10 days (11 days with driving)
The theme of this write up is: it's cool to see water be so small and then see where it gets so big later. Thursday evening June 26th Sebastian, Charlotte, Helen and I drove towards McCarthy and camped, then caught a flight with Wrangell Air to Tebay Lakes Friday morning. From the air strip we walked right and stayed low and around for a bit to avoid some up and down drainages. Some years the landing strips might not be open this early, but this winter was a low snow year. The year prior I had called Wrangell Air when debating our Donjek trip versus this, and the landing areas were not quite open. We worked our way uphill and I was very hot. The day from here was a sidehill, with beautiful mountains for views on the other side. We also had a cool view above the East Bremner River, seeing where it dumped into the Bremner and then the Copper. We walked almost 11 miles and then made camp.
The second day we finished our sidehill and descended down to a creek crossing. We ended up going high and around then crossing as a group of 4: Sebastian in the front, then Charlotte and Helen, and me in the back. As we headed down the other bank, there was a large snow bridge above the river, but falling through would be above a waterfall feature. We worked our way back to our sidehill ridge and continued on, detouring from our route when we spotted a bear and cub along the way. Our route became not a sidehill and was nice tundra walking down to another creek crossing. We used our packrafts to bump across this creek and camped on a plateau above the waterfall. We did around 8mi this day.
While we were camping we saw a black bear walk by and off below us. A little later we spotted a black bear sniffing around on a hill across the creek that we walked by earlier. It looked our way, and started rapidly working it's way straight in our trajectory. We tracked it as it moved towards us in the bushes, the bear intermittently peaking it's head up to look our way. When the bear came to the creek it ventured out at a couple points but seemed to decide the water was too iffy to cross each time and backed off. It started to work it's way back into the bushes from the creek less urgently. Then we spotted another black bear further left that was larger. We watched the smaller black bear that had come towards us get too close to the larger one. The larger one chased it off. Overall maybe the bear was very lonely. 6 bear sightings this day and it was also my birthday.
The next 5 hiking days we consistently did 12-14 mile hiking days. The third day the walking was nice tundra around various lakes. We crossed the East Fork of the Bremner one at a time with no problems, although the water was the coldest of any river we crossed. Cool to see in the distance where the Bremner dumps into the Copper River and heads as a huge river to the ocean, but cross this small stream up higher. ALSO cool since I've spent time up higher where the Copper is around the Sanford approach, around the Lakina River up high, and rafting the Nizina. These are all in the mix in the Copper we saw from a distance, added with the small stream we crossed.
The rest of the day consisted of bushwhacking up a slope where we angled up and to the right. We popped out on town and peaked at the river we were going to cross below. We headed up river of it and it was a shallow crossing. We gained some mounds on the other time and side hilled on the other side. We worked our way down to a tundra flat near water for camp. We weren't sure about snow coverage going into the trip. Overall on the route up to this point the snow was very hard packed and nice on the feet for side hilling in parts.
The next day we went up the pass. There was some pot holing snow around the top, but the snow made it way faster on the way down because we could shuttle fast. We went left around the lake, but from the other side it seemed you might be able to cut the distance. The slope didn't seem crazy steep. After the pass we crossed the low Klu River. The walking after this was nice rolling tundra. We followed the Klu for around 10 miles, and one variation with pack rafts would be rafting this river if you had solid skills and a higher risk tolerance. In parts it looked very chill, but in parts it did not. The Klu also joins with the water we would be rafting later into the Copper. We returned to our side hilling, although this was on the other side for the first time. We dipped into two valleys to stay a little higher and avoid bushwhacking. We camped in the second one, prior to where we wanted to cross the river.
On day five we used our pack rafts to pop across the river in the morning. We gained elevation again through bushes, and then side hilled around our last bend along the Klu. Staying a little higher as we dropped down we found a game trail. The travel along here was nice and then turned into tundra. We steadily gained elevation to the highest point we'd been up to so far (5,800?). Some punchy snow here and great views of a glacier at the top. The other side of the pass with a cornice, so we went off to the far right and down climbed a small part of snow. We sped down the snow and down down to camp at a nice lake. Beautiful camp spot. My feet were starting to be wrinkly and hurt on the soles from the days of wet.
Day six we climbed back up a bit and came to a stepper up section. We ended up going up the more left side and then cutting over. We shuffled down the snow and came down to Bremner mine. Two people were staying in the cabin. We took a long break looking in all the buildings. Then we continued down the road towards the airstrip and along our way. We didn't get water at Bremner just in case of mine contamination, and there wasn't water for a bit along the side hill. In hindsight we could have filled up coming down from the pass prior to Bremner. We went up our last larger pass in low visibility, and saw tracks going to same direction we were travelling in the snow. When we descended we camped on the other side on this plateau.
Day seven and our last day of solely walking before some rafting. We went up a smaller pass and then worked our way down with view of Bremner glacier. We cut towards the left side hoping to cross the river when it was two channels instead of one. The first channel crossing was cruiser, the second we had to look around until Sebastian found a good place to cross. We bush whacked staying higher until we found the game social trail that leads down to Bremner glacier. Once off the trail we worked left to enter onto the glacier and walked down the Tana Lobe. The walking was fast flat glacier around rocks, until we had to dip left to avoid cracks. We did some unsteady boulder walking. We took a dinner break at a stream, unsure if we would find non-silty water lower down. I took my shoes and socks off to let me feet breath a little. When I was taking my sock off, the skin on the bottom of my right big toe had stuck to my sock and ripped some of the skin off. It started bleeding everywhere and then clotting weird (dehydration?). We bandaged it and Charlotte let me use a little sliver of paper that turns into soap that she had (very cool). We walked for a couple more hours until we reached a flat sandy spot.
On day eight we woke up and transitioned to rafting. In hindsight, we should have walked a few more miles. But we were tired and my toe made me want to raft sooner. We portaged a lot around weird features, paddling some intermittently. We were finally around this in early afternoon and paddled the rest of the West Tana class I river (2-5mph?). Around 13 miles in we pulled off on the left to have dinner at some fresh water. We rafted another mile or so and then pulled off onto the right for camp. We spotted an animal highway full of bear, wolf, moose tracks shortly away from our camp afterward. When we were settling to bed Helen heard breathing very close to the tent and started yelling. I was already getting out of the tent to collect my dry suit hung up on a tree to dry. I looked over and a brown bear was running off looking very scared.
Day nine began with the West Tana joining the Tana. The water was faster, potentially 10mph. The river was pretty classic glacial. Choosing braids wasn't too hard, and the water was fast but without intense eddy lines or features. After around 14mi on the main Tana River we pulled out across from the sand dunes and started our bushwhack to the Chitina, to avoid the big scary features in the Tana Canyon. It seemed like this would be shorter than portaging the Tana, since the bushwhack looked like 5mi. It made me feel better when Charlotte found that some people bushwhacked over during a classic (it's possible). We ascended up and gradually left on the north side of Towhead Mountain. It was very windy and there was a lot of beetle kill to crawl over and that could have fallen on us. We descended down Towhead and at one point had some decent mossy travel, but then we had a lot of dead willow forest to thrash through. I think the walking miles ended up being 7mi that took us 11 hours. We found fresh water right after exiting the forest, made dinner and then continued to our camp along the Chitina. I was grumpy about my wet toe cut.
We slept 8 hours, packed up, and started on the Chitina. It was probably moving 10-12mph. Initially there were some braids to pick through, and then it became one channel. There were some occasional waves trains on the outer bends. Overall, there were nice eddies to pull into and we found fresh water along the way. We were very happy that it was less windy than the day before, and that an afternoon wind didn't pick up at some point. We pulled out before the Nizina and Chitina confluence and walked over to the Nizina. Pretty cool that the water (some of it) we crossed up above the Bremner glacier works it's way down into the West Tana, becoming a large river in the Tana, joining with the Chitina, and then joining with the Nizina and everything else to become the Copper. The water was small enough to step over, and when we pulled out the Chitina was a lotta water moving fast.
We ferried this and saw a guided group that had finished rafting the Nizina and was waiting to fly out. One of the guides told us about a trail up river. We were planning to bushwhack out, so maybe doing your homework before trips is nice. We walked up river and found the cable in the forest. To the left of it we picked up the trail. For awhile it was nice with trees to climb over. Then it seemed to disappear and we walked through some moss. We picked the trail up again, which was a muddy trench. We walked on either side of it. It would have been a shorter distance to bushwhack to the road, but it was mentally nice to have something to follow, and who knows what the bushwhack is like. This trail took us 2 hours 45 minutes walking quite fast, due to wanting to get to the Potato for dinner and due to the hungry bugs. Sebastian and I had lost our bug nets the day prior somehow.
We made it to the road and caught two hitch hikes in groups of two, making it to the Potato for dinner and spending the night in McCarthy.
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