Eldridge Raft and Ski Out

 

5 days of travel, 7 days including weather days

Got to fulfill my dream of skiing and rafting in one trip! While I often want to see a new river, new trail, new place, it’s special to do trips around the ak range where I feel an immense connection to place. One, I burn less fuel which is a constant battle for me. Two, it was so nice to look across and be able to see backpacks I’ve done in the foothills of the ak range and talkeetnas, kesugi where I’ve gotten rained on the last fifteen years, denali to reflect on my walkie walkie up it, the many glaciers I learned a lot of skills from a lot of people (and got to teach some too), places I’ve flown for day skis and hikes, the area I first held the controls of a plane, where I worked my first pay roll job on a trail crew, Talkeenta Air Taxi where I worked for ten years.. Growing up I saw the ak range and talkeetnas and had no idea what was out there. And now I’m just glad to spend time out and about, and for the people who let me hound them for any info over the years to get me to these places. Now I have an immense map of bikes, rafts, skis, flys and the such in my head. I don’t feel ownership over it and I can’t claim to know know the land (and my relationship with the land begins and is framed with colonialism), but I feel like it moves through me and humbles me sometimes.

On Friday we awoke to a rainy day in Anchorage. We texted TAT and the weather for the day sounded unpromising, so I went to my brother's track meet in Palmer and Erin continued packing at a slower pace. Saturday morning we met at TAT and it was another rainy day. This gave us the chance to sort more stuff, pack more properly, and do the optional park service check-in. We each weighed in with 70lbs of gear, which seemed uncharacteristically heavy for us. I’ve brought less than 10lbs on hut trips before, and commonly get my overnight packraft supplies under 35lb.. but this trip just called for more stuff. 

We ended up not flying out that day, but we did do a lot of socializing around town with old and new friends. This is my first summer not partaking in seasonal work in the last twenty years or so. Anchorage summer will have its perks, but it was nice being part of the seasonal town vibe for a little bit. Initially, I was suppose to be on an Alaska Mountaineering School contract. With cancellation due to low student enrollment, I'm really happy Erin and I were able to plug something in to the time. 

Sunday morning we flew in, getting to stop at base camp, thunder, root canal, ruth gorge before landing at the Eldridge. Gave Paul a hug and apologized for all the stuff hanging off our bags, and said goodbye to some friends teaching an AMS course that flew out on the back haul. Then we were alone and began unpacking our rafts to use at sleds. We put gear that was "less critical" in our raft tubes. Figuring if we lost our rafts, we probably couldn't use our paddles or other boat gear, we packed these, extra food, and extra layers away. We rigged our rafts to our backpacks, talked over our plan for different rescue situations given there were only two of us each with a raft tied to us, and set off down hill. There had been fresh snow the last few days, so there was some friction on the rafts, but overall travel wasn't strenuous. We took our time moving 4-5 miles down travelers right. The con of coming from other parts of the range was that we didn't get to scout any part of the route out, but it made for more mental engagement fun on the way down. I would say we mostly went down the middle part of the glacier. Our travel pictures are in order, with the picture below on the left looking back on our tracks. We took this part slow, and I would definitely want good visibility.

The next day it was snowing or raining most the day, and we couldn't see far at all. We spent the day in the tent pretty much sleeping the whole time. I had brought more comfort items than usual (potential explanation for the 70lb packs), but no book. I did have headphones, but I wasn't sure how my battery was going to pan out if I started listening to podcasts this early in the trip. The next morning we woke up at 5:30a to clouds around us, but we could tell there was clearing beyond it. By 7:30a there were mystical clouds along many of the surround mountains, but the travel visible was great. Relishing in the cooler temps and slight bits of shade made waking up early worth it, as we knew it was about to get HOT. I don't travel to hot places, but never have I been so hot as on a glacier during a warm day. 

 

  

Heading down the glacier we stayed traveler left, and got pulled a little right into the cracked up area in the bottom left photo (it looked like good travel 🙆). It was easy to diagonal out of, and we popped onto a highway type medial moraine strip to continue down glacier. On satellite it looked like this area was a mix of bare ice and dirt during the later summer months. We were able to walk a decent amount down glacier, until a few miles before it looked like the moraine got hilly on Gaia. We took a longer break under our vestibule mid-day to escape the heat and make more water. 

The next day we awoke and travelled fast in the morning. The slushy slog snow of yesterday had turned to crust, and we were able to pull our rafts 3miles in an hour. We did some skinning on crust side hilling, up and down pulling the raft before we decided it would be more efficient to put everything in our packs. We each put all the weight on our back. The first couple downhill skins were still very crusty, and it was quite terrifying. But the snow quickly softened and felt more forgiving. Erin did a full steep ski turn in front of me with unlocked heels and 70lbs on her back (impressive). We continued this for 8 more miles, very surprisingly neither of us fell. In places the moraine was pretty cracked up, but some snow filler made it easier to cross some water channels and other features. We worked our way right until there was a creek making it way into the glacier on the right, creating huge ice walls on the side. Our goal was to make it to a part of the moraine that felt easier to navigate in low visibility, in case the weather didn't pane out the next day. The last few hours we were sinking into the snow pretty far and getting baked in the sun. We found some rocks we could skin up to and set up our tent. We made food a bit away from our tent in case bears were around, and stored our food a bit away. Traveling over the moraine, it was pretty crazy to see how much ice has melted on the Eldridge. 

    

The next morning we set out to look for water to put the boats in. We had a few more miles of moraine, and then hugged the right side along the trees. We tried to make a pretty straight line down the open area where the fountain river would connect with the chulitna. The fountain ended up not being open enough to raft, so we walked the 8-9 miles in very slushy snow and set up the tent in some trees for wind shelter. The next morning we cut across to where the chulitna was on our map. As we got close, we got concerned about channels below us and not being able to see or probe for potential water. So we put on our dry suits and life vests, packed our tubes and shuffled around with our tennis shoes on our skis pulling our heavy rafts around. There was a 2-3ft lip of ice and snow on the sides, so we had to walk along the river to find a place to put in. When we found some open dirt we attached our skis to the outside of our rafts, and popped into the chulitna. Rafting with the snow and ice around us was super cool and eerie. After about 10 miles we started seeing more patches of ground and less snow. We rafted about 20 miles in 4 hours and then decided to camp and hang out for the night. We camped between lower troublesome and the bridge, but more snow and less gravel bars were around that area. In hindsight, we would have camped a little before this where the snow was much more melted out. The next morning we rafted the last 24 miles in 5 hours. Since we only took one break and it was a colder day, our feet were pretty chilly. We pulled out on the left in the first channel after the end of Talkeetna. 

Overall, we didn't get precipitated on once while travelling, only a couple times at night and on the storm day. Traveling distance through land when I have to do some route thinking builds my info on the way nature behaves like nothing else. Some new logistics of rafting and skiing also made my brain happy. Pros of doing the trip this early in the year was the ability to ski all of the walking parts, navigate the moraine easier, and not carry our skis on our backs. Cons were we had to walk fountain river, bring more winter gear, and make sure the chulitna was running enough. 

For updates on ways to advocate to keep the Susitna River (a river the Chulitna joins with in Talkeetna) flowing and not damned sign up for the Susitna River Coalition newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/bvZKWwA