Me and Jack Fry hiked/packrafted a 100-mile route in Alaska known to the locals as Alaskacross. It is done by a few nutty locals as an informal race in June but Jack and I just wanted to do it ourselves. The challenge was intense. The terrain was rugged, there were almost no trails, bushwhacking and tricky river crossings were commonplace. It was my first time packrafting and I felt like I got the hang of it pretty quickly and I had a blast for the most part. About 3 or 4 miles from the finish, I happened to wipe out and lose my raft and all my gear. Jack and I finished the route by cramming into his packraft. Overall a great experience and worthy challenge!
1. Start of hike near Usibelli mine. 2. A weird abandoned bus in the middle of nowhere (not Chris Mccandless's) 3. Cody pass 4. Put-in spot for Cody creek into Wood River 5. Take-out spot to hike up Kansas Creek 6. Napping spot 7. Put-in spot on West Fork of the Little Delta River 8. Crash site 9. Take-out spot from Tanana 10. Lost Lake Scout Camp, the end of the route. To be able to zoom in on the map follow this link.
Jack and I wanted to try the AlaskaCross, that is a 100 mile packrafting route that goes roughly from Healy to Lost Lake. Since it is a race, people do it in more or less one push with some people finishing in as little as 31 hours and others coming in much later (even up to like 70 hours). We figured we could be about in the middle of the pack and so we reckoned that if we left Friday morning (the next day) we might be able to get back in time for church on Sunday. I still didn't have a packraft but I had researched them and so I knew exactly what I wanted, so I made a quick trip to Beaver Sports in Fairbanks and they only had two to choose from. Fortunately, one of them was exactly the options I was looking for except it had a cruiser deck instead of a whitewater deck. I went for it. I also bought a carbon fiber paddle and a PFD. When the guy rung me up it seemed pretty cheap and I looked at the receipt and saw that the guy had given me the paddle for free. I asked him if that was on purpose but it wasn't, haha, so he rung me up again. Still, it was cheaper than I expected, about 1500 dollars total. I was pretty stoked on my new gear but it seemed odd to drop about 1500 dollars on gear for a sport I had never even tried before, like I knew my skiing friends would give me crap about not investing that much money into better skiing equipment. Anyway, Friday we woke up at 5:00 and Jack and I drove down to Healy (Brooks had opted out to work on his cabin), drove up a canyon almost to a mine called Usibelli where it starts. The plan was to leave my car there and just pick it up on Monday when Jack was going to be driving past Healy anyway. We started hiking with our packs which were pretty heavy considering that we didn't even have any camping equipment, we just had our rafts, our food, some warmish gear, etc. I think we were on the trail by about 8:00 AM or so.
The first leg of the course is a roughly 30 mile hike up this canyon (I can't recall the name) to Cody Pass. We had a dirt road for a few miles until we passed the coal mine and then we found the easiest place to walk was along the river. We had to cross the river a ton, sometimes there would be just small little braids we needed to go over but often we had to roll up our pant legs as high as they would go and wade across substantial braids. I changed into my neoprene boots with the hope of keeping my shoes dry for later. Along the way, we got a little rain but it didn't bother us too much. Just before the pass we walked by an old abandoned tour bus just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere; we puzzled over how it even managed to get there. I wish I had the pictures!
Over the pass we hiked down to the cirque and then followed Cody Creek down a few miles (with more rain) until it got full enough to put boats in. I was a little nervous as I got into my raft for the first time and paddled out into some mild rapids (no more than class II). I started to get the hang of it pretty quick, the rafts are surprisingly stable and so I was quickly feeling pretty comfortable with the rapids. My biggest worry was that I would put a hole in my raft because I kept hitting rocks ( I still wasn't reading the river very well for the most part so I was hitting a lot of obstacles). I quickly found that the rafts could take a beating. When we got to the Wood River, the water was a little calmer which made me glad, but it was also a lot more braided and it was very difficult to avoid shallow places where I would drag bottom. I found myself "butt-scooting" way more than I would want to, even to the point where was getting pretty aggravated. I'm not sure when it happened but I noticed my boat was slowly losing air and so I knew I had a hole. We were pretty close to where we needed to get out of the river so we just kept going and I had to periodically twist around in my raft (not easy to do) and add a little more air through the inflation valve. That was a little tricky because I had to avoid obstacles and try to avoid shallow spots at the same time, but I managed to add a few breaths here and there.
At about midnight or so, we got to the Kansas Creek inlet and pulled out of the river. We tried to set out our stuff to dry, but since it was cooling off, dew was falling on everything and it wouldn't dry out. We spent a minute trying to patch my hole but it was apparent that everything was too wet to adhere very well. We had 17 miles or so before our next rafting spot so we just packed our stuff up wet and started walking.
This part of the hike was pretty miserable. We were supposed to follow Kansas Creek up but we accidentally started following the wrong one for a while and had to cross country through a forest to get to Kansas Creek. Anyone who has gone cross-country in Alaska knows that this is not an easy thing to do. But it gets worse... Once we got to the creek we walked along its Southern edge for a while but quickly got to pinch between the river (which was totally uncrossable) and a steep bank totally covered in plant life. So we struggled our way up the bushwacky nightmare of a slope up and around the pinch to arrive at nothing but a few more yards of easy walking before another pinch. We had to do that several times and the going was really hard. Everything was wet too, so every time we pushed past a tree or bush we would soak ourselves in a fresh splash of cold water. And every time we thought we'd gone around the last pinch we would come upon another one. Slowly but surely we made our way up the canyon until eventually the river started to become small enough to cross. By this point, the sun was starting to come back up again and we were really tired. I was physically pretty bushed but more than that, I was so sleepy it was hard to think of anything else. We told ourselves we would stop for a nap as soon as the sun was high enough to shine on us (thus we hopefully wouldn't be too cold). Finally around 6 AM we had a low sun peaking at us from over the canyon walls and so we unpacked anything dry we had (fortunately I had kept my down puffer dry for just such an occasion) stopped for a nap. Jack tells me we slept for two hours, but to me it is just a couple of hazy moments. I almost felt worse after the nap, but I convinced myself that it had done some good.
After our nap we still had two passes to go over. I started feeling better and better as we hiked and by the time we got to the second pass I was charging uphill con gusto. I waited at the top for Jack and laid out all my stuff to dry. I was even able to fix the hole in my raft. From there we had only had like 7 miles until our next river, West Fork of the Little Delta, which was supposedly raftable but we were a little doubtful so we mentally prepared to possibly put in a few extra foot miles before getting back on the water. This part of the hike was fairly miserable, except by comparison with the Kansas Creek section. It's like I told Jack, "It's a good thing we did Kansas Creek, because otherwise I would be aggravated by this section."
When we reached the West Fork it was obviously runnable and looked really fun (and a little intimidating). We put in to the river and had a grand time splashing our way through several miles of quality class III rapids. I seriously had a blast! It was a little exhausting but the enjoyment factor really offset the fatigue.
When we met up with the East fork into the Little Delta River proper, it was a sweet respite. The water was much calmer but still swift. We were able to slouch down in our boats and just take in the spectacular views with only minimal piloting. Sure, we had the occasional section of butt-scooting (it was a little hard to read the currents right), but it wasn't bad enough to really aggravate me.
Jack had a hole in his floor so at this point he was having to pull over pretty often to bail water. At one point my boat went kind of limp and I thought I might have another hole but after inspecting the boat and adding some more air it was fine again; I think I must have just bumped my valve open a little while butt-scooting or something.
The miles flew by and we knew we were getting close to the Tanana River which was pretty much the only thing between us and the road back to Fairbanks. We were trying to stay in the fastest currents because we wanted to make good time so I suggested to Jack that I felt like the left-most braids of the river seemed to be better generally. This turned out to be kind of a mistake because it took us down a corridor of trees which meant there were log-jams and sweepers to avoid.
At one point, I was ahead of Jack and coming up on a log sticking out over the river like a baseball bat waiting to bunt me. We'd gone around (or under) lots of these already so I did the usual thing: I paddled at 90 degrees to the current trying to get out and around the log instead of getting swept under it. This method usually worked and/or I was able to pass under okay; but this time I couldn’t get out of the current and got swept right into the log and got... bunted. I remember sticking my arm out at the last minute hoping that the log would be loose enough to sort of be deflected over me like a Karate-kid wax-off. But instead it just knocked me clean over into the river. I was sitting there upside-down in my packraft for a couple of seconds in panic mode, just kind of generally struggling but not getting anything accomplished. Then my wits returned to me and I (metaphorically) took a deep breath and said to myself, "be smart, you know what to do". I reached over and peeled back the velcro from my spray deck and slipped out of my boat. I don't know how long it took to surface after that, but I felt like it was way longer than it should have taken; meanwhile I was undergoing all kinds of aquatic forces, like being punched in the face and body-slammed by the water. I finally came up, (literally) took a deep breath and gathered my wits even more. My raft was in reach so I grabbed it and flipped it back right side up and pulled myself back in, it was surprisingly easy to do both. I looked around for my paddle and saw it being swept along only like 6 feet away. I frantically paddled my arms over the boat until at last I snatched it up. As I slipped back down into a sitting position I had a silent cheer to myself of like, "Yeah, that wasn't so hard, I'm awesome!" And then I looked up and saw a formidable log jam with arms wide open to receive me. I only had time to paddle like 4 strokes (which accomplished almost nothing) before slamming into the horizontal logs. I sort of came to a rest mostly out of the water on the crisscrossing pile of logs but my raft was pinned up against the logs pretty thoroughly as the fast water rushed all around me and the raft. I could tell there was no way I could just pull it out and I was frantic to get free of the log jam and my first thought was that maybe if I deflated the raft it would slip through the logs somehow or something. So I turned around and started to unscrew the cap, I think I must have sort of stepped out of the boat at this point too but I don’t remember for sure. Suddenly, one of the thinner logs in the pile broke and slowly fulcrumed up (like a slow-motion trebuchet arm) and suddenly I was back under water. I'm still not sure what exactly that was about, I don't know if I was like standing on that particular log or if it just knocked me off the one I was on. This time under water was even worse. I felt enormous pressure pulling up on the chin strap of my helmet (my gopro was on there and fastened under clips built into the helmet and it still got torn off and washed away) in addition the other things experienced before. I passed under the log jam; later, Brooks told me you don't normally get to pass through under a log jam alive. I keep thinking how lucky I am that I'm not where my raft is right now. Again, it seemed like an unreasonable amount of time to float back to the surface, I mean, I was wearing a PFD and it couldn't take that long to float to the top of like 3 feet of water. Eventually I surfaced again and floundered around for a minute trying to get out of the current. Jack had caught up to me by this point and was yelling for me to come towards him. I think I tried it for a second but I had already gotten out of the current a little so he just passed me up. As I got closer to the bank I could touch bottom but still not stop so I just bounce stepped closer and closer to the bank and finally caught on to another log. Meanwhile Jack bounced himself into a few logs but fortunately was able to stay upright and in the boat. He quickly pulled out at the next available spot while I climbed up onto the logs in a total fit of adrenaline. My emotions were all turned up all the way like I was super relieved and grateful to be alive but I was also like super charged up and angry, I was also just like dumbfounded by the strength of the water and how puny I was in comparison. I coughed, sputtered, grunted, growled, and shuddered as I staggered out onto terra firma. I looked over and could see Jack standing on land downstream a little way and I gave him a thumbs up and then thought, "should I walk toward him or toward my boat?" I decided he would probably walk toward me so I might as well go get my boat. I had never managed to unplug it and I was still under the false notion that doing so might release it from the jam so I walked over to the log jam, shuffled out crawling-styled onto one of the main logs until I could reach the raft. I then unplugged it and let the air rush out. Big mistake! If it was pressed up against the logs before, it was pressed flatter and firmer now. I pulled on it as much as I could and couldn't budge it one bit. The only part I could even get out of the water was the stern where the plug and cargo fly are located. Realizing it was daft to try to pull anymore, I crawled back to land and started walking toward Jack. He met me about half way and we went together to the raft and tried numerous times to make any progress. Realizing the futility we figured maybe we could at least open the cargo fly and retrieve some of my gear from inside the raft, especially my phone, wallet, and keys which were all in a gear storage bag that came with the raft. We reached in, down into the rushing water and pressed up against the logs and managed to feel the bag, but it would not budge. It clips in on the inside of the raft and we could not for the life of us reach the clip even though it shouldn't have been that far to reach. After struggling for a while and wearing ourselves out, we finally gave up. That suited me just fine. I felt like trying to salvage my gear was a high potential to make a bad situation worse. Also, I figured that I was wet enough to get pretty darn cold and that my best chance of not being completely useless was to finish the route sooner rather than later all things considered.
Jack took a minute to get his phone out and call his wife, Alison, to start the one+ hour drive so she would be there when we finished. Bless her heart for packing up all the kids at 3 in the morning and driving down to the end of the trail... she'd end up waiting there a while for us.
After that, Jack and I both crammed into his packraft together and tried to get further downstream. It was quickly apparent that two people in a raft is a lot harder to manage in swift waters and we had what I consider some pretty sketchy near-misses even in the tiny stretch of river before we landed on the East bank. We figured we could just walk to the Tanana river and see how conditions there were. We were hoping that since it is such a big river it might just be flat and fast, but to tell you the truth I was dreading getting back into the raft at that point. Bushwhackng was pretty miserable as we made our way NorthEast towards the Tanana when suddenly we came out of the trees to a braid of river way sooner than we expected... not the Tanana, just another braid of the Little Delta. So I had to get back in the boat with Jack to cross a little section of that, we were able to walk through other braids, and found ourselves on the far shore which was pretty open and navigable for a big section. So instead of bushwhacking NorthEast, we decided to just walk North along the river. It wasn't long before we were pinched by fast moving waters and had to decide weather to bushwhack or float. I wanted to bushwack no matter how bad it was (and it was really bad) but after a few minutes of that Jack insisted that we go back to the river and kind of like try to make progress down the river taking turns in the raft. This kind of ended up with me bushwhacking a lot and only rafting a tiny little stretch while Jack walked on land, but it made progress. While Jack was pulling out of the water to trade me, he apparently saw two bears run off into the trees. Plus, we could now see the Tanana from where we were. So instead of continuing to bushwhack, I consented to try to raft the rest of the way to the Tanana, but I was way scared of getting into the river and finding it way too much for us to handle in the same boat. Realizing that I was probably being a little bit over concerned about river travel, and knowing that crossing the Tanana was really our only option to get home (besides rescue), I put my trust in Jack and we pushed out back into the last little bit of the Little Delta.
As the Tanana came closer into view we could see that it was fast but placid and I had already started to relax a little before we even made it all the way across (although I was a little worried about passing a good pull-out spot due to the fast flow). We made it just fine and only had to bushwhack one more steep but short section before meeting up with a trail Jack knew about which led us to the scoutcamp where Alison was waiting to pick us up. She had been waiting for us for a couple of hours by then.
I feel like the mishap takes all the attention, but come on, give us some credit for completing an unsupported, rugged, beautiful 100-mile route in under 48 hours (an average-ish time amongst course-completers, and they are few). Part of me just wants to leave out the whole crash thing and just focus on how the rest of the challenge went down; but oh well, I guess I wanted to write about it.
Maybe unplanned swims in rivers are commonplace and no big deal for rafters, I'm new this sport after all, what do I know. But for me it was a very traumatic experience that I hope I never have to experience again. With the speed of that river it seems to me like injury/death are pretty likely.
Sure, I am a little bothered by the inconvenience of having to replace my phone, keys, and wallet; but honestly, that is such a tiny irritation compared to the gratitude of being alive and having no injuries. My prayers are not "why me?" They are, "Thank you!"
I don't know if it is comparable at all or not, but I'm reminded of the experiences some of my friends have had with avalanches and how they were lucky enough to walk away with the only loss being gear. I also echo some of Spencer Weiler's sentiments from surviving an avalanche (found here: http://spencerweiler.blogspot.com/2014/03/cheating-death-avy-report-from-coalpit.html)