December 17th

5C (right now it is 7C) Overcast.
I'm late this morning - did come down with a doozer of a head cold, so missed one Christmas party last night and  will miss another today. I'm doing my share of protecting the vulnerable by staying away from crowds.
I'm sorry if the story gets a little bit disjointed, but doing it this way - either 1 day a head or a live entry - is my excuse. I will put it in a sequential order later as this will become part of another book.

Night came and no Art.

By this time, of the year daylight didn’t arrive until almost eight am, but I was at the airport just after seven. I would fly in the DeHaviland Beaver as the only passenger.

We had a few minutes to talk and I told the pilot about Art’s flat top mountain. I said “I don’t know where it is except that he mentioned it was above the Tuchodi (River).”

We decided that was the best place to start, we were fairly confident Art had headed towards the mountains as his main interest was sheep.

We took off as soon as we were given clearance and headed westerly to where the Tuchodi joins the Muskwa River about eighty air miles away.

At the confluence of the two rivers the country quickly changes from the upper flatlands into the rugged northern Rockies. Stone Sheep, Elk, Grizzly, Moose and Caribou call the area home.

As we approached the narrow valley entrance we climbed up to about eight thousand feet then in a few minutes the broadening valley of the Tuchodi stretched ahead of us. But now where to go?

We flew for a few minutes then turned north and followed up a side valley, it ended abruptly so we turned to the south and flew along a ridge back over the Tuchodi.

We repeated this maneuver twice and on the third time as we swung north I spotted a flash from a mountain to the west and almost at our elevation which was now just over eighty-five hundred.