Just Follow the River

One evening two young college girls from Canada arrived.  At that time I was still staying in the Yurt.  The Yurt is a round tent/building that is divided by a seven foot wall in the form of an upside down capital T.  When you walk into the the Yurt you will see a frigerator, a stove and a few cuboards and a counter space.  Under the counter are six drawers.  This is the Yurts kitchen.  Men who live in the Yurt go to the right, women to the left.   On each side of the Yurt are two sets of bunk beds and one twin size bed.  For the first two days I was alone in the Yurt with, a male season intern.  On the third day, my boss moved in with us and I had the Canadians move in on my side.  They say Aye alot.

Anyways, they wanted to know if I would show them the way to the falls.  So off the three of us went.  I like an idiot forgot my radio and GPS but I did have my bear spray along with me.  In my defense, I was just planning on following the road to the trail and the trail to the falls and back again.  So we hiked to the falls and spent about an hour enjoying the beautiful scenery.  Then one of the girls got it in her head that we should follow the river to Brooks Lake.  I said other people have done it but I never had and I wasn't sure of the way but after a few minutes of discussion we decided that following the river would be easy and Brooks Lake was not that far away so the three of us decided to try it. 

We got off the platform and headed to the edge of the river.  It was a beautiful sunny evening and the scenery was awesome.  We had been hiking for about ten minutes when we came up to a stream that entered the river.  All three of us were wearing tennis shoes and not our muck boots (knee boots) and the stream was a little too wide for us to jump so we decided to try and find a way to get across the stream.  Following the stream we came across a bunch of fallen down trees blocking our way so we thought no problem just walk around.  Once around the trees we could not see the stream or the river anymore but we were standing on a bear trail and decided that it was heading in the right direction so we would follow that.  As we were walking we were busy getting to know one another.  This of course led to not watching where we were going.  I thought I saw the road up ahead but it turned out to be a place in the woods where there were not any trees and the sunlight was decieving us in to thinking there was a road not just a barren piece of tundra.  Standing there in this clearing surrounded by a forest of white spruce trees we realized that we were no longer heading in the right direction that we had done a 180 turn in the woods.  This made one of my partners very nervous, the other was sure were she was going and took off with the two of us rushing to keep up because it is not wise to be separated in bear country.  Bears won't attack a group unless absolutely necessary.  So the leader went walking off in quick pace through the thick trees.  After another fifteen minutes of endless walking in circles I made everyone stop and just listen for a few moments.  I could hear the falls off to the north so I took the lead and headed to the sound.  Being you are not suppose to be quiet when hiking I said we needed to keep talking but the Canadians were a little nervous and couldn't think of anything to say.  Finally one of them decided to sing a silly bear song she had heard before she left for Alaska and she taught it to us.  So there we were three lost girls singing silly bear songs looking for the place we had started.  After another ten minutes of wandering we came across the trail safe and sound and without a bear story.  We were lucky if we had done that a month later those same woods would have been filled with bears.  It was not a bright idea on my part, though I joked that we weren't really lost just temporarily misplaced.

The next night, the same girl talked the male intern into a hike to a lake a mile away.  It was 9:30 at night.  They asked me if I wanted to go.  I said are you crazy.  It was too late to start a hike.  Needless to say they got lost on the way to the lake.  On the way out there they had met a bear and moved into the woods to avoid it, and preceeded to get lost.   This time they had got very lost and at 11pm called on the radio, which the intern, at the last minute remembered to bring, that they were lost.  The intern had a compass on him and gave the ranger station the heading.  Two hours of searching by the law enforcement rangers did not  find them.  By this time it was getting dark.  They called the two lost souls and told him they would resume their search at 5am.  The intern told them he had a lighter and had started a fire and had built a lean to for them.  He also had a whistle which the Canadian girl was blowing constantly to scare away the bears.  By 7:30 the next moring they were found.  Needless to say once found they became the butt of many jokes but the lesson learned is not to go wondering off and if you dumb enough to do so take the proper equipment with you.