Go Play Outside!

JAY'S RANDOM MUTTERINGS ON THE THINGS TO DO OUTSIDE IN ALASKA, POORLY SPELLED.

For the last several years I have being hoping to do a version of a pack rafting trip Roman Dial did in the White Mountains, floating down Beaver Creek, then hiking back to the put-in. This spring everything came together and one evening I found myself floating down Beaver Creek with Ms Marsh, Tom, Andrea, and John, on the start of the loop.

We left town late Thursday afternoon, intending to have a mellow couple of hours of floating on Beaver Creek before camping along the river. After several hours of mellow floating, we camped on a gravel bar and called it a night. Just before we all turned in a single caribou gave us a bit of a start when she splashed loudly across the river to investigate us, and took off once she determined we were not fellow lichen-eaters. There were are number of strangely colored patches on the hill across from our campsite, and on a lark I took off to go check them out. It turned out they were crape paper streamers weighted with sand on one end.

I was pretty baffled by the discovery as this spot is a bit out of the way. Perhaps they were dropped by plane to mark something, though they were lots of them and they were all over the hillside, so they would not be very effective as a marker.. If anyone knows what the deal is I would love to hear how they got there and what purpose they have (beside being litter that is).
Ms Marsh did get some fine streamer twirling in though.

The next morning we continued floating. The weather was fantastic – hot and sunny, excellent for a long mellow float.

We stopped briefly at Boreali to stretch our legs, check out the cabin, and write a note in the logbook. The thermometer on the side of the cabin agreed it was hot.

The first half of our float was on a section of river that I had been on several times before and I was quite excited to get to the section that was new to me, downriver of Borealis Cabin. This section of Beaver Creek is pretty fantastic, with wonderful views of Big Bend, a massive limestone hill that juts out into Beaver Creek.

My pictures don’t really do it justice – the scenery on this section of river is pretty wonderful.

Floating Beaver Creek with John the biologist, Amy, and Andrea was a constant lesson in bird identification. They were on constant lookout for various types of birds and always pointing out new and interesting bird sightings, and listening to bird calls.

After a full day of floating we camped on a brushy gravel bar near where we would start hiking. The good camping spots were a bit rare on in the last several miles of river we floated, with all the nice gravel bars covered in dense brush.

We spent the evening enjoying brats cooked over a campfire and finished the last of the PBR.

Our campsite had a pretty good view of the surrounding hills and it was interesting to see an area I have only been to in the winter. I have spent a hours slowly skiing this section of trail without much to do but look at the hills along the river, and so it was neat to get a different perspective. The river banks had lots of wolf prints, but surprisingly few bear prints. We saw only limited bear scat and only a few prints. I had been told this area has a fairly high concentration of bears, so I was a bit surprised by the infrequent signs of their passage.

In the morning we headed up the hill on the start of our hike. Waking up was difficult for some of us..

The first several miles of the hiking were a bit challenging as we hiked up though a section of riparian forrest that burned in 2004.

Eventually we climbed past all the burnt sticks and reached the ridgelines. The rest of the day was spent hiking up and down many small ridges as we hiked along the Limestone Jags that form the central ridge of the White Mountains. There was quite a bit of climbing and descending but the brush-free and tussock-free walking, along with the views, made it all worth while.

The massive limestone crags are spectacular.

We saw several groups of sheep hanging out on the cliff faces watching us from above. Summer is a good time to be a sheep. Alas, I expect this area is pretty harsh in the winter time.

Eventually we tired of yo-yoing up and down, and descended to the winter trail that leads from Wolf Run Cabin to the Windy Gap area. The trail had surprisingly good walking and it appeared that the only traffic the trail sees in the summer is from the wildlife.

We made wonderful time on the winter trail, zooming down the trail while checking out the wonderful views of the valley. I have skied though this area many times, but it takes on a completely different character in the summer. Many sections that were slow slogs on skis zoomed by while waking, and several sections that are very fast (one decent is a bit too fast) seemed to drag on forever while walking. We made a brief stop to gawk at Windy Arch, a natural limestone arch in the ridge face as we walked past it.

Just before the drop down Fossil Creek we traversed a long flat ridge that offers great views.

In the winter I often spent a couple of minutes enjoying the view, and the contrast between summer and winter is pretty interesting.

Eventually we descended to Fossil Creek. Several years ago I had nearly ran over a wolverine while coming down this section of trail in a snow storm. The thought of seeing a wolverine gave Ms Marsh some extra boost and powered her down the hill as she raced to be the first one though the wolverine sighting zone. John helped out, offering his professional biolologest advice on finding wolverines, including a rendition of the wolverine alarm call, which sounded suspiciously like “Help, help!”.
Eventually we reached Fossil Creek and much to our surprise, found it to be a fairly deep swift moving stream. It had enough water to make it (potentially) packraftable. After watching the giant of the group, Tom, ford the stream where the winter trail crosses and go up to his waist in fast moving water, we decided to spend a bit of time exploring possible crossing places that were hopefully not as deep and fast. We eventually found a point were it was passible and forded across.

We then pushed on to Windy Gap Cabin.

We explored the cabin for a while, checking the log book for other visitors, and relaxed in the little bubble of bug free heaven. We then camped in vicinity of the cabin, enjoying the fantastic views. In the morning we packed up and headed up a ridge leading towards Cache Mt.

For most of the morning we climbed up a series of ridges to a pass near the base of Cache Mt. A week before I noticed while looking for some satellite imagery of a wildfire nearby that the entire Cache Mountain area was still quite snow covered. So far on the trip the hiking had been pretty good and snow-free. As we reached the pass and peered over we learned that things were about to change.

The valley over the pass was still well covered with snow, and as we descended we learned the valley was flooded with freshly melted snow water, making for cold and wet hiking. Eventually we made it past the cold and splashy valley and headed down to the winter trail that connects Windy Gap and Cache Mt Cabin.

Once we reached the winter trail the hiking became much more pleasant.

This section of trail is so remote it appears to get no summer vehicle traffic, and it appeared the only users were on four legs – mainly wolves and moose from the tracks.

We also started seeing some interesting trail finds..

We followed the trail to the divide, enjoying the fast walking and the completely different experience of traveling this area in the summer. I have been on this trail on skis and by bike in the winter, in weather that ranged from tee shirt warm, to well below zero in howling winds. It was absolutely amazing to see it in the summer and it was really eye opening how different it is. There were constant reminders of the winter season here, with a huge number of tripods lying flat on the ground, and a steady stream of sled dog booties. We were not in a major hurry so we spent a bit of time righting the fallen tripods – if they stay up the trail will be a lot better marked.

Upon reaching the divide we found a very beat up trail sign marking the divide that had long ago fallen to the ground and was lost to winter travelers. We also righted a massive tripod made from old sign parts.

The divide was covered in knee high grass, but as we headed down the other side the vegetation quickly changed into a wonderful spruce forrest with large white spruce.

After several more miles of hiking along the trail we headed away from the trail and camped near O’Brian Creek. Since we had a long final day planned, we all hit the sack and made an early start. The morning started with a steep climb up though another burn, this time one from 2005.

After climbing up and down several ridges we made it to the home stretch where we could see Bear Creek, which would take us most of the way back to the parking lot. The hike down the last ridge was made a bit more exciting by a chance encounter with a moose. John had just finished telling a story about how a female moose had found him inexplicably attractive and had chased him around and around a tree until he was forced to jab her with a stick, when surprise, surprise, a small female moose appeared and expressed interest in John. Eventually we managed to drive it off with John’s honor intact and we continued to Bear Creek hiking though mixed tundra and some occasional dense brush. Eventually we encountered a small rise with what looked to be a small hunting camp and a four wheeler trail leading down to the river from it. The hunting camp had some interesting rocks…

Leading away from the camp was a ATV trail that appeared to provide pretty good brush-free walking. It was a welcome sight.

We zoomed down the trail to the river, where the trail continued on following the river. We ditched the trail, inflated our rafts, and began the short float out to Beaver Creek.

Bear Creek is a fun fast-flowing little creek that provided a wonderful way to finish the day.

It is one of the two creeks that eventually come together to create Beaver Creek, the other creek being Champion Creek. The water was moving at a pretty good clip and we zoomed along enjoying the scenery and resting our feet. Bear Creek has a massive log jam that completely blocks the river, but there is a nice dry side channel that provides wonderful walking so we portaged around the jam until we reached Champion Creek, where we put back in and floated down to the confluence of Bear and Champion Creek. After another half hour or so of floating we reached our takeout. Alas, from our takeout we had to hike a mile or so though rather large tussocks to reach Nome Creek Road and our vehicle. It was not fantastic hiking, but not truly awful either. The views were pretty nice though, with the tussocks decorated with lots of little white flowers. Unfortunately a fire near Fairbanks brought a lot of smoke late in the day, so the visibility dropped quite a bit.

Eventually we reached the car, where we loaded up and headed back to town. Everyone was back to their respective abodes by 1am, which was not too bad.

This was a wonderful trip, and well worth repeating. There is something really fun visiting a place you normally see in a different season, and it provided a wonderfully different perspective on a place I really enjoy. The White Mountains are a pretty neat place in all seasons, and I think the pack rafting potential is largely untapped – so get out and have some fun!

A big thanks to John, Andrea, Ms Marsh, and Tom for making this trip possible!

The loop was about 90 miles, with 48 miles floating on Beaver Creek, 34 miles hiking from Beaver Creek to Bear Creek, and the remaining 8 miles a mix of floating on Bear Creek, and hiking from Beaver Creek to our car.

A map:

A larger 63k scale map can be found here.

More Photos Here!