Alaska Journal - 8/8 - Poor Sain

After the brutal 2nd day, we decided to do a nice short day on Day 3 to get just over the border into region 40 (our permit told us to go there). Trevor woke up around 7:30 on this morning when a drop of condensation fell in his eye. Before he could fal back asleep, he heard some sounds outside the tent. So, he looked out and, just outside our camp and down at the lake was a giant bull moose drinking and eating the plants. He immediately woke me up. It was amazing. We tried to get the others to wake up, but every time we whisperred their names the bull would turn his head and look at us while firing lightning bolts from his eyes. I wanted to post a pic of the moose, but sadly my camera had condesation on the lense from the nite, and the picture came out bad. Hopefully Trev's will look better when he gets it developed.


After a little bit more rest, we got out of bed to find that the smoke had lifted from the valley. McKinely was still in the clouds, but the rest of the Alaskan range was out in full force. It was breathtaking.




After a nice hot breakfast of oatmeal, we set off on our short trip. As we went along, McKinley came out of the clouds and showed itself for the first time on our trip. From this point onward, about 80% of the pictures we took incorporated the 20K foot monster in some way or another.


After crossing a river and being about 5 minutes from a possible camp location, we were busting through some brush when Sain's shoulder got dislocated. Allen and I went on ahead and setup camp on top of a hill while Sain tried to pop it back in. After failing for a while, he decided to come on up to camp and try to get it popped in there. His technique kept failing, and we found a new one in Matt's The Backpacker's Field Manual, Revised and Updated: A Comprehensive Guide to Mastering Backcountry Skills by Rick Curtis. With the help of Trevor, Sain was able to get his shoulder back in. This book was very helpful during the course of our trip, and we would all highly recommend it. At only $10 on Amazon, you can't go wrong.


The rest of the day we spent relaxing and playing cards. It was great. That night we had picture time. I am not going to link all of the pictures here ... so check them out in the Gallery. I will put one of just McKinely though.




I would like to point out that the only reason that we were able to take this nice pictures at night is because Wang, I mean Allen, carried his tripod the whole trip. We made fun of him for it at every possible opportunity, but all in all it was a good thing that he brought it out.