Day 10 - July 13
Sunny, 21C

The wind is still strong, keeping the hordes of biting insects at bay. Deb decides she'd like to stay at the tents to explore the beach while the boys and I hike up the canyon to do some filming. On the way back from our hike, we see an eagle fly up the river. From our vantage point on the banks, we can look down and admire the birds mastery of the air currents as the buffeting wind provides a challenge.

After we pack up and head downstream, we encounter a young bull moose feeding near shore. We're upwind from him and he's curious about us. He sniffs the air and comes closer to figure out what we are. Eventually, he catches our scent and decides to leave in a hurry - guess its time for us to find a place to take a bath.

A little farther downstream, we see two more bull moose with much larger racks of antlers, but they take shelter before we get close. We also see a cow with a calf, but she doesn't let us get very close either.

We stop at another site that shows evidence of long time use by aboriginal campers as well as more modern visitors. On a large, prominent rock, we find a brass topographic survey marker. Nearby, we find a broken spear point.

Our destination for tonight is near the site of John Hornby's cabin. Hornby was an eccentric English explorer who came to this area in 1925 in the company of his 18 year old cousin Edgar Christian and family friend Harold Adlard. All three died of starvation because they arrived too late for the caribou migration which they were relying on to supply them with food. Edgar kept a diary of the tragedy that make for very compelling reading. On our last trip, I brought excerpts from the diary which we read in our tent. You could feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end as Edgar's last tragic words spilled from the pages.

Just upstream from the cabin, we encounter a herd of about 30 musk ox grazing in the willows near shore. We spend some time filming them. They don't seen to mind our presence and walk right past the canoes, almost near enough to touch with a paddle.

There isn't as much left at the cabin site as there was on our visit seven years previous. More of the cabin has been absorbed by the land, some of the artifacts I remembered are no longer there and the crosses that mark the grave site are in a more advanced state of decay. Someone has brought three newer crosses and laid them on the grave sites. What hasn't changed from our previous visit was the bugs - they're every bit as bad as they were last time.

Some time after we returned from our last trip, I learned that the father of Rick Wilson (one of my neighbors) was the person who originally discovered the cabin in the woods back in 1927. Sometimes it is amazing how small the world can be.