After the team all made it safe and sound into the transition area (TA1) - I would like to say we got up the next morning refreshed and ready to tackle the next section of the course. Of course - it was already the next morning, but we were pleasantly surprised to see Shu Shu and John had food and a tent, and some really nice amenities for the team. This transition was in Girdwood - which is a very nice little town, and also pretty touristy in an outdoors kind of way. http://girdwood.com/
We knew we needed to get moving on the next section, we also knew we needed to shed some weight from our packs to be able to move a little faster. This would be critical because we would be adding packrafts and drysuits to our packs. We also would start with a "realtively" long hike over Berry pass to Twentymile River and then start the packrafting fun. Tim was sick and would not be joining our gang of 7.
The first part was all easy trail and we took a fun checkpoint picture at CP6.
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| Hamming it up at CP6 |
Berry Pass Trail
From there we had really easy hiking on Winner Creek trail for a few miles - until it petered out and became Berry Pass trail. The hiking slowed and we entered more rugged trail hiking with really cool water crossings.
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| Plenty of water crossings |
My favorite was a waterfall off a snow field that made an incredible rocky mountainside crossing over swift water through rocks. I went across - and set up my camera. We were there with Team Gung Ho, and they had already picked out a good crossing point. I was able to shoot awesome video of the team working across the rocks. And it did not save to my camera - in fact no video or picture after that would save - Doh!
We continued along Berry Pass trail, spotting bears and switching places with Gung Ho a few times. As we crossed the pass itself Team Orion came up from behind us and passed us moving very fast. It felt nice to have a few other teams around us as we worked our way down the pass as it was getting darker. We hit the heavily forested sections around midnight, and the tree cover along with the dusk darkness made us break out our headlamps to be able to see better. Well at least those of us who had headlamps. Our progress slowed greatly as we picked our way over the trail which now had regular deadfalls and holes in the dark. We passed Gung Ho one last time before we got to the bridge that signaled Rose Hip Creek and our entry point into Twentymile River.
Cairn Beach
We set up camp on the this little rock beach on the edge of Rose Hip Creek. We were so exhausted we used our pack rafts as a tent (easiest to set up), moved our food and packs upstream, and fell asleep immediately. We were sharing the beach with Gung Ho (Rob, Jay,and Penny) who were also exhausted - but had at least set up a single tent. I fell deep asleep and woke about 3 hours later - very cold. I started shivering, but quickly put on my fleece and pants and slipped into my dry suit and warmed quickly. Rob and Jay were inflating their pack raft and getting ready to take a blind leap of faith. Rose Hip Creek was pounding around a blind corner (cliff) and there was no way to see what faced us on the other side (waterfall, strainer?) Soon the rest of the team woke up - all shivering from the cold. I helped team members get into their dry suit to get warm, and we were soon all up and eating breakfast. We watched Gung Ho put their pack rafts in the water - ad they were off.
After some consultation with the team - we decided that we were not comfortable putting in here with the fast current and blind corner. We hiked back up about 200 feet (up) to the bridge over Rose Hip Creek, and back through the forest on the other side. We finally found a beach about 400 yards downstream of Cairn Beach on the other side of the creek. I also noticed that there was a huge strainer just 200 yards down from Cairn Beach that would have caught most of us by surprise. We were able to blow up rafts here and start down Rose Hip Creek - for about 400 yards before it rerouted completely into the Alder trees.
So we portaged along the old creek bed about 1/4 mile - to Twentymile River. Here we would start our pack rafting adventure. The water was still moving very swift - with lots of choices, lots of strainer, and some tricky - but doable lines. I decided to go first and picked a nice, but challenging line that narrowly avoided a few strainers - but was doable. I wen down about 400 meters, eddied out and turned around to see the team. The scene was chaos, at least 3 boats were floating, there was a paddle in a tree, 2 of the team had swum to the side of the river, and the others were paddling for dear life. The team sprang into action and we got everyone to the beach and retrieved the boats and packs.
The last challenge was to retrieve the paddle in the tree. Terry was amazing, he was able to toss a rope around the paddle and pulled it free (after a few tries).
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| Tired but not beaten |
The first pack raft had not gone well. We were cold, tired, and scared - the team did not want to go back on the water, so we started hiking downstream. Pretty soon we ran into Jay, Rob, and Penny who were sitting on a log with one boat. We quickly learned they had hit a full stream strainer that had lost Rob his boat - which headed downstream with his pack. I had seen the strainer as we hiked downstream and had thought at the time I was glad we did not encounter that strainer!
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| Hiking down the beach |
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| Team Gung Ho minus one bost |
We used Gung Ho's Sattelite phone to call into race central where we learned that the spot transmitter that was on Rob's pack was still pinging and was only about 1/4 mile downstream. We devised a plan to rescue the boat - Rob and Jay would go downstream in their good packraft. Penny would hike downstream with us - we would then meet up downstream and re-assess. We had some excellent moose trails so the hiking downstream was easy. By the time we caught up with Rob and Jay they had found and rescued the boat, but the pack was nowhere to be found. Since the spot tracker was on the pack and not the boat - we knew it was nearby. Sure enough we located it on a strainer a little downstream and a little tricky cliff rescue of the pack had Gung Ho whole and back together.
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| A nice beach to rest |
They started back into the river which was much calmer here, and Sterling and I were able to convince our team to get back into the river. This time our travels were much easier and I took great care to stop, eddy out, and hike around all obstacles for the next few miles. Eventually we reached a beach where we could attack Checkpoint 7 on a lake on the other side of a tree covered ridge. We pulled out here and I learned that the team really got no sleep on Cairn Beach because of the cold - so we decided to rest here. The sun was out and it was nice and warm. Sterling and Kerry were asleep within minutes - sunbathing. I organized 4 of us to hike to CP7 with the plan to hike there, see the lake, and hike back. 3 would remain behind and rest on the beach. The group of 4 quickly became a group of 2 as the terrain got challenging real fast. Lena and I hiked to within 200 meters of the ridge when I decided it would be best to hike back. My estimate of time it would take to get to CP7 was off (by hours) as I completely underestimated the terrain. We headed back, roused the group and headed downstream once again.
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| Kerry getting a nap in the sun |
We ended up passing Gung Ho who also tried to attack CP7 and also bailed out when they realized how challenging it would be. The rest of the rafting downstream was pretty uneventful (if not long). I think Sterling fell asleep in his boat once as it started drifting all over the place. As we approached Seward Highway I estimated it would take us less than an hour to reach the road. Of course this was before the current went absolutely dead and a huge headwind kicked up. Instead the 1 hour easy float turned into a frantic pack raft paddle into a headwind for roughly 3 hours. As we approached the bridge we called Shu and John who were waiting for us at CP17 (across the Turnagain Arm) and asked them to pick us up at Seward Highway - saving us about 2 miles of paddling. As we crossed under the train bridge, the train went over and stopped on the bridge. The conductor (William Nye - I am not kidding) waved frantically at me - and then hopped off the train and ran to the shore where we were. He had just bought a pack raft and wanted to know where we had put into Twentymile River. We chatted for a while and then he went back to the train and drove off.
Gung Ho caught up with us and we all loaded into the back of the U-Haul which John drove over from CP17 to the Twentymile/Seward Highway bridge. We all loaded into the back and drove to CP21 - the put-in for the whitewater. We would be getting there around midnight. The adventure was about to go extreme - but we did not know that yet.
Next: http://eaglinar.blogspot.com/2015/07/expedititon-alaska-part-4-water.html
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