Alaska trekking home | Pack Food | Trekking Gear | Alaska Treks
Summer 2004
Spent nearly four months in the wilderness in the summer of 2004 on a lot of cool trips, including a kayaking trip in Southeast AK
the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic race in the Talkeetnas, and trips skirting the Harding icefield ,in the Wrangells, the Copper River , Prince William Sound, and the Kenai Fjords.
Read short descriptions of each trip below, or just click on the picture to go to the complete account of the trip.
The Grand Tour of South Central Alaska - July through September
Part 2 - Skirting the Harding icefield - July 5-15
Click on the title or image to see the pictures and journal entries from this trip
Hig and I met up in Anchorage and then spent a day where he was working in Hope, before catching a ride to the junction between the highway to Seward and the one to Homer. From there we walked to Homer, skirting the icefield as closely as possible. This was partly to see the awesome glaciers, partly to avoid as much bushwhack through deadfall spruce as possible, and partly because it was blisteringly hot the whole time, and glacial breezes provided our only relief. This was mostly a pretty poky trip, with the exception of the last day, when we spent almost 24 hours traveling the last 47 miles to Homer by foot and raft.
Part 3 - The Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic race - late July
Click on the title or image to see the pictures and journal entries from this trip
Eureka to Talkeetna.
The Talkeetna mountains are a beautiful place. We spent most of the trip up high on the tundra, and it looked a lot like the Brooks Range (though thankfully lacking tussocks). It was a little fast to get a really good look at the wilderness, but we have a few pictures on a disposable camera that I'll put up when we get them developed.
It took us 4.5 days to finish the race. We started out walking fast at the beginning, but then our legs and feet started giving out on us, and we finished up slowly. We started out with the herd of racers heading up the ATV trails to the Little Nelchina and Horsepasture Pass. Then we followed Cardioceras Creek, and headed over a pass into the upper Talkeetna, with only a small wrong turn along the way. The high passes were awesome, but the moraines were a pain to walk on. From there we took a rather unconventional route (mostly because we wanted to, not because we thought it'd be faster), and skipped the whole upper Talkeetna River, in favor of walking over some high passes to Iron Creek. We intended to go from there to the Sheep River, but figured our legs couldn't handle another pass, so we followed Iron Creek out to the Talkeetna. It wasn't the best creek for rafting, but we did get to raft quite a bit of it, and there were some fun rapids there. At least they were fun by our standards - we are by no means accomplished rafters. The whole trip was strangely lacking in wildlife, for all the sign we saw, but we floated right past one brown bear on the banks of Iron Creek, who was standing up trying to get a good sniff at these strange creatures in their funny boats.
The winners of the race, Gordy Vernon and Thai Verzone, did the course in about half that time - about 2 days and 7 hours. Their "atomic bomb" was a large cataraft, and it won them the race by allowing them to raft right through the Talkeetna Canyon, where all the packrafters were forced to portage around the large rapids.
Despite the pain, it was an interesting challenge, and we'll probably try the race again the next time it moves to a different course.
Part 4 - Around Mt. Wrangell - August
Click on the title or image to see the pictures and journal entries from this trip
Nabesna to Chitina.
After recovering from our race attempt, we met up with our friend David to hike the Wrangell St. Elias mountains. We walked up next to Wrangell, Sanford, and Drum - all volcanic peaks over 14,000 feet tall. 2004 was the summer of the crunchy swamp, and everywhere we walked was bone dry. The air was hot, the sky was sunny, and our views were sometimes blurred in a haze of forest fire smoke. We ran into a few sheep hunters, found not very many fish, and discovered that the bushwhacking was much easier than we expected. We were forced to slow down and take it easy so as not to get to Chitina too early. We finished the trip by rafting down the Copper River as far as Chitina.
Part 5 - Packrafting the Copper River - August
Click on the title or image to see the pictures and journal entries from this trip
Chitina to Cordova.
David had to fly back to Seattle and work, but we continued the trek from Chitina. Unsure of the Alpacka's capabilities in such a large river, we walked around Wood Canyon before putting in. We started off floating down the Copper on our own, but soon ended up with a great batch of guides and companions, in the form of David Grimes and a group he was taking down the river. Our Alpackas were the duckling rafts to their large mother ducks, and we followed our parents all the way to the takeout and then caught a ride into Cordova. We had more beautiful sunny days, less smoke haze, and some awesome country. The Copper River is a gash through the mountains, and all along there are steep and picturesque slopes. We hiked across sand dunes next to the river, and paddled past two glaciers calving right into it. All went smoothly except for the time we decided to take a day hike that brought us back to camp at one in the morning.
Part 6 - Walking and rafting along Prince William Sound from Cordova to Valdez - late August
Click on the title or image to see the pictures and jounal entries from this trip.
We were back on the ocean, headed out on a journey by land and sea to Valdez. By sea it was easy. By land we had more difficult travel. We had rain and sun, sea otters and mountain goats... The woods were full of disappointingly untasty huckleberries, and the streams were full of pink salmon flopping on the gravel, unable to swim up the drought shallowed channels. We ate alpine blueberries, and picked too many hedgehog mushrooms. We rafted an unnamed creek to the Lowe River, and hitched our way the last few miles to Valdez.
Part 7 - Packrafting the Kenai Fjords - September
Click on the title or image to see the pictures and journal entries from this trip
Seward to Seldovia.
Our box of food wasn't at the post office when we arrived in Valdez. So we took that as an excuse to change our plans entirely. We'd been planning to take the ferry to Whittier and walk to Seward. Instead we decided to take the ferry to Seward and travel the outer coast to Seldovia. The Kenai fjords are a distinctly unwalkable area, but we figured we could paddle the coast in our Alpackas, crossing fjords and hiking the passes between them. Suprisingly enough, it worked, despite almost losing my raft, being attacked by a bear, navigating through a crevasse maze, and a variety of other adventures. We took three weeks for this two week trip, using the extra time to camp out and practice fishing and gathering. We finished the journey by paddling and walking to Hig's hometown of Seldovia, sustaining ourselves on Top Ramen and baking mix products foraged from an old shipwreck.
Alaska trekking home | Pack Food | Trekking Gear | Alaska Treks
Last modified: 4/5/2005
