Trip Report: Paddling/Hiking from the Alsek outlet to Yakutat
Note from the editor: this trip report covers a rarely-done paddle/hike from Dry Bay where the Alsek hits the Pacific to the town of Yakutat which is a regional air hub. Most folks finishing the Tatshenshini-Alsek trip fly from Dry Bay to Yakutat, but our friends Eric and Lisa are adventurers to the max.
By Eric Lee
Day 1: After saying our goodbyes to the Tatshenshini rafting crew, Lisa and I launched with our packrafts back onto the Alsek River on what ended up being a 3 hour paddle to the northwest corner of Dry Bay. The navigation was especially tricky because the bay was huge and had many, many braided channels, but with several GPS checks, we were able to make our way. We planned to stay at the shore before beginning a backpacking leg the next day, hoping to cut down on some water weight and just doing the whole segment the next day. We found a nice gravel bar to place our tent on, enjoyed a relaxing dinner and headed to bed.
Satellite view of the usual Alsek takeout at Dry Bay
All was well until around 3am when I awoke to the sloshing feeling one gets in a waterbed. At first I was a little disoriented but then looked outside of the tent, only to find all of our gear floating in the bay and our tent half underwater!! I quickly awoke Lisa and we ran outside to recover our gear and move to higher ground. Remarkably, nothing was lost, although I did find a couple of items at low tide in the morning. Lesson 1: the two different high tides can be HUGELY different in Alaska (in this case, the night high tide was 3.5 feet higher than the afternoon high tide).
Lisa's down sleeping bag stayed mostly dry, and she slept outside the rest of the night, while my synthetic bag was soaked (luckily for Lisa my side of the tent was the part underwater). I spent the rest of the night sleeping in a soggy bag in the wet tent.
Day 2: We awoke to a sunny morning, dried out our gear, got our backpacks set up, and headed through the field of lupine and over the foredune to the beach. Lisa's new backpack unfortunately featured about 30 straps, and no matter how we adjusted them, the bag sat on her catty wampus, leaning to the left about 30 degrees from vertical. It was very uncomfortable but sadly no amount of experimenting the whole trip ever fixed the issue. She is returning the pack as soon as she gets back.
The coastal hike was refreshing: we gazed at the beautiful turquoise waters and waves crashing onto the steep beach. Several bald eagles showed us the way, continuing to fly just a little ahead of us, moving up the beach with us for miles. We quickly became connoisseurs of sand, migrating to hard packed grains whenever possible. Despite the encouragement of our ornithological cheerleaders, after a while, the heavy packs got to us, and 13 miles of hiking, even alongside the beautiful ocean, became a slog.
Looking to get out of backpacking mode and move to the next packrafting leg of the trip as soon as possible, we searched for an inland path to get to a river that ran parallel to the coast, finding an opening in the woods with some ATV tracks. Following those led to two residences that were alongside the Akwe river. Against my better judgment, with visions of the ruffian, trigger-ready Alaskans who might reside in a remote place like this, I walked through one house's yard, looking to see if it had river access. The house seemed boarded up (for bears? Or because it was uninhabited?), but the lawn seemed manicured. No one was home though, and after passing several boats in the backyard (good sign!), I found the river a few hundred feet away. And a bonus: a working manual pump! We camped on the dead end ATV track outside of the house, and planned to set off on the river in the morning.
Transitioning between backpacking and paddling the packraft
Day 3: Awaking to a morning drizzle, we prepared our morning gruel (oatmeal never gets old!) and headed to the river. After packing our stuff in the rafts, we plopped into the river and set out for an 11 mile paddle. The river reminded me of a Florida swamp, with its narrow, sinuous path and abundance of vegetation. It was a nice change to be in the packrafts, which were infinitely easier on the body than the packs were. Our pace was only slightly faster than walking though because the tidal river had almost no gradient and the headwind also slowed us down. Unfortunately, Lisa had to deal with a leaky valve on her pack raft, which had gotten some sand in it and was not holding a good seal. Pumping every 30 mins became an extra burden and nothing that she tried seemed to help fix the valve issue. Nonetheless, we did move down the river and enjoyed our quiet day in the woods. After our 11 miles of paddling, both of our phone maps (Gaia, Google) showed that the river exited into the ocean, but the river clearly continued, so we paddled onward! After 2 or 3 more miles, we reached an outlet to the ocean. Lesson #2: rivers change and the Lost Coast of Alaska is not a top priority of USGS.
At the exit, we donned our backpacks again for a short walk on the beach to the outlet of the Italio river, which had stunning views of the St Elias mountain range. We went to a very high spot so as not to repeat the error of our first night, and then fruitlessly tried to avoid a colony of Arctic terns hellbent on violence.
Day 4: After doing some calculations, we realized that we needed to make miles so that we could get to Yakutat in time for our flight. Our plan was 10 miles on foot and 6 miles on raft. It was going to be a big day. We loaded our backpacks, walked across the shallow Italio river, and enjoyed yet another day of glorious weather. The entire walk had low foredunes, allowing us to see the many mountains to the northeast, including Mt St Elias, the second tallest peak in the US. We made it about 5 miles until we had to cross a deep glacial outflow, ominously named Dangerous River. We timed the tides well, so we arrived around low tide, when the tidal gradient was smallest. The current was strong and the river cold (I learned a lesson about the tempering effect on pack rafts!). We ferried across without too much trouble and then switched to backpack mode again. Another 5 miles brought us to a point where our maps showed another river parallel to the ocean (the Ahrlklin), but my first scouting mission inland came up empty, with my only success being the discovery of a ripe wild strawberry or two and many, many bear tracks criss crossing through the sand and alders.
After another mile, we popped up on the dune again, this time seeing the faint glimmer of water in the distance! Eager to drop our loads, we set off on a little bit of a bushwhack, singing and yelling the whole time because of the numerous fresh bear tracks. Lisa and I arrived on a big mud flat, with a river that looked more like a lake that was about 6 inches deep. This was supposed to be our next water source, but the water quality looked no better than a neglected farm pond, and we decided to wait for water at the takeout, which we hoped would be better based on a blog post. Lisa was out of water, and I only had a half liter or so, so things weren't good on the water front.
Undeterred, we found one spot that seemed to have some grass like plants that would not dirty our gear, and set off to load/inflate the rafts. I scarfed down a late tuna wrap lunch (at 6pm) and didn't notice at all that the mud flat around us was filling in with water. Lisa, after moving her raft three times to avoid the water, pointed out that maybe something was up. I looked up and noticed that there was not a mud flat anymore, and that we were on a shrinking island that was only about 10 feet in diameter. Suddenly we went into sprint mode..we had to get everything in the pack rafts fast, before the water came up! As we were doing this, I noticed on the shore that a grizzly bear had appeared, right where we had walked out onto the mud flat! Somehow we felt safe, even though really there was just an expanse of 2 foot deep water that separated us from the bear. We finished inflating our rafts just in time for the high tide to completely engulf the island, and we launched into yet another headwind, this one quite strong. We were moving forward but we didn't realize how slow it was until we saw that the sun began to set without us reaching the end. I had packed my phone in the packraft, so we had no idea of our progress.. as the sun set, indecision set in. What if this river didn't look the same on the map, just like the Akwe river? What if we had missed the takeout? We decided to deflate my raft to take out the phone and then repump it. Before that even happened though, when Lisa got out, she realized that she was very cold, moving into hypothermic after sitting in the cold, wet boat all evening. She needed to get warm fast, so we searched frantically for a nearby campsite. Our options were universally terrible, full of slippery clay leading to thigh-high fields of grasses and shrubs. Nonetheless this was becoming an emergency and we pulled in to the second spot we tried. Lisa changed into dry clothes, and I set up her sleeping pad and bag so that she could warm up more in there. It was 11pm at this point. I checked my phone and saw that we were about 1.5 miles from the takeout still, having only paddled 4.5 miles in over 4 hours. We both skipped dinner, and went to bed exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and in the case of Lisa, still cold. Morale was at a nadir.
Day 5: We awoke after a relatively short night of sleep because we still had a ways to go to make out Yakutat flight out. We nibbled on a bar, some chocolate, and some peanut butter. Anything that didn't require water.
We were a little more hopeful than the previous night, but anxiety was still there. After loading our packrafts, we set out at 830, trying to make our 5pm flight. The headwind was still there, but at least the tide was going out, which definitely aided our progress. We landed in the small community of Situk after a decent paddle and began to contemplate our 8.5 mile road walk to the airport, still without water and no idea how to find the creek that we had read about. Our luck finally turned, though, as we overheard a man down the road. After asking him for water, he appeared a few minutes later with a jug that we used to fill our bottles. A short while later, we began our long walk to the airport, but only about 15 minutes passed before we were able to wave down a guy in a truck. We hopped in the back and rode with him to the airport, incredibly grateful for his generosity. We were able to repay him with our two bear spray cannisters, which he was incredibly happy to receive ("perfect for berry picking when you don't want to carry a gun!").
This trip tested our limits in many ways, but I am very grateful for the beauty of the landscape, the incredible remoteness (not a soul to be seen until the last day!), and the company of an incredible friend. I can't wait to come back to Alaska again, where the wild lives free.
A camp on the Tatshenshini, by Eric Lee