aug 14 Devil's Canyon

the turn around point in Devil's Canyon

We are on a 50-passenger jet boat up the Class VI rapids of Devil’s Canyon on the Susitna River in Alaska. Ahead of us is a 10-foot high waterfall at one of the narrowest points yet in the canyon. It’s loud. The roar of the jet boat is lost in the thrumming as the reddish-brown canyon walls squeeze one of the largest rivers on the continent and drop it off that ledge. Most conversation has stopped and we are all wondering, hoping, that the boat is going to stop here.

We were free to move about the boat until we reached Devil’s Canyon. Then the captain asked us to stay seated until we reached the turn-around point. We began rocking and rolling up the river as the canyon walls rose and closed around us. Then we reached this waterfall. The captain does stop and somehow he keeps the boat hovering at the bottom of that drop for more than half an hour. Once we realize that he really can hold the boat at the bottom of the waterfall, we take turns snapping photos at the front of the boat, laughing at the sheer power of the water.

The Susitna River of Devil’s Canyon is nothing like the river I know. The rapids are the out-of-control, high-energy teenager that eventually becomes the driven yet patient mother whose sharp, angular features have become soft and rounded with time.

Most of my experience of the Susitna has been on that matriarchal river – a mile-wide braided stretch more than 50 miles south of Devil’s Canyon. My small town sits near the confluence of three rivers – the Susitna, Chulitna, and Talkeetna – and is named after the last one.

Read the rest at The Nature Conservancy's Talk Blog ...



Devil's Canyon

21 august 2016 Rivers Without Waste

 

Last week we watched a short film called Voyagers Without Trace about a 1938 trip on the still-free-flowing Green and Colorado Rivers.  The French trio – 2 men and a woman – completed the first recorded kayak journey from Green River, Wyoming, to Lee’s Ferry, Arizona.  The film also follows a similar American trio of our time who follow the original journey, only now they must ‘portage’ around the Flaming Gorge dam and their take out is the upper end of Lake Powell.

In 1997 we were part of a quartet on the Green and Colorado Rivers, kayaking through Canyonlands National Park and taking out just below the confluence.  That June the days were hot and unrelentingly sunny. The current mostly carried us along and we often rafted together to enjoy the float and canyon scenery. That stretch doesn’t have any rapids but the Green carries a lot of water and we had a couple of unintended dunkings when we weren’t paying enough attention.

We didn’t notice any influence of the dams above or below us, but we suffered every evening from another change since 1938.  Invasive tamarisk lines much of the shore of the Green River today.  These thick plants have become mosquito haven.  Every evening as the sun dipped below the canyon walls, the bugs came out in droves along the shore.  The first evening we were unaware of what was to come and were so overwhelmed that we abandoned a pot of shrimp, boiled in beer, that had just finished cooking, to dive into our tents.  Eventually one of us snuck back out of our tents, clothed head to toe, to retrieve the food and deliver it to the tents.  Then we understood why when we got onto the river, another party was cutting their trip short, some still crying, over the mosquitos they had encountered.  We camped higher after that first night and our trip was memorable for the scenery and company.  

I’m currently re-reading Cadillac Desert, which was written 30 years ago, about how water in the western US has been moved, exploited, and over-allocated.  The book and film reminded me of the southwest rivers that we rafted or kayaked when we lived in Colorado.  We mostly boated sections that had survived the obsession of the Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and many state governments with damming rivers so that water wouldn’t be ‘wasted’ by flowing to the ocean.  Ironically, a significant portion of the water in these huge reservoirs evaporates without ever being used. We did kayak on Lake Powell once, near the beginning of the period of its falling water level.  We visited an archaeological site, which gave us some idea of the history and magnificence of Glen Canyon, which had been drowned by the dam of the same name.  (The film DamNation includes footage of the canyon taken by an interesting group of river runners before it was flooded.)

Re-reading Cadillac Desert reminds me of how lucky we are to now live in Alaska and be floating big wild rivers that are still flowing freely to the ocean.  Thankfully all the efforts to waste public money on large dams whose costs outweigh their benefits continue to fail here. Adventurers and regular people like us are still boating (or swimming!) the Susitna, Kenai, Yukon, and other big rivers for 10s to 100s of miles without encountering a single dam.  That never feels like a waste of water to me.

 

More photos of our 1997 trip on the Green and Colorado rivers are here:

 

 

May Day 15 life on the ridge begins

My selection of today as our "first day living on the ridge in Talkeetna" is somewhat arbitrary (and it's not technically a ridge but more on that below).  Paul has been here in Talkeetna more than in Anchorage for the last 8 months.  I've been mostly in Anchorage and most of our stuff still resides in that house,  But all that will change soon.  Earlier this week we signed a contract to sell the Anchorage house, and the move north is finally feeling real.

So why did I pick May 1st?  For one, I am in Talkeetna today and woke up here this morning. And May Day is a celebration of spring, new life.  This will be a new phase of our life.  And lastly, this evening is the start of Talkeetna's annual Birdathon event.  We've got 24 hours starting at 6 pm to identify as many species of birds as we can.

For months I've looked forward to this weekend with the hopes that we'd spend the evening on the deck, observing birds in our new neighborhood and relaxing with friends.  On Saturday we'd ramble through the woods and along creek and lake shores, using the birding as an excuse to be outside much of the weekend.  The weekend would be a balance of house work and recreation, with the scales tipping towards play and relaxation.  The months of house remodel, shop building, and house selling -- mostly working indoors -- would be behind us.

And it almost is. A few details remain on this house, but we could move our stuff in tomorrow.  The Anchorage house is tidier and cleaner than ever and we found buyers who love it.

So that's why I'm calling May Day our first day of life on the ridge.

But it's not really a ridge. Though we've called it the Little Ridge  House since we bought it four years ago, and our friend and neighbor Chip calls this place Redtail Ridge for the hawks that he's observed.  Really it's the bluff on the edge of what used to be the broad floodplain of the Susitna River.  The Alaska Railroad acts as a dike between us and the river, so we're unlikely to ever see the river at the bottom of the slope.  Instead there's a small spring fed creek that meanders between some trees in a wetland field.  Beyond the track we see the birch-spruce forest, catch a glimpse of the river, and admire the foothills of the Alaska Range beyond.

It's not really a ridge, it's not really the first day, but it is the start of something new worth celebrating.

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post script May 4: The weekend was exactly what I had hoped for.  Fabulous weather (see the photo above), a personal best of number of species seen, and tons of time outside hiking and hanging on the deck.  We even bushwhacked across the partially frozen swamp below our place, over the train tracks, along a couple of sloughs, over to the Susitna River (see the photo above again).  Then we were happily reminded that we'd been told about a trail to that same spot, which we took for a much easier (though longer) return to the house.  Along the way we added to our birding life list (ruffed grouse!) and saw the boreal chickadee that broke our previous Birdathon record.

8 may 10 simple pleasures

What could be finer than tromping around in the woods on a warm spring day with the excuse of looking for birds? That's what we did for many of the hours between 6:00pm Friday and 6:00pm Saturday during the Talkeetna Birdathon. Paul and I also biked about 20 miles to some area ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers. Bhikkhu didn't think much of staying in the crate Paul attached to his bike rack, so the pup napped in the cabin on Saturday afternoon.

Our total bird species observed and identified was down from previous years. Was it us or them? Who knows. Who cares. We added two species to our life list - blue-winged teal and surf scoters (actually seen on Sunday). A trio of trumpeter swans put on quite a concert while we were at Lakes 4 (photo above) and 5 on Saturday morning; they flew between the two while we were hiking between the two.

All that was topped off with a bonfire by the Susitna River and a swapping of bird stories with other twitchers.

10 August 2008 Susitna River

On Friday we boarded the flag-stop train in Talkeetna (locally dubbed the Bud Car due to appearance, not refreshments) for the hour ride to Gold Creek. There the conductor deposited 7 of us and a lot of camping and boating gear beside the tracks. We ferried the gear down a steep embankment to the Susitna River bank. Gold Creek flows in just upstream of the railroad bridge.

We were an odd flotilla -- raft, Feathercraft single kayak, Klepper double kayak, and an Aerius inflatable kayak. One way or another, we all floated back down to Talkeetna in 2 days of floating. We ended up camping 2 nights on an exposed sandy-gravelly island because Saturday was so rainy, no one wanted to pack up to move to a better spot. Despite the weather, it was a very relaxing day of bocce, reading, visiting, napping, rock collecting, and eating. A beach vacation, Alaska style.