#alsek

I'm not good at people pictures and in fact normally neglect to take any.   But I got a decent shot most of the folks this trip. 

Our Trip Leader - Bruce

Other Guides - Thirsty and Pauly plus Echo

Sarge and Frank on their perpetual dish duty.

Caroline and John

Willie, Don, Steve aka Sarge, and Frank   

Jill, who got me into this.

Keith 

Which leaves Stephen and while I could claim that as an attorney he didn't want to be identified, i just didn't get a good one of him.  All I've got is this one of him examining bergie bit like it's part of Crown Jewels.

All in all it was a good trip, with a good group.   The weather was unbelievably good, we all finished with gear for cold, wet weather that we never used.   The water was fast and the white water that spot where it's exciting but made easy by the guides.   

The only thing that could have been better is more hiking.   We sit in camp and most of the time just sit on the rafts, just doing a paddle assist to the rowing guide occasionally.   So while they get a good workout, we don't.  The one day with a good hike planned, we decided the river was too deep to cross.  

The weather was as good as ever for our final run to the takeout at Dry Bay.   The sun shone on the glaciers as we headed out from Alsek Lake.  

And for a long time we could look back to it.  

But by the time we reached the takeout it was raining to the north, east and south of us.   We had our big rain of the trip while waiting there, seven minutes of light sprinkle, an amazingly dry Alsek trip.   

We unloaded the rafts, broke them down, deflated, and rolled them.   The frames were disassembled into parts and strapped into bundles. Then we were transported to the airstrip.   

We were earlier in the season this year and so we had a lot of wildflowers: the Fireweed and Indian Paintbrush were the most showy, the dryas were the most common, just opening up their seed heads.  

The parasitic Ground Cone was common in Alder thickets.   

Lots of others that I don't remember the names of were seen in lesser numbers.  Cathie is always my go to person for flowers, so when she's not there, I'm lost.   

I've been amazed at how little wildlife we see along the river.  What we do spot is fleeting, we are floating downstream, the animals are moving, and my camera is in a drybag clipped to the raft.  By the time I would spot something and get the camera out most critters were gone.   These included a moose cow and calf crashing through the riverside alder thickets and a pair of bear juveniles sparing on a high bank.  

The bald eagles were better at sitting quietly and posing for us.   I don't understand how they can catch any fish in the cloudy grey glacial waters of the Alsek though.  

The next day we headed to Alsek Lake, where we got stuck behind the ice four years ago.   We stopped above the lake entrance to walk across the peninsula and look at the lake.   

There was quite a bit of ice at the upstream end, but the water was high enough the guides planned to bypass the lake by going right of the island between the lake and the river.    We were in luck, there was enough flow around “The Knob” that we sailed right through, with a little scraping and moving back and forth on the river to catch the feeders.  

When we got to where the lake comes back into the river it was ice free!   So very different from all the ice of last time.   Without all that ice it wasn't even very cold!  And again no rain!

There were several large bergs in the lake including one with a tall wall at one end.   There was another group camped on a spur seeming quite close to the big berg.   We spent the evening speculating the possible impacts on them of the berg calving further.   

The big mountain in the area, Mount Fairweather, peaked out from behind the clouds occasionally, but not a really clear view.  That didn't keep us from taking pictures of the various peeks.    

There were large cracking sounds during the night and in the morning that berg was much diminished but their camp was fine.  I guess it split up a bit at a time instead of one large hunk.  

The next morning we had blue skies and Mt. Fairweather and the whole range was standing proud free of clouds.   This was amazing since last time its presence was just a rumor.  

Our next stop was Walker Glacier where we had hiked out onto the glacier in 2013.  But that whole section of the glacier collapsed a few years ago leaving a lake in its place.  To see something like a mile of glacier gone was disturbing.  

Back then the clouds were low and we couldn't see much of the mountains surrounding Walker.   This time our blue skies came through and we had a glorious display.  

Below Turnback Canyon we quickly reinflated the rafts and loaded everything back on pretty quickly; only two hours to load all the gear, transfer and load up again.  

Below Turnback the scenery and weather change.  We were in the coastal rain forest now.  There was more vegetation with more conifers, and more snow on the mountains. From this point it's usually more rainy and damp.  We had seen low clouds down river all morning and were prepared with our rain gear, but our good weather followed us, the rain stopped and patches of blue sky started appearing.

We headed downstream to the confluence with the Tatshenshini.   By this point the Alsek is quite large.   The flow varies considerably with the seasons, from a low of 5,000 cfs in the winter when everything is frozen to peaks of over 200,000 cfs in summer.   The gauge near the mouth said we were at about 110,000 cfs.   That's bigger than the average flow on the Missouri,  for comparison.   The grade of the river has also flattened out.  That means that despite the flow the river is dropping sediment.  So from this point there will be gravel bars in the river with the flow dividing up among them.  This is a potential problem for rafters.  The guides are always trying to evaluate whether a particular channel will be a “feeder” or a “bleeder.”   That means whether it will feed into other channels and provide enough water to  float the raft, or whether small channels will split off, bleed, making the channel smaller, sometimes until it can no longer float a raft.   That’s bad news for the boater, stuck in the middle of a huge river without enough water to float.  Rafts don't go upstream, so at that point it can mean everyone getting out and towing, or in the worst case dragging the raft to deeper water.  But there was enough water and our guides made good enough choices that we floated through with occasional scraping.  

We camped across the river from our Tatshenshini camp site, but still had a good view for the morning light on the mountains and of the arch of clouds over the Tatshenshini upstream. 

The next day was portage day.  The river passes through Turnback Canyon here and it is unrunnable, at least in rafts.  A few brave and skilled souls have made it through in kayaks. 

So we had to partially dissemble the rafts and have a helicopter lift us over the Canyon.  It took six trips: three of people and three with gear in slings below the helicopter.  

Flying over the canyon it was clear why we portaged.