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NOATAK RIVER — The trip started with a lucky flight in a small plane.

We took off from Bettles under patchy clouds and flew north over rolling hills and winding rivers in a well-worn Beaver. By the time we reached the rocky peaks of the Brooks Range, the clouds were thick and low.

“We might have to turn around,” our pilot, Scotty, shouted over the roar of the engine.

The wall of the mountains crept closer as we climbed into a pass. The ceiling of clouds pinned us down. Scotty flew in to take a look, then snuck through a window of clear sky between rock and cloud. We made it.

The view opened up, and before us appeared the wide river valley and snaking river that would be our home for the next three weeks.

We touched down on a pond near the river and unloaded our gear — sleeping bags, bear canisters filled with food, fishing rods, warm clothes, a pair of folding kayaks.

A few minutes later, Scotty taxied back across the pond and took off, circled around, then disappeared up a side valley. The sound of the engine faded away and we were alone, many miles from anywhere.

It was a relief — no more errands to run or e-mails to answer — but also the start of a challenge. We had 17 days to get from here to the village of Noatak, 350 miles away, on a wild river none of us had ever seen. For any hurdles that arose, we had only our skills and our wits and the gear we’d managed to fit in the Beaver. (We did have a satellite phone, I’ll admit, but hoped not to use it.)

Because of a weight limit on the plane, we had less food than we thought we’d need. We had old boats with untested repairs, and when we unpacked them, one of the wooden ribs had split in half.

• • •

The Noatak River starts in the Schwatka Mountains in the western Brooks Range and drains the largest undeveloped mountain basin in the U.S. For more than 350 miles, the river runs through mountains, tundra and spruce forest with hardly a sign of humans — wild even by Alaska standards.

It flows west and south, and passes through the village of Noatak after roughly 350 miles, then winds another 50 miles to the south before emptying into Kotzebue Sound.

The headwaters flow through the 8 million-acre Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Most of the rest lies within the Noatak National Preserve, and 330 miles of river are designated as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. A good chunk of the Noatak is also a designated UNESCO Biosphere Reserve — a sort of wilderness control to the scientific experiment of human influence.

I paddled the river from the headwaters to Noatak in August with three friends from Anchorage — Diana, Darcy and Toby.

• • •

We had the time, so for the first few days, we hiked.

At our camp in the headwaters, the river valley was flanked on both sides by 4,000- and 5,000-foot peaks. Aside from craggy Mount Igikpak and snow-capped Oyukak Mountain, few were named on our map.

We chose our routes at whim, and made our own paths across the tundra to reach the hills, feasting on blueberries as we went.

Golden eagles soared overhead, searching for prey. Dall sheep flocked on the hillsides. Tussocks gave way to rock and then fresh snow as we climbed, and at the summits, U-shaped valleys and craggy ridges spread out before us.

We might not have been the first humans to climb those peaks — a few dozen people paddle the river each year — but in our wandering hikes, we became explorers. The few other paddlers we spotted were the only asterisk to being completely alone in the wild.

Toby fixed the broken rib with a wooden splint and hose clamp, and on the third day, we paddled downriver to where the giant Kugrak River valley joined the Noatak. We hiked again the next day, and it was on that day that we saw our first caribou and bear.

We’d ferried the river and crossed the tundra, climbed the rocky western ridge above the Kugrak, and waded through snow to reach the summit. On our way down, we spotted a pair of caribou coming up. The cow studied us from afar; the bull kept grazing.

Another bull appeared, then three more caribou further down. The cow spooked and took off, glided over the rocky terrain we struggled to walk on.

Over each bunch of rocks, more caribou appeared — a calf with stubby antlers, a group of nearly a dozen. We perched on rocks and watched, surrounded by animals.

The bear arrived that night at dinner, just across the river from our camp. Her fur was light and dark, a little dirty and wet. If she noticed us, she didn’t let on. She walked slowly up the river on the far bank, trailed by three young cubs.

After that day, caribou became commonplace.

One morning at dawn, Darcy spotted a half-dozen across the river. They trotted up the rocky bank, then waded into the water and started to swim across the current upstream. They came out on our side and climbed the bank to the tundra, pausing at the river’s edge to shake the water from their coats.

In my mind, I made an amateur’s list of the big land mammals in arctic Alaska — caribou, grizzly bear, Dall sheep, moose, musk ox, wolf and fox. We’d already seen caribou, sheep, and a bear. I hoped we would get a chance to see them all.

• • •

We soon developed a routine. Diana woke early to start a fire, over which we boiled river water for tea and oatmeal. We took down tents and packed our gear, then loaded our belongings into the wooden kayaks.

Then we paddled.

In the upper stretches of the river, the valley was only a few miles wide and flanked by high peaks. The river itself snaked and bent so much that in any given day, we paddled every direction of the compass. Further down, the mountains faded away and the landscape stretched out into long vistas.

In our hours in the boats, we talked or drifted into thought. We studied the banks and the clouds, and we pointed out caribou, loons or feeding arctic grayling as we spotted them. We marveled at hawks, falcons, and even a snowy owl.

At our campsites, we studied the bear and wolf tracks that nearly always lined the banks. And food, which we had worried about before, started to seem like less of a problem. We fished most days and added grayling and pike to our camp dinners.

• • •

On the third day of paddling, near the entrance of the Kavachurak Creek, we reached the rapids. Waves piled up in the outside of sweeping turns or below boulders in the river. The water was low — thanks to some clear weather — but the current was fast, and standing waves rose a few feet high. Water splashed over the bow, and the boats flexed in the middle as they rode the waves. Toby’s repairs worked well, and only one needed bailing.

A few guidebooks offer general information about the Noatak River, but none details the specific rapids or tells how to run them. So we read the rapids as they came, and only once did we nearly swamp.

At the start of one, Toby and Darcy stopped and pointed to the bank, then paddled their boat to shore. Diana and I followed. We beached the boats and snuck downstream, and there it was — a giant musk ox plodding up the bank.

We stopped and stared.

The animal paused to tug at some willow twigs, then left the bank and crossed slowly into the tussocks, its long hair swinging like a skirt.

That took musk ox off the list.

Another first came soon after. We had stopped by a river eddy to fish and were snacking on pilot bread and cheese, when we spotted a pair of ears and a furry head swimming our way. We grabbed for pepper spray and scrambled to repack the boats, but as the animal neared the shore, it was clear it wasn’t a bear. We breathed again and watched as a light grey wolf climbed out on the rocks and took off upstream, more frightened even than we had been.

A few days later, we saw a red fox.

• • •

The Noatak is not completely free of human development. But as the days and miles ticked by, the wildness of it began to soak in. Aside from the erosion of riverbanks and the shifting of channels, the river looks pretty much like it did 30 or 300 years ago.

In two weeks of paddling, we saw only a handful of cabins on the bank. We read of archeological sites, but saw none from the river.

The further we went, the bigger the river got. The Aniuk River added its water, and then the Nimiuktuk. At the mouth of the Cutler River, we started to see chum salmon on their spawning run. (One night we feasted on salmon; others we ate Dolly Varden.)

The river valley spread wide at the Grand Canyon of the Noatak, the mountains off in the distance. In the Noatak Canyon, rock walls rose hundreds of feet in the air above the river. Our topographic maps became useless below that, where the river split into ever-shifting braids.

Only in the final few days did we see trees — cottonwoods first, then a few birch, and finally spruce. We treated them like novelties and used them for their shade.

The caribou disappeared.

By the lower stretches, the only big animal we hadn’t seen was the one most common to Fairbanks and Anchorage. We’d seen plenty of moose tracks, but no moose.

And then one appeared — a young bull standing alone on the bank. When he saw us, he plunged in and started to swim downriver. We drifted and watched as he swam a few hundred yards, then climbed to the bank and sprinted into the brush.

On our last day, we hardly paddled at all. It wasn’t fatigue — steady current and tailwinds had given us a relatively easy ride. It was the recognition that the wilderness would soon end and civilization begin.

We stopped for a snack on the riverbank — with fish, we had plenty of food for the trip — and watched the salmon resting in the shallow waters.

Then we floated the last mile to the village, already planning the next trip.