Before we even started this stretch of the river we needed to get up to town in Carmacks and get some fuel. Not knowing where the store was in town we drifted by slowly to try to catch a look at it. Not seeing anything we pulled up to a woman walking 2 Labradors and hailed out to her, she pointed out the way. Not knowing exactly where the sandbar was, we ran up on it. Not too bad, with Jeff pushing with the pole I put on the waders and got out and pushed us across to the landing spot. I called home and checked my email but soon several people stopped by and wanted to talk and look over the boat, we didn't stay long in town, shoving off into a very cold rain. It was a good day for a nap so we had to stop and make some soup and lay down for a little while. The run down five fingers rapids was nothing really, the low water made for an easy ride. We see some fish camps on the shore here and there and pass by three women paddling kayaks.
The day passes slowly in the rain until late afternoon in a break from the cold the sun comes out for a while. We are pulled up among the Hootchikoo Rocks, a 300 foot cliff of Basalt, there is a small campsite above the river and as Jeff cooks I light a small fire. It is a beautiful view as we eat by the fire then lay down for a couple minutes and nap in the sun among the spruce needles. We'll run until 11 that night, stopping after scaring up 16 trumpeter swans and watch as they circle overhead then fly upstream. Our camp for the night is across the river from McCabe creek where Tom's barge is hauled up on shore for the winter.
The next day seems a lot like the last except for it was sunnier and warmer. We pass mile after mile of wild land, the scale of it is exhausting. High ridges and more basalt cliffs, gently sloping grassy mountains and no one in sight, all day we pass one couple camped ashore with a Grumman canoe then in the evening we camp near a couple with a small child. Oh, and Cowboy.
Cowboy has a small cabin with a broken picture window in the abandoned town of Fort Selkirk. He ran river barges for years and judging from his lifestyle is perfectly at home in this land. In the trailer he tows behind his four wheeler is a freshly skinned beaver carcass, a rifle, and a bottle of propane. He is not a guy who talks too much so I never got the whole story behind the beaver but I did see him throw the carcass into a bag in his skiff so, while he kept the pelt, the meat was most likely for a friend. His one room cabin is simple and we have to knock hard on the door for him to hear us. I have a shell stuck in the shotgun back on the boat and can't get it out, could he help out? "Bring it up", is all he says. He gets the shell unstuck quickly and needs to get on his way to check on a barge, we give him a box of shotgun shells for his trouble and he is off in his skiff to head up the Pelly River then to check on his barge.
The next couple days are river days, hot river days. The sun is up well before we are and is setting after 11. At nine last night I was putting on one last dollop of sunblock for the day as we putt down the increasingly wide river. We are joined by two pretty major rivers, the White from the west and the Stewart from the east. The Stewart brings a brown muddy water to the mix and the White brings grey silt and trees. Thousands of full size trees, some still green and all with their root balls attached begin to hang up on every sandbar. The river turns wide, about three fourths of a mile wide with multiple long sandbars and as we drift in the hot afternoon a wind picks up the silt from them and makes a dust devil that spins across the river. The mountains are getting lower and farther from shore and the river is winding it's way between them.
Day five we see a boat ashore ahead through the binoculars. A man is cutting a tree with a chainsaw and a woman drives a four wheeler with supplies from their boat to the cabin. A teenage girl is poking a stick into a giant log jam at the rivers edge, she is wearing tennis shoes and says hello as we coast by her, about 25 feet away, at 5 miles an hour. They are the only people and that is the only conversation we will have that day. Drifting by someone on shore at 5 miles an hour you only have about 30 seconds of time to talk, a little more if you don't mind yelling.
There are lots of moose and beavers and ducks and geese and swallows and eagles. A few black bears but no brown bears yet. As we wander the sites where camps and roadhouses and telegraph offices used to be, crashing through underbrush looking for fallen down log structures and artifacts we are both always aware of bear sign and habitat. We see 100 mountain goats up on a high rocky mountain and an endangered interior peregrine falcon circles us. As it turns 11 PM the sunset persists in the northern sky, three Canada geese land then take off from the slough beside us, and another angry beaver slaps his tail on the water and dives. It is remarkable to be out in this enormous wild land so far from civilization. It is remarkable to watch as the scenery changes in front of your eyes as the boat spins in the current. So far so good. Remarkable.