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!

Kanudity! (or Kanuti Hot Springs Bachelor Party by Pack Raft)

I'll explain later.

Back when Bill Clinton was president a skinny German kid named Philipp was an exchange student to my high school. Through all these years we've stayed in touch, seeing each other a few times when we had occasion to be on the same continent. He and my good friend JesseBear, who were also friends from the olden-days, saw each other more frequently, since Jesse travels to Europe a lot for work. 

This summer Philipp came to back for a visit, and so Philipp, JesseBear and I decided that we ought to take a trip, and that it ought to be to Kanuti Hot Springs. 

More pointedly, it became discussed that this trip was looking a lot like a Bachelor Party for Philipp and Jesse. JesseBear will be a married man when I see him next, as he is marrying a very lovely girl before the end of the month. Philipp is shortly on that same path with major life changes afoot, including-but-not-limited-to a real job as a teacher after a lifetime of being a student. Interestingly, this is the second time I've been on a trip with two old friends that were on the cusp of major life changes - the kind that are generally associated with growing up - while I came along as an itinerant drifter who has embraced the responsibilities of adulthood the way a quarterback embraces a defensive tackle.

In spite of the 14 years that have passed since our high-school days, in a lot of ways we felt that our dynamic had not changed. We thought that if our 17-year-old selves could know, they'd be proud. We even had a lot of the same discussions - commonly about the same girls - as a decade and a half ago.

I've been to Kanuti quite a few times in the winter, but never in the summer. I heard it was a good packraft trip. We launched.

During this trip we took selfies with a frequency that would make a teenager cringe. JesseBear on left, Philipp in the middle.

Jesse and Philipp at the put in on the Kanuti River, which is about 50 miles north of the Yukon River Bridge.

The float was beautiful, but as usual I didn't take many pictures of it. It starts out calm with some proper whitewater near the hot springs.

It was an overcast day in a beautiful place.

We got to the hot springs after about five hours of floating. The sun came out right as we arrived, but we were soaking wet and freezing from the float. We wasted no time getting into the pools.

There was a group there when we arrived, having arrived there about an hour before us. Fairbanks being what it is, I knew about half of them, but not very well. We changed that. Cheers to new friends, eh?

We soaked until late at night before stumbling into our tents. Our new friends only stayed one night, and we had the place to ourselves for the afternoon and evening. In the morning JesseBear enjoys his coffee by the pool.

Philipp.

The inlet of the springs, all covered in algae. The area flooded a little over a year ago and the pools changed substantially, including that they now drain in the opposite direction. However, the water was still hot, the pool still muddy, and the point remains the same. 

Not since my first trip to Kanuti have I managed to take a three day trip there - modern technology has still not found a way to make three-day weekends standard for everyone. This time I was glad to having a bit more time to explore around, something I had been looking forward to.

JesseBear wades into a slightly warm pool.

Jesse and Philipp on an afternoon soak.

More selfies.

Actually, I should just show you how out of control the selfies got:

However, our party was suddenly interrupted by an un-invited guest.

This bear seemed to view our presence as a simple inconvenience in its pursuit of our food.

It came in the evening and circled our camp twice before apparently losing interest for the evening. However, we were not able to relax.

Sept 8 edit: I posted this photo to Facebook, and when I originally wrote this post I forgot to include a comment that was written on Facebook by Selena Hopkins-Kendall,
"Jesse bear, what will you wear, what will you wear at night? Bear spray for you, & three headlamps too. That's what I'll wear ALL NIGHT..."

I did not expect to sleep well in view of the distress the bear caused us, but, to the contrary, I slept like a baby. Until...

In the morning we awoke to the bear's return. Philipp let us know that "we [had] a problem" and I had to chase the bear off of the dry bag that contained our food. He didn't get any, but he did wreck two drybags, the fucker.

After being chased off the food he continued to circle all morning, gradually getting closer in between pauses to root around in the mud or eat grass. 

I took quite a lot of video, which I will edit together and add to this post at a later time.*

*if you read my blog regularly, you should know by now that this is a lie.

He got closer.

...and closer. He got very close. Too close. We sprayed him.

...a note on spraying him. We used Counter Assault brand bear spray. We nailed him at short range with a very short (less than 2 second) blast. He seemed quite distraught by the event, and ran off, not to be seen again.

I think his behavior was quite typical of black bears: there seems to exist the quite common belief that Grizzlies are more dangerous than Blacks. Most people who have direct experience with bears hold the opposite belief - blacks are more curious and thus more commonly the source of trouble. Grizzlies tend to avoid humans.

This guy wasn't acting aggressively towards us, but he was not afraid of us, either. Spraying him certainly seemed to cause him to reassess his opinion of humans, and hopefully he will not trouble anyone again, as he now has reason to associate us with the great discomfort our spray caused.

While spray may not protect you from a bear that is hell-bent on eating you (he was plainly quite healthy and fat), it certainly gave us the opportunity to "haze" the bear and explain non-fatally that humans are neither his friend nor a source of food. I don't oppose carrying guns for bear protection, but if we had only had a gun, we would have had no choice but to kill the bear. The lesson that I learned was to always carry spray, even if you have a gun with you - I believe this is a very typical bear interaction, and spray was the correct solution.

It was our final morning, and once the bear left us we hastily packed and began the hike out. The first part of the hike is through a dense birch forest that has sprung up in an old burn. The bushwacky-ness of it was never too bad.

It rained. And was windy. And was cold. And it steadily got worse. 

It' seems like it could be a beautiful place, but the weather was rotten.

This was the last time we stopped and the last time we smiled.

Those are grimaces, not smiles. The rain was beginning to freeze, and there was snow on Caribou Mountain, which we passed over on the hike out.

It was terribly wet and extremely fucking cold. We busted out the hike out in 5.5 hours, largely due to an "absolutely no fucking stopping" policy. I was starving, freezing and carrying a lot of extra food and clothes, but I refused to set my pack down to get it out, preferring to suffer for 3 hours than to get colder for even the few minutes that it would take to re-fuel/re-layer.
And further tragedy struck. This may be the last photo that my utterly kickass Sony RX100 ever took - it appears that I over-estimated its resilience to wet weather. It is currently sitting in a bunch of dry rice in an attempt to save it, but it is acting like it got fatally wet from the rain. I'm distraught - I love that camera.  

Camera tragedies and bear troublems notwithstanding, the trip was an outrageous success. Both JesseBear and Philipp felt like they were returning prepared to face their new lives as grown-ups, while I felt like I might try to go back to Kanuti again this season.

Kanuti is the perfect packrafting trip - it's a fun float in arriving directly at the hot springs, followed by a long but reasonable hike out through the golden tundra. As an added benefit, since you float first you can bring beer and heavy food. Autumn, when the leaves are turning and the mosquitoes are gone (I think this must be a mandatory component) seems like the ideal season. Waterproof your camera, bring your bear spray, and GO GET IT!