A Visit to the Big Fork River
We are now less than two months away from leaving on our big adventure north. We have set a tentative leave date of May 6th, assuming ice and river conditions allow. Fortunately, the milder winter we have had this year leads us to believe we will be able to leave as expected.
Over the last month or so, we have continued to stay busy with preparations for our trip. We have finally finished our food and all the baking, dehydrating, and repackaging needed for that. We also decided to add some food to our 3rd resupply that we will plan to carry into the 4th resupply to allow us to pack our packs a bit better. These two resupplies will now both be 33 days worth of food. Our 4th resupply (formerly 41 days) alone would simply be too much food for our packs we have, so spreading it out seems to help quite a bit. Our remaining focus is finalizing our “kettle pack” with various repair kit items and kitchen supplies and finalize putting our medical kit together. Aside from those, it is a lot of small ticket items I am sure we will be working out up until we leave. It will sure feel good to be done with the big items here soon.
Over this past weekend, I spent the weekend with my girlfriend at our family hunting cabin in Big Falls (where we will begin our trip). Johnathon and his girlfriend spent their weekend a bit further north on the border in International Falls. On their way home on Sunday, they stopped in Big Falls at our family cabin. We got to do some practice up north with the firearm we will be taking with us on our trip, as well as a variety of “bear bangers”. Bear Bangers are a pen-sized device that shoots a loud “flare” into the air that explodes and is used as a non-lethal way to help deter bears away from your location - we will have some of these with us on our trip as well. They are small and fit right in our life jackets.
Before leaving town, we stopped at the Big Fork River at “the falls” (pictured above). In less than 2 months, we will be leaving from the north side of the river, below these falls on the river. There is still ice covering the river and some snow yet in the woods up north, so for now, we just have to hope all will be gone in the next few weeks! Felt a little bizarre to be at our starting location - it is all starting to become a little more real day by day.
We are excited to continue to hone in on our final preparations and looking forward to our upcoming trip! Stay tuned for more!
Z&J
