Denali Highway Road Trip

With Jared shortly on his way to the desert and I to the AT, we decided to take one more trip, down the Rich to the Denali Highway, and back up the Parks. Neither of us had driven the Denali before, so we were in to see something new.


Perhaps the greatest mile of highway anywhere - the short section that follows along beside Rainbow Ridge.


Jared had rented a kayak so that we could paddle the Tangle Lakes for our first night of camping. I was unfamiliar with the lakes, but they ended up being absolutely beautiful, and placed in a stunning setting.


In my packraft. The raft doesn't do great on flat water, but it holds its own, and it was nice to take it out and continue to experiment with it.


Jared in the kayak. Trolling for fish as we paddled, he caught a grayling and a lake trout.


The fish were to make for a supplement to our dinner along with other food we'd brought. Jared's about to fillet it on some snow near where we ended up camping.


Among other things forgotten, Jared neglected to bring along a beanie, and was forced instead to go for the bedouin look, wrapping his head with his fleece pants. Also forgotten were the poles to the tent, which led to some interesting shelter creations on our two nights camping.


The weather took a turn for the worse towards what were probably the more scenic parts of the Denali Highway, but here's a sample of the view looking north. Among the mountains in the distance are Deborah, Hess, and Hayes.


We spent our second night near Denali National Park. Here's one of our shelter concoctions.


And me crawling into the shelter. It wasn't comfortable, but it kept the mosquitoes out and (probably) would have kept the rain out, too.

Even with the weather, the ride down the Denali Highway was incredible. Certainly a place to return to for further adventuring.

Salcha River Boating

Having heard that searching from rivers for bear is a good way to see one, Jared decided that he wanted to try driving up the Salcha River a way, for a good adventure and to see if he could find some bears, and I tagged around.


We rented a 100hp flat-bottomed boat for the trip. Here's Jared behind the wheel.


It was a pretty powerful little boat, with a 2 or 3 inch draft, which was sweet. We only managed to run into up onto gravel bars once a piece.


Me behind the wheel. We started out with the cover on the boat, but as it was a beautiful day we eventually peeled it back.


After running into a bit of a log jam, we decided to start heading back. On the way out, we explored a little side creek, and Jared brought his fishing pole along. The creek ended up being a gold mine--Jared caught 7 grayling, and I caught 4. Here's Jared with one of his.


One of my fish. We only held on to one, and threw the rest back.


Our initial thought for cooking the fish was to roast it over the fire. It started out alright, but the fire burned so hot that it burned up our spit.


We resorted to baking the fish on rocks by the fire, which turned out quite well.


Me chowing down on the grayling. It was pretty tasty, even without additional flavoring. They say grayling doesn't taste great if you don't eat it fresh. We got it about as fresh as you can.


My hair starting to get out of control. I didn't have high expectations for a trip powered by internal combustion, but it ended up being a pretty fun trip.

Attempt on Institute

On the drive back from Seward I was eyeing the Deltas to see what conditions looked like up there. Institute Peak and the area surrounding it was still quite snow-covered, so I talked Tim into heading down there with me.


We slept near the base of the Gulkana Glacier, with the plan to awake early, summit by about noon, and be back at the car by 5.


Conditions weren't great when we started hiking - it was overcast and the everything above 5000 feet or so was obscured by clouds, but we decided t give it a shot. The first couple of miles were hiked in boots.


After a couple of creek crossings, one over a conveniently-placed bridge, we got to snowline and started skinning. Here's Tim disappearing into the ether. Needless to say, conditions never improved. We went for a while in a completely flat light, not always entirely sure we were headed the right direction.


Eventually we hit what we believed to be the summit ridge, where it got steep enough to throw on the crampons. Already past our projected turnaround time, this is Tim right before starting our final push to try to make the summit before it got too late.


Institute's an 8000 peak. We got up to about 7500 when I fell 15 feet into a crevasse. This is a picture I took looking up out of the crevasse, with the rope that was my lifeline on the right. It took about an hour for me to climb out, at which point we decided to descend.


The high points never lost their cloud cover, but on the descent the lower sections started to clear up, making it a nice ski down.


Towards the bottom the snow turned real wet and manky. Here's Tim switching back to boots after having rocked out.


Tim getting ready to jump across a stream on the way back.


Crossing the same bridge we came in on - it picked up this wild harmonic motion at the either end, which made crossing it pretty fun.

So I'm still o-fer on Delta range summits, but the trip was great. It encompassed a little time on crampons, skis, and boots, and I had a new experience - climbing out of crevasse. Hopefully I'll never have that experience again, but it makes for a good story now.

Resurrection Bay Sea Kayaking

With a fair number of people having a 4-day weekend over Memorial Day, 5 of us got together and drove down to Seward to go on a sea kayaking trip. We ended up renting kayaks for two days, paddling around Resurrection Bay, camping out, then coming back the next day. Photos are courtesy of Jeff and his sweet new digi SLR.


A bunch of buoys at the place where we picked up our kayaks.


Picking out a good 'yak. With 5, we had 2 double kayaks and 1 single.


Hanging out waiting for our water taxi to arrive.


Erin and I paddling. The weather was pretty good - it wasn't sunny, but the rain that did fall was light, and it wasn't too cold. We spent quite a while on the first day exploring little coves up and down the bay.


There were some other people hanging out on the water, though not that many. This boat was registered in Juneau.


We camped on Fox Island out in the bay, on a little spit coming off the main island. After setting up tents and hauling our gear into the camp site, we got a good fire going. Dinner for the night was cheddarwurst and macaroni and cheese.


A pretty cool look at some trees on the spit.


In the morning, I decided to go for a swim in the bay. It was cold.


Cool clouds coming over a saddle in the two mountains that composed Fox Island.


Exploring around in the morning, we spotted a small cave, and I went back to check it out. It didn't go back very far, but was fun to poke around in.

All in all, Seward's a pretty amazing place, with mountains everywhere and beautiful water to paddle around in. Combined with good weather and corresponding great views for the drive down and the drive back, and the brilliant hospitality of Erin's parents before and after kayaking, it made for a great trip.

Castner Hike

Toward the end of April, Jared and I headed down to the Deltas, the eastern edge of the Alaska Range, to kick around on a glacier for the day.


We decided to hike up the Castner Glacier for a while. Here's a view looking up the glacier - while it had been blustery and cloudy driving down, things looked pretty good over where we were hiking.


Knee deep in a post-hole. We ended up switching to snow shoes eventually, but the snow was a bit too rotten even for them in some places, and we spent quite a bit of time knee deep in snow.


Jared by where a creek was cutting through the glacier. All of this is covered by snow in winter - you can't even tell it's there.


Jared descending next to a small lake that formed on top of the glacier. It was a good short hike, and cool to be back on glaciers and back in snow.