Hey Boat Floaters! We had a nice adventure floating down 20 Mile River here in Alaska last week...
Started the day at 9am by driving south down the highway about 10 miles for the truck drop. Notice the exceptionally high tide:
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Met up with Dearnly and Thom and split up the beer rations accordingly
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Left the house at 10:30 on foot. Cracked first beer as seen here at noon
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We had to walk for about 6 hours to the put in at the westernmost headwaters of 20 Mile. Cool waterfall.
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Looking back to the backside of Alyeska Mountain. We started on the frontside and and came up the long valley
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Finally reached Blueberry Pass
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Thom says "that way". He has done this trip a few times and it is a first for Dearnly and I
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Gotta get to the river!
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Here we are, need more water. I feel like we are being watched. Deep in griz country
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Had to get across this little side channel to main current. Dearnly's feet were already wet so he went for the wade. Thom and I had rubber boots on so we decide to juke upstream into the the alder thicket to navigate across the alder strainers and keep dry feet. About 150 in, as we struggled for a clean line, Thom say's "Did you hear that?!" I say "No" then a second later I hear distinct WUUFFF! over the rushing river noise from very close proximity. Could be nothing other then giant brown bear, at least based on deep gut reaction the sound had on me.
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We said fuck it and darted back to where Dearnly had crossed as he called to use.
I got across the stream and on to the open sand bar and looked back upstream to where a large mama bear and THREE large juveniles were ambling out way.
So much for another beer as we very quickly filled our rafts up with air and nervously watched the family move our direction
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Fuck you bears! we are out of here 4:20 on the dot
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100 yards later a walk around
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We've had some major precip events with like 6-8 inches of rain in 48 hours in the last week. The river was low again but it was like the main channels had been blown out and we had a fair amount of shallows to deal with.
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Is it just me or are we in the middle of nowhere and it is getting dark?
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Why yes, it is getting dark. And no, no one has a headlamp
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8pm
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When is iPhone going to come out with an outboard app?
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Remember that high tide way back 12 hours earlier? Well, we were hoping to have navigated the upper river faster then we did and hit the highway before the tide affected the current 2MILES upstream from ocean. It actually kind of fucking sucked.
The air temp was hovering around 40 and and if you stopped you got cold and the tide was so high that it over flowed the banks into the alders anyway. No beaches, no light, no reprieve from incoming current except by staying right next to shore an using tiny strip of dead water. By this time the the river is about 50 feet deep and a couple hundred yards wide, littered with huge logs going this way and that. The last faint sliver of silver finally faded to pitch black as we JUST KEPT PADDLING. I would stop on occasion and listen for Dearnly bringing up the rear. We were in no way able to respond to a capsize if we even knew it happened. I could here the highway in the distance so we knew were were close, but what is close if you are moving forward 1/4 mile and hour while paddling as hard as you could for the last 3 hours?
Anyway, we eventually saw the parking lot light and felt a burst of energy but it still took another half hour to the truck. At the pull out both Thom and I could not even get up out of our boats and I literally crawled up the bank and scared the shit out of a trucker having a smoke break.
Is it ski season yet?
