Today was a beautiful, and very bright day. All of these photos were way over exposed and I had to tweek each of them to be able to see anything other than WHITE.
I have resized these photos due to people telling me this trip was loading too slow, I hope this is better! 5/3/04

Sean, Chuck and I headed up the Tsirku River (pronounced: Sir-kew), But the locals call it "the Big Salmon".
We didn't know when we left the roadhouse, if we were to chase the head waters at the Tsirku glacier, or jump the saddle and enter the Takhin, (pronounced: Ta-keen).
As it turned out, we actually kinda didn't do either, but it was a great ride all the same.

We found the river very low, but the banks more than made up for that,
You can see chuck just entering our first tough crossing, Sean on the island and I across the next section.

This is always the first technical crossing, the water is usually deep but the banks are mostly allowable.
But today, though the river gave us lots of room to play on the gravel shores, the banks where verticle and solid...and tall!
And although the river loves to wander all over the valley floor from year to year, it always runs right against this steep bluff.
So the first crossing gave indication of the rest to come, a very interesting challenge to make our way up the Big Salmon.