We had pretty good luck with the weather, considering it was September and we were north of the Arctic Circle. It was usually cold (although twice in the morning when we were packing the sun was warm enough for me to pull off a few layers.)
Nights could be beautiful — the absence of any ambient light was precious.
We had three or four clear nights. Each time, we had the northern lights, in various strengths. I finally got my act together and set up my tripod, figured out the manual settings, and got up in the middle of the night (not just for photos) and took some pictures.
There was one night we had a steady rain, and in the morning we had to pack up in the rain. I put on all my rain clothes that morning.
I had a LOT of layers on.
Fortunately, the rain let up during the day, and we were able to dry out things in camp.
That day, a flock of Mergansers swam in front of our raft. (Seemed to be a bunch of small ones and one or two full-size ones.)
If we got too close, they would fly down the river a little, but not too far.
I thought they were trying to get away from us, and felt sorry we were terrorizing them. But after we stopped for lunch (about 1 1/2 hours), when we were on the water again, they were right in front of us again. Maybe it was a game? Or the young ones were learning to fly? I didn’t worry about them, but enjoyed watching them. Ron often followed them when they chose a channel to go down.
On the last day, we reached the East fork of the Chandalar River. It was much bigger than the Wind River.
We reached the place where we would be picked up. It had plenty of firewood, and Ron built one of his typical fires — although he had a saw, he didn’t see a reason to use it.
The next day the planes arrived as scheduled, and we headed back to Fairbanks. I was surprised by how much the color had changed in the week we were out.
