The Klutina is Flowing!

Waking up slowly, in a monstrously comfortable bed I make my way downstairs to be greeted by smiling faces. Coffee and conversation fill the kitchen as Carson works on a bit of studying on his journey to become a pilot. We watch a couple interesting videos regarding learning to fly and then Amanda cooks us up a great little breakfast. Having access to the internet for the first time in quite a while, I set out to make some updates.

The rafting run will be this evening, but we need to go on a water hauling run to refill the house’s tank before we go. Carson and I hook up the trailer and tank then head off to fill up. Seeing a window into the process and work that goes into a life in the Alaskan “outback” is infinitely interesting. I question him on nearly every aspect of the day to day struggles and how much worse they are in the winter. Of all my friends, he is the one that just makes sense to be out here.

With the water hauled, we load river gear into his Cherokee, and hitch his rock crawling jeep to the back. We drive down to the take out and drop the rock crawler, then drive the Cherokee up to the put in. its 13 miles on a rough off road track. It climbs up to some amazing views over the river and valley, before descending back down to the water level where we set about to inflate our boats and get psyched for the run.

We’ve been scoping the river for hazards with every viewpoint, either up high or once we descend. The water is moving, and there are a couple times we see an errant tree floating along in the water. Signs of “flood stage”. There is inherent danger in water levels like these, the biggest being one of those trees stretched across the water, ready to pin you against with fast flowing water. The river is wide though, helping to make this less likely. We see no signs of it during our roadside scouting, but we do see a few holes bigger than I’d like to hit with my little packraft. The current is also rather “confused” in some places, creating strange eddylines and lateral waves, which can be challenging to navigate in small craft. Nothing is telling us to abort he trip though, so we gear up.

I don my drysuit, as the water is darn chilly. I hope not to swim, but I’ve gotta be ready for an unplanned flip. Carson’s “shredder” is a bit bigger and more capable boat, but its still small and ends up getting splashed around quite a bit. The run turns out to be continuous “boogey water” for the whole 13 miles. Hitting a weird bit of that confused water, I do end up getting flipped and taking a swim. With another boat downstream to help me hit shore, I’m not too worried even while I’m in the water. Thank goodness I put on that drysuit. I’m tracking our progress with my GPS and it shows us moving along at 6 miles a hour. We aren’t really paddling downstream, just to guide the boat off the banks and to avoid logjams. 6 MPH is hauling. We do pull off to check out an old trapper’s cabin, which has held up surprisingly well despite its simple construction. Aside from that, it’s a fast and pushy whitewater run.

Unfortunately, the shuttle is long. The rough off-road path takes about an hour to navigate and heading up to get the Cherokee means an hour up and another one coming back down. There is a big tourist lodge just at the bottom of the road though, and we are starving, so we pull in. The rock crawler has no doors though, so Carson and I are covered in fine dust. Its bad enough that we swing into the bathroom to rinse our faces and arms off before entering the lodge proper. He even takes his shirt off to bang the dust out. Bathing like hobos in the fancy lodge. We are classy gentlemen. The food is good, but tourist priced. Eh, we earned it today. Another good day filled with whitewater, laughs, a few bald eagles and a beautiful backdrop all around.