Some Yukon, B.C. and Alaskan whitewater..

So rafting in the far north is quite a bit different then the style of rafting I'm used to. Usually you show up at the put in with your boat and your river gear, run the shuttle, and get on the river pretty quickly. But up here things are a bit different. Some things I've learned you should never leave home without for rafting in Alaska are: Chainsaw, Bear spray, Knee High rubber boots, Tire Chains, Tow Straps, and possibly snow shoes... yes even in June...

A lot of the new guides I work with are really good boaters and we have all been having that itch to run something a bit harder then the stretch we run daily for our clients... Our first adventure was to attempt a 1st descent on the Upper Upper Klehini river which starts in B.C. down a gnarly 4x4 trail and ends at the border crossing into Alaska... After explaining to the border guards on both the American and Canadian sides multiple times why they would be seeing us more then once that day as we ran shuttles we made our way towards the river... Things started out pretty smooth until we ran into a patch of snow that was still more then 3 ft deep and our trucks couldn't make it through without bottoming out... We decided to hike it down towards the river and see if it would be possible to carry our boats the whole way down... after about a 2 mile hike through prime bear and moose territory and a bit of bushwhacking we made it to the river. It seemed to be running at a fairly high level and we decided that due to the extreme effort it would take to get the boats and all the gear down to the river and the high probability of there still being ice bridges over parts of the river we would have to wait until a later date to try and make that run... We hiked back to the trucks and enjoyed out celebratory take out beers on the account that we still had a good time and no one swam...

The second river we ran was the Blanchard and the Upper Tatshenini rivers in the Yukon... which were/are running at the highest levels anyone has ever seen them at. After about a week and a half of temperatures reaching over 80 degrees up here it was decided that the rivers should be good to go and we again made the drive across the border up into the Yukon and headed down the blanchard... The marker rock which we normally use as a gauge to tell how high the river is was completely under water and we were pretty sure we were going to be in for a big ride...

The first 10 miles or so was same fairly easy but continuous class III and by the time the Blanchard had dumped us onto the Tat we were feeling pretty relaxed and comfortable on the river... About 3 more miles down stream the river made a hard turn to the left and showed us a thing or two about becoming complacent on the river... the 3 rapids on this stretch had morphed all into one very very long continuous class IV rapid that left us chasing one kayaker who had swam and had left the rest of us with some pretty close calls...

We ran that stretch again the next day, but with all of us being a bit more on our game and it was a ton of fun... We are probably going to head up there and run it atleast one more time this weekend before the water starts to drop off to a more normal level.

All of the rivers here in Southeast Alaska are running near flood stage right now with all this warm weather we have been having... The town is even setting up plans to deal with the possible flooding of the highway out of Haines which is only about 2 ft from being taken over by the Chilkat river right now...

So aside from the fun trips we have been taking around the area I have been working a fair bit lately and my body is really feeling it... Since the rivers we run are glacial and braided they change almost hourly... the channel you can float down in the morning may be completely gone when you do you second trip after lunch... In addition to that we have the added bonus of dodging all the trees and other schwag that is being constantly brought down the river... Yesterday we were in a fairly deep section of the Chilkat river and out of no where a 20 ft tree went rocketing up into the air from underneath the surface of the river as it had struck the bottom and landed only 10 ft from my raft... It would have been pretty bad news if it had landed on top of us or had come up underneath us and punctured the raft...

I've been seeing tons of wildlife up here as well but I don't even seem to have a camera ready when I do... Bears, Moose, Humpback Whales, Lynx, Coyotes, Wolves, and more eagles then I even care to count anymore.... It's pretty intense...

Other then that I have been starting to figure out what I'm going to be doing this winter... So far I have a job offer to Teach English in China... but I'm still holding out for a guiding position in Chile that I may have some good connections for now...

I'll try to take some more photos soon and keep this thing updated more....

Hiking into the Upper Upper Klehini

The sweet taste of defeat...

Stopping at a spring to fill up water on the way to the Blanchard River.

Freshly caught Sockeye Salmon cooked over the campfire on the Blanchard River.

Emilies Bootie Beer for swiming on the Tatshenshini.

Klehini River, Chilkat River, Davidson Glacier Hiking

Training on the Lower Chilkat River.

Lunch on a beach of glacial silt.

Home Sweet Home.

The grocery getter bike.

Letnikov Bay.

A very, very full zodiac on the way over to Glacier Point.

Even our buses have to have 4 wheel drive in Alaska.

Davidson Glacier.

WFR/Guide Training

So after waiting for all the photo's in the last post to upload I didn't really have the energy to actually write about what has been going on up here so here's a little update.

So after only 2 days in Haines I hopped on an hr long ferry ride over to the town of Skagway where I was taking a Wilderness First Responder course. I didn't get to see any of the amazing views on the ferry ride over there since it was already 10:30 when the ferry left... that and two of the managers for Chilkat Guides bought a few rounds of drinks in the bar on board...

All of the guides who work in Skagway live in an 8 bedroom house together which is set up sort of like a hostel. Tiny rooms, 3 Bathrooms, and a fairly large living space. All that being said it is much cleaner and new then most of the guide housing I've seen or lived in... even when there where close to 20 of us living there for that week taking the WFR...

Skagway is one of the main stops for cruise ships in the area and when I was there the town was just coming out of hibernation. With product being moved into stores, new coats of paint being applied to buildings, people slowly starting to trickle back into town. The population swells in size like most seasonal towns and it's always a fun time to be around. Even though I didn't really know any of the people who kept showing up it all felt really familiar..

As far as the WFR course goes it was pretty intense. We practiced everything from splinting broken bones, tractioning bones back into place, carrying people out on a litter, to injections and survival techniques.. The Scenarios where all pretty real and set up a like a triage scene with multiple serious injuries (complete with fake blood and screaming patients) and we'd have to decide what was the most critical and what conditions required the most care. At one point some of us even hopped in the ice cold river and actually made ourselves hypothermic and it was really awesome to see how well the hypo wraps really work to reheat the body. It was all really fun.

So after about 13 Days in Skagway we all got back on the ferry over to haines... which we almost missed because of misplaced tickets but I won't get into that.. The weather for the ferry ride was absolutely beautiful. The sun was shining and the water was a teal-blue color.. We saw Mountain Goats, Countless Eagles, Otters, and dozens of waterfalls created by the melting now up above...

Our arrival back in Haines was celebrated with a BBQ and a bonfire where I met a bunch more of the senior guides here... most of which have 20+ years of boating experience and I'm sure I have a lot to learn from.

In haines most of the guides camp out behind the Warehouse and it's a bit crowded at the moment due to the amount of snow that is still sticking around in the trees and the fact that all of the new guides from all 3 outposts are currently living here for the first week of training.

Training here has been really fun so far... We get to do Yoga for 45 minutes in the morning before we get on the water and the weather has been perfect. I've been told not to get used to it though since Haines usually see's a bit of rain during the summer but I'm just going to ignore that and think positive for a sunny season..

The rivers we run here are all glacially fed which makes them really really dynamic. They can change which channel they are running down in a matter of hours... so you really have to always be on your toes and make sure the river didn't decide to suddenly run into a grove of trees which can be a really dangerous situation. Yesterday we went up and ran a new section of river and that turned out to be just the situation. I was acting as the Trip Leader for the training run and as we came around the corner a couple of times I'd have to nail a must make eddy... hop out on the under cut ice banks and get my raft stopped and run down and scout around the corner. The day was complete with a section we had to line the boats through and even take them out and portage around some log jams. It was my favorite day up here soo far... it was like a puzzle and you had to figure out where the pieces go and do it without putting peoples lives in danger. At one point Ramsey, a guide with 30 years of boating experience and who is our head trainer, told me he was so impressed with my boating skills that he would trust me to take his own mother down the sketchy section we had just ran. That was one of the best compliments I think I have gotten.

Spring here in the valley is absolutely amazing.. We are already getting over 16 hours of sunlight a day and its putting spring into overdrive. Things are turning greener by the minute, the mountains are weeping down in avalanches and waterfalls.. dozens of species of birds are arriving daily, and yes the bears are now all awake and walking about town... I personally haven't seen one yet but I have seen the prints of a large grizzly a couple hundreds feet from where I have my van parked. There is a really powerful energy in the air here with everything coming back to life..

I think that is all I have for now... today is my day off so maybe I'll get back on later and upload some more photos...