I am back in Arizona after a marathon 7 day drive from Tok. I was tired getting here but am at last sleeping in a real bed again. The trip was everything and more than I expected. Kayaking was hard at times, brutal at others but mostly fun all the time. The river is probably more difficult than most of the ocean kayaking that I have done with the notable exception of James Bay. That was sporty for sure. The terrain was magnificient and the native peoples a true delight to be with. My shoulder appears to be doing somewhat better. It seems that I had a partial separation of the joint when I got tangled up with the sweeper on the second day. Not a great way to begin a long trip. That is part of the deal though. When it popped back in it pinched a nerve that made my hand go numb. I would pull on it and move it around and the nerve would be fine for awhile until I popped the joint into a bad position. My doc was pleased that I did not impinge any arteries passing by the region. That would have been BAD. Anyways that seems to be the problem. The effect was that I lost about 40% of my power. I could not bridge my paddle so my strokes were somewhat ineffective. Basically more motion without much power forward and somewhat of a discomfort most of the time. I did max out on naprosyn and that seemed to help with the swelling. Oh well. It will get better.
I was disappointed for sure. This was not the first time I have been turned back because of injury on a trip. Probably will not be the last either. The 500 miles that I did was just incredible. The Yukon is a large, actually very large river. More like a lake in some places. It is gentle and calm and then turbulent and hostie with serious and convolted currents in many places. It boils and roils, has a tremendous amount of underwater debris and obstructions and hugh whirlpools that I though only existed in Pirate movies. I was caught in a couple that were about 100 feet in diameter. Those were really cool! Microburst winds caught me in the open once. These very localized and fortunately short lived events came from no place and hit quickly and violently. They were possible 100 yards wide, lasting for possibly 5 to 7 minutes and with winds close to 50 miles an hour. You just had to keep the bow into them so they would not capsize you. That was some of the fun. I have to continue setting up my computers and start downloading images. I will start getting images to Libby in about a week or so. There are some beautiful sights to be seen.
I thank all of you for your thoughts, prayers and support.
Mingo