Rafting Wrangell St. Elias - The Mighty Chitina River

River trips this week included pack-rafting on a remote river with no name and two inflatable canoe trips down the Chitina.
 

The Chitina is a maze of swiftly flowing, intersecting channels, some ten feet deep, others ten inches  – with a current strong enough to give a consistently good ride. Countless glaciers feed countless waterfalls that feed countless streams and rivers that flow into the Chitina. The volume of never ending water inspires awe. We stopped on a sandy beach for a campfire. Stripped willow branches and roasted hotdogs. How can a simple hotdog taste so good?

The scent of Bison was sharp and there were hoof-prints all along the shore. The bison were introduced into this area in the 1960s.  It’s a small herd – winters are harsh and while they have survived, they’ve not necessarily thrived.  Although we could smell them, and saw an abundance of fresh bison tracks and fuzzy wool balls of recently shed winter fur we never spotted the herd.  Tiny U-Shaped indentations signaled the arrival of at least a few healthy calves this year.  We noted large wolf tracks, moose droppings and signs of bear.

The river is lined with spruce and aspen. Only dim sunlight filters through to the forest floor. Behind the fringe of trees, the mountains rise straight and steep from the floodplain, foregoing foothills. We passed a moose browsing the brush along the shore. From the terminus of the Tana Glacier the Tana River rushes down the mountain to roar into the Chitina. Two bands of color – the silt of distinctly different glacier minerals – merge and swirl as the two mighty waters consolidate, deepen and quicken between walls of rock. At Jake’s Bar we deflated our canoe and loaded it and ourselves into the waiting Cessna for the flight upriver back to Ultima Thule.