August 28, 2007

This weekend we walked from Girdwood to Eagle River. It is strange to walk from a town 45 minutes to the south to a town a half hour to the north, but they are both a bit east of us and can be connected by hiking through a mountain pass in a mere 26 miles. This was the Crow Pass trail.

We started on Friday night. One member of our party left a car at the Eagle River end and we all met here in Anchorage at our condo. It was supposed to be 5 of us, but we dropped to 4 at the last minute when a coworker’s wife was called to work. This created a bit of a logistics nightmare as he tried to take the contents of two packs, packed to support two people for the weekend, and repack for one. His pack wound up at about 48 lbs, partly due to the excessively large tent and extra food he wound up carrying. I managed to head out the door at 36 lbs, well under my mental limit of 40 lbs.

We took our truck to the Girdwood side, driving about 8 miles up the old mining road to the trailhead. We almost aborted the trip when one of our party had an equipment problem, a missing buckle on the hip belt of his pack. While we contemplated our options, he found a spare on another strap that was the right size. We headed up the trail, climbing 2000 feet in three miles to arrive at the pass. It was a beautiful evening for hiking and the elevation gain seemed easy. I think we were all pretty excited about the adventure.

The clear night caused the temperature at elevation to drop into the thirties. Our small tent is much cozier than our big car camping tent, but we weren’t too motivated to get out of bed in the morning. A breeze in the pass added to the chill while we cooked breakfast. The sun finally reached between the mountains to start cutting the chill as we put our packs on our backs and began heading down the trail.

Saturday was a long day and our pace was slow. We started slow as we really enjoyed the views of Raven Glacier as we slowly descended the rocky trail into the Raven Creek valley. The footing was often difficult and steep. At one point we had to cross a slope with mud on top of snow. The larger pieces of gravel provided some traction on the hard packed frozen surface.

Along the valley floor, we found tall vegetation and muddy trails that continued to hamper our pace. We had a small stream crossing that was too deep for our boots. We all just plunged in and accepted the wet feet. By this time it was a warm sunny day. We dried out a little as we ate our lunch on the bank.

Our rough plan was to cover about 10 miles to get us right up to the Eagle River crossing. The cold morning and the warm day motivated us to consider trying the crossing on Saturday while we were warm instead of waiting until the next cold morning. We weren’t sure we would be able to make the crossing as the water level in the river increases on warm sunny days due to the melting at the glacier.

The crossing was weighing on all our minds. Eagle River is no small river. The crossing is not far down stream from Eagle Glacier. Melt water is always very cold. We heard the water level should be about waist deep. Crossing a big silty icy river is a scary prospect. It was particularly concerning since the day one of my coworkers sent the email suggesting we finalize our plans for this trip, another coworker responded with a link to the Anchorage Daily News with a breaking story of a drowning death while making this crossing. People have died in many of the places we have been, usually due to some carelessness, but the timing of this story put the thought deep into our minds. The worst part was the lack of details. Usually you hear what they did wrong. We were left to speculate.

Crossing moving water is tricky. I do it all the time while fishing, but it still scares me. It is even more dangerous when carrying a heavy pack. If you don’t keep your straps loose, the pack might submerge you in the icy water too long before you are able to remove the pack. If you choose the wrong crossing point, the hazards downstream might make a painful slip fatal. Dead trees jam frequently along the river and catch debris that runs into it. If you happen to be some of that debris, you can be trapped under a log. Large rapids also pose serious hazards. So we approached the crossing hoping that the unfortunate individual that lost his life a few weeks ago chose the wrong crossing point at the wrong time and kept his backpack on tight.

As we arrived at the river, it quickly became clear that choosing the wrong crossing point was a serious temptation. We read the trail guides and had a few tips from people who had done it so we knew we needed to head upstream a ways, but I was still surprised at how far upstream we needed to go. Numerous locations looked accessible, even tempting, but we knew there was an established ’safe’ crossing point. We finally arrived at a sign with a white post on the other side of the river, a clear indicator of the crossing point. At first glance, I was surprised at how wide the river was at this point. We could see some exposed rocks about halfway across so we knew it would be like two crossings. The second half looked more intimidating, calmer but fast moving. It looked like it could be deep. The first half looked a little shallower with rock induced ripples.

We decided to use interlocked arms to cross the river. We figured out our lineup with the heaviest person in the upstream position creating a wake for the lighter people in the human chain downstream. We practiced the technique on dry land before plunging in. My first impression was that this wasn’t so bad. The water didn’t feel painfully cold. The bottom seemed reasonably smooth. The water seemed shallow. We inched forward and the water deepened to our knees. I felt a great sense of relief as the bottom began sloping up to the midway point. My legs were getting cold and I just wanted to get out of that water. The shallow water gave us a brief reprieve from the iciness on our legs. We plunged into the second half. It seemed like forever getting across. The rocks on the bottom were large and slippery. The human chain locked us into undesirable footing, but we never had more than one person struggling with their footing at one time. It actually worked very well even though it sometimes felt like I was being taken for a ride. We emerged on the other side only to quickly realize that we were on an island. We located another post across the next channel and made quick work of the last stretch. Our feet squished as we headed down the trail on the other side, but we seemed energized by getting past this scary point.

The next challenge was finding the trail. The flat rocky landscape of the river valley was dotted with vegetation. The gaps between the vegetation all looked like trails. We headed toward the mountains on an angle, gaining some distance downstream at the same time. We decided we were too far inland, so we angled back toward the river. We finally found a worn path just as the vegetation was thickening up and slowing our progress.

We hiked about a mile to the next stream crossing. This one involved walking on a couple of logs while holding onto a rope that was stretched between trees on either side. It was beginning to feel like an obstacle course.

We looked for a campsite at this creek, but some tents were already set up on the gravel bars and the established campsite in the woods was right along the main trail. We talked to one of the hikers returning to these tents and he said the next good campsite was about 2 miles up. We were still pretty energized, so we decided to press on. This was probably a poor choice.

The mountains pressed close to the river. The shore line steepened and we were soon walking on a narrow ledge that dropped off into the river. The trail went up and down over the rocks and variations in the landscape. We climbed up, we climbed down, all the while focusing on our footing, often complementing our footing with handholds on the rocks and trees on the slope. This went on for a long time. We were all fatigued and this stretch of trail required our undivided attention.

The mountains finally retreated from the river and provided a flat cove of land. We found an established campsite tucked off the trail in the trees. It was almost 9:00 and we were all exhausted. We stumbled into camp and dropped our packs.

Backpacking is a lesson in organization. Tasks and gear must be organized for maximum efficiency. We set about finishing the evening’s tasks, cooking dinner, filtering water, and setting up the tent. I knew our dehydrated dinner required 10 minutes of sitting after adding the boiling water, so I focused on cooking. Kris headed off to filter water. While the water heated, I started setting up the tent. I finished during the 10 minute wait period. We ate and then poured ourselves into the tent. We were exhausted and it felt great to finally lay down.

Sunday was now less daunting than our original plan. Because of the crossing and additional miles that we put in on Saturday, we only had about 9 miles to finish. Our biggest challenge was at Icicle Creek, swollen by the melt water produced by the weekend’s sunshine. Crossing wasn’t difficult, although we did spend some time looking for a crossing that wouldn’t get our feet wet. In the end, we plunged right in and crossed the narrow creek. The challenge was really on the other side. We couldn’t find the trail. We hunted upstream and downstream. We tried to use the GPS to direct us to the trail. We finally found the trail near where we crossed. It was just hard to see because it looked like a branch of the stream rather than the trail.

We struggled through a few stretches with dew covered overgrowth, but as we got closer, the trail became wider and smoother. We knew we were getting close when we began to see day hikers. We knew we were getting even closer when we began to see day hikers without water bottles. The last two miles were improved trails and we were practically sprinting to the finish. It was a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

We didn’t have any significant wildlife encounters on the trail. We saw a few Dall Sheep on the mountainsides. We scared one moose. We saw a couple of ground squirrels. Eagles soared high above the ridgelines. We saw a few bear prints and lots of bear scat, but no bears.

We enjoyed the berries again. Our fellow travelers seemed to appreciate our knowledge of berries as they began to try the different berries as we pointed them out. We had a few salmonberries on the Girdwood end, blueberries and crowberries at the high elevations, plentiful red currants and raspberries along the river, and a few scattered watermelon berries. I even ate a couple high bush cranberries that were finally ripening up, but even still are too tart to really eat in numbers.

After getting driven back to our condo, Kris and I took much needed showers before heading back to Girdwood to pick up the truck. We ate dinner in Girdwood while we were there.

We saw beluga whales this weekend as well. It has been over two years since we last saw the belugas in Turnagain Arm so we were pretty excited to see them as we drove toward Girdwood on Friday evening. We actually saw them twice on Friday in locations more than 10 miles apart. Then we saw them again on Sunday. I don’t know what they are feeding on, but they were in Turnagain pretty thick this weekend. They are not the most spectacular whales to see. Mostly you just see the bright white animals surface briefly with no tale slaps and no theatrics. It was still exciting to see them.