Packrafting Denali: Savage to Sanctuary

Winter has arrived in the interior, but with low snow, I'm a little bored.

I had a good construction job for a few weeks, an unfortunate career that pays for me to pretend to be a writer. But I'm laid off for a month until they start a couple of new jobs. 

So I've got some time to catch up on blog posts and other writing projects to keep my writing and photography career going. After all, I've been earning over $100/month as a writer this year. I'm blowing up!

It was fall in the interior. We had a long spell of perfect weather, and Erica and I wanted to make some use of it. We decided that the right thing to do was go climbing at Prindle. We also acknowledged that that sounded like a lot of work. So we decided to go packrafting instead.

We decided on a day trip in Denali National Park, though with the shortened fall days we decided to car-camp the night before.

The Sanctuary River is a popular trip in the interior, and there are three ways to do it. We decided on the one that is logistically simplest: Savage to Sanctuary. We also invited John Harley, because everybody likes John.

The first few hours of the hike were disappointingly brushy. We never did any terrible bushwacking, but it wasn't wide open, either.

It is pretty, though.

John. Well, John and my shadow.

Erica manages to smile.

John doesn't smile.
In the background is what looks like an ATV trail. "naw, can't be," we said. "This is a National Park!" Apparently it is an old tractor trail.

There were lots and lots and lots of moose shed antlers.

Walking alongside the Savage River, which should perhaps be called the Savage Trickle.

Erica is typically quite good about wearing bright colors. She let everyone down this day.

As we got higher up the valley the moose sheds turned into caribou sheds.

The long-abandoned cabin that the old cat trail apparently led to.

Autofocus is fantastic, unless you don't have a plan. Then when the processor tries to read your mind and finds only static, it does its best.

The correct pass is the grassy ridge visible on the very right-most of this photo. That is not the pass we took, however.

We saw some other hikers who told us that this was the pass that they went over. I don't think that they did, I think they just told us incorrectly. However, Erica consulted her GPS and said that this was the correct pass.

Erica has a thing about always being right. Honestly, I'd go over this pass six more times just to revel six more times in her having been wrong. 

Some minerals turned the water in this drainage to a deep orange.

Me: John, I don't think those other guys came this way.
John: Yes, they did. I'm following their footprints.
(later, at the top of the pass)
Me: So, John... those footprints you were following? Those were bear tracks.
John: Yeah, I figured that out.

If the correct pass is the prettiest pass, however, then we went the right way.

The pass was quite steep, and the black rock was quite loose, as evidenced by my switchbacking tracks in the foreground. See Erica in the distance?

John at the top of the pass.

Most of the tracks in this photo are bear tracks, some are our tracks, and some are us following bear tracks.

John looks into the Sanctuary Valley.

If we hadn't gone over the wrong pass then we wouldn't have gotten to walk down this cool ridge.

Erica soaks it in. John perches in the distance, taking pictures.

There was quite a lot of bush thrashing to get to the Sanctuary River, which I chose not to take any pictures of. However, it also brought out a habit of mine that could be potentially somewhat dangerous: when doing unpleasant backcountry travel, I tend to retreat deep into daydreams in order to dissociate from my uncomfortable reality. However, during this time I tend to be pretty quiet while I duel with the voices in my head.

In bear country, this might not be the best habit. I got away with it this time, though. 

The Sanctuary River.

We inflated our boats, got all geared up, and launched. John, being a braver - or perhaps more competent - man than me, kept his camera out and took some pictures of the float. My camera disappeared into the drybag, thus as usual, there are no pictures from the floating. I think I'm gonna get a waterproof camera, though.

It was the road lottery weekend, which meant that people were allowed to drive their private vehicles on the Park Road. We got back to the road to find a great deal of traffic, and yet we still struggled somewhat with hitchhiking back to our car. In defense of all those people, many of them had quite full vehicles, as is to be expected for such an trip. However, there were a lot of empty pickup beds that went past.

John and I hitched separately from Erica, assuming she could get a ride easily by herself, and then come back to get us (neither of us care for her safety, so choosing this as the most expedient method was the obvious choice). However, she barely succeeded in getting a ride any faster than John and I, apparently due to a shortage of serial killers with road lottery permits.

After quite a while of walking, a truck passed John and I, then stopped and backed up.

"We don't have any room in the cab," a military family sporting deep Texas accents drawled apologetically, "but y'all can ride in the bed if you don't mind."

It's amazing how many people will drive past a hitchhiker on the assumption that they don't want to ride in the back of a pickup truck. "Fuck no we don't mind! We've been outside ALL DAMNED DAY. WE'RE WALKING. WE'RE OUTSIDE ANYWAY. IT'S NOT FAR to ride, but it is FAR TO WALK. We would LOVE to ride in the back of your truck, where, as it turns out, we cannot even murder your family, were that to be our choice. Yes, please, offer us the bed of your truck. We can always say no."

We were 11.5 hours car to road, with another hour or two to complete the trip back to the car. We could have been about an hour faster had we gone over the correct pass. Apart from a bit of brushiness, the trip lived up to its reputation as being a nice day trip from Fairbanks.

Thanks John and Erica!