Welcome back to another adventure story from the Land of the Midnight Sun!
As a whitewater kayaker of almost 30 years, I was skeptical the first time I saw an Alpacka packraft. They looked flimsy, light, easy-to-flip. What could you really paddle in a duck boat like that? But when I slid my legs into one and pushed off into the water, my expectations were blown away.
Not only do these little boats make paddling the off-the-roads rivers and creeks in Alaska possible, they do so with remarkable ability. But just how far could I push these tiny rubber boats? Class III? Class IV? Class V?
This is the story of the hardest river I’ve paddled in a packraft.
In southcentral Alaska lies a range of jagged mountains. These gnarled peaks stab into the sky like a serrated cutlass. Though the highest of these peaks touches only 8,849 feet, no one doubts that these mountains, draped in glaciers and shrouded in mystery, are among Alaska’s most scenic and most treasured. These are the Talkeetna mountains.
Within the Talkeetna Mountains lives one of Alaska’s most popular playgrounds, Hatcher Pass. Hatcher Pass is a wonderland. Immensely popular for backcountry skiing, hiking, climbing, and photography, Hatcher Pass is natural beauty at the highest level but far more accessible than other Alaska ranges such as the Wrangells or the Brooks or even Alaska’s crown jewel, the Alaska Range, home of Denali. As you drive the winding road that carries you into the Talkeetna Range, it is hard not to notice the tumbling stream chugging along beside you. And as a kayaker and packrafter, it’s impossible not to imagine tasting yourself in its frisky rapids.
And so finally we meet the main character in this story: the Little Susitna.
Although the Little Susitna could be thought of as a peer or even competitor to Sixmile, as both are roadside runs of similar length and difficulty, their character couldn’t be more different. While the rapids of Sixmile tend to come in short, pool-drop constrictions and ledges, the Little Su is a never-ending maze of gumdrop glacial boulders and technical rapids that test your technique, endurance and skill. The takeout beer never felt as hard earned for me as it did at the end of the Little Su. In just five miles we’d navigated countless boulder gardens, scouted a dozen rapids, and survived at least six near flips.
But enough talk, let’s plunge into the action.
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