The Headwaters

Day 1

I didn’t have much time to think about anything when I awoke in the morning. I made sure my bag was packed and I brought it to the door. It was insanely heavy and I wondered what I could have possibly put in there. I was pretty sure it was only the essentials, but it felt like I had a junior high school kid on my back. At least I wouldn’t have to feed that too.

I stumbled over to the cache where we were meeting. I weighed by bag and was appalled. I frantically searched for extra weight I could take out. I had time to remove one item before we were told it was time to go. My mind was racing. I had to get some things from the office so I ran over there. I guess my pack would just be heavy.

I had good timing so I threw it in the back of our vendor’s truck and hurried back over to the cache to get my bag to throw into the truck.

We made our way out to the float pond and loaded all our things into the Beaver. It is my favorite one plane. The yellow and blue make it look like something you would see in an air show. I was glad to get a ride in it.

The cloudy day framed the Brooks Range and revealed mysteries as we flew over an hour north. Mountains that looked like mythical creatures popped out of the clouds as I awed at their splendor. We made our way up the river valley and landed on a lake.

We were at the headwaters of the wild and scenic Alatna River.

I felt humbled as we unloaded our things at the lake with the foggy cloud bank over us. Maybe my luck with the weather truly had run out. Our pilot soon left us. We greeted the visitors who were camped on the lake. They told us they were planning on doing a few day hikes before floating down the Alatna.

We grabbed what we needed and headed up to a cluster of cabins on the side of the lake. Stumbling over tussocks, we arrived at the cabins and looked at their condition.

We walked back to our packs looking for the knife I had dropped to no avail. The tussocks were excellent at hiding things. Large clusters of grass grow out the earth and in between them is empty or swampy space. If you drop something out in that, you might never find it. I shrugged it off. You can’t really bring anything out in Alaskan wilderness that you aren’t afraid to lose.

Then our journey down river began. We struggled to put our heavy packs on, at that time I realized I didn’t have my trekking poles. Man I was I a mess! I shrugged it off assuming that they were safe aboard the airplane and then got to walking. Water levels had been very low due to a warm summer and lack of rain, but we were hopeful that maybe we could start paddling before the Alatna joins with the Weyahok.

As we left the headwaters, we looked up toward the mountain. Up in the tundra, 3 caribou were grazing. My first caribou! They were far away, but still a wonderful sight. The sun had come out making our journey more pleasant. We stumbled on tussocks and tried to avoid willow patches, but we were still making good time.

Water was up high enough we thought we could start lining the boats down the river. It would be good to get heavy packs off our backs and have our packrafts and the river carry them. We tied our gear down and started walking along the water following our packrafts.

We went a few miles before stopping for lunch. We sat on a small gravel bar enjoying the immense beauty of the upper Alatna River valley.

As we continued walking our boats down river, the willow trees started to become thicker. The banks disappeared into thick willow branches. As we tried our way down one channel a few boats hit and one flipped over. We were in waist deep water as we flipped it over and made sure everything was together.

Well, alright Alatna, you win this time. We packed up our boats and decided we had had too much fun. We all mentally set a goal for where we would camp. Stumbling over tussocks, we made our way, sometimes just one step at a time. Good thing we were on the same page, because when we got there we were ready to call it a day.

We sat, exhausted in our wet boots and clothes before finally taking the muster to change. It felt amazing to get my wet boots off. I reveled in the comfort of my Chacos and breathed in the fresh, unspoiled mountain air. I was on the Alatna River in Gates of the Arctic National Park in the Brooks Range in Alaska.

Over dinner we chatted and laughed. I spotted a bear (code word “Mamma Mia”, which created havoc when the ABBA song got stuck in my head multiple times) on the other side of the valley. We watched the grizzly slowly graze in the open tundra and I wondered how I could ever have gotten so lucky.