Sheenjek River Trip

Some rocks look very beautiful when wet	Information Technology management
Marie and Sean heard some bears in the brush. Later we found these very large foot prints.	Big bear prints on the bank. Big beaver lodge in the distance. This lodge is so large that I can imagine the beavers sitting around a fireplace, in rockers, drinking tea. Smoke coming out of the top of the lodge would not surprise me.
Big beaver dam.

8/13/03 - Paddle into flats. Channels.

We paddle onto the flats. There are many chanels to choose from. Sean spots a large moose on a bar to the left. On the right we see the carcus of a black bear.

The morning ritual of loading boats. This morning we saw two bears tromping along the shoreline toward us. I was calculating our ability to get off the shore before they arrived when they saw us and bolted into the forest	Nice light that morning.
Fishing reel camp. Sean found an abandoned fishing real. The bars are getting large.	Marie and I took a walk in the woods.

8/14/03 - Goosenecks.

4:30 start. Paddle goosenecks. Floating lunch. Lynx. M & Billie. Swim. hear animals in brush.

This section of river has several large goosenecks which we have been dreading. Looks like we'll be paddling 5 miles to cover one linear mile and we are afraid the current on the flats will be slow. The reality is not so bad. The current still move along so our progress is fairly fast. And, the river has breached the last gooseneck, completely eliminating a 5 mile loop.

We hear lynx crying in the woods. At one point Marie looked up to the bank to see a lynx keeping pace with their boat.

Eagle on tree.	Some beavers build their lodges along the river shore. This does not seem as secure as the large pond lodges.
Most of the shores show a thin layer of soil over old river rocks.	In some places the soil drools over the steep banks of rocks and perma-frost.
I'm paddling with Sean today.	Marie and Billie
Much of the forest is part dead, like this.	We take a floating lunch today. If we assume that the current moves at three miles per hour then floating with no breaks would be faster than our techniqe of stopping for meals and sleeping.
It does take one active paddler to keep the boat in the main current. Rafted together three of us can nap while the other paddles.	Marie and Billie
We stop at a decent looking gravel bar.	Ah, some more nice lighting

We figure this camp is about 6 miles from the Porcupine. Dinner is pizza, rice, spinach, peanut sauce.

8/15/03 - Last Sheenjek Layover

9:30 am up. Layover. Sean "fishes". Much reading.

Sean decides to paddle to the far bank to fish.	The current turns out to be to strong for him to even keep his place. After some antics he manages a safe return to our shore.
The river levels comes up a little so we build our own gauging station.	Sean observes that while there are a lot of Mosquitos they don't bite.
Marie's experience is different than Sean's	More signs of big bears near our camp.
Moose too.	Another evening of nice light.
A visitor to Sean's tent.

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