4-4.5 days
Erin, Sebastian and I had high hopes for our walking ability so we parked a car at Little Tok River off the road, close to where the classic started this year. We drove there after work Thursday and arrived late. The next morning we got picked up after an hour of hitch hiking by a converted school bus. The couple was working in Tok this summer. They knew of converted school buses all around different areas, and exchanged stickers with each other. The couple gave us each a sticker each, fed us guacamole, told us about their grandchildren, and they also had a cute dog. Their bus was really impressively put together. Overall I've hitch hiked more this summer than ever before. I've had great luck, getting picked up by a semi truck filled with shih tzu dogs birthed on the back seat, a self-driving Tesla someone was living out of and travelling the US for months in, and people who were parking a car at our same raft take out. Most of these experiences I couldn't have invented or thought up for myself. We got dropped at the Tok Cutoff close to Glenallen to continue the other way to Paxson. This was my first bad luck hitch hike, and we didn't get picked up for a few hours. Eventually we called a guy named Greg who runs a raft shuttle and was going that way anyway, and got a ride with him. He dropped us off a bit further out on the dirt road drop off around 6p.
We walked around 7 miles and then we found a nice flat spot near dark. This was my first time trying a mid as the main shelter instead of a kitchen tent on the glacier. We used our packrafts as ground coverage but with 3 people it took us a while to figure out getting settled. We put the edges pretty close to the ground which I think contributed to condensation and decreased our space, since we were all trying to not touch the walls. Rain switched to snow shortly after we set up, and it on and off snowed through the morning. We decided since hitchhiking took us most of the first day, we walked extra on the road, and the precip made us slower setting up and packing up, to go for rafting out the closer Chistochina instead of heading to the Slana River or Little Tok River, which we had also considered as options. We estimated Chistochina was 30miles of walking and 50miles of floating.
We meandered 11ish miles that day. We crossed the Gakona Glacier, which you could completely cross in many different areas. We didn't go too far south, because after crossing the creek on the other side we climbed up a bit to shoot across towards the next drainage. Overall, you could walk a lot of different ways up here. We camped before running into Gakona Glacier part 2. It snowed again in the evening, but in the morning we had no precipitation and snow line was above us. It was breezing though, and really cold.
We did 11ish miles again. We dropped down a ridge into a creek bed and came to the West Fork of the Chistonchina River. We could have tried putting in here and I think it would have gone, or taking ATV trails over. But we wanted to do a bit more hiking, so we scooted up the far right side from the glacier and followed this nice valley to a pass. There was snow in the pass. We dropped down to the toe of the Chistochina Glacier and camped on a bench. Another day of great travel and beautiful views.
The next morning we walked a few miles past mining equipment to the Chistochina River and put in. There was some scraping rocks, but overall it was doable to raft. Once the West Fork joined we didn't hit rocks again and moved faster. We rafted around 36miles in under 9 hours, more than the usual amount of rafting for me. We had to do some exercise sessions of running and squats when we got cold a couple times. The river was very dynamic and interesting. We were able to pick sneak lines that were class I/II, Erin and I following Sebastian. If you wanted splashier water there were a lot of options to spice it up. Probably good comfort on Eagle River Bridge to Bridge would be a fine level for rafting this river, unless it changes with higher water. There were a wild amount of huge boulders lower down in the river. I am very confused about how they got there, as we didn't see huge cliffs or slopes above and they were enormous to transport. Something to be aware of when picking out features versus enormous rocks.
The highlight of the day was we saw a dog pop up right off the bank of the river as we were floating by. But then it seemed spooked and we realized it was a wolf. And then we saw 5-6 wolves running with us for a few moments down the river, all jet black. Super cool, super rare.
We camped in a fall-like area and rafted the last 15 miles in around 3 hours. There was a part around 11miles in where the river dove to the left into the trees. All the sudden there weren't eddies and wood around. You potentially could have grabbed onto a bush on the side, but the current was fast enough you probably would have flipped. We got through here and had wide births from any woods, and then I pulled over into a eddy before the channel split into a couple smaller branches into the woods. Don't know how I, always water beta not alpha got in the front of this section. We found another small channel to portage over to, that then joined with the main channel once it was out of the bushes. The rest of the way the river didn't go into the forest. It seems there's a road the length of the river. Not sure the property type laws but could be a bail out. Overall such great hiking and so many trip options in this area. We didn't see anyone the whole time besides a few caribou and the wolf friends.
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