Pictures

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Leg 6: Talkeetna Mountains -- Chickaloon to Cantwell

An Adventure Treks (AT) group was camping on Boulder Creek and I joined them for the night. Like NOLS, they eat well -- that night they had cooked up Asian noodles with fresh veggies and peanut sauce, and for desert they were essentially frying brownie batter. Brownie batter, yummy. Fried brownie batter, even better.

The AT students were great -- fun, light-hearted, and having a good time. They were out there to camp, not really to hike -- you'll notice that the student on the right is wearing a sports coat, the student in the middle has a mullet wig on, and the student on the left is sitting in a Crazy Creak camp chair.

Looking back south towards the confluence of Boulder and Chitna Creeks. Notice the moraine-filled valley just above the confluence.

Another awesome campsite, this time at the pass between the Oshetna River and Caribou Creek. Soft, dry tundra -- and a view.

I saw thousands of caribou in the Oshetna River valley.

A close-up

I encountered dozens of satellite herds of caribou elsewhere in the Talkeetna's. The caribou were skittish but curious -- they would run away and then run back, run away and run back, and so on.

Game trails abound in the Talkeetna's after centuries of caribou migrations and grazing.

The headwaters of the Black River

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