Day 9: 09/18/2025

Start time: 8:55

End time: 2:50

Starting Mileage:88512

Ending Mileage:88358

Low Temp:22

High Temp:37

Total driven: 154 miles drive time 5 hrs. 55 min

Blog Entry:

Happy Birthday Lesa! Yes Lesa has two birthdays, the day she was born and the day that is on all those official documents.

Spoiler alert we made it to Deadhorse at 11:18 AM. You can see a few of the vehicles they use in winter with the trax and big wheels and of course proof that we made it. The Dalton on the north slope is a pretty good drive still.  Yes pot holes and mud but more pavement go figure. There is one section I believe it is like the last 30 miles in that is just amazing paved drive they put in 2022. I mean you're doing 55 to 60 mph, crazy.  Well we were skunked today for the very first time on not seeing Musk Ox up on the north slope.  Very disappointing for sure. Pretty much the only reason we go past Galbraith is to see the Musk Ox.  We usually see two to three herds and some individuals.  Nothing today, not sure why but one thing we noticed is all the water up on the upper slope which is unusual and they are also building pads for either gas or oil I would assume so maybe that is messing with the Musk Ox in the area.

Most of the day we were socked in by low clouds but when we pulled into Galbraith the sun was shining.  Took the pups for a couple of walks around the campground, there are Caribou hunters all over the place so the Sammies mostly stayed on their leads.  We did let them off a few times when we were sure we could and they had a ball running around in the cold and little snow around the campground. Granger is just full of himself acting like he owns the place and strutting around. Moxee is as usual this trip loving all the new things she is seeing, smelling and hearing.

We are seeing hundreds of Caribou in the hills and we saw a few on the way up and back from Deadhorse but most of them seem to be in the Galbraith area now. In one of the pics you can see Lesa, Granger and Moxee looking at a bachelor herd of caribou about 100 yards away. Unfortunately I didn't have the big gun with me. I would like to take the big gun and go stalk them and get some pictures but I also don't want to mess up anyone's bow hunting.

At 8:00 pm and we are going to go out and have a fire because it is just so nice outside.  It may be nice out but it is already 22 degrees outside.  Going to be a cold one for sure tonight! We were thinking of staying another night here but sitting around the campfire last night we decided  with all the caribou hunters we are going to leave in the morning. We are usually here 7-10 days later and miss caribou season down here in the Galbraith area, something we forgot about when we decided to come here first. We are then able to go walk the valley's and hills to the southwest of us but again not going to be able to do that now so will do it again another trip.  As you can see from the pics the hills are covered in snow and it would have been awesome to go back in there. Sitting around the campfire tonight we heard wolves far off in the distance following the caribou herds, in the valley we would have been hiking.