2005 Alsek Trip

Dave Lindsay, a long time friend with whom I worked with at Mountain River Tours in the early eighties, invited me to go on a 15-day trip on the Alsek River in northwest Canada .  A Paddler Magazine article in the March, 05 issue mentioned the Alsek as one of the world’s five best rivers, primarily due to its scenery.  The Alsek is famous for Turnback Canyon , a seven mile long Class VI, which was run solo by Walt Blackadar in the 1970’s.  Only a handful of the world’s best boaters have run this since.  And no, we were not about to attempt this canyon, trips on the Alsek hire a helicopter to portage the section.

I last saw Dave a year prior when he was supposed to join me on a Hell’s Canyon of the Snake river trip, but he canceled due to the passing of his mother.  He generously loaned us his gear at which time I saw him for the first time in about 15 years.

Dave filled the Alsek trip with 15 people, all from Boise except me.  There were 5 gear boats: Dave rowed one with Bronwin, whose husband, Ron rowed another boat.  Mike rowed one with his wife Shelly; Jim one with his wife Evelyn and John had the other boat switching off with Carl.  I took the one paddle boat for the most part with folks who normally paddle a kayak: Greg and his wife, Alisa; Kelly and his girlfriend, Leslie and Stan. 

Dave picked me up at the Whitehorse , Yukon airport and I rode with some of the crew to the put in at Haines Junction , Yukon Territory , where we met the rest of the group.  I had been near the Arctic Circle once before during summer solstice, but it still took getting used to the constant daylight.  It was like dusk from about 1:00 a.m. to about 2:30 a.m. , otherwise the sun was out all the time.

We put in on June 19^th, on a river call the Desadeashe, a tributary of the Alsek .  The day before the sun was out and we rigged boats in 80 degree weather.  It was a little cool at 6 a.m. when we put in but not too cold.  We had heard stories of groups making no progress on the Desadeashe due to brutal upstream winds, hence the reason for the 6 a.m. put in, to beat the winds.  There was current at first, then real slow water for the last half before the confluence of the Alsek at mile 17.  We saw several moose in this stretch and it got very cold as we had been suckered into not wearing dry suits since it was so hot the day before.  This was the only day on the river I did not wear my dry suit. It was interesting running a paddle boat with a bunch of kayakers, as they wanted to thow in their own strokes, but I think I gained their respect pretty quickly (I had to yell at Kelly once for really throwing a stroke) and they were great to paddle with the whole trip. Dave gave us two days to get to the confluence in case of winds, but we preferred to get there in one day.  We made it to camp by 11:15 a.m.   We did the right thing as later that afternoon there were huge wind gusts.  Dave almost lost his tent as a gust blew the tent away, even though it was staked to the ground.  All of us had our tents tied to a fixed object, like a tree, the rest of the trip.

Day two we got our first taste of the braided river, a wide, flat river that spreads out over gravel bars and has many channels to choose from.  Some can turn out to be too shallow.  We did well with the braids and stopped at a pretty side creek waterfall we hiked up to.  I switched with Dave and rowed the gear boat after lunch.  We camped at Marble Creek around mile 35.  The cfs (cubic feet per second) was maybe 35,000 by now.  We would reach over 100,000 cfs after the Tatshenshini confluence.  We hiked at most camps, always carrying our bear spray.

Day 3 was the most brutal. We had a cold rain and lots of wind.  We started getting some Class II rapids, but our main mission was to get to camp and be able to get out of the weather.  We reached our first lake, Lake Lowell , where we would view the beautiful Lowell glacier from our camp site.  Dave, Jim, Carl and I did an ice run to get ice from small icebergs in the lake.  Behind the glacier were three tall mountains: Alderson; Hubbard; and Kennedy.

Day 4 was a layover day, so most of us hiked up part of Goatherd Peak .  We bushwhacked a bunch through thick brush, but the views were great and the hike well worth it.  Coming down we took shortcuts by sliding on our butts across snowfields, which was quite entertaining.

Day 5 was to be our biggest rapid day (the Alsek isn’t known for its rapids).  One rapid Sam’s was a Class III run to the right of a big island and a Class V to the left.  The island was long and the Class V rapid was at the end of the island so one couldn’t scout it and then go down the other side if it looked unrunnable.  From recommendations we went right.  We came out at the base of the Class V left side and felt we could have done it.  Ten miles later we came to the biggest rapid of the trip, Lava North.  It is rated a Class IV, which I agree with.  There was a huge knarly hole on the right, a big crashing wave/hole center left and a narrow highway between the two.  There was a sneak route, with a move to get left of the crashing wave, down the left bank.  All gear boats opted to go left.  I was the only one going right.  We lined up ready to go and I was to go third so there would be safety below, and I lined up to be third.  However, once I hit the center current, as the two lead boats were floating in the slower water on the left, I knew I was going to be first.  We nailed the line, real clean down the highway.  The waves in the highway were a lot bigger than they looked from the bank, so it was a wicked fun ride.

The gear boats running sneak hadn’t realized how difficult of a pull it was, so two of the boats ended up running the crashing wave (made it OK) and another, after watching other boats hitting the crashing wave, snuck so far left he got stuck.  It was a good feeling having done Lava North.  I have done all three famous Lavas.  Of course Lava Falls in the Grand Canyon and Lava South was a huge rapid on the Bio Bio in Chile , but it is now under a lake as the river was dammed up.  We stopped and checked out another Glacier (Fisher), then camped at the mouth of Fisher outlet.  We saw two bear at this camp, one grizzly and one black.

On day 6 we had nice moving current with good class II-III waves and long rapids.  We stopped for a couple of short hikes, and then got to camp at Plug Creek around noon .  This was a great camp so we decided to layover another day.  We did several hikes at this layover camp, one to a glacier.  It was really cool to see the river that came from this glacier not actually come from the base of the glacier but it bubbled up in a pool 150 feet down from the end of the glacier.

Day 8 was real fast current again though a real pretty gorge, so we made 20 miles in 2 hours and camped at the portage beach for Turnback Canyon .  We are now in British Columbia , Canada .  There was a memorial paddle for Walt Blackadar at the wall of Mount Blackadar behind us.

Day 9 was our helicopter portage.  They took four people on the first trip then came back for the gear.  All of the rafts were deflated and the gear was put in a huge net to be transported by the helicopter with only the pilot in the craft.  It took four trips with gear and four trips for the people.  I got to be the one to hook the gear net to the helicopter.  It was pretty interesting (and scary to be standing right there as the helicopter comes in arms reach so I could hook the net to the bottom of the copter.  I went on the last trip.  The pilot took each of the groups through Turnback Canyon .  At first it just looked like a knarly high water (70,000 cfs now), huge eddy lines, run, until we got to a rapid call Double Indemnity, which was a double drop that really looked deadly.  There were a few other crazy rapids below that.  We rigged the boats (the first crew already had the boats inflated when the last copter ride was finished).  We rowed a little ways downstream and camped at a little cove at mile 111 we called “Blue Lagoon”.   The lagoon was pretty, but the bugs were the worst here.  The next day the river widened and we started getting into lots of braids.  It was real high water so most of the gravel bars were covered up, but this made it harder.  One could easily end up beached on a gravel bar that was just under the water.  I had fun going out in front trying to find the channels, but most didn’t like these braids.  Also in this area we began to pass numerous glaciers, what spectacular views!

Day 10 was more braids, I rowed the gear boat and it was a challenge to find camp near the confluence with the Tatshenshini.  Day 11 the volume increased to over 100,000 cfs with the Tat’s water.  It was a fast float to our camp at Walker Glacier.  This was really cool to be able to walk around on the glacier.

On day 12 I rowed gear once more and we stopped at a beautiful waterfall to resupply our water.  Really braided here (which I led mostly and I loved!) and it stressed out most of the rowers.  At times the different boats would get into different channels and we’d be spread out nearly a mile apart across the river. We crossed over in to Alaska here and had great views of Mount Fairweather today..  We made it pretty well through the braids then we had to enter Alsek Lake at a place called the Spit.  Current takes you into the lake and you have to be careful you are not sent into an inescapable area of icebergs that float all around in Alsek Lake .  It wasn’t too intense today and we went on to camp on an island in Alsek Lake called Gateway Nob.

Day 13 was a layover day at Alsek Lake .  I decide to take Dave’s gear boat out into the icebergs and Dave, Greg and Carl rode with me.  Now I knew that icebergs can roll so I stayed a good hundred feet or so from the icebergs (way more than the height of the bergs).  It was really cool, this tour of the iceberg lake with three glaciers coming into it.  We saw one glacier completely overturn then saw a piece of a glacier break off, but all went well on our 2 ½ hour float.  That evening we heard a loud crash and looked up and saw a huge iceberg split in two with one side of the ice moving fast about 300 yards.  It was scary to think that if that had happened while we were out there that mass of ice would have hit us and we surely would have perished.

Day 14 we rowed the rest of the Alsek to near the ocean where we took out at Dry Bay .  We had a little detour as I was leading and missed a turn so we had to row up a channel a ways.  Oops.  We camped at the take-out and on Day 15, July 3^rd we flew back to Haines Junction.  It was a pretty cool flight going over much of the river that we had just run. 

The highlights of the trip were the scenery with all the glaciers, which was truly amazing and the folks in my paddle raft were really fun.  The highway at Lava North and flying over Turnback Canyon were pretty cool, too.  It was a pleasure to do a trip with Dave Lindsay again and I look forward to another in the future.