Trip Report: An epic trip on a river you’ve never heard of… The Canning
By Denny Egner
The Canning River is an extremely isolated drainage in the far northeast corner of Alaska, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The trip starts high in Alaska’s Brooks Range mountains, and then runs north for 125 miles toward the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean. After leaving the mountains, the river marks the eastern boundary of the 23 million acre Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, which includes the 213,000-acre Prudhoe Bay oil field.
In July, I was invited to float 87 miles of the Marsh Fork and the Canning with my old college buddy Chris Beck and his good friend Mark Spano. Both Chris and Mark live in Anchorage. Getting from Anchorage to the put-in for the Canning is an adventure in itself. We drove over 600 miles north from Anchorage to Coldfoot with overnight stays in Fairbanks and Coldfoot. The Fairbanks to Coldfoot drive is on the Dalton Highway - the Haul Road featured in the TV show Ice Road Truckers. There are lots of semis - many passed us - on their way to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. The road follows the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, an amazing bit of engineering, which along with the road creates a linear scar on the landscape. North of Fairbanks, you cross the Yukon River (fourth biggest drainage in North America) and the boundary of the arctic circle (66.33 degrees north latitude). We were in the land of the midnight sun. In much of July, instead of setting in the west, the sun travels lower and lower, scrapes the northern horizon, and then starts rising again!
Coldfoot is one of very few stops with services along the 414 mile Haul Road. We decided not to rough-it so we got a room for the night at the only motel/ restaurant/gas station/store. We spent $250 for a room in a building left over from the 1970’s pipeline construction. The tiny, noisy, single-window room had two single beds and barely enough space for a sleeping bag on the floor - more $$$/night than what my wife Kim and I spent recently on our rooms in Tokyo, Madrid, Lisbon, and Barcelona. WTF?
Left to right: DeHavilland Beaver (plane), Denny, Chris, Mark, and our pilot Dirk of Coyote Air
The next morning we arrived at Coyote Air in Coldfoot. Coyote Air is run by a married couple, Dirk and Danielle, who have been doing bush flights for 30 years. We flew on a DeHaviland Canada Beaver which is recognized for its ability to take off and land on short runways. Over 1650 DeHavilland Beavers were built between 1947 and 1967. The one we flew in was built in 1953 - an especially good year since Chris and I were both born that year. The flight over the Brooks Range was smooth - 1.5 hours to the put-in and 2 hours back from the take-out. As we flew through the mountains, it was easy to see lots of Dall sheep and caribou trails but none of the creatures who’d worn these trails into the treeless terrain Dirk, our pilot, explained that wildlife numbers in the Brooks Range are way down. In previous years, you could aways see sheep and caribou - now sightings are much less likely. He explained that climate change has led to mid-winter thaws and rain, leaving a nearly impenetrable layer of ice that prevents these creatures from reaching the food below . Over our two weeks on the river, we saw only one sickly caribou, one wolf, four musk oxen, no goats, and no bears. The musk oxen were cool - lots of hair and dainty feet - reminded me of Farrah Fawcett.
There are two river branches for starting a Canning River trip - the main Canning and the Marsh Fork. We did the Marsh Fork and were dropped off at the Bench strip (there are landing spots both upstream and downstream - the put-in will usually depend on flows). We had a moderate to low flow - maybe 500 CFS at the start and probably 10 times that at the takeout. Much of the Canning is a highly braided with lots of gravel bars and a wide floodplain. At the Bench put-in, the floodplain is maybe 1/4 mile wide. Near the takeout, the floodplain can be a mile wide in places. This makes choosing the correct river braid an important decision - you don’t want to run out of water on a gravel bar that is far from the main flow.
Marsh Fork of the Canning River near our put-in
I used a packraft. Mark and Chris used IKs. It was my first time in a packraft and I found it comfortable and maneuverable. Those of you who have camped with me may remember that I’m pretty darn slow getting ready to go in the mornings…. and loading the tubes and pumping up a packrat certainly didn’t make me any faster. Unfortunately, I was the last one ready to go every morning.
We stayed at the Bench put-in/camp for two nights. It was a beautiful spot in the mountains with nice day hikes. The two-night camp became our standard over the trip. We had two weeks to travel 87 miles so we had plenty of time but we wanted to be careful and provide a time cushion in case the weather pinned us down somewhere along the way. We only had one night where we broke camp the next day. The two-night camp pattern allowed us to have a relaxing trip with time to hang out and enjoy the landscape.
Mark had done the Canning about ten years ago and a friend of his had done it more recently. Mark had notes from his trip with coordinates for potential campsites, hikes, and interesting features. We used my newly purchased Garmin InReach to help navigate. There were a couple of times when the coordinates we were using to locate our campsites didn’t work because the river had shifted. In one case, the river had moved about 1/4 mile to the west so rather than camp on a bench above the river, we had to camp on a gravel bar. It worked out fine because it gave us the opportunity to get good look at a group of musk oxen.
Over the 87 miles, the river drops almost 2000 feet in elevation and the landscape changes dramatically. For the first half of the trip, we were in the mountains. For the second half, we were primarily in the flatter, arctic plain. The weather varied in the mountains - we had sun, rain, clouds, and clearing with amazing skies. Rainstorms were short and everything would dry out quickly. As we dropped in elevation and entered the arctic plain the weather pattern shifted and became less variable with longer stretches of sunny weather… that is, up until the last few days. With three days to go, we got hit with an extended 12-hour rainstorm. We were originally going to do an 8-mile float and set up our penultimate camp but given that it was raining and the river had larger channels, we pushed on another 8 miles to the take-out. It was the only day, we had to set up in the rain. The next day was beautiful and everything dried out by mid-day.
Midnight sun -- Chris Beck drawing
On the arctic plain, the opportunity to experience the midnight sun became more likely because we weren’t surrounded by mountains. Chris is currently writing a book about astronomy and he did a drawing that explained how the sun would be visible at our location - about 70 degrees north latitude in mid-July. I was up at midnight one night and snapped some photos of the sun peeking out behind a rocky outcrop. On our last night on the arctic plain, both Chris and I set our alarms for 2 am to see the sun at its lowest point (Alaska’s time zone is shifted to make it more in line with the rest of the US and it’s on Daylight Savings Time so the sun is lowest at 2 am instead of midnight). There was a cloud bank to the north so we didn’t get the low point photo!
Best thing: The skies, the skies, the skies.
Looking north on the Canning - the sun at midnight
Best hike: Impossible to pick just one. Highlights: a hike up a creek to a waterfall hidden within a cave and multiple hikes up to viewpoints above camps.
Worst thing: At our first camp, the 1/4 mile hike times eight to carry boats and gear from our camp site west across the river floodplain to the channel with enough water to carry us down river.
Most surprising thing: A braided river requires a similar level of concentration to what is needed for picking your way through a whitewater rock garden. One key difference, in addition to looking at what is right in from of you and what is just downstream, with the braided river, you must look at the whole landscape to determine if the river is dropping to the right or left over the next mile.
The arctic plain at the take-out
Next most surprising thing: Walking in the tundra is extremely tiring. Tundra can be squishy with small grass tussocks surrounded by seeping water. Walking through this landscape is like walking on a continuous set of plastic, half-dome balance balls.
Most valuable gear: My ExOfficio Bug Jacket. I bought a hooded jacket impregnated with bug repellant and it worked great and with a of dab of non-Deet repellant on my face, I didn’t really need a head net. Mark (who has done many, many river trip and camping trips around Alaska) rated the mosquitos to be a 7 on a 10 point scale (10 being the worst). The second most valuable item of gear was Mark’s home-made Bug Palace - a tarp with mosquito netting for walls. We ate all meals in the bug palace and told many stories protected from swarms of mosquitos.
One more great gear item: Ursacks - collapsable, bear-proof Kevlar-fabric food bags.
New saying: “Hey Bear” when walking through the willows and brush. It seems to have worked - we didn’t encounter any bears —just some huge paw prints.