East Susitna River Packraft

 3 days

 

Sara, Kelly, Jamie, and I drove up early Saturday morning through Cantwell and onto the Denali Highway. We pulled up to where Valdez Creek road intersects, and stashed two bikes here and the pull-out. We drove up Valdez Creek road about 10 miles until the creeks got too high to cross in the truck. Then we set off hiking along the road. In general we following Valdez Creek up, loosing the road a couple of times. It went surprisingly high up, maybe 6-7 miles. We contoured left towards a beautiful lake on tundra, and then over a pass. We went down a little and then back up towards a second pass. Here there was a great flat tundra bench near water, so we camped around 11-12 miles in. 

 

The next day was a good day to try and make a straight line navigating. There were a couple small creeks and swampy spots, but overall it was tundra walking up gentle passes. The first pass had boulders, but the next three bumps up were small with tundra. On our third bump up there was a nice lake and a curious caribou with a huge rack. We made our way down to the river on a game trail as lightening and thunder rumbled around (hopefully the caribou on the ridge was okay). The game trail took us all the way down pretty much. We thought about crossing the creek at the bottom to camp on the other side, but it actually looked pretty deep at the time. We found some camping by crossing a branch of the East Susitna and camping on the other side. There was vegetation were we camped, but during very very high water I could see more parts getting flooded. This day was around 14 miles.

 

The third morning we got on the river at 8a, which started as some class I/II picking braids with an okay current. Around 8-10 rafting miles in, we came across the rapids. We paddled a small section of them, and then portaged on the left hand side. There was a pretty knarly (for me) looking feature a little after this as we walked by, looked more intense than what most people have called class III features. A little after this we ferried across to the right, and then put in after this. The rapids were more mellow here, but interesting to read since there were many boulders and shallow spots to get stuck in. Right away it mellowed to class I and was slow.. for the next 25 miles. We stayed in our boats for the next 8 hours with no breaks, and ate, drank, and actively paddled as we went. Overall for the day, our average speed was 3.2mph, moving speed 3.7mph, and max 7.6mph (probably on the rapid). We pulled our on the left, and Kelly and Sara biked to the car while Jamie and I packed up the gear. It would be cool to do a larger traverse in this area since the walking was so good, or combine coming off some glaciers into rivers. The river day was long, but it was cool to raft the start of the Susitna, since I grew up looking at it my whole life where it's a big fast river connecting with the Talkeetna and Chulitna. 

An alternate idea would be to pull out higher up on the Susitna and do a short bushwhack to the Valdez Creek road a few miles in. This would take out some of the last slow rafting, and decrease the bike shuttle or potentially take out a car shuttle.

For updates on ways to advocate to keep the Susitna River flowing and not damned sign up for the Susitna River Coalition newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/bvZKWwA