August 16, 2026

Tuesday 16 August - day 49

A restless night but we had moved the canoe up to the tent and the water didn’t come anywhere near us. We are quite sure though that the river has eaten at least 20 meters of the sandbank since we arrived. That is a lot!

Late start at 10.40ish and lunch break for about half an hour at 14.30

Just after lunch we talked to Stan, a fisherman from Tanana who were moving stuff off the river as the rumour had it that more water is on the way. Somewhere on the Porcupine River in Canada the river rose with 13 and a half feet over a day or a few days.

Paddling there is a lot of trees and debris in the water

There were a few islands we were hoping to camp on, on the way to Tanana but all were flooded with no sand/gravel bank left. There was nothing at all on the downriver side of the islands either.

Saw a spot that was okay but we wanted to try Sixteenmile Island (lots of islands are so named as the number of miles from a village, this one is sixteen miles from Tanana) When we got to Sixteenmile Island there was nothing up river and we decided to cross to the right bank of the river but that was also hopeless. while over there we could see some cabins on the island. We thought it might be a fish camp and we decided to check it out. We were lucky that there was hardly any current so we could easy cross back again.

It turned out to be Tanana Tribal Council Spirit Camp. There was nobody there and we decided to camp just under their basketball net!

I slept better that night knowing there was no way we would be flooded.

There was hardly any current so we didn’t go so fast today so it turned into a quite long day.

paddled for 8 hours 21 minutes and 71,8 km we had 46 minutes break so we were out for over 9 hours.

N W camp 39

The sharp-eyed among you will notice the lack of coordinates in Jane’s notes for this post. We’ll just have to go back and take them again! However, what Jane also reveals is confirmation that we were making the right decision to get off the water. As the locals were securing their gear in anticipation of more rain and higher river levels on the way, we could only follow suite and be smart. Already we could see that the river was getting more sporty with more debris and fewer places to camp.

It was still an exciting place to be though, and even more so when we discovered float planes ‘parked’ beside fishing camps. Once again, we were reminded of the size - not least the breadth - of the Yukon River when compared to most European rivers. It might not be the Amazon, but it was Alaska which is just as good if not better in my book. ;-)

As Jane writes … You know what? Jane’s got it covered. :-) I’ll leave you with a snippet of Jane’s notes from above, and just add some photos.

It turned out to be Tanana Tribal Council Spirit Camp. There was nobody there and we decided to camp just under their basketball net!

I slept better that night knowing there was no way we would be flooded.