PWAC Victoria: Lyn Hancock, Writing Sample

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Alsek River: The Wildest River in North America

by Lyn Hancock © 2003

Join Lyn as she rafts the unique and little-known Alsek River from Yukon to B.C. to Alaska with Nahanni River Adventures. This river, which some say is the wildest river in North America, has everything--unsurpassed scenery, dense concentrations of grizzlies, magnificent icefields, and a canyon described as "unpaddleable." Photostory published in the Nanaimo News Bulletin, Mar. 14, 2002 and Above and Beyond, Sept. 2002.

"I think you're having us on, Ron. There aren't any bears on the Alsek," John joked to our guide as our rubber raft rollercoastered through the standing waves of what is generally considered the wildest river in North America. "You've showed us fresh tracks in the sand and hair rubbed on the bushes, told us stories of bears ambling through camp and trapping you in rafts, we're now running through Kluane's Special Preservation Area for grizzlies, and you haven't showed us any bears!"

Ron, one of our three miracle guides from Nahanni River Adventures, was too busy to respond to John's joshing! Battling rolling waves, crisscrossing currents and gusty headwinds to keep us afloat in the Class 3 rapids, he was alternately pushing and pulling with the oars, going with the flow of wallowing troughs and cresting waves, keeping out of holes and bypassing boulders that appeared and disappeared in the roiling water.

While John and Chris at the stern hung grimly to perimeter lines ready on command to grab paddles, I slurped around in the bouncing bow trying to take photos, Ted held one hand on the cargo lines for safety and the other on me in case I fell overboard.

"Kodak moment coming up," called Ron suddenly as we swirled around a 90-degree bend in the river to come face-to-face with a giant wall of ice--the famous Lowell Glacier that has surged and dammed the Alsek several times, drowning whole villages. From our viewpoint in the rafts, much of its magnificence was foiled by fields of bergs and growler bits bobbing around in Lowell Lake at the foot of the glacier's terminal moraine.

Suddenly, someone called, "There's a bear!" I swung my camera around to follow waving fingers pointing to a big brown grizzly "welcoming us to camp," Ron wrote later in the daily journal.

Grizzlies and glaciers are the most popular attractions of a trip down the Alsek and this was our first glacier and our first grizzly. We watched entranced from a safe back eddy (the other rafts had already landed), as the bear ambled along a gravel spit, swam across the ice-chunked lake, and beached itself on the very side of the river we planned to camp. I had time to switch my lens to telephoto as it paced across the sandy brown hills of the moraine, then disappeared.

We waited in the rafts while our guides, Ron, Bob and Pepi, checked the bear's tracks, then decided where to safely locate our tents and the "groover." This mandatory portapotty was designed to carry our sewage between our put-in point at Kluane Junction, Yukon and our take-out point in Dry Bay, Alaska. It was named for the grooves said to be left on the backsides of soldiers who used ammunition tins as toilets. The groover always commanded the best views. Our campsite for two nights on the sand dunes at Lowell Lake was superb. With bear spray close at hand and singing bear-scare songs such as the Teddy Bear's Picnic, we could sit on the groover in comparative comfort and safety and enjoy what one early Alsek river rat called a "daily scenic overdose."

In front of us, three peaks of the St. Elias Mountains straddling the Alaska/Yukon border--Mt. Hubbard, Mt. Kennedy and Mt. Alverstone--made a stunning backdrop to Lowell Glacier. At the toe of its terminal moraine, chunks of ice the size of houses thundered into Lowell Lake. Behind us reared the imposing rock face of Goat Herd Mountain that we climbed next day for even better views.

The Alsek is a paradise for naturalists.

As memorable as the icefields in the distance were the flowers at our feet and along the face of rock walls--blue monk's hood, Jacob's ladder, delphinium, gentian, lupin and forget-me-not, pink fireweed, moss campion and rose root, flowers as large as cow parsnip and as small as grass of Parnassus.

Some of us hiked to the very top of the mountain and saw mountain goats. Although the Alsek is home to the largest stable population of grizzlies in Canada, some say the world, and we saw fresh bear sign every time we stepped from the rafts, we were happy not to see bears on this hike up Goat Herd Mountain. We stopped for lunch at the thousand-foot level in a floral meadow by a giant glacial erratic and were content with the antics of arctic ground squirrels instead.

More than 180 species of birds frequent the Alsek, most seen during spring and fall migration as the river is an important flyway between the interior Yukon lakes and the Gulf of Alaska. We noted the usual "little brown jobbies"--sparrows, warblers, finches and flycatchers--as we hiked to treeline, but our most productive birdwatching would not be till later in Dry Bay when we drifted under the regal glares of dozens of bald eagles.

The night of our hike it was warm enough to skinny-dip in a shallow tarn in the sandy moraine near camp (soapless to keep it pristine). Some of us stayed up till dawn to revel in the warm alpenglow. Next day was also sunny and warm. "This can't be the Alsek," Bob exclaimed as he woke us up to a breakfast of cinnamon buns and chocolate éclairs. "Last time we did this trip we were wind-bound here for several days. Sand got into everything, we couldn't cook and the guests had to stay in their tents."

The Alsek is a short river but it is surprising, constantly changing as it drops dramatically from alpine tundra at 1,800 feet to sea level in just 160 miles. It varies in width from 40 feet in Turnback Canyon to 3 miles at its confluence with the Tatshenshini. It is the ultimate destination for those who love wild rivers. Twice as many people run the Tatshenshini, the Alsek's tributary, as the Alsek itself because the Tat, threatened in recent years by a colossal copper mine till saved by a worldwide environmental campaign, is more widely known. "But the Alsek is grander than the Tat, it has more glacial lakes, more glaciers, more sightings of bears, bigger rapids, and you can't beat the drama of Turnback Canyon," Bob said. "You put-in to the Alsek, and bang, the scenery is right there from the beginning."

The Alsek is unique. It flows through three political entities, from Yukon to British Columbia to Alaska; through three national and provincial parks, from the confluence of the Dezadeash and Kaskawulsh Rivers in Kluane National Park and Reserve, Yukon, to the Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, British Columbia, to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska. It drains the eastern edge of the St. Elias Mountains, one of the world's largest non-polar icecaps with more than 350 glaciers, and the largest continuous block of protected parkland in the world. Its designation as a United Nations (UNESCO) World Heritage Site acknowledges its outstanding natural qualities. It is further honoured as a Canadian Heritage River.

If You Go

Fly to Vancouver, then fly Air Canada to Whitehorse, or drive the Alaska Highway to Whitehorse or the put-in point of Kluane National Park. The number and frequency of river trips are controlled by a permit system to maintain the wilderness experience.

Departure dates are limited to one per day and assigned on a 50/50 basis to commercial and private groups. Highly recommended is an 11-day river trip with Nahanni River Adventures ex Whitehorse for $3,645 plus $50 park fee (Canadian dollars). Contact NRA at Box 4869, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada Y1A 4N6; tel: (867) 668-3180, fax (867) 668-3056, or reservations from North America: 1-800-297-6927; e-mail info@nahanni.com; website: www.nahanni.com.

Its landforms, created by ice and earthquakes, are incredibly diverse. In our 11 days on the river, we experienced alpine tundra, glaciers, icebergs, lakes, sand dune deserts, narrow canyons, open woodlands, gloriously flowered gravel bars and lush rainforests, we meandered through shallow braided streambeds hissing with silt, and we shot past deep holes of whitewater. Our methods of experience were equally diverse. We hiked, climbed, paddled, rowed, walked on glaciers, skirted crevasses; we traveled by van, raft, plane and helicopter.

Twice the rapids were so horrendous most of us chose to portage around them. Only Connie in a wet suit was game to accompany our guides through Lava Hole North, named for the world-famous Lava Hole in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Meanwhile, the rest of us, brandishing bear bells and pepper spray and singing our bear defence songs, lined the bank along a bear trail to watch and film their exciting passage. It was a tossup which was more hazardous, the frigid "boat-eater" rapids in front or the nearness of grizzlies behind. Connie's trepidation in the water lasted a few minutes. Ours on the land continued for an hour.

Portaging Turnback Canyon by helicopter was my highlight in a succession of highlights. Few have paddled the Alsek River and even fewer have attempted to paddle the Class 5 and 6 rapids of Turnback Canyon. The first person to do it by kayak was Walt Blackadar in 1971 and he did it by mistake when he couldn't stop soon enough. In his book Never Turn Back, he calls it "unpaddleable, read my words, it's unpaddleable."

Luckily, Doug, a veteran pilot with Trans North Helicopters, slung us and our deflated rafts through the writhing ten-mile gorge in a Bell Jet Ranger. He used to fly just five feet above the turbulent waters till deterred by federal safety regulations. Doug flies higher now but he still made our 15-minute zigzag between the canyon walls and our tour of the toe of the Tweedsmuir Glacier that had forced the river into the narrow canyon a thrilling learning experience. He swept us past waterfalls and hovered over glacial fountains, sandy archways and ice bridges that were almost architectural in design.

By Day 11 of our trip, glaciers hung in line on each side of the river but often their needle-nosed tops were shrouded in cloud and fog, "glacier breath," Bob called it, and we donned as many as six layers of clothing to ward off the cold.

Despite the change in weather, we were all eager to walk on the actual furrowed surface of aptly named Walker Glacier. "This is the most dangerous part of the trip," our leader warned, "so you must keep together and not try straddling any crevasses." Bob carried ropes, crampons and an ice axe just in case. He did give us a chance to stand on the edge of one deep crevasse and peer down 200 feet into its pure surreal blueness, then he photographed us doing it with the fractured face of the glacier's blue ice pinnacles (seracs) as a backdrop. We celebrated our glacier walk by dipping our bottles into melting glacial ice, the purest water in the world. The Alsek continued to live up to its reputation for glaciers and grizzlies when, from the comparative safety of a moraine, we watched a huge Alaskan brown bear, our tenth bear sighting of the trip, munching berries and rubbing its rump against the silt-based bushes of a glacial lake.

The river finished in a crescendo of contrasts--from the stark Titanic splendour of gigantic icebergs in the Channel of Death that led to more icebergs parading in front of an eight-mile wall of ice formed from four glaciers in Alsek Lake, to the lushness of the coastal rainforest as we hiked a Kokoda-like trail up Knob Hill, then rowed on calmer waters beside lower mountains to our take-out point in the Gulf of Alaska. At Madge's suggestion, we spent the last hour on the river in complete silence, meditating on our individual experience. The Alsek, truly one of the most mystical rivers of the world, had far exceeded our expectations, and we all agreed that our guides and our gourmet meals were unsurpassed.

On the flight back to Whitehorse, we flew along the river at glacier-top level in glorious sunshine through the highest mountains of North America and relived the journey all over again.

Lyn Hancock
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Last updated: November 3, 2003 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/hancoc06.html