The alarm clock is set for 5:45 am but we are all awake anyway. Jetlag here you are. We have our breakfast at 6 am. Kelly is already back (She brought to girls to the Dalton Highway Bus – they plan to paddle down the Koyukuk River).

We leave around 7 am for the airport with Peter. Our flight is leaving for Bettles at 9 am. After a little bit negotiating we have to pay for overweight – but our baggage will arrive the same day in Bettles.

As you can see lots of small planes at Fairbanks airport 😉

We have a stop-over at Allakaket – the little village near the confluence of Alatna River with the Koyukuk River where we are supposed to arrive and fly out three weeks later. When taking off at Allakaket airport, the pilot has to avoid a bird – fortunatley no one of us is afraid on planes.

Once arrived in Bettles at around 10:45 am our stuff is loaded on the pick-up (in between other stuff 😉 and stored while we are waiting for our bushflight into the wilderness. Our bagage arrives shortly after us.

As we have some time to kill (the weather is not really promising), we visit the Gates of the Arctic National Park Visitor Center in Bettles (just a short walk from the airport). Luckily we get there shortly before the heavy rain starts. The ranger there is really helpful and superfriendly. We start watching a film on the National Park when we get the call at the visitor center that our pilots are back and are ready to go – the weather should be fine enough. After a short drive to the airpot lake, we put our stuff in two floatplanes and take off for Circle Lake at around 2 pm. Dad, Mum and Marie in one plane and me in the other one.

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We are trying to check from the plane where exactly we have to take our canoes (and all the other stuff) from the lake to the river…easier said than done…

Landing on the “u”shaped circle lake…yep from closer down it does not look that large at all.

After landing and putting all our stuff on the shore we started to assemble our canoes in order to cross the lake – direction Alatna River.

Thanks to the wind it’s sunny now. We leave in our canoes at around 5 pm. It’s also thanks to the wind that is blowing us in the face that the crossing is harder than expected.

Leaving Circle Lake to get closer to the river was not always that easy….

Then the fun part of the day started. We had to cross a little forest and boggs and again a little forest before we reach a small game trail that leads us to the river – and all that with two canoes, two barrels with food, two gear boxes and all the waterproof bags.

It takes us about 3 hours to get to the river. We cross and arrive at around 9 pm on the other side. Luckily it does not get dark here. No pressure there. All of us are exhausted, however. We set up camp and build a fire nevertheless to grill some ribs. Finally, really arrived and no more portage to come! It’s well past midnight when we “fall” in our sleeping bags…