Episode 1: Packrafting The Noatak River, Alaska.

Good morning. I can't move. I'm sitting on my new shirt. Annette's in the back here trying to get her head up here. So we're we're heading out and we're starting our journey you guys. We're leaving Anchorage. We're heading to Fairbanks today. Five and a half hours you think? Yeah I mean we might turn off in uh Talkeetna. So a day of driving. A little tour on the way. So we um get to Fairbanks and then in the morning at like 5 30 we leave. We catch the plane. So we are all excited to get to the river's edge because we're lugging this big we're wondering how we're going to get all this stuff in these boats but we believe we believe we have heavy stuff and the food for a month is really heavy and we're lugging it around and we have to lug it down to the river. So once we get to that river's edge we know that um our boats will be carrying it for us so we're excited about that but anyway we're on our way taking you guys with us. Let's go. Yippee. Pesky just drove herself. She said she needed space from us so we'll see her down there I guess. She's serious about going? Yeah she's going. She's got her route. She's an expert. I was hoping we were gonna be alone in the wilderness. Yeah well you know how it is. Well hopefully she starts a little bit different time. Yeah. So there's Denali back there's got some clouds but you can see it back there in the background. Okay the first leg out of Fairbanks. Right here. We have to weigh all of our stuff. It's all of our stuff. Unbelievable. So we made a little stop here. We have about 20 minutes to Bettles. All right so we got off of that plane and our stuff is piled in here somewhere. We're at the Bettles little airstrip. So here's our little water. We were in the office that's right over there and then right here's the bathroom. It's an outhouse. Christy chose to go pee at the last airport which didn't have an outhouse or anything so she had to run behind a container. I saw the pilot over there peeing and I said is that a bathroom? He said it's only 20 minutes to Bettles. I'm like I gotta go. So I went I went behind that little thing over there where he was. Yep pretty crazy. Sounds crazy. They separated this group from our group and this is our stuff right here and we're just gonna leave here soon. Early. A couple hours early actually and look at it. It's just a perfect day to be flying. So here's our float plane. Okay let's run the plane. Okay there's a net. Did we wear any sunsets? Yeah. Um and then I also have my own bag of survival gear back there. Also an orange bag. All of it's her name. Awesome. There's also an emergency locator transmitter back there. All right you guys. Here's our little plane. Wait this is like still open. There you go. Thank you. That's our pilot. Girl power in here today. All right I'm gonna hop out and get a little closer to shore with the plane tight. That's our amazing. That's our girl Lana right there. Our pilot. She's pretty dang amazing. She's pulling us over. This is amazing. She's pulling us over in this airplane. Look at her. She's tough. That was an amazing flight. It was beautiful. Perfect weather. We flew right over the Arrogance Spectacular doesn't do it justice. Like if I mean not. So here's our plane. We just got all of our stuff out on the ground there. Look at this beautiful day. It's like perfect day. Hey be safe. Thank you. So here we are out here by ourselves. This is it. The beginning of our float down the Noatak River. We're gonna go. Right now we're gonna carry all this stuff. I think we have to go like 200 yards over to the river's edge and we're gonna. We're not sure how far it is but we're gonna set up camp and then start tomorrow so we can organize ourselves. It'll take us a while to get the stuff carried over there but that's our plan. All right. So we just emptied our packs. We're gonna go get our next load up there. Should have one more load. This is the Noatak River right here. Just it's just absolutely beautiful. We're getting our second load. It's so heavy. Got all my stuff down here. Annette and Bob are still getting theirs but look at this. Amazing. It's just amazing out here. Oh I'm starving. I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna eat something. I just put my little chair out right there. I'm gonna sit right here by the Noatak River and have lunch. Shot of our tent. Still putting stuff up but here's our tent. We're just sitting down here drinking some hot drinks and here's Barb's tent. Pink tent. We're just walking along the beach here. There's these big prints. Looks like a caribou or moose or something walked over here. So beautiful out here. It's really warm, quiet, really still day. So Annette and I are gonna put all of our food bags here. We have the earth sacks underneath these dry sacks and we have them tied to this tree. And Barb has this alarm thing so if something's over here messing with it an alarm goes off. So we're gonna try it. See see what's up. I just wanted to show you how light it still is at 1 30 in the morning. Okay we're starting our morning over here with some dehydrated eggs, coffee. So we haven't had our boats on the water yet so we're gonna have to organize our stuff. This is my pile right here on what goes in the boat and what um well it all goes in the boat but how it goes in the boat. We haven't even gotten our boats out yet. They're still in the bags but anyway it's a perfect spot, perfect weather. We're getting our boats adjusted to the cold water. Yeah all of our stuff are in these boats and they're floating so far but we have to put our bodies in there and see what happens. And we're off. Our first launch fully loaded and it is really NOAA TAC and it is just perfect and uh great weather. The water you have to kind of watch there's a little bit of a shallow spots here and there but we can get around it okay. That's awesome. Just awesome. It's our first stop of the trip. Taking a little lunch break here. We are packing up. Gonna head out. She was cutting up a caribou. Oh my gosh. Pretty shallow. Kind of look shallow. I'm gonna have to get out I think. So the main river, the NOAA TAC is right over there. This is another one running into it. Pretty awesome. It's coming down this valley right over here. Okay we're gonna camp here. So we're unloading because all the stuff came out of Barb's boat. Out of the tubes. We're trying to get ours unloaded here. I let the air out of mine. I'm trying to get the bags out. It's in the water. So right back over here is our grizzly bear neighbor that we've seen several times wandering through that over there. And then there's our camp. There's our tent. Barb's is way over there. Boats. We're so hot that we have to set up these shade things. It's just the sun is so intense and there's no shade. So we set up our little shade stuff and we're all just hanging out for a while. Here's our bear friend. He's hanging out sleeping on the sand right there. So we're sitting right here and right there I just got up to check my phone and there's the bear sunbathing right behind us. He's getting a drink of water. He's swimming across the river. He's totally in the water. It's underwater now. Back out. Just got in the water. It got cooled off. Now he's rolling on his back. He's rolling around getting nice and sandy. This is where the bear was lying down right here. See that little spot? And we're right there. And it was sleeping right here. And here's its little print. Here's one of them right there. And then it walked away. It's just a young one. Oh my gosh. He came over here and pooped. Oh he's full of berries. Oh my gosh. Look at this. He came over here and pooped. Look at that. A bunch of berries. There's a bunch of berries right out here. Who was looking so sweet over there was being naughty over here. So see Barb's bags right there. So we don't have trees to hang stuff on. So you tie them to these bushes. So I had mine tied like right there. I went back in the bushes and went to the bathroom. I came back. I had my bag tied right there. Right on the edge. And you tie them on there really well so they have to work to get it off. And then we have these little alarms that will go off if they start messing with it. Well I came back. I tied it. I walked back over here and I got the alarm turned around and there was a bear on my food bag. I mean on top of it. So we started screaming and yelling and going on the whistle and it took off into the bushes. And it came out and started heading for Barb's. Barb has her bags kind of sitting right over there. So it starts heading over there. We're screaming and yelling and making noise. And so finally it ran across the water and took off over there. So now we're over here and Barb brought this bear fence. And we're putting that up. I'll show you it when it gets set up. But you put the food bag in the middle of it. And if the bear comes up there it'll shock it so it'll leave them alone. I mean we're really more worried about our food than anything. It doesn't really seem to care about us but wants our food. You have these wires and it goes in a square rectangle we have it set up. And we have our bags in the middle of it. And it's like an electric fence. If the bear tries to get the food they get a little bit of a shock. And hopefully it deters them to get the food. All right so we have this little warning so people don't walk up on this. A little reflective sign. There's nobody out here. But then we have our food bags there. We have the alarms on them also in case just in case. And then we we have to just set this up. Rest of it up and get it where it would give a little bit of a zap. We're trying to save our food but we're trying to save the bear too. So maybe it'll deter it from bothering people and getting food. Well we have another perfect morning it looks like. Got a little cloud haze right there in that valley. Amazing. So we didn't have any food drama. It doesn't sound like anything tried to get the food or tried to get us. Just totally peaceful and quiet. Good night.