Friday, July 15, 2016

East Fork of the Chulitna

     So it's been some time since I've posted and will likely be quite awhile before I post again due to changes in life.  Every now and then I find the time and desire to put one up.  This time I wanted to packraft something up by Denali, but with Sanctuary River being closed for wolves I had to choose another option.  After researching a bit, the best reviews pointed to the East Fork of the Chulitna River.
     The routes to the put-in were plentiful, but we settled on the one with the least perceived bushwhacking and moraine. Cory Smith had done the route and written about it.  After a drive up to the Denali area, we stashed our bikes where the East fork crosses the highway, drove north, and parked at a construction/mining site where the ATV access trail use to be.  The long Alaskan days allowed for a late start at 6pm.  We hiked the ATV trail up into the valley with no bushwhacking.
     We noted some bear tracks, wildflowers, spruce grouse, eagles, and some caribou.  Sparse snowfields were still present in the river bottom, but overall the valley was green.  Walking was easy and scenery was great, but the mosquitoes were bothersome.  We crested our first pass, hiked to the summit and enjoyed incredible sunset views of Denali and the surrounding mountain ranges.  We also saw a few sheep on the ridgetops.  Despite being close to 6000' with a breeze and cool temps, the mosquitoes persisted.  We proceeded to drop down into the next valley, setup camp, ate dinner and slept.  I slept, but I hear others had more difficulty related to mosquitoes.
     The next morning we broke camp, headed up and over the next pass and dropped down to the East fork of the Chulitna, enjoying blueberries along the way.  The caribou trails made the descent below the treeline easy.  We picked a nice spot on shore, blew up  the boats and started floating.  The river looked bony, but actually floated very nicely.
     After some splashy floating the river mellowed out where Crooked Creek joined in.  After a bit, the gradient increased and it was more splashy.  Then we entered a canyon with several fun class III sections.  The water mellowed out a bit and then we encountered a section that did require scoping.  We established our route and executed with success.  From that point we rode the remaining canyon of clear blue and white water until the river opened up and ran south.  The rest was pretty relaxing given the nice weather and easy floating.  We even got to do some salmon-spotting in  the shallows.  
     Once at the bridge we stashed our gear, and biked back to the car in record time thanks to our pace line leader, tailwind, and overall downhill course.  
     For those of you who don't know, albedo is a non-dimensional, unitless quantity that indicates how well a surface reflects solar energy.  Also, the H&H Lakeview Restaurant near the Talkeetna turn-off has some decent burgers for the hungry traveler, a nice lake out back, original AK paintings, and some scrappy dogs running around in the restaurant.  Enjoy the video.

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