The king of pack rafters (at least Interior ones), Ed Plumb organized a trip down to Riley Creek near the Denali Park entrance. This creek is very accessible and is rumored to have some nice class II boating with at least one class III drop. It was supposed to be a short 1-2 mile hike followed by a several hour float. Ed recruited a very large posse (13 people total) for this adventure – I guess the short nature of the trip and the potential fun floating made it pretty attractive.
I was unfazed by the unlucky number 13, as my morning coffee was filled with good signs.
After meeting up at Lulu’s we all left town shortly after 9 and were on the trail hiking at a little before 1 in the afternoon.
The hike was fantastic – the trail is in great shape and very fast walking. We had a major train of people –
I was pretty bouncy from the latte and probably annoyed everyone around me with my endless babbling.
Fortunately people shifted around a bit and thus I got to spread my annoyance around.
Eventually we left the trail and dropped down to the creek.
Where we put in on the creek the water was moving moderately fast with more water than I expected – it looked pretty fun.
This creek has quite a bit of character – at the water levels we floated it at there were quite a few nice rocky sections with fun obstacles to maneuver around.
There are a couple of sections where the creek runs along smallish rock walls, but nothing too exciting.
The forum post that spawned this trip, circa 2007, mentioned a rope across the creek near a cable. Well, it turned out that there is still a rope across the creek under a cable, near a foot bridge.
It appeared the rope was used to haul stuff back and forth across the cable, but its seemed that having it dangle just above the water was unnecessary, especially since there is a foot bridge just near by. NPS’s legendary safety paranoia seems to be a bit missing here..
Shortly after the footbridge we encountered the rail road bridge and a brief exciting section. This bit could be a bit tricky – at the water levels we floated it at it was fairly fun and not too tricky. We took out just after the parks highway bridge and made our way back to the cars.
Quite a fun day trip and highly recommended. Its very similar to windy creek, but at the water levels we floated it slightly harder with a few sections that are a bit more challenging. The total time for the hike and float was around 5 hours so it makes for a nice mellow day trip hike-and-float. It was pretty fun to float in such a large group. There was quite a selection of paddles, different sorts of boats, and several generations of spray skirts all of which it was fun to see in action. There was also a wide range of gear folks were taking. One of the pack rafters sported a neat helmet cam made from a gorilla pod and also going super lightweight style with no pack – just strapping his pfd to his life vest – most impressive! Hopefully some of the videos he took will get passed around, as they might make interesting viewing.
More photos here:
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| Riley Creek Packrafing trip |