl!” she warned.

“I don’t have any,” I exclaimed. “You always forget something on these trips…”

“Say no more,” she said, “I think I’ve got some upstairs.” She returned with sunscreen from her own cupboard and insisted that I take it. What a kindness.

At the library, I visited for a while with the librarian while my next Harry Potter audiobook downloaded. It’s always interesting to talk with folks who are connected with schools in different villages to compare and contrast.

We decided in Tanana that, to hell with fishing on the Kenai, we’ll just take the rest of the summer for this trip. We were supposed to be in Fort Yukon on the tenth and that just isn’t happening, so we’ll set ourselves up to take our time.

We left Tanana in the rain last night (I counted forty-six dogs in a dog yard on the shore. Whoah!) and cruised until we found a flat spot on the south shore of the river. It was a late night, so we slept in and had a great swim this morning. The water got deep enough quick enough that I could dive off the transom with the boat tied to the shore. Daazhraii came in with us and romped and played in the shallows and chased sticks. It was a rare true break from packing or driving or setting up or breaking down camp. We didn’t motor out until mid-afternoon. There’s nothing new about this, but we were able to relax without worrying about making our deadline in Fort Yukon because we’ve decided that we don’t have one.

Wahoo!

(editors note: we wound up in Fort Yukon on 7/19 and took off 7/20 for the Kenai where we had a super-successful weekend dipnetting. We’ll be eating reds all winter! Now we just have to make it to Arctic before the school year starts.)