12 days packrafting Gates of the Arctic, Alaska, 2022

So in July 2022, Zach, Rebecca, and I took a trip to the North Fork of the Koyukuk River, which is in Gates of the Arctic National Park, way up in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska. The plan was to spend about two weeks out there backpacking and pack rafting 100 miles down the river all the way to Bethels. So animal signs were just everywhere. We saw grizzly and moose tracks almost everywhere. There was soft ground. We found one spot north of the landing site where grizzly and wolf tracks zigzagged all around the banks of the river. We also found a whole bunch of antler sheds from moose, bighorn sheep, and caribou. Zach seemed to have a knack for finding these antler sheds. All right, we've come four miles. Or no, let's back that up. We've come four hours and we've gone one mile. And we were gonna go along the side of that mountain and then decided that was gonna kill us. So we didn't do that. We started way down there at the river. That's uh, which one is that? Frigid Peak. Yeah, trying to work our way up. Right now I'm suffering from heat exhaustion. Rebecca's got some foot problems. Zach's one foot is falling off. But we're going. We're brave. Or stupid. Red Star Creek and then we'll set up camp. It's our first time on the river. It was super muddy and probably a foot or two higher yesterday. We saw a grizzly bear right there yesterday walking down that bank. As soon as he saw us he reared up and looked at us closer and then took off. Never saw him again. First grizzly bear? What do you think? First grizzly bear. It was really cool. Yeah. I'm just glad he wasn't on our side of the river. Yeah. This is where we landed, by the way. This is literally the landing strip where they landed us. We were afraid they'd try to land again while we had all, we're all spread out. I'm gonna have to get out of the way. Now we're headed down river, North Fork of the Koyuk. Koyuk? Koyuk. I can't get the syllables right. Zach? Koyukuk. There it is. Koyukuk. I can help the English major with his English. Koyukuk. Shall we dance? All right, we're headed through the Class 2 rapids at Cladonia Creek. Rebecca's already run them. Didn't have any trouble. Hanging river right. These rapids are just downstream of Cladonia. Literally just a few yards downstream of Cladonia. The biggest problem is there's a big boulder right in the middle and a big rock fall on the left. So we're trying to stay river right. As you can see by me spinning circles. We've already scouted it. Rebecca and Mark, whom we met down at our camp yesterday, are down here at the takeout, right at the eddy. Rebecca made it look easy, so let's see how we do. All right, we're on day six. We've just left camp where we stayed for two nights and now we're headed down. We camped at the Clear River Confluence. Now we're headed down to Tineguk to see what it looks like. Tineguk. I don't know how you pronounce it. There you see my partners, Zach and Rebecca. This is the Tineguk valley. It's beautiful. It's an eroded mountain right there. We camped at the base of that yesterday, the day before. Yeah, that valley looks huge. It's beautiful. All right, so we're on the north fork of the Koyukuk and that's the Tineguk coming in. Really pretty right here. Imagine being hot and dry and comfortable. Headwind, pouring rain. Been this way for two days. I can't ask for anything better. Oh, we'd never see the sun again. It rained on us for like two days straight. Nasty headwind today, driving rain. It was pretty miserable, but the sun finally came back out. We missed a lot of views of a bunch of mountains. I think now we're mostly getting out of the mountains. We have about 35 miles to go back into battles, but one of the good things about the rain today was seeing all the lichen just kind of explode on the sides of the mountains. Just this bright yellow gold color. So it was really, really pretty. So now you can see it's getting pretty flat and there's mountains back there. Luckily the sun's coming out. I can feel my toes again. Well, this is where I had my first flip. I hit a log. It's about right there. Flipped me over and then I stayed with the boat and the paddle until I hit that tree about right there. That jammed me up and tried really hard to drown me. I managed to get out of that, but the boat and the paddle got hung up in the tree. And luckily after I got out of the water, trying to figure out how we're going to get the boat and the paddle out, they just dislodged on their own. And Zach and Rebecca were able to paddle out and catch them, bring them in. No problem, but it just kind of stinks. I had my first swim, but we'll go look at that log a little closer. Rapid, as you can see, carried me straight into that log, which I didn't see until it was too late. It was pulling me into it and I hit it sideways and it flipped me. And really what I should have done was, in hindsight, I should have just turned into it and hit it straight on. It probably would have spun me around. I'm not sure how much better that would have been because as you can see, there's a strainer right here on the top. Well, when my boat flipped here, I was able to grab the paddle and grab the boat really quickly. And then I hit this tree and it grabbed hold. We had a bear vault, a bear canister strapped to the stern of my boat and it caught on that tree and it pulled me underneath. And I was underneath the boat and then under the water and I realized the boat wasn't moving. And so I ducked down to get out from under it and popped out. We didn't lose, I didn't lose any gear. Nothing got wet. It wasn't supposed to get wet and all's well that ends well. So good times. First swim right there. Right there. We're about 35 miles upriver from Bettles. That's where it happened. Look at this beautiful view we have now. We hadn't been able to see mountains in two days, but back up through there is what we paddled through, at least for the past day or so. We've been on the river for about 70 miles now, I think. Unbelievable. Got our first moose sighting of the trip. There's a cow moose and two babies. Just came out of the woods right behind us. Freaked out as soon as she saw us. Go on babies. Go to mama. There you go. All right, you've never seen somebody so gross. It's day 12. It's the morning of and I haven't had a shower in 12 days. I am gross and stink and everything else. And it's been a hard trip. Last night at about two in the morning this horrible heavy driving rain came in with at least 50 mile an hour gust wind that just one big huge gust came in. I cannot believe that our tent stood because it was a crazy gust of wind. But they did. They stood. We made it. We live to tell about it. But the Arctic's sending us out the way the Arctic wants to send us out. This is the last day. We're getting ready. You can see the boats getting ready to hit the river and we have seven miles to go to Bettles and that's the end of the trip. It's Thursday so we're actually coming out a day early. But thank goodness because I feel like cleaning our gear and getting it ready to get for an airplane is going to be a huge deal. But here's what I look like. My gosh. After 12 days of not shaving. I think this is the longest I've gone without shaving in my entire life. I will fix that this afternoon. But you can still see I mean we're out of the National Park now. We're just kind of going down the river but there's still this is just still untouched wilderness. It's just beautiful. We camped back behind me on that gravel bar and just beautiful. Wolf tracks and moose tracks all over this little peninsula and yesterday we saw a beaver back that way just maybe not even a quarter mile down the river that way. But that's it. So it's been a phenomenal trip. It's not been the trip that I planned. It's been way off from the trip that I planned but it's still been a phenomenal trip. So gotta come back to the Brooks Range that's for sure. All right we can see the first houses of Bettles. Picture's all crooked but we've officially seen just one person in 12 days. It's been incredible. We've seen as many grizzly bears as we did people and more moose. Is that a powered canoe? We've been doing it wrong. Farted our way back home. It's coming right for us and we're here. Rebecca almost made it. We're done. What'd you guys think? It was great. It was awesome. We lived to tell about it uh despite the Arctic trying to kill us every five minutes. Yes. The uh yeah so that was really cool. You can see it's still raining and dreary and windy and cold. What's the first thing you want? Food. From? Eric. Or really anybody who will give me delicious food. Anybody who gives me food. Cool. Awesome trip and we all lived to tell about it. Outstanding. Good job everybody.