3 days
Mark agreed to drop us off Friday at the hut with the heli after work around 7:30p which was very nice of him. And he only charges $375 per load of 3 in the R44 which is cheap and makes it a reasonably affordable trip for involving transport. We had Car 1 drop three people with Mark, go to Caribou Campground to pick up up two more for the second heli load and leave a car. We got to the Scandy hut, made some dinner, and went to bed. I had only been to the hut in the winter. Turns out where you find the water in the summer is a stream below the hut, or on our way out within a mile or two there was a good water supply.
The herd of life vests setting out:
The next morning we woke up on the earlier side to walk out the Matanuska Glacier. I didn't personally know anyone who had walked out the Matanuska recently. Sara had guiding a NOLS trip years ago, but we didn't have any recent information. Mark was helpful on the way out and pointed out a route he thought would be the best. I had heard anywhere from a day to a few to a week to hike out, so we weren't really sure how the hike out would go.
We came down from the hut and stayed on the right side (from the perspective of the walker) of the lateral moraine. The terrain was flat and easy walking. We continued and got water from the creek. When the banks around the creek looked like they got steeper around two miles in we popped onto the moraine and made a diagonal to the next medial moraine. There was no need to cut straight across, because it looked like the glacier got mellower further down glacier. We hit a flat dirty ice section that hugged the right side the medial moraine, and walked down this for around three miles. Eventually when the ice became less flat, we crossed left to the next medial moraine gradually over two miles and walked along the side of this. We only walked on this moraine for less than a mile, and then started crossing back over to the right medial moraine.
I had been around spoon valley coming from the caribou pull-out, and Mark had mentioned this as the way to get into spoon valley. We cut across the glacier above where spoon valley started to see if we could get into the valley from the up glacier side. We climbed up the bank on the side which was a bit steep. There was a game trail that followed the side and down to the valley, minus the last couple hundred feet of bush whacking. We camped once we hit the water.
The next day we hiked up the valley along gravel bars, crossing the river back and forth. We turned left up a drainage for a bit and then gained the right ridge above it. We should have stayed higher than we did, but we dropped down a bit and then took another drainage back up. The terrain was gentler higher. We then reached the top of a pass and meandered down. This drainage got steeper, so we side hilled along the right side of it and popped out above it on the right. We went down to a tributary and filled up on water, unsure of where non-silty water would be in the future. We then climbed up the other side from the tributary. There was a knob on the left of the ridge, and we aimed right of the knob. Looking up from the Matanuska river later, hugging the left side of the knob along the side of the drainage could have been a better descent with less bush whacking. We got into some bushes, then followed some trickles of water until we found a game trail. It was faint and getting very dark, but my eyes were able to pick up most pieces. Eventually we lost it and cut straight to the river. We popped onto the river when it was darker right to a place we could camp (lucky). This was about 10 miles of walking for the day.
The next morning we rafted back to the caribou campground take out. The first part of the South Fork was splashier, potentially 2+. There was one narrow section where the outer edge was pushy into a big wall. We joined into the main Matanuska River where the water mellowed out more. The raft was around 18 miles and took us around 4.5 hours.
Me trying to pick Mark's nose, talking to my realtor remote (again).
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