An Extra Happy Packraft Trip

Last year a crew of us were able to do what we felt was one of our “best trips ever” (mostly due to only having short term memories!) in the Nahanni region of northwestern Canada. Between the beauty, scale, remoteness, weather, challenge, whitewater, weather, and crew it was pretty amazing, and as such it was a bit of a challenge to follow it up with another one this year, especially because two of our five weren’t able to do during “the season” (we’ve always seemed to have good luck in June) due to work commitments (Benj) and surgeries (Mike; finally getting his shoulder fixed after not only years of abuse but falling hard on it on last year’s trip, and a new hip! He’ll be good as new soon….). But packraft trips in the Great North are so amazing that it’s always worth going back, so brother Paul took some needed initiative and realized that Tim Kelley’s “Extra Happy” trip was a bit shorter, easier, and logistically-simpler than the more complex Nahanni trip, and knowing Tim like I do (I’ve been fortunate to have done a coupla trips with him) I know that he’s an aficionado of packraft trips, so we decided to give it a go.

Replacing Mike and Benj means filling (literally, in Mike’s case) some big shoes, so in addition to last year’s Trip Master Greg Hanlon (captain of the ever-growing New England packrafting team)

we needed a coupla/few more folks to fill in. Which is not that easy: who has a packraft, is skilled and confident enough with it to handle remote, likely class 4 whitewater at unknown flows, has invested even more $$ in the appropriate mix of lightweight camping gear, is able to haul a too-heavy pack too long in variable Alaskan spring weather, and is willing to deal with what I like to call the three B’s of Alaskan adventures: Bugs, Bears, and Bushwacking! Bryan Godlewski of Driggs, Idaho has proved his mettle many times, including the quite-challenging Idaho skiraft traverse and if Bryan’s able he’s a sure bet:

Of course, veteran AK packrafter and trip leader brother Paul:

Late addition Sawyer Hanlon, to keep the average age down:

And AK newbie Steve Addicott of Park City, whom Paul and I have recently reconnected with and ever time I saw him he asked about packrafting; I’m not sure he actually thought we’d invite him, and was a bit nervous about getting Diegelized in the wilds of Alaska, but we were glad he was game!

As a few trips to AK have begun, we were able to base out of former Salt Laker and longtime queen of the AK avalanche community Wendy Wagner’s little house near the airport, which is always a great place to have gear explosions and edits and leave the last minute gear ejections. When we needed to get to the small airport a half an hour north of Anchorage we ordered an XL Uber; I’m not sure that our mini van driver quite expected 6 guys with oversize packs, but like Canadians, Alaskans are super nice and accommodating and will always work hard to make unusual things happen so we stuffed in and watched his suspension sag a bit!

Group sizes in Alaska are always a bit of a function of what planes you’re flying in, and what planes you are flying in are a function of who you can find to fly you into some remote spot onto a skitchy air “strip” (usually just a longish gravel bar). The details of this dynamic were in flux even up to a coupla weeks prior to the trip, but the proprietor of Nick’s Air Service – not surprisingly named “Nick” had put up a post on an AK packrafting page saying he was keen to fly folks into Alaska Range rivers and a coupla quick messages between Paul and Nick got us confirmed, and even solved a potential problem of the lake that Tim had flown into had experienced a beaver dam burst in the coupla years since Tim was there and was now too small for planes, but Nick has a sort of secret little strip on the nearby South Fork Keskokwim that worked out perfectly.

The views of the Alaska range and the Tordrillo mountains to the west were amazing, and there was so much snow still there after a biggish winter that we all wondered how big the flows might be.

This was emphasized by Nick’s exclamation that they’d been in a heat wave: “it’s been over 75 for a coupla weeks!” That’s a pretty nice “heat wave” compared to the triple digit-plus temps that we got going now in the West…..

We bounced down onto a gravel bar next to a big braided river running murky from glacier melt. Nick ejected 3 of us and our gear, then took off to go get the rest of our crew. Once our six-some was reunited, Nick again took off, and as he circled around and flew back over us I got the same sensation I’ve had a few times in AK; for those pilots it’s just another hourlong flight, but for us it was a long ways into some big, wild, and remote terrain and the hopes that the trip would all work out!

After (perhaps unwisely) camping on the rough little airstrip we blew up and traipsed across a coupla braids to find enough water:

and then floated a few miles down to where we thought we identified a some decent terrain to get up to our original destination of Jimmy Lake. It was a good reminder that what “looks really good!” from 1500 feet up isn’t quite bushwack-free, but by AK standards it wasn’t bad.

Jimmy Lake is not far from the nearby unnamed creek (Tim and Brad called it “Bad Bear Creek” due to a bear encounter near the bottom).

What Tim said was “slow motion, low volume, butt-boating” was actually a plenty-deep, swift, very floatable creek that we zipped down quickly and found ourselves on our first objective: the Styx river!

According to Wikipedia (and probably some long-ago teachers I had): “In Greek mythology, the River Styx is a river in the underworld that separates the living from the dead  (that yellow emphasis came from a website and I can’t figure out how to get rid of it!). The word styx literally means “shuddering” and expresses a loathing of death. The river is also a female deity and goddess, and is sometimes referred to as the “River of Hatred.” We hoped that by paddling it that we wouldn’t be passing over from living to dead, and hoped that the river gods would forego “hatred” and deliver us nicely. Actually, it occurs to me that I often refer to “the river gods”, but only really obliquely and never have known what the actual river gods are (like Ullr, the god of skiing). Loathing death whilst on a river is a good way to maintain one’s status as a “living”, so I suppose “Styx” is as good a god as any!

We knew from Tim’s trip report that the Styx was mostly class 3 with a coupla spots that stepped up a bit. But in our latest indication that the rivers were running high we pretty much bombed along, trying to keep good spacing so that we wouldn’t bounce each other out of the few small eddies. At one point I found myself in front and crashing through some bigger-than-class 3 waves and holes and into a sharp left hander where I caught an eddy to avoid us all flushing into something bigger, and as I saw Addy (Steve) paddling hard near me his boat was buckling around him and the tubes were in his armpits; something was clearly awry. Addy paddled, um, like his life depended on it and was able to catch an eddy, as did the rest of the crew, and we realized that he had put a tear in his boat (as it turned out, our only gear failure on the trip). As half the crew set about patching the boat the rest of us scouted downstream and saw that it was indeed a bit of class 4, but had some clean lines through it that we all hit nicely.

Downstream another biggish rapid loomed, and we scouted it the best we could from above. Greg and I had slightly different opinions on the lines, and I have a keen respect for his perspective, so we decided to go as a three-and-three with Greg, Sawyer, and Addy going first while we watched to see how it would go. As they got smaller in our vision one by one they hit the crux move; Greg sliced through, and Addy flipped. Sawyer went through and started going for Addy’s boat or paddle and then…..he flipped too. As Sawyer popped up swimming, the first thing he heard was his supportive, sympathetic dad: “Aw FUCK Sawyer!”

Paul, Bryan and I stared transfixed for just a second, until we realized that it was very much time to go, and I was a bit more determined that “my” line was the way. Though plenty exciting, the three of us flashed through and once back together we quickly headed downstream hoping that the high-water boat/captain carnage/loss wasn’t too bad. As it turned out, Sawyer had been able to toss Addy’s paddle ashore, Addy himself made a valiant swim to shore quickly followed by Sawyer, and Greg was fortunate enough to be able to push one boat ashore while another got fortuitously pinned. Just upstream of where the two boats were was a big hole that the entire river necked into, and as we were sorting everything out I asked Greg “Did you run that thing while chasing the boats” – Yep, got backendered, did a sort of screw-up brace roll, and was quickly back on the boat-gathering. Greg has long powerful arms and a great roll, but that kind of move was what his new Alpacka Valkyrie was made for.

The rest of the Styx was exciting but uneventful, and super beautiful:

and eventually we found ourselves back on the South Fork of the Keskokwim,

which we floated a few miles down to a small side creek that we intended to hike up a few miles and over into the Happy river.

About a mile up from the Keskokwim was a beautiful little lake with just barely enough room for six guys to camp next to, which was nice because the Styx had kinda had the riparian bush closing in on us as we lost elevation.

We came upon an old trappers’ cabin; no trail to it, but maybe it gets used in the winter?

The first hike from the SF Keskowin to Bad Bear above the Styx was a nice little warmup for AK hiking, and now that we were quite a bit lower elevation it appeared that hiking was going to get a bit more real.

For a mile or two we followed some decent game trails (caribou and bears like trails) but the creek was booming from the leftover snow and the heat wave so we realized that most of the time the game – and Tim’s crew – were able to hike in the creek bed, and we were pushed into the alder thickets. As with Gamble oaks in Utah, I have a grudging respect for the super-tough alder, and it made us earn the few miles we were able to make up that valley. A few times we had good views up the valley and normally the distances wouldn’t seem far, but between the deceptive bigness of Alaska and the quality of the bushwacking it took a bit of fortitude to plunge forward, and we all took turns doing the slightly more arduous leading. At times that meant just plunging headlong into the seemingly impenetrable.

Eventually, however, we got high enough that the alders thinned and gave way to slightly-less challenging sidehill scree walking, which led us to a tributary stream blasting through a deep gorge.

This was our conduit to Goodman pass, over which was Sheep Creek and the Happy River. As we pondered the ways to get beyond the gorge Sawyer pointed out the obvious: “there’s a pretty nice campspot right there!” next to Denny Creek at the mouth of the gorge, and after a day of alder thrashing we were happy to throw down our packs for good. That evening the thunderheads that had grown each afternoon but dissipated with cooling got a bit more organized and our scrabble game was scrubbed as we dove for the tents as the rain unleashed; not a big deal, but with plenty of snow high in the drainage and a longer-than-normal “shower” it took a while to fall asleep on the pretty low gravel bar -the only viable place to camp – with the creek thundering along next to us, but sleep we did and fortunately did not get flushed downstream.

In the morning we trudged steeply upward for about 800 feet to get around the gorge,

and on top found a nice caribou trail and saw the trailmakers. As we had seen last year in the Nahanni area, unlike other perpetually terrified ungulates who sprint away from people (except moose, of course) caribou seem to be pretty curious and after catching wind of us actually came in for a closer look before casually wandering off.

A couple of hours walking on a nice trail brought us into the broad and flat Sheep Creek valley, and we were keen to get back into our boats. At what seemed to be a good spot we blew up and put in, but just out of sight our old friends the alders had basically created a fence across the creek, creating a hectic cluster as we all slammed into it and each other. After untangling we thrashed some ways down the shore to another tributary and more cautiously and successfully floated to the Happy river.

Andy Embick was a legendary climber in Alaska and though busy as the small town doctor in Valdez, also became an equally accomplished paddler, and somehow found the time to write “Fast and Cold“, the definitive guidebook to Alaska’s whitewater rivers. The number of rivers in Alaska is staggering, and the scope of his book was equally amazing. He gave ratings (via stars) to all of the rivers in his book and as a seasoned adventurer he was pretty discriminating in his ratings, so only four rivers in the book were given five-star ratings; the Happy was one of them. It’s always a bit dangerous to delve into anything and start with “The Best” because then the rest may seem sub-optimal, but we don’t get many opportunities to get up to the Great North, so we were okay with choosing a five-star!

As we had been floating the various rivers up to this point I’d been describing them as “medium/high?” in my notes since there are no gauges on any of the rivers and we were just looking at how the water looked on the banks, but when we got to the Happy I simply said “high water.” Tim had described some of the rapids as class 3 boulder gardens, but as we flew down the river there were no boulders to be seen, much less gardens of them. Again, we put Greg on point and kept enough space between us to not bounce into each other but close enough to be able to see what Greg was encountering. Early on there was a section that abruptly stepped up to powerful class 4, and we were all paddling hard to weave around the chundering holes, with general success, until Addy got caught, flipped, and swam. Steve used his paddle to propel himself to shore quickly while Greg once again chased the boat and was able to get it in relatively quickly. After a quick riparian thrash by Addy he was reunited with the crew and his boat, and after a bit of a rest we got back on the river.

There’s a bit of a mindset difference of running familiar rivers in relatively civilized terrain and being on unfamiliar rivers – or any adventures, for that matter – in pretty remote places. If – when – you take a beating when you are pretty deeply in and there’s still plenty to go, there’s really no choice but to take a few deep breaths, take stock of your situation, remind yourself that you got the skills, and paddle hard. Like a lot of activities – but to me, maybe a bit more so – paddling is a pretty heady sport, and just as a “good” head can propel you through exciting rapids successfully, a lack of confidence can literally destroy your abilities (kinda like life, I suppose). I hadn’t done enough adventures with Steve to know how he might react to a bit of a beating that worked out well but just as easily could not have, but turns out he’s done a bit of specific mental focus training and to my relief he put it to some good practical use and indeed paddled hard, even as we continued to rocket down the river with turn after turn, putting faith in Greg’s probing and the nature of the river that – after the steep section – mostly was consistent gradient with the occasional big waves and holes to avoid/contend with.

As we boogied along with gradient lessened and we were able to relax a bit more, but the Happy was not quite done with us. As expected from perusing the map the river made a long sweeping turn towards the confluence with the broad, flat Skwentna river, and as I came around the tightest bend at the just above the confluence I saw a tree across what looked like a big section of the river, and amazingly another tree had fallen directly across from it, but there appeared to be a gap between the top branches of both. The swift current was whisking me ever closer to the gap, and I spun about to signal upstream to the rest of the gang to move hard left to the gap, but as I got to the gap myself I realized that it was super shallow and the key seconds that I spent signaling made me miss the power strokes to grind onto the barely submerged rocks to slow/stop, and the current grabbed my stern and started to yank me backwards into the tree. Instinctively I grabbed the skirt and as quickly as I could kicked out of the boat just as it went into the mess and was able to drag myself away as the boat hit the branches, reared up into them, flipped over, and flushed through and into the Skwenta! By that time Bryan had made the gap and was ground out on it in the shallows and saw what had happened so he was quickly trying to skooch across the shallows to give chase to my boat, which had already drifted around the corner on its own merry way to the sea. Bryan took off after it, while Paul also made the move through the shallow gap, while in the meantime Greg and Sawyer somehow crashed through the branches of the tree and were also heading down the Skwenta. Greg had yelled to Addy “Get out of the river” and Addy had driven himself into thick bushes at the bank and gotten out, so he was safe at the moment, but he had to make the move across to the shallow gap. I hollered at him to paddle like hell, or maybe go farther upstreasm to ensure the ferry, but the brush was so thick that it was kinda untenable. So Addy conjured up some some of the aforementioned steely mindset, launched in – with me as a catcher – and paddled like I’ve rarely seen anyone paddle, his blades creating a veritable blur that coulda launched Nick’s plane, and…..didn’t make it. He came crashing into me and between us we were able to get him out of his boat and grab it before it too flushed through the brush into the Skwenta.

By that time Bryan had gotten my boat, everybody was safe, all was indeed “Happy”. I jumped onto the stern of Paul’s boat (a super effective move that packrafts can enable much better than kayaks for transporting people who have stupidly lost their boats) got reunited with mine, and the crew, and we gently floated out onto the swift but flat and braided Skwenta.

While the Skwenta was flat, it was a bit tricky at times because of so many big logs (alders again?!?) that had floated down and gotten caught on the shallower gravel bars as the levels had dropped, so we had to follow the majority of the water to not get into dead end braids, not get ground out on gravel bars since we couldn’t see the bottom of the murky glacial water, and avoid the myriad of big logs.

But none of these things were a big deal, and after a day and a half of paddling we found ourselves at the Skwenta airstrip, which was a few hundred yards from the Skwentna roadhouse that served up nice burgers and beers to the few folks who flew in (there were a coupla vehicles there that were last registered in the early 2000’s…not much need for an updated license plate in Skwenta!).

And soon enough our scheduled flight roared down the runway, we all leapt in, and we were whisked back to Anchorage, only a 40 minute flight away.

I’ve now been on about 10 trips to Alaska for skiing and boating, and I’m about 0.5 for 3 on ski trips, and about 7 for 7 on river trips, so I think I will keep going on the river adventures! Thanks again to Greg, Sawyer, Addy, Bryan, and Paul for being such fun and solid pards on a great adventure, and much thanks to Wendy Wagner and Jon for once again allowing us to take over their cute Anchorage house as a base camp.