Luke and I found our selves alone in the dark shivering from the cold and the stress. It felt like someone took a car off my chest, as I was so relieved that she was safe. Like 2 beat dogs we battled our way through the dark back to camp. We knew we had at least 2 days of work ahead of us before we could leave. We made some dinner and drank as much water as we could and crashed for the night.

We awoke the next morning to clear skies and cold weather. Luke used Becca�s binos to check our pack and see if the bears had got them. They were where we left them, so we eat a hot meal and got ready to go get them. We made good time getting up making sure to use the crampons this time. Once we reached my pack Luke could see how close he came to being alone with 2 casualties, as my pack was right at the boulder field. Once we had our packs we ever so carefully descended and made for camp.

Luke below where Becca got hurt.
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Dangerous, but beautiful place.
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Where we were heading!!!!
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The water bladder that slipped away from us.
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Back at camp we ate and repacked and started down to base camp with the first load. Luke hauled an impressive 134lbs down. It took us all day, as we neared camp I spotted 2 brown bears right by our camp. I started yelling and they moved off. As we got closer there was another bear right by the tent, 3 total within 50 yards of the tent. I yelled and walked along the coast to allow my scent to be blown in their direction.

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I made us some dinner and we enjoyed a warming fire as we discussed the events of the last couple days. Luke and Becca both are incredible people and I was honored to share a fire with such great young folks. Even with his bride in the hospital Luke kept a great spirit and did the Lion�s share of the work to recover my goat and our gear. We really enjoyed the extra warmth of the base camp and the extra sleeping bags we had brought. Plus the lantern helped keep the chill off as well.

Our last morning greeted us with more great weather the freezing temps made keeping the meat easy and I stashed it high in a tree. We ate a hearty breakfast and made really to return to spike camp to recover the last of our gear. We made good time up with only one near empty pack .

It seemed that it was only getting colder and when we got to spike camp and packed up the last of the gear we had no choice but to pack down our frozen water bladders full because they were frozen. We made it back to base camp at 4:30pm and called Andrews, I had called the day before and filled them in on our situation and they said to call as soon as we were ready and they would come. True to their word they showed up 45 minutes after our call.

We loaded up the Beaver and returned to Kodiak. By now Becca had made her way back to Anchorage and had surgery to set and repair her leg. Andrews gave us a ride to the hotel and we changed our tickets to fly out the next morning. I rented a car and we headed to town for a hot meal after we washed off all the goat stink from us.
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