Today I woke up to 41 degrees in the van…who knows what it is outside. With everything we need in our little capsule of steel and rubber, there’s no big rush to go outside and find out.
The sun is making its way into the sky, creeping slowly from behind the snow capped peeks, but has yet to shine on the opposing peeks across the river valley.
Our camp last night was right beside the Matanuska River, surrounded by Alders, sporting their new yellow fall colors, Drayas, also in showy white tops, and Fireweed that has lost its towers of red flowers and turned to tangled white silky seedpods. The mountains surrounding this valley are topped with snow from the thunder storms 2 nights ago, accenting the harsh, craggy peeks.
Yesterday, we drove up from Ninilchik to the Russian River Ferry crossing and joined the throngs of fisher people hoping to catch a nice coho salmon, or at least hook into one of the giant red sockeye on the Kenai River. These fish are huge! As your standing in the water, these fish are lined up, heading upstream. Every now and then, one will breech the surface slowly or jump out of the river all together. With your concentration on your line and indicator, this is quite alarming at first, but soon becomes the norm and you settle in to the rhythm of casting.
It’s time to begin our month long procession east then south, out of Alaska, into Canada, and finally, the lower 48. Time to say good-bye to the wildness of this beautiful land, where it is easy to forget your worries, clear your mind, and refresh your inner most being. To the fresh, crisp, cool air, the bears, moose, squirrels, seagulls ravens and bald eagles, all etched firmly into my mind, a sorrowful good-bye. A fond farewell to the mountains and glaciers, turquoise rivers and milky white glacial streams and waterfalls, thousands of lakes and fiords. To leave behind the thousands of miles of pot-holed, wavy, and frost heaved roads of dirt and tar.
Although the journey has not ended just yet…we’ve traveled almost 6,000 miles since Salt Lake City. We’ve driven on almost every road in Alaska, been from the Continental divide (Antigun Pass) to Lands End (Homer). We’ve traveled by ferry along the Inside Passage between Juneau, Skagway and Haines. Took a wild ride down the Tatshinini and Alsek Rivers, played with icebergs and bergy-bits. We’ve had our share of bear encounters, some too close for comfort. I’d say it’s been a wild and encompassing ride for sure with still more to come.
The clouds, like ghostly apparitions, glide across the mountain tops, getting stuck in the rocky crevasses and at mid-mountain, the tops of black spruce groves. White gashes of the snow fields and silent glaciers, creep across the mountain passes, carving deep scars into the ancient Arctic tundra. The tree stands dot the sides of the hill in a spattering of greens, yellows and reds, as the fall closes in. A hint of chill hangs heavy in the air tonight. It’s gonna be a cold one, clear skies and a light breeze from the NW. The lake stands still as glass, reflecting the grandeur of the surrounding alders, willow and poplars. All is silent and eerily still.
It’s been a week of travel from the Antigun Pass of the Dalton Highway above the Arctic Circle. We took a side trip to Chena Hotsprings for my birthday, before heading south down the Parks Highway. Denali, or more correctly, Mount McKinley, was playing peek-a-boo with those of us that hunkered down for the night in the makeshift view point parking lot campground for a night of boon-docking. The sun is starting to actually go down now at a more reasonable hour. The long days of the mid-nite sun, have gone for the summer, and the march towards the winter darkness has begun.
The weather has been, well typical Alaskan. In any given week, at least two days will have sun, two will be cloudy and three will be wet. The wet days are usually drizzly and overcast, which both ignites the colors and makes for flat lighting, muting the contrasts. Good trade. Sometimes these are prime wildlife spotting days, since a lot of the visiting humans hunker down and stay dry. Bears, both black and brown, love to forage for the blueberries and raspberries that are covering the hills and road sides. Moose are a rare sighting in any weather, so the fact that we saw one was almost a miracle. The fish don’t much care if it’s raining, bright in sunshine and clouds, we caught our fair share of the Arctic Grayling. Porcupines waddle across vast empty ribbons of highway minding their own business. Ground squirrels and prairie dogs scamper about the puddles and dig in the soft black soil. It’s a struggle for survival that we have had the good fortune to observe while here.
The salmon run has begun in most of the streams and rivers. These mighty titans of the fish world, fight with every ounce of life they have left to make sure the population survives. Their bleached bodies, still sporting the deep red color of the end of life, struggling upstream in shallow creeks and streams or their corpses lie rotting on the sides of these rivers and streams, providing nutrients and sustenance for opportunistic predators and scavengers like the raven and gulls. Even the majestic eagle makes a showing at this feast. In the way of the salmon’s final goal…stands humans and the grizzly bear. Both worthy foes.
We’ve seen the landscape change. Not just the beginning of autumn’s colorful show, but the craggy mountains, smooth rolling hills, flat Arctic tundra and massive lakes and rivers, glaciers and gigantic snow fields. We’ve floated down a river, through an iceberg choked lake and seen temperate maritime weather. We’ve flown over 12,000 feet in a seaplane through the snow laden Fairweather Mountain peaks. We’ve seen thick subarctic boreal forest and sparse arctic tundras, vast inlets, bays and fiords. The wildness is everywhere.
It’s one thing everyone knows about Alaska, there are mosquitoes and all sorts of things that want to suck your blood. I’m here to tell you it can go either way…one day swarmed, the next not a single mozie. There are 22 different types of mosquitoes in this region of the world. These vicious little bugs come in all shapes and sizes and if we add in little black and brown biting flies, well the game is on!
It goes like this…you find a camp spot, look out or just go for a hike, you step out into one of the three climate zones here…wet and sprinkles, dry and overcast, or sun shine and warm, within a minute the dinner bell has rung, humans are on the menu. Within 5 minutes you feel like you are crawling with bugs as these little and not so little insects begin to swarm in dizzying numbers, attacking any exposed skin. The largest mosquitoes don’t bother to find skin. Their little saws-all proboscis can scissor its way through a couple layers.
Soon the constant buzzing and slapping and scratching becomes maddening. Out comes the bug spray, at least a 100 DEET as nothing else even phases these little buggers. You feel slightly more invincible. Crack open a beer and settle in to enjoy the beautiful vistas. Suddenly, like an advancing army, another swarm envelopes you. You stand up, looking like a broken windmill, slapping and swatting at unseen foes. Now you run inside, making sure you were not followed by any marauding insect, and search high and low for the ultimate of all weapons in your bug arsenal…the dreaded head net.
Now, you’re prepared to vanquish your foe, or at least hide from their relentless pursuit of your tasty life blood. After an afternoon of respite from the incidious torment, it’s time for dinner. Hmm…head net or no head net…that is the question. The big plate of freshly prepared food looks delicious…so you slowly remove the net from your head and begin enjoying your food…until…floomp…you inhale a bug. Then one lands in your drink, another has taken to trying to molest your juicy steak with its proboscis. You feel your blood pressure rising and wish for rain. Ahhh…welcome to Alaska.
We’ve just returned from an amazing Canada/Alaska River trip down the Tatshashini and Alsek Rivers, down into Alsek Lake and take out at Dry Bay. The whole trip took 13 days plus travel time of another 13 days to Haines, Alaska.
Although the river trip was not on our bucket list, traveling around western Canada and Alaska was. The river trip became the catalyst for this new chapter in our adventure.
As we sat in Bali, melting from the oppressive humidity, we realized our travel in the blazing sun, and blazing kindness of its people, needed to come to an end. We had covered much of SE Asia in a 4 month period: countries like Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Indonesia, and Malaysia. It was an other-worldly experience, and touched both of us deeply…but our bodies were screaming for a break from the heat.
We found ourselves thinking of very cold places, Antarctica, Iceland, Alaska, Patagonia. Big dreams of cooler temps, zero humidity, even some of our old haunts just didn’t excite us. When Chris saw the Facebook post from Bio-Bio River Expeditions, for a trip down the beautiful Tatshashini/Alsek Rivers. Pictures of rafts floating around stunning blue icebergs grabbed both of us by our sweaty hands and led us down the rabbit hole. This was it!
So we set off on planning to see if we could make this happen. We picked up a Sprinter Revel Van, outfitted it for the arduous trip, bought the necessary clothing and secured a seat for us on the trip.
The drama began with seeing the expensive nature of this undertaking. We bought the van because renting a van or RV was exorbitant. Then came my tummy health issue, then the breakdown of the van as we set out. We made it to Skagway, caught the ferry to Haines and settled in a few days before the trip and one more hiccup, Chris broke her tooth and needed an emergency appointment with the only dentist in town. All that was now water under the bridge, no pun intended, as we suited up in supplied dry suits and met our group.
The next morning was glorious, sun shinning, smiles all around. An amazing feeling of joy and a bit of trepidation hit me as we stood on the river bank, red dry tops, blue dry pants and insulated black and brown mud boots, red life jackets cinched up tight. Within an hour or so, we came to our first splashy wave trains, one finding its way into my dry suit, chilling me and reminding me to hold on.
Camp was always beautiful and we scrabbled to find a level, clear area for our tents. After a few days, the tents became a pain in the ass! They were short and squatty, making entering and exiting very difficult without crawling on hands and knees across wet, rocky ground. The sleeping bags were warm and cozy…bonus!
There is just so much running through my mind when I think of the days on the river itself. Once in a while we were asked to paddle, sometimes to help propel the rafts, other times just to stave off the cold chills of the cold rain and biting winds blowing downstream. We all looked like a blue rubber basket of Easter eggs, as we curled up in tight balls to conserve heat. Some days presented with sun and a promise of grand vistas and windless travel. These days would take your breath away as around each river bend, new wonders appeared. It was somewhat difficult to figure out how to layer under the dry suits, but no matter when we left shore, dressed like small children going out to make snowmen, we soon were adding or removing layers…from hot to cold and back to hot if you were lucky, but little in between.
Camp life was usually pleasant, except when the mosquitoes would swarm. The weekend before we arrived at Purple Haze camp, there had been 6” of rain in a 24 hour period, probably why we had wind and rain further upstream. This rain awakened the veracious insects. Black flies and mosquitos topped the ticket. These tiny, or not so tiny in the case of some mosquitoes, will drive you mad! We were lucky that only a few camps seemed to be utterly infested with the biting menaces, and happy they were only one night stays. Everyone adorned head-nets and deet was the preferred perfume of the evenings meal. Dessert was passed on as we all ran for the shelter of our squatty little tents and played the game of smash the rouge mosquito that found its way into the tent, it only takes one of these little bastards to drive you batty.
Alaska has its beauty and also is a harsh environment. It is not for the faint of heart. True Alaskan wilderness is not forgiving and should be entered with caution and care. On the last day, we found out that our pilot had gone missing with 2 others the day before. Due to the search, no plane was coming to get us. These were seasoned veterans of this Alaska wilderness and its small communities that depended on their services. Tragedy and grief is not an emotion I thought I’d experience on this trip.
I can’t tell you if I was ready for the myriad of emotions I went through but in the end…it was an experience of a lifetime and one that will be remembered. Alaska is wild, natural, stunningly beautiful, incredibly demanding and deadly.
We’ve reached the end of our journey…Alsek lake. As we awoke yesterday morning, we busily broke camp, had breakfast and shoved off around 10:30am. We were glad to be out of “Purple Haze” camp due to the swarms of veracious mosquitoes that drove everybody mad. Dinner was a disaster! Dessert sat un-eaten as we all took refuge in our tents.
The sun broke out, in all its glory, the next morning and we all changed out of our layers and put on shorts and tank tops, for about 2 hours we soaked up the sun and stared at the ice capped mountains surrounding camp once again. 360 degrees of the most serene beauty one could imagine. Just when you think it can’t get any more stunning, the bar gets raised.
In the beginning of our trip, we encountered small burgie-bits. We had finally found glaciers! It was called Walker Glacier but you can no longer walk to or on it since it has receded and left a huge lake of little icebergs and a lot of tangled trees and muck, sticky, gooey muck. But today we’ve hit the mother load…Alsek Lake!
We spent all day watching the icebergs roll and calve. We even got to row the rafts around the icebergs floating in the bay. These things were massive and apparently can roll without notice. The tops that were exposed most of the time was the bluest blue you can imagine. As the sun shined through they would glow like a blue sapphire. The ones that rolled usually expose a rocky grey muddy bottom that has been dragged through the bottom of the lake.
A glacier is an amazing thing. It can be blue or grey or white. Usually are thick and fill a deep crevice at the top of the mountains. Some come all the way down to the lakes and rivers; others have receded high into the mountain valley and formed formidable cliffs of ice.
The lake was in constant motion and we watched the icebergs as they journeyed their way, crashing into one another, creating deep thunderous scrapping sounds. It was quite eerie. Had the lake in front of our camp not been clogged with heavy berges, the waves set off by the turning and crashing into each other could have swamped the camp. Huge piles of logs marked the high water line, and we were told to set our tents up above the debris line.
Our last morning, we woke up to a thick layer of fog for our 4am wake up. We hurried to get out of camp and to Dry Bay for our flight extraction from there to Yukatat. We floated for about 2 hours in the fog with visibility under 50’. Arriving we disassemble the three rafts and broke down all the gear. A family with ATVs and trailers came to picked up the colorful piles of dry bags and coolers, paddles and oar frames.
We all hurried about up and down the rocky beach, carrying whatever we could carry. Then hopped on the trailer and were taken to the airport, a gravel runway between a clearing of alders.
Arriving at the bush airport, we were told that the pilot that was coming to get us and his wife went out with a friend in his plane and had gone missing. Our pilot was not going to be able to pick us up nor was anyone else in the small village of Dry Bay. All pilots were running search and rescue.
So here we sit at the bush pilot airport. We will probably miss our flight to Juneau tonight.
We woke up this morning to rain…not just a few pesky sprinkles like yesterday…but a steady down-pour. From the looks of it, it’s been raining all night. Forecast: 90% chance of rain all day. I say let it get it all wrung out of its system now before we hit the river.
We went to a local restaurant last night, the only one open in all of Haines. We sat up to the bar, since no tables were available. The waitress/bartender was running around waiting tables and tending bar. For almost 3 hours we watched her skillfully doing her job, not missing a beat. It took near 30 minutes or more to take our order and another hour plus for the food to come out. Back to small town speed.
A couple came in and settled in next to me. First, Henry, a First Nation member, then his girl friend, Carol, a white, small statured woman. They had so much advice for us, from what was good to eat, see, hikes, and so forth. They knew of the trip we were going on and told us it was a great trip. Apparently the company gives away a free trip to locals once a year. They also mentioned that the town hadn’t had any good rainfall in some time…wish granted…it’s raining.
Our journey to Haines took us on a ferry on the inside passage from Skagway to Haines. It took the best part of 3-4 hours for the loading, sailing and unloading in Haines. The trip was amazing. The views were more of the same…mountains climbing up out of the sea and scraping the sky. Some were draped in clouds spilling over the tops like a huge pillowy blanket. Most had veins of white snow outlined in groves of hemlock, birch and spruce.
As we approached Haines, a gigantic blue and white glacier appeared in a huge valley atop a mountain. The glacier looked miles thick from sea level and took on the typical pale blue of the glaciers. At the toe formed 2 huge waterfalls cascading down the mountain face and bursting into thin air as it plummeted over the edge. To the left was a river glacier. It curved around from a canyon inside the mountain and spilled into the bay. Just an amazing sight to behold.
We took a hike out to a point where we could see the bay and for miles up and down the fiords. We hiked through the most beautiful coastal rainforest. Thick hemlocks, spruce and birch trees stood along with thick thickets of devils club towering above our heads. We carried a machete, bear spray and bear bells to ward off any predators we might encounter. Maybe a bit of over kill but we also played the Carlos Naki native flute station down loaded on my phone, to warn anything we are coming. A little bear prevention goes a long way. The hike was beautiful and the final destination just took our breaths away.
It’s been 12 days since we left Salt Lake City. Twelve days of constant driving, sleeping, hiking and driving some more. Yesterday, we crossed from Canada into Alaska. The grandeur of the views before us just kept getting more and more grand as we pushed through the rolling hills, and back to the Great Northern Rocky Mountains.
White Pass was a long mountainous pass with switchbacks and craggy glacier choked peaks jutting up from the valleys…with rivers flowing out of these behemoths in cascading waterfalls. Scattered snow melt lakes dotted the landscape, each with its own color of blue, green or milky white. The subalpine trees sprung up from rocky out crops and random high spots, stunted by the harsh winter months and many feet of snow. Small creatures darted from tree to tree, outcropping to outcropping. Birds flitted from tree to tree, with some doing crazy mid-air acrobatics, chasing insects we can’t see.
We exited the ALCAN Highway in Tagish, connecting with the Klondike Highway for our last push into Skagway, Alaska. The history along this stretch of road dates way back to the late 1800s when the gold rush took over this part of Canada and Alaska. The Tlingit people trapped this harsh land for survival. The Russians came to harvest what they could from the gold rich mountain streams and lakes and to buy pelts from the Tlingit people.
In 1942, the Alaska Highway was being completed which brought more and more people into the small villages and allowed for stores, saloons and hotels to spring up creating a booming mercantile market that allowed for easy sale of pelts and goods needed for gold mining. All this collapsed as the gold dried up. The roads to the villages still remained so the Tlingit continued to occupy the infrastructure that remained and created a lucrative trading business of beaver, lynx, bobcat and other large game animal hides. They supplied gas to westward travelers in their fancy new cars, a place to sleep and eat. Some of these towns, such as Dyea, have streets and street name signs, but the buildings have long since returned to the earth. Only trees, pictures on posts, and a boreal forest stand where the buildings once did. It is left to the imagination once again.
We chose to stay in the historic district/town of Dyea last night and tonight. Our camp sits on a tidal river. We learned that there are 22 different species of mosquito in Alaska, and I think we encountered half of them. A strong breeze did keep the rest of them away. We were entertained by a couple of bald eagles hunting on the tidal flats. We were not so amused by the little chipmunks that thought it would be fun to get up under the hood and strip some felt insulation off an intake for the fresh air by digging it off fuzzy piece by fuzzy piece. We decided to tape the shit out of it to prevent any more marauding.
Skagway
Today we packed up, went into town, and got showers at the Skagway Rec Center…much needed. You can pay $10 and stand under all the hot water you want! They even provide towels…bonus. Now all clean and wearing clean clothes, we are going to “paint the town” of Skagway.
We packed up camp this morning, everything was still damp from the previous days storms. It seems to rain a lot here. Last night, we camped near some natural hot springs. Laird hot springs was once a respite for the workers back in the 1940’s, building the Alaskan/Canada Highway, or ALCAN for short. The ALCAN took 9 months to build and was built by the US to service troops in Alaska during WW2. These natural hot springs flow into a beautiful river mixing to a perfect temperature. There’s a long half mile boardwalk to get to the springs, that crosses some swampy areas choked with peat and thick patches of lichen. The trees are sparse and mostly just tall skeletons, poisoned and bleached white by the sulphur and minerals leached from the hot springs.
After a good soak, we drove to the overflow camping lot and picked a spot. The campground had just filled up when we arrived, figures, and we were sold a spot in the overflow lot across the street from the official campground. Basically it was a big gravel parking lot with an outhouse and a fence. We settled in and slept well.
Throughout our trip thus far, we have encountered a myriad of animals. There is an abundance of black bears. It has become a norm to see at least one black bear grazing on the fresh green grasses on the wide swaths of treeless area between dense forest and Highway. We have also seen stone sheep, timber bison, a porcupine, huge black ravens and the normal rabbits and ground squirrels when we venture down a side road.
We ventured down a gravel road to see the beautiful Smith Creek Falls. It was such a beautiful sight, we decided to set up our chairs and sit by the edge of the cliff to finish our morning coffee. The sun was popping in and out of the cloud filled sky, a light breeze blowing and the thunderous sound of the immense falls all made for a devine spot to stop. We had just settled in when suddenly Chris says, in a low steady voice, “Bear…” Let me tell you the fear that grips you when you hear that word. My stomach instantly tensed up, a rush of adrenaline, we stood up, bear spray in hand, and started walking slowly, yelling and waving our arms as we headed for the van. The bear saw us and turned and ran back into the thick trees and shrubs as fast as we ran to the van. I must say that bear spray is now within constant reach and always on us when we go anywhere outside.
The landscape has changed again. We’ve been following the path of a wide river as it carves its way between towering peaks. The water takes in a milky white color as new rivers rush from high glaciers down into the swollen river basin. As it meanders along, the sun turns it the most beautiful pale blue as if the sky had just poured itself into the river. It’s not hard to see the powerful force that this water has, with huge trees, roots and all lying about, stranded on huge piles of boulders the size of a small car. Don’t be fooled by its tranquil appearance. At times, this river is a torrent of icy froth and foam, seething and grabbing whatever finds its way into its banks and tossing it like a toy. Amazing and deadly in one package.
Two Travelin' Chicas... 