Koroc River

August 11, 2018

It rained all night. It was still raining at our planned wakeup time, so we stayed in the tents a little longer, hoping it would clear. We got up in the end anyway, and the rain stopped as we were having breakfast under the tarp. As we left camp, patches of blue sky began appearing, though we hiked off into a fog, which gradually cleared as the day went on. As we hiked down the drainage towards Base Camp valley, we had our first wildlife sighting of the entire trip, a lone caribou who got somewhat agitated at our presence. Finally it decided which way to run and took off over the hill as we continued on down. We found a beautiful place to camp just as we entered the valley, so set up quickly, stashed all our excess gear, and then hiked up valley towards Base Camp about five kilometers away. We picked up our climbing gear, had a quick break and then proceeded back down the valley, following a newly marked route, in fact last week new, since this route was not here when we hiked in seven days ago. Elaborate cairns now dot the landscape every few meters and some brand new bridges cross the easily rock hopped streams. A little bit overkill if you ask me, to support guided wilderness tours in this area, but that is just my opinion. We ran into Dominic along here who was loaded fully up for trail maintenance, including a weed whacker, and stopped to chat. He told us that the flight on Friday was cancelled and the big group was now waiting at the airstrip for a flight out tomorrow. He suspected that the plane might be early to clear the backlog, weather permitting. He also suggested that we should camp close to the airstrip to make sure that we are there in time. We hiked back to our camp, making one tricky stream crossing where Deb got her feet wet, I took off my boots to wade, and Paul managed to find a successful rock hop route. We cooked up a hot lunch at camp and then reluctantly tore it down. We hitched up our now heavy packs with the climbing gear and hiked on towards the Koroc River. We scrambled down into a beautiful waterfall gorge where Base Camp creek descends out of the valley and then forded the flow, Deb hugging my wake in the fast current. Some bushwhacking, nasty side hilling, and a few swamp crossings brought us to the Koroc River where we walked along the sand flats for a while, observing caribou tracks and even some fresh bear prints in the soft ground. We found a good place to ford, where we made an easy crossing in the knee deep water. A trek across a few more swamps brought us to the airstrip, where a trail of new cairns showed the way. We set up camp near a small pond and a pair of Innuit guides from the group at the domes came over to chat. They warned of a bear in the area that they had scared off with their gun yesterday. They also asked us to show them how our bear fence worked, as they had one for their camp but did not know how to set it up. As we cooked supper, the sun set and it got very cold out. We hit the sack shortly after as this ended up being the hardest hiking day of the trip since the last two days were condensed into one. Hopefully we get a flight out of here tomorrow.

Foggy day.