Today was a new day. It was still cold and windy but the storm was gone and we had visibility again. The entire valley was bright white from the storm which dumped about four inches. We couldn't get off the mountain fast enough.

Jumping over an icy river is aways fun - unless you miss and fall in. In this case - I landed safely on the boulder.

 

Knowing that we were getting nowhere fast, we left our packs down on the Johnson River at the intersection of a stony creek bed and did a quick run to check for any bear sign. For nothing else other than to simply scratch it off the list, we went about two miles up the creek - confirming our suspicions that there was really no reason to spend any time up here. We walked back to the Johnson, grabbed our pack frames and headed home.

Fresh Grizzly tracks made the night before - all right!

On the way we came across very fresh grizzly tracks in the snow. This was a new set of tracks - from a much larger bear. Interestingly, the tracks were made less than fifty yards from the other fresh set along the river two days earlier (the ones which prompted us to set up the spike camp). We had some options and after drying our clothes and a good meal, we sat along the banks of the Johnson hoping to intercept a bear coming downriver. We hunted till midnight and headed back to the plane camp.

We took advantage of the spotty sun and wind to dry some clothes.