Fun with Packrafts on Angel Rocks and the Middle Fork

July 16th, 2009

On a beautiful monday Marsh and I decided to hike the Angel Rocks to Chena Hotsprings Trail in the Chena Recreation Area and about midway along the trail drop down to the middle fork of the Chena River and float back to Chena Hotsprings Road, then bike back to the trail head. I anticipated it taking 3 hours of walking, and 2 hours of floating. It turns out I was right about the floating section, but off by more than a hour on the hiking end. Such is life – I am getting a reputation for being way off on the time estimates.

The hike up Angel Rocks is always very scenic, with wonderful granite tors and outcrops. Luckly for us the blueberries were out and a few were even ripe. Yum, yum!

Once we reached the highpoint of the trail, we dropped down to another ridge we intended to follow to the Middle fork. Much to our surprise there was a established winter trail following the ridge all the way down to the river.

The trail is marked with cut up Alaska DOT roadsigns, which is quite unusual – in fact I have never see that done before, and its definitely not standard Alaska state parks signage.

The trail is in beautiful shape and is completely clear of brush with not a drop of mud or tussocks to be seen. It is very nice hiking! The trail is quite strange though, as it appears to get only winter traffic. Besides the redneck signage the array of lost items on the trail was quite amazing. We found several piles of traps dropped in the middle of the trail, two coolers, one shovels, a blue glove, and several dinner plates.

Alas, the trail did not head all the way to the river, but parallels it for a ways, so we took a more direct route though the tussocky swamp. The wet and squishy walking had begun.

Fortunately we only had to pound though a very limited section of tussocks before hitting the river. The river was very underwhelming. I had to look at it very carefully to detect any current at all – it was not what I anticipated and if it was like this the whole way we where in for a major slow paddling slog. We inflated our boats, put in and where off. After a couple of hundred feet, and one ox bow later we where much happier. It turns out where we in a slough of the main river which was dammed up by beavers.

There was much rejoicing when we hit the main channel, as the middle fork had lots of water in it and it looked like we had a nice fun float ahead of use. There was also a eagle, which turned out to be the sole non-beaver animal sighting.

The rest of the float was quite mellow, with a couple of shallow spots and a number of sweepers but nothing tremendously exciting.

The fireweed was in full bloom and made for some beautiful vistas.



When we hit the confluence of the main chena and the middle fork a beautiful cloud of fog was drifting out of a slough. It was very neat looking and a big improvement clouds of mosquitoes and white socks we where running into earlier.

Finally we hit our take out point, where Marsh snapped a photo of me jumping around like a mad man.

All in all a wonderful packrafting day trip. The hiking distance is 8 to 9 miles, with one mile off trail, and the float is under 2 hours in the moderately dry conditions we did it in. Higher water would make for a faster and more interesting float. Very recommended!

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Chena Dome in a day

July 8th, 2009

In honour of my switching to 3/4 time, I decided to use by first Monday off to do something interesting, like hike Chena Dome as a day hike. 12 hours (11 hours 35 minutes but whos counting anyway) and 6 quarts of water later I finished Chena Dome with sore feet but otherwise a fairly happy hiker. Chena Dome is one of the classic interior ridge hikes. Its quite a roller coaster of a hike, with lots of ups and downs, including some really steep sections. The reward for all this up and down is a fantastic alpine hike with spectacular views. The trail starts at 900ft above sea level and tops out at 4200ft asl, with 5 smaller ridge high points topping 3000ft.

The trail is a loop with the trail heads separated by a mile of walking on Chena Hotsprings road. The upper trail head had a bunch of Alaska DNR trail crew workings with Bobcats busy building a new trail out to Lower Angel Creek Cabin. The traditional trail had become increasingly trashed by summer ORV use, so DNR has decided to build a new trail on the hillside for summer use – hurray for DNR! The current Angel Creek trail has huge ruts in it and it now takes a lot of snow for it to be pleasant skiing. The new trail looks like it will make for superb summer biking and winter skiing. I am really looking forward to skiing it this winter!

The beginning of the trail winds through a several year old burn as it slowly makes it way up past tree line on the ridge. The fireweed was quite beautiful.

Just before the trail breaks out above tree line there is a huge batch of burls.

Once above tree line the trail becomes a ridge walk and follows a series of ridges. Great views abound.

The Chena Dome trail is a seldom flat – if you are not going up, you are going down.

Wildlife sightings were pretty limited. I saw a number of ptarmigan and song birds of various types.

My views from the trails were periodically cut off by smoke – there are lots of smaller fires burning in the interior and sometimes when the wind shifted I could hardly see the ridges next door. Occasionally it would clear up and the views would return.

At about mile 8 there is a 1950’s vintage military plane crash. I spent about a half wandering around looking at the wreckage.

Finally, the summit! There is a Alaska DNR communications hut on top, but otherwise there is nothing much too see. I did find a large pile of moose droppings, which seemed quite out of place.

Once over the summit I encountered one of the few places where the trail is flat. It was a little to rocky for good running but was a nice break from constant ups and downs.

Eventually the trail drops off the ridge into a saddle near mile 17 where there is a small shelter. The shelter has a water catchment which makes it a great place to camp or to for a break, as there are not a lot of water sources on the trail.

After a shortish break to refill my water bottles and have something to eat I was back on the trail. Remus was overheating for most of the trip, and greatly enjoyed wallowing in the tundra pools we passed.

After a couple of miles we started up the last hill, and then the long downhill to the parking lot. All in all this was quite fun as a day hike, though pretty long. It a lot of way it makes sense to do it as a day hike as you do you have to carry a heavy pack up and down the hills. Anyway, highly recommended!

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Burling!

July 7th, 2009

On a wonderful Sunday, the dogs, Tom, Marsh, and I went in search of burls. Fun was had by all, except perhaps Remus, who learned that life is not fair. Bouncy happy young dogs have to haul water in backpacks while the other dogs get to run around unencumbered.


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And I Forgot My Spoon

June 30th, 2009

Tom and I decided that we would attempt to hike, bike, and packraft a loop in the White Mountains National Recreation Area, hopefully hiking into the headwaters of Beaver Creek and floating out. We started at Ophir Creek Campground, got on bikes, and biked east to the start of Quartz Creek Trail. Quartz Creek trail is a 17 mile trail that heads to the headwaters of Beaver Creek. This is new territory for Tom and I – I have done brief hikes in the area and had skied some of the area in the winter, but nothing of any length in the summer.

Things did not start off particularly well. 20 minutes or so before we made it to our starting point, the sky opened up and dump a torrential downpour on us. This was not a auspicious start, but fortunately the rain stopped soon after we arrived at Ophir Creek Campground.

We left the car, got on the bikes, and headed off to Quartz Creek Trail. The trail is mainly a ORV trail had undergone major upgrades in the last couple of years, including some fancy plastic base material, and inset concrete stream crossings.

It was quite impressive how much work BLM had put into making this trail passable for the four wheeling crowd. On the upside, it was not muddy at all which is quite a rarity in these parts and was very fast walking.

After stream with the fancy brickwork, we ran into our first party of motorized users. We talked to them for a bit and were very surprised to hear that there was only enough water in Quartz Creek to “dip a pan in”. This did not bode well for our float. Near one of the high points there is an interpretive plaque – which was impressively random, as we had not encountered any signs up to this point since leaving the parking lot. The main point of the sign appeared to be not to chase the sheep with your four wheeler.

The trail winds it way over several passes, through alpine meadows, and crosses several streams.

The flowers were out in full bloom in the high meadows.

The trail is amazingly scenic. This is probably one of the nicest trails I have hiked on in the interior.

As we crossed the final bit of Little Champion Creek, the rain caught up with us.

Fortunately the rain did not last long, and we were soon dry and approaching one of the highlights of the the hike – the beautiful tors. Near the end of the trail there are a large number of very large granite tors, some of which are right next to the trail. It is incredibly scenic.

We stopped at the final tor and had dinner. Dinner was complicated by the absence of my spoon – it appears that during my packing I somehow forgot to put my spoon into my pack. I ended up eating with a folded bit of plastic bag, which was less than ideal. For folks interested in shorter days, this would be a wonderful place to camp.

This was the end of the trail for us – we now had to head down to Bear Creek to start the float. As we worked our way around a large hill a beautiful rainbow came out.

Once around the hill, we were very happy to see a full looking Bear Creek in the distance.

After several miles of intense bushwacking (around 5 I believe) we made it to Bear Creek, which was quite floatable, which lead to much happiness. I had been dreading a long walk back out and had visions of a creek with only a couple of inches of water in it. Fortunately the floating looked quite fun, and into our boats we went.

Bear Creek was quite a fun float – the upper bits where we started are a bit rocky, which made for exciting rafting.

At about 1:30am we decided we should call it quits for the day and camped on a gravel bar. At this point the trip was verging on a death march, Bataan style, so calling a day was in order.

The gravel bar did not have any bear sign, but did have a large number of quite fresh wolf tracks.

After a couple of hours of sleep we resumed the float, and bobbed down the river.

Bear Creek was largely free of sweepers and log jams, and we only had to portage once.

After 3 hours or so, we made it to Richards Cabin, a BLM cabin that can be rented. The cabin is a former inholding or mining clam and is very nice. We stopped for a bite to eat and to leave an entry in the log book. It is amazing how different this area is in the summer. Tom and I had skied into this cabin 4 months earlier in a snow storm – now we were walking up to it in a muddy trench being hounded by mosquitoes. The contrast was stunning.

Shortly after Richards we ran into a huge log jam, which we had to portage around. We took a dry ox bow thinking it was a short cut, which ended up in Champion Creek right before it hit Bear Creek becoming Beaver Creek. At the confluence the water level rose a lot, which added to the fun considerably. Bear Creek had a fair number of shallow riffles that were only just float able in a packraft and required a lot of care to not get stuck on.

Eventually we made it to our take out point, put our packs on, and slogged though 3 miles of tussocks back to Ophir Creek camp ground. The tussock slog was remarkably unpleasant.

After 1 and a 15 minutes of tussock slogging we hit the road, and a short while later the car. In the car there were Staxs, juice, and pastries, hurray!

The trip was quite an adventure. In retrospect it would have been more fun if we had camped where we first hit Bear Creek, then floated in the morning making the first day a little shorting and giving us more sleep. It was still quite fun though, and a highly recommend float for anyone who is interested. Richard’s cabin appears to be quite bug proof, and would make a excellent overnight stop, in case any future travellers read this. Hikers not up for 20 mile days could camp at one of the Tors and enjoy great views.

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High water on the Chena

June 26th, 2009

Tom and I decided to take advantage of the recent rain and float the Chena from approximately mile 45 to first bridge. The Chena was quite high – according to the National Weather service it was the 8th highest they have recorded for the 40 mile bridge. In any case, it was a wonderful float and quite a bit more fun than it is at normal water levels.

The float was approximately 8 miles, with a 5 mile bike shuttle.

The river was full bank to bank for the entire float.

The new Hunt Memorial Cabin .

There was a bit of wood, but nothing very serous. The sweepers were easily avoidable with all the extra water.

With an average flow rate of approximately 10 km/hour, paddling was not really needed.

The bridge near the Granite Tors trail head.


Near our takeout we ran into a several floaters out enjoying the high waters like us.

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Hiking the Granite Tors with the twins

June 13th, 2009

Saturday Nancy, the twins, and I set off to hike the Granite Tors as a overnight. The Granite Tors is a nice day hike (without additional encumbrances, like for example two three year olds), or a easy over night trip. It is a very beautiful hike which wanders though black spruce bogs, recovering burns, and high alpine meadows. There is a bit of elevation gain, but nothing too extreme, and the views are spectacular. The hike is about 15 miles long, with a starting elevation of approximately 750ft and a high point approaching 3000ft.

It was a beautiful hike, and the girls where very excited to be out hiking.

The dogs, Togiak, Polar, and Remus where also excited to be out and about.

Nancy and I carry the girls in Sherpani Rumbas. They work well, but are not really designed for two parents carrying twins – there is just not enough space to carry gear for overnighters.

The beginning and end of the trail winds though a low lying black spruce forest, which is board walked. The board walk made for fast pleasant hiking. We saw a lot of unripe blue berries – this will be a very good berry picking area this fall.

The twins are big fans of the board walk which is pleasant hiking for short legs.

Eventually the boardwalk ends and the trail starts heading up. The next couple of miles of trail slowly wind up the ridge until it reaches tree line near the first tor. This area is recovering from a fire that occurred several years ago and it is quite interesting to see the vegetation coming back.

There are a large number of burls leading us to an extraneous burl picture.

The twins where quite excited by the cairns which Molly starting calling “rock trees”.

Eventually we made it up to the top, referred to by some locals as the “Plain of Monuments” and we camped at the base a set of tors. It was a wonderful camp site with enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes away.

After a couple of stories we all hit the sack. The hike out was a little less fun, as it was raining pretty hard for the first hour. Molly and Lizzy where unfazed though, and enjoyed their ride out in the covered comfort of the kid carriers.

On the way out we ran into some friends on the board walk and enjoyed their company for the rest of the hike out. The trail on the way out was almost entirely down hill and very fast walking. Perhaps too fast – at one point I almost fell and was told by Lizzy to “go slow on the hard parts”. The way out heads down from the plain and passes a number of large tors before descending though a burn for a couple of miles, then hits board walk which lasts for most of the remaining couple of miles of trail.

On the way out we stopped by Mia’s and got dinner. This time the croad was a bit more adventuresome and ordered some of the Korean options from the menu, which turned out to be a good call, as they are quite good.

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