Day 8: Oshetna River to the Little Nelchina.
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| The Little Oshetna valley |
This morning, like the rest of them, I awoke before Art. The sun was shining through the white fabric of the tent and beckoned me outside; I can't help it. I tried to sneak out of the tent undetected with the intention of allowing him to sleep-in a bit. Inevitably he woke-up just as I was about to carefully zip the bug-fly back shut again. My clumsiness extracting myself from the tent probably had something to do with the fact that I was pretty stiff and sore. I realized that my tent-moves were less-than-graceful. Darn.
“Do you think we have enough fuel for two cups of coffee today?” He asked.
“Good Morning Artie,” I replied. I stood up carefully on my tender feet and stretched tall. We had been carefully tallying our stove "burns." We were using my jet-boil stove and one small canister is supposed to afford 22 two-cup boils. Since we were filtering our water (mostly) we decided that we didn't need our coffee water to boil (it would be safe at any temp) so we were shutting the stove down early to conserve. We brought two full canisters of isobutane/propane fuel and as it turned out it was more than enough and there was no reason to ration such a thing on this trip. “Yes I think we can have two cups today,” I said.
“Great.” he said and with that we started our day 500 vertical feet above the Oshetna River valley, a place synonymous with big numbers of caribou from the Nelchina herd; I was excited. We slowly packed up our things making sure to take our time to enjoy our coffee. Down the hill we went, each step taking us closer to the scar in the hillside, that we knew to be an ATV trail.
It had been over 60 miles since our feet had graced such a trail and I would be lying if I said that we weren’t looking forward to it. We crossed a dirty brown-water tributary of the Oshetna and hastily stepped foot on the well traveled ATV trail that led would lead us straight to the main river. Once we arrived at the river we would cross it and leave the trail behind. Our route would continue straight across the Oshetna drainage. I do not know where that trail originated or how the trailblazers got so far back to begin with. Crossing the Oshetna on a wheeler seemed a bit daunting, but I know guys as adventurous as I am that pride themselves on their ATV skills and it doesn't surprise me to find their marks so deep in the wilderness.
We made our way up onto another amazing plateau that took us several miles up and over into the little Oshetna River valley. From a rocky outcropping overlooking the whole expanse of the Little Oshetna drainage we could see another four wheeler trail carving it’s way down the valley. From our vantage point we could see several other towers of rocks along our ridge and the thought of the Great Wall of China came to my mind. It was as if we were at a guard station along the wall peering down into the valley below.
We would discover that the ATV trail down in the valley was more of a road and I couldn’t keep the thought out of my mind that maybe the toughest terrain was behind us on this journey, maybe we will be walking the rest of the way out on four wheeler trails; I couldn’t have been more wrong. More on that later.
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| Taking five by the Little O. |
We walked the road down to the main tributary of the Little Oshetna and it was a wonderful walk. The valley was broad with occasional groves of trees. The “Little O” was clear as glass and during one crossing Art saw some trout darting out of his way. Several miles down valley we left the trail to traverse the hillside, cutting our way up into Horsepasture Pass. Before long we joined up with a great ATV trail and marched our way up and into this giant wide pass that was over two miles wide and five miles long. We were pretty tired at this time in the day but with such a good trail we decided to trudge on. We crossed a few creeks and with tired legs we walked down a switchback bringing us to the Little Nelchina River. As we descended to the creek we assessed the murky water and it looked like it might be a bit dicey. When we got there we discovered that it wasn’t so bad. “Let’s cross now so we won’t have to in the morning,” I said. We crossed the dirty water easily and took off our packs.
Just then I looked up and couldn’t believe my eyes. “Hey Artie look!” Pouring off of the mountainside were hundreds of caribou. They were dropping down and crossing a tributary of the Little Nelchina no more that 100 feet from us. “Let’s set up the tent here.” Art said.
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| Arthur Mannix: Dances with Caribou. |
Over the course of that evening (as late as we could stay up) and the next morning we figured that we saw over 400 caribou pass before us. There were probably 70 baby calves that were as nimble and agile as the adults. They were the size of mid-sized labrador retrievers. They would prance about going up and down the slopes, in between their mothers legs like it was all a game. Artie and I, by contrast felt a little less-nimble and more like a couple of bushed old men; We had no trouble nodding-off to sleep even with all of the action going on outside the tent.
This would be Little Nelchina Camp.
