Alsek River Day 14

July 19, 2012

Today is take-out day. We need to be in Dry Bay today, but today goes all the way until midnight! We sleep in a bit and wake up to a beautiful but slightly hazy day. After breakfast Michael, Anita and I head down the shore of the Knob to look for the trail that goes to the top. John left ahead of us and we figure we have reached the trail since we see him coming down. We head up and he decides to go back to the top with us. We climb up a boulder scree slope of big rocks, not little ones, and most of them aren’t too stable. We take our time and everyone makes it up without too much problem. The top is open and grassy with pebbles, and view is exceptional! We hang out for about an hour, chatting, taking pictures, and soaking in the beauty before we head back to camp.

At camp we eat lunch and now it is time to pack up and head out.

We are looking for the top of a slough that has been used in the past to paddle down to the NPS airstrip. It is as dry as a bone! (Pat and Michael and group were able to use it in 2007). Isostatic rebounding which is the loss of the weight of glaciers allowing the land to rise about 2 inches a year is we assume, the reason. We decide to paddle down stream and take the bottom of the slough up to the airstrip. John has the GPS coordinates that the NPS gave us for the downstream entrance to the slough logged into his GPS (N59 10.059 W138 31.368 (7V 641608 6561350). Several hours later we

find a likely candidate that the GPS shows to be .9 miles from the coordinates we have so we stop. John starts paddling up to look around the corner to see if it continues, Pat walks downstream to check out the next slough. A little while later John comes back, he doesn’t think this is the right slough. We can hear an ATV coming and a minute or so later a guy pulls up and Pat comes back. After lots of conversation the guy says "oh yeah, if you want to get to the NPS airstrip go up that slough a couple of miles" (the one John checked). He says it gets pretty shallow and we might have to carry the boats 300 yards through muddy stuff at the end. We are not looking forward to portaging the raft again but you do what you have to. The actual coordinates for the slough are: N59 10.590 W138 32.275 (7V 640707 6562303).

Michael and Anita start rowing up the slough to get a head start, Pat, John and I continue shooting the shit with the local. He is very nice.

We finally start up the slough and catch up to the raft after 15 or twenty minutes. The slough is beautiful. We are technically heading upstream so we can see the mountains that we just came through and since the sun is starting to set everything is pink and orange. We do encounter some shallowness but the boats will float without the people in them so we just walk up the shallow spots and pull the boats behind us. In just a couple of spots the raft stops floating so we drag it across a few feet of mud but we make to the airstrip no problem.

This is our buggiest camp!

Plane is coming at 7am tomorrow.