This trip report is dedicated to the memory of Keith Reed, a fellow off-roader who drowned after falling into a whirlpool along the Little Oshetna River.  Keith was a friend and former employee of my brother-in-law (Dan Green) and I offered to ride along and offer any help I could when I heard a group of wheelers had answered Keith's Dad's request to recover his son's truck.

I didn't realize it until Dan mentioned it later but most of the guys on the trip had not wheeled with each other before but they were all willing to drop whatever they were doing to attempt the recovery on a cloudy Monday morning.

The starting point for the trip was near the Eureka roughly 140 miles from Anchorage.  Thankfully the clouds had thinned a bit and the threat of rain had subsided.  Dan had mentioned this trip could take several extra hours if the trail turned muddy.

I was riding with Kevin in his FJ40.  He explained to me how technically this may be his second FJ40 since the original frame had been worn out.  As you can see, even with a few days of mild rain there were stills some pretty deep water crossings.

One of only two mechanical issues of the trip, a pair of inverted shackles on Kevin's FJ.  Dan was able to pop them back in place with a large pipe wrench and as a cautionary measure we snugged Kevin's winch to his front axle to limit suspension travel.  The springs were actually pre-bent on a previous expedition which caused the shackle inversion. Later in the trip, Curtis had some issues with his PCM in his XJ but a spare PCM cured the problem.

Approaching Monument Hill we passed this Unimog, buried up to it's front bumper in mud with a tent pitched beside it.  No one was around so we continued on with the intention of checking up on it again on the way out.

Monument Hill was a huge hill that once on top afforded views into several different valleys.

I tried to capture some of the raw beauty in the above panoramic shots.

We continued up yet another sweeping valley, stopping from time to time to let the rest of the group catch up.

We crossed over from one valley to the next and the clouds had started to build dropping light rain on us.

It was another hour or so before we made it to the truck, nearly 50 miles off the highway.

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