Tatshenshini: Voyaging Together

We traveled in three rafts with three guides and 10 other clients down the Tashenshini to its confluence with the Alsek and then down the lower Alsek.  These rivers flow through Kluane, Glacier Bay, and Tatshenshini-Alsek Parks, three parts of a UNESCO World Heritage Site comprised of four contiguous parks.  Wrangell-St. Elias is the other, and together the four protect a total of about 38,000 square miles.    

The UNESCO website says the parks hold "the largest non-polar icefield in the world and contain examples of some of the world’s longest and most spectacular glaciers" and "demonstrate some of the best examples of glaciation and modification of landscape by glacial action in a region still tectonically active, spectacularly beautiful, and where natural processes prevail."

We shared this massive protected place with a friendly community of strong, good, careful, caring people.   Here is the village, population fifteen, starting with the three guides, third-generation Tatshenshini guides from Haines, AK, who learned the river from guides who learned it from guides on the first commercial trip there in 1976.

Alisa

Steve

Bryce

Steve and Dale

Glen and Marcia

Donna and Eric

Nancy and Tom

Ray and Connie

John

Sarah

Southeast Alaska

AMHS M/V Columbia at the Dock in Petersburg

We were away mid-June to mid-July on what came to feel like four trips: 

an Alaska Marine Highway System voyage in four legs that held the whole trip together,

Mendenhall Glacier from our Campsite near Juneau

five days in Juneau,

Lower Alsek River and Sapphire Glacier

a raft expedition on the Tatshenshini and the Lower Alsek,  

Paddling in Jamestown Bay near Sitka

and eight days in Sitka. 

We'll start with the Tatshenshini in the next posts; the other three trip parts will follow in time.  Patience with us, please.  We will sort through what we saw and thought, posting as segments are ready.  And forbearance, too, please.  Even edited, the photos and words will mount up!

Lindbergh Lake

We took the boat to Lindbergh Lake (about 80 miles north of Missoula in the Swan Valley) to make sure we have all the Folbot Greenland II's parts--skin, crossframes, washboard, longerons, foot rudder, spray skirt--and essentials--paddles, bailer, dry bags, pfds, roof rack, ....

While Eric doesn't play along with this, I call our boat Nunataq, a beautiful Inuit word for rock that was once surrounded (and often smoothed) by a glacier.  When the glacier retreats, a nunatak remains, standing alone, as one does in Muir Inlet in Glacier Bay.  Our lovely boat first traveled by air folded in two big bags from Ithaca to Glacier Bay in 1996, and we paddled past the Nunatak (English spelling).  In a few days, we'll take the trusty Nunataq folded and packed in Otto, our Corolla Utility Vehicle, on the ferry from Bellingham to Juneau and Sitka.


Nunataq and humans, we all did fine at Lindbergh Lake.

Biking and Sauntering

Eric and our friend Gary on the Three Trees Trail

Parking our bikes under the Higgins Street Bridge

Gary and Eric on the Sound of Music Trail

heartleaf arnica on the North Loop

fuzzytongue penstemon near Lolo Street overlook

bitterroot at Lolo Street overlook

prairie star near Glacial Lake Missoula high water mark

cushion buckwheat on Sin Min Koos summit

The Garden

Biscuitroot and Shooting Stars

Chokecherry

Waterleaf

Ch-paa-qn Peak in the Distance 

(just to left of tallest trees)

Balsamroot

The balsamroot plants have fully awoken around the Jumbo saddle--all over and everywhere and huge!

And the tiniest of yellow flowers are also blooming: yellow violets.

Beautiful Day for a Bike/Trike

We went up Rattlesnake Drive and around Siesta Drive, a favorite relatively quick neighborhood ride, with Catharine and Robin on their beautiful Lightfoot and Catrike recumbent trikes. 

Catharine's is a delta, with one front wheel, and Robin's is a tadpole wheel configuration, with two in front.

Temperatures in the mid-60s, a light breeze, all of us happy to be out on our bikes and trikes!  And Robin showed us where to find glacier lilies near the creek.