theat
Well-known member
Just got home from a quick trip up to SE Alaska. The primary goal of the trip was to get flown into a remote river that starts at the terminus of a glacier and packraft out to the ocean. After a bunch of research which primarily consisted of talking to locals and the only local commercial super cub pilot, we decided on a river. According to the pilot with the only landing strip in the drainage and the local rafters we spoke with, the river had only been floated by locals up to this point. It was starting to sound like a pretty good adventure in the making!
Due to the highly volatile weather typical in that part of the world, we gave ourselves a handful of extra days up there to give us the best chance of getting a weather window for our flights up into the drainage. This gave us plenty of time to explore the area and forage for mushrooms and do a bunch of fishing.
While exploring the shoreline of a lake looking for fishing spots, I found this patch of Chicken of the Woods. I had never collected or eaten these before, but we collected enough to supplement a few meals. They turned out to be delicious!
Where we were at, pink salmon were at the peak of their run. Between them and the dolly varden, our rods spent a lot of time looking like this.
We kept only a handful of fish to eat while there since pinks don't freeze particularly well.
We were not the only ones catching fish along the river.
Since none of us had previously been on the ocean with a packraft and we knew we had a 4-5 mile crossing to end our big trip, we decided to spend a day hiking down a peninsula then paddling 4 miles back up the coast. Ended up spending a little while beachcombing in a couple of secluded bays. Mostly found fishing related trash.
We were planning to paddle the mile across to the glacier in the background, but despite how calm it looks in these pics, there were some pretty nasty looking whitecaps out in the middle. In retrospect we all thought that we should have made the crossing.
Due to the highly volatile weather typical in that part of the world, we gave ourselves a handful of extra days up there to give us the best chance of getting a weather window for our flights up into the drainage. This gave us plenty of time to explore the area and forage for mushrooms and do a bunch of fishing.
While exploring the shoreline of a lake looking for fishing spots, I found this patch of Chicken of the Woods. I had never collected or eaten these before, but we collected enough to supplement a few meals. They turned out to be delicious!
Where we were at, pink salmon were at the peak of their run. Between them and the dolly varden, our rods spent a lot of time looking like this.
We kept only a handful of fish to eat while there since pinks don't freeze particularly well.
We were not the only ones catching fish along the river.
Since none of us had previously been on the ocean with a packraft and we knew we had a 4-5 mile crossing to end our big trip, we decided to spend a day hiking down a peninsula then paddling 4 miles back up the coast. Ended up spending a little while beachcombing in a couple of secluded bays. Mostly found fishing related trash.
We were planning to paddle the mile across to the glacier in the background, but despite how calm it looks in these pics, there were some pretty nasty looking whitecaps out in the middle. In retrospect we all thought that we should have made the crossing.
