10.5 days (plus 3 days travel), minimal pictures taken on the poor weather days
I am writing this a year in hindsight, and this trip was one of those blurry ones where lots happened. So I will try to provide as many details as possible. For whatever reason, this trip feels like it may be the hardest trip I've done to date (I think?), harder than Denali or the wilderness classic or hiking out of the Eldridge. Maybe for others easy peezy. This could be due to unfamiliar terrain, the weather, the wildness of the area or less experience at the time. I think I’ve also learned that if you save a mile or two for the next day or sleep in a bit multiple times, all the sudden you’re days behind. This area felt like the true wild, like we were small compared to the forces of the ocean, weather, and animals. If I had to sum it up in two words I would say terrifyingly beautiful.
Katie and I packed up in Anchorage and flew on Alaska Airlines to King Salmon. We spent a few hours in King Salmon, and then successfully caught the caravan (this is a plane, not a group of people we joined for the journey) to Port Heiden. With friend contacts who work at Grant, we were able to message the village agent ahead of time to ask for a drop off a bit further from town. We helped unload mail and msc other things, dropped by a few places in Port Heiden and then were on our way. The village agent was very nice and drove us across a small stream so our "feet wouldn't get wet." I think my feet got wet thirty minutes after that moment and stayed wet for ten days, but it was a very kind gesture.
There was a swampy ATV trail for the first couple of miles until we got above brush line. It was drizzling on us most of the day, but the moisture was very manageable. It was windy, so we decided to camp before the vegetation disappeared in some shrubs. We slept for awhile. For me I sleep best camping, because there are no distractions or productive things to do. The possibilities for late night projects are more minimal in a tent.
The next day we continued up while the rain and wind built. We walked on snow fields where the wind picked up the top and threw the little ice pelts in our face. Katie did a great job navigating. She had neoprene fleece lined gloves she could take her hands in and out of, while I had neoprene gloves that were hard to get on and off in cold weather. As we rounded the top of the crater, the winds had to be 70mph. It was cold and windy, but there was a rainbow over a lush green depression below us, what I understand to be a 1931 sub-crater type feature. We scampered down the other side. Looking back up the next morning I led us down some steeper than ideal terrain in the visibility we had. We camped near the 1931 crater, trying to set up our tent without anything blowing away. I also had to go to the bathroom so this whole ordeal is funny to look back on. I don't have any pictures from this day due to inclement weather reasons.
The wind while sleeping wasn't too bad, and we woke the next morning to no rain! We took our time looking at the crater, not venturing in because the vegetation looked fragile. We walked the 6mi over to Surprise Lake (I think bringing us to around 26mi) where we looked around at the pretty colors. There is no water in the crater besides Surprise Lake and snow melt. Surprisingly (accidental pun, we’ll keep it), we ran into twins in their 60s that love this area and had flown in that morning. They were awesome and stoked to see us. We paddled across the lake for scenery and saw some caribou in the distance. The Gates is where the lake turns to river and it is class 3/4. We pulled out before this and looked at fossils along the way down. A few miles after the Gates we decided to camp.
Just as quickly as the nice weather the day prior had come, the rain came back. We had decided the day prior that we weren't comfortable floating the Aniakchak River yet, so we looked at the map and decided to try cutting through this valley to save on portaging distance. Be wary of sharp newly birthed sharp volcanic rocks in this section, if you come to this area, and decide to raft this part. The visibility and wind were quite poor. We would orient ourselves on gaia, pick a boulder to go to and then get disoriented shortly after. We found a stream (I believe Hidden Creek) and followed this, taking turns with who was route finding mentally and for wind and rain drafting purposes. We would walk at a fast pace one in front of the other, and then the front person would yell switch and so on. I didn't want to get too many layers wet, so my top layering was a minimal. But I found if we walked at a brisk pace it was manageable.
This cut across was very successfully and easy travel (minus weather wise). We were able to see generational bear tracks, where they've stepped in the same place for so long that they were very deep. Do the cubs also step in the tracks? If so how do they make those long strides?? We made it across to Hidden Creek confluence with the Aniakchak, and decided the water was still too spicy. Kate had taken a scarier swim the week before when we were rafting and we're both conservative water bugs, so we continued on walking. We camped along here at some point, very moisture saturated from the day (weather makes allll the difference). Days like this are why I almost pass out when some has something in their pack not double water proofed. Recently on an Arctic trip I woke up with my tent floor a lake. I was on high ground tundra, but due to historic rains the tundra turned to 80% lake while I slept. But, my stuff was all fully water proofed in the tent so I survived! These stories I tell myself just enable my phobias.
The next morning (fifth day including the first half day as day one) we continued our portage in poor weather. Brush line came up (inconvenient) (I can stop doing so many of these but I love parenthesis) and we portaged further until the river mellowed out into some alders. This portaging took awhile, but with only one person to pull off gear recovery or rescue stuff so remotely, it seemed we should be very cautious. This began my thought processes on remote versus not remote rafting. I thought about how careful we were being, and what resource differences we had on this trip compared to a road side trip. Over the trip, I decided that for immediate hazards such as wood, drowning, entrapment, the scariest things for me, remoteness actually doesn't matter. Roadside water might lull us into thinking we have a larger margin of error, but for these hazards who is in your direct vicinity might be all that matters due to the time element. However, loosing our gear would be a much bigger ordeal and safety concern than road accessed adventures, where walking out or coming across another person could be possible. I digress, and feel free to debate me on this thought.
On the sixth day we finally began rafting where the river travelled through more vegetation. The river was shallow because it had branched out. Katie and I were staying within 10ft of each other for communication and close proximity when I heard Katie scream and lots of splashing. Obviously it was raining as well because why wouldn’t it be, although not very hard. I turned around and saw a mother moose running at me, somehow sneaking between Katie and I. She was towering high above me and her baby baby calf was floundering behind her. When Katie screamed she turned and ran towards Katie, and then ran into the woods. Was a bear chasing them or were they just upholding the unpredictability personality trait of a moose? I forgot to mention this is the most densely populated brown bear area in the world. But, the bears were probably at the coast where the salmon were and we never saw one along the river. Reasons to not do this trip once the salmon make their way into the rivers.. We continued paddling until past midnight, actively paddling for the last parts to make distance. I think we timed it with the tide going out, but it was so flat we had to get somewhere at some point. We saw a few other moose. We folded our rafts and made it to the cabin at Aniakchak Bay. We could have cut across to Kujulik Bay but a cabin after the weather sounded very nice.
The seventh day we tried to dry out some of our stuff in the morning but the heater wouldn't work. So we got on our way. Probably more hours lost. We went inland, because we didn't want to do an open water paddle. Crossing some swampy areas, we started to see our first huge bears milling about. Some of the swampy areas were above our head, so we crossed in our boats. For time savings, we blew up one boat to travel across and then the other person pulled the boat and paddle back with a throw line and got in it with their pack. There was a lot of bush whacking and it took us two days to get to Kujulik Bay. I would be curious to ask an expert (I guess there’s no such thing, but someone more experienced) about route finding here. It seemed as if wherever we picked to go was soo thick. On the second day we found a small creek to raft down for a couple miles into the bay.
At this point we were a bit concerned with the time bush whacking and portaging had taken up. We both had guiding work contracts coming up, Katie sooner than me, and we only had so much food. So we decided to wake up early at sunrise. We made good time across the beach of Kujulik Bay, keeping our eyes keen for bears and going a little inland to avoid them. At one point we saw a mom and three cubs (but honestly they looked full grown to me) coming towards us. The beach wasn't super wide and there appeared to be a cliff that was unscaleable. We figured it'd be pretty tight in this small area with four bears and two of us, so we rapidly blew up our boats. It's wild. The bears were walking at such a chill pace, but they were closing distance so fast. We paddled toward the ocean. The bears looked at us for a bit, and then all the sudden decided we were danger and ran up the cliffs in a second. Very impressive. When the tide came up we would follow very established bear trails along the upper cliffs. For a little we carried our rafts blown up on our backpacks for bear visibility to make us look bigger and in case we wanted to jump into the ocean to get some distance from them (not sure about this philosophy but it seemed to work). But they were cumbersome in the wind so we put them away.
These days run together. The ninth day we started inland again, figuring the five-ish miles (if I remember correctly) would be better than the 13mi open water paddle, where we had found the information that there was nowhere to pull into in the case of a sinking boat or strong current. This inland took two days sun up to sun down, 6a to 11:30p. We moved at a painfully slow pace. We tried to find water ways to follow, but they would cliff out and then we could have to climb back up. We tried away from the water ways, but the bushes were super thick.
Finally on the tenth day we found a river to walk along. Eventually it became raftable in places, getting in and out of our rafts. We had minimal food left (a learning process) and were tired when the current rapidly picked up, Katie rounded a corner, and got closed lined by a piece of wood. She gathered her raft, paddle, and backpack (on the outside given how many in and outs we were doing) and was holding them standing up on the edge of the river. Not sure how she did this so well. But, the current was pushing against her back so that she couldn't move while holding onto everything. I jumped out of my boat to the side, pulled it onto the bushes and ran through the bushes to gather her gear one by one. We decided to deflate boats since we were close to the ocean, the river was within a lot of vegetation, and the current had picked up. Lucky that the branch had no wood under it, and this was a good learning experience.
We picked our way through dense bushes, finally getting to the beach. We saw a couple bears on the hill in the distance, and a bear further along the beach where we were going. We went inland of the beach to let the bear keep on its path. This had worked thus far on the trip, when each time we were near the coast we saw 4-9 bears a day. However, this bear crossed further inland to come towards us. It stood on its hind legs and looked at us from a close distance. I blew my whistle, but then the bear looked real curious. I realized it probably sounds like a small animal prey call. We yelled and threw rocks, and decided to rapidly blow up our boats. Maybe they would make us look bigger, or maybe we could slowly back away into the ocean. The bear walked further inland and we thought it was gone, but then it circled back around. So, we got into the ocean and paddled out a little bit to create potentially more of a barrier between us. A few minutes in I realized I hadn't clipped my backpack into my boat perimeter line and did this.
It was 11p and we decided we were tired from the bear, wood, bush whacking and lack of food. We headed towards the beach to camp. While I was paddling in, my boat turned to the left right at the moment a wave broke on my tube, and my boat got flipped. I grabbed my boat and paddle and ran towards the beach (yelling Katie's name). The next morning when the tide was lower we saw there was a river cutting across the current, which is likely what turned my boat. It would have been a quick correction if the wave timing had been different. I was very grateful I had clipped my pack in and not lost it. If my pack was saturated before, it was now newly fully saturated with salt water. My sleeping bag was double dry bagged, but somehow water had worked its way in over that day. I definitely shivered a bit at night but overall it was manageable. The whole day in general provided a lot of thoughts afterward about our decisions, risks, and responses to each other in need.
I believe this brings us to the eleventh day, and since we could stay on the coast the whole time we made cruiser time. We were hungry but actually not as much as you would think, because our stomachs may have shrunk a bit. It was a sunny day, being our third nice weather day I believe. This area was so unbelievably beautiful (really the whole coast was). We fast walked beaches, threw our packs and down climbed bear trails, wadded along shallow parts of the ocean when the tide came up, and took to the ocean only once to avoid bears. I had taken off my neoprene gloves during bush whacking, because invisible thorns kept getting stuck in them. I had cuts all over my hands from the thorns, and rubbing salt water in them made for puss and pain.
By the afternoon we had made it to the spit across from Chignik Bay. We had to cross this in order to get to the town and landing strip. The fishermen said they would really not like for us to get into the water with their operations, and would prefer to give us a ride across. They mentioned the current out was very strong as well. We waited for a few hours and saw our plane ride back to King Salmon come and go. We knew from friends that sometimes planes are unable to get in and out for three weeks at a time due to weather, so we hoped for good weather and another plane tomorrow. We caught a ride across and asked someone in the town if they might be able to house us for monies. They also let us into the school for chips and candy so we could buy some food. We slept a long time that night and the next morning I realized I'd had foot pain since day two of the trip, and now it really hurt. I also realized I'd felt a cold coming on a few days in that had been suppressed, and then developed a cough that lasted for a month after this trip (old lung problems from pertussis in college).
This trip was a big learning experience for me. Personally, I was impressed that Katie and I didn't snap at each other over sleep, hunger, bush whacking, or returning on time for work stress. By the end we developed much speedier transitions and didn't need to communicate about logistical things. I did a few trips with Katie this summer, and when I did a trip with another group later in the year, it reminded me that I actually had to speak words to communicate again. Katie and I debriefed for a long time in King Salmon, assessing how we could have changed our packing, if we made sound decisions, our slow bush whacking speed, our responses to each other when things went wrong.
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