We start the day with nice weather and after startling some owls at about 11.30 pm (? should not they be asleep) we decide to stop on the confluence with another small river to try to catch some fish.
In the course of the day, the air starts to get kind of foggy and we are wondering weather it’s fog or clouds when at some point there also is a kind of “burnt” smell as well.
Now we understand: It looks like the wildfires finally catched up with us despite the change of the river.
In addition, there are not a lot of “good camps”. We navigate about 3 hours after lunch before we finally settle for a quite “sandy” bank. Fortunatley, there are some portions with a little bit of gravel to set up our tents even if we are farer away from the river than usual. The smoke is still there and even get’s thicker and thicker. Mystic.
After deciding to camp here (the mountains around us are starting to vanish in the smoke), we call Peter to be sure that the fire is not to close (we are fine). Then the same routine as every day since Saturday- pumping water and cooking steaks!
We start to play cards after dinner (Jassen) but have to stop around 10.30 pm as it starts raining (and we have not set up our tarp)…early night then.
Alatna 2019 