Once we were reasonably sure of our position it was time to take a hike and do some exploring. We camped on the road that night, and started down one of the seismic trails the next morning. This commenced an exploration that went on for most of the next two months. We had compasses, a map, backpacks, rifles, and each carried a 4x4 piece of lumber.
Why a 4x4? The State of Alaska expressly required that a corner be marked by a 4x4 stake. Being the law abiding rubes that our act obviously proved, and certain that some bureaucrat would stomp deep into the woods to check for compliance, we lugged them all the way in, only to leave them lying in an area we never returned to.
Deep Creek flows through a small canyon and we eventually came onto its bluff. It was several hundred feet to the river below. Many places were too steep to descend into the canyon, so we walked east along its edge that first day. Later we would go into the canyon and explore it, but that first day we were content to see what was on top. We eventually came to a grassy meadow that sloped gently down toward the river.
It had a breath taking view - a half mile across to the opposite rim and you could see a mile or two up and down the canyon. We decided to camp on that spot, and eventually staked our claim there.
A cluster of six or eight large spruce trees grew in the meadow. We went into the middle of them and chopped all the dead branches away, clearing an area big enough to pitch an eight foot square tent. It was perfectly protected from wind and weather, and well hidden from view. We brought back a tent the next week and built a permanent camp inside the cluster.
School was out at 2:00pm on the next Friday, and we were packed and headed down the road by 3:00pm. That was our pattern for the next five or six weeks. We’d get down there about 7pm and be too antsy to camp on the road, so off we’d go, into the woods, just as darkness fell. The sun never seems to set during the summer, but by September, when there is no moon and a bit cloudy the might gets real dark, black. In a hour it was so dark we might as well have been in a cave, and all we could do was forge ahead, use our flash lights to check the compass, and hope we didn't get lost.
We found ourselves in a area of tall grass, with blades towering over our heads. It was spooky and we were singing and talking load just in case a bear was in the area. We wandered into a swamp and I stepped knee deep into mud, pitched forward, and jammed my rifle barrel into it.
Any bear within three miles would have heard the cussing and sensed there was a lunatic human in the area to be avoided. That’s probably the reason no bears showed up. We were thankful of that as our main protection was disabled. I carried a 308 caliber and Dan usually brought a 22 for small game. We extracted ourselves from the muddy swamp and shortly thereafter heard the river and knew we were close to the bluff. It took us several weeks to develop a path to our camp.
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