Floating the Gulkana River: I survived

Yes, take a moment and dab off your fevered brow.  I realize (and regret) that I left you all in suspense after my last post wherein I mentioned in the interests of family togetherness I would be floating off into the wilderness for a few days. A surprise for the Last Frontier Gardener: we made it. Hardly any broken bones, animal attacks, or lost baggage/children.

No snorts of derision from the pack and paddle crowd.  As a city-bred female, I am particularly and devotedly attached to the modern comforts of indoor plumbing and have quite given up expecting men to empathize. Sadly, “indoor plumbing” and “Alaskan adventure” are not often found arm in arm. But fear not, I won’t bore you with graphic details of attendant suffering during this journey.

[OK, maybe just this one graphic detail: our commode was a bag attached to a rickety comfort seat. Yes, you read that right, we had to pack everything solid out. On the liquids end of things and to save millions of women and girls the pain of piddling on a shoe whilst squatting in a mosquito infested patch of Devil’s club, I am in the process of patenting my drip proof wilderness bathroom commode for women and girls (“Potty Cup”) which I picked up at a gas station beforehand.

For humanitarian reasons, I will risk spoiling this trademarking process. I will help campers all over the world and share, for free, my idiot-tested invention: a large (plastic is most durable) concessions cup. See last picture in this post. And your welcome.]   

Floating down a river with unseasonably high and fast water (class IV rapids anyone?) was a bit daunting.  On the Daunted Scale, 1 being a visit to your local library and 10 being a visit to your local fast food play land at noon on a rainy Saturday, I was about a 7.  At the risk of this post turning into a War and Peace saga, here’s the condensed version of our 47 mile/75 km Gulkana River float on June 27:

Day One, Wednesday

• Drive to Paxson Lake, make arrangements for someone to take truck from lake (start) to Sourdough Creek Campground (finish), $60, worth every penny if you are a lousy hitchhiker, the alternative.
• Put on approximately 34.97 pounds of gear. Pump up raft. Slowly. Sweat. Wish gear off again. Wish raft was on a trailer already pumped.
• Three hours later, kids cranky. Wind picks up. Starts to rain/hail. Hard.
• Begin 4 mile paddle down lake. Wish small motor wasn’t rubber band horsepower and on the fritz.
• As the hours pass, and no discernible progress is made across lake, silently curse the outdoors, family trips, and occasionally husband.
• 10pm- Find first camping spot available. Set up tent. Put sodden, hungry, and crying kids in it. Make dinner.
• Midnight- Go to bed and hope bears eat us in the night and save us more misery tomorrow.

Day Two, Thursday

• Wake up and rue the day. But hey, the rain stopped, for a few minutes.
• Eat breakfast, pack up camp for two hours.

 

• Load up boat again and float off. Do some fishing, catch/release quite a few grayling and one trout.

• Get to tricky Canyon Rapids section (class III and IV depending on conditions), stop and grind teeth.

• Portage all gear to campsite (there is an outhouse!!! well, more of a shack, really, and bring your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer, kids), abuse young children silently for not being able to carry as much as a Sherpa.

• About forty trips up and down hill to campsite and back, laden with gear.

• 9pm- Camp set up, ready to float rapids. Pray. All rain gear on. Kids stowed on bank, watching with video camera to document our deaths for insurance purposes.
• 9:02pm- Float by two gentlemen on the cliff, sipping their beers, they holler, “Good luck!” and laugh. More beer swilling men appear to watch our demise. No women appear to be within twenty miles of this place. Feelings of apprehension.
• 9:03pm- Swept towards giant boulders. First time death imminent, but avoided.
• 9:04pm- Second time, avoided, but small scream escapes mouth. More prayer.
• 9:04.5pm- Third time, a steep drop and boulder thrown in for fun. I get wet, very wet.
• 9:05pm- Pull over to side after rapids section, tie off raft, squish over to campsite. Change undees. Oarsman unscathed and laughing. Requests another float next week.
• Sleep the sleep of the reprieved. Remnants of s’mores still smeared around face.

Day Three, Friday

• Pack up raft. Again. Float away. Into next section of rapids. Assured by husband that this is a cinch after yesterday. Get stuck on a couple of large trees in the water. Both adults exit the raft into fast, deep water in order to push it free. Entertain fantasies about what children would do if they floated away and we weren’t able to jump on in time. Thoughts turn slightly uncharitable towards husband. Raft slips free, we throw ourselves in.

• Pull out for lunch. Hot dogs on the bank. Look for hot dog loving bears over shoulder. Swat mosquitoes.

• Float in between every spare rock not busy holding something up in Alaska. Hit a few.
• Campsites all full.

• Except this one. Stop and haul most of the gear off the raft. Again.
• Eat a sumptuous dinner of green enchiladas cooked in a Dutch oven. Preparing food ahead of time and freezing it does have its benefits. Pat self on back.
• 9pm- Set up portable bear fence.
• 10pm- Still setting up portable bear fence. Electrical engineer hands housewife directions in five languages for properly attaching battery to fencing. Achtung! Peligro! Steam escapes wife’s ears. Engineer repents and figures out problem after three tries. Hint: make sure batteries are properly installed.
• 11pm- slight humming sound of electrified bear fence is music to ears of neurotic camper. Oblivion.

Day Four, Saturday

• 3:30am- awake instantly and determine no more humming is heard. Hear branches crackling nearby.
• 3:31am- force other adult to wake up and check batteries. Still going strong. Might as well use Potty Cup. Paper version on it’s last legs, determine to bring a plastic cup next time.
• 10am- camp packed up and put back on raft (again). Float off for the last time.
• Smooth going. A little boring. Wishing anemic, unreliable 2.5 horsepower motor was attached again.

• Pull into the landing at Sourdough Creek Campground after passing under the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (above pic). The end.

• Maybe not. Unpack gear from boat (again) and haul up to truck. Deflate and fold raft.
• Eat a sandwich with a little sand in it. Swat bugs.
• Pack up truck. Put whining children in it. Drive away. Resolve to take a long, hot shower at home, draining the hot water tank if possible.

And next year, we’ll do it all again.

                             Source

Any camping or rafting this summer? Feelings about concessions cups? And please do weigh in if you’ve floated the Gulkana!

You might be an Alaskan if…(summer edition)

Not content to canvas a subject so near to my heart just once, I hereby present for your pleasure the quiz you are all longing to take. Your week will not be complete without the perusal of this list.  And if nothing else, you will find out if you are a true Alaskan.  Just in case you weren’t sure.

You might be an Alaskan if:

• summer is your favorite month of the year.
• your pet fishing hole is a more closely guarded secret than oh, say that time you ran out into the street in your pink bathrobe waving a broken golf club and throwing cheap garden ornaments at a bear.  Whoops, did I really just write that for all to see? Again?
• the first mosquito bite of the year is a badge of honor.  Not really, but it helps take your mind off the itch.

• you just planted your new annuals, perennials, and veggies out this weekend.  Memorial Day weekend is the traditional “safe” time to plant so as to ensure no frost damage. (As for this impatient zone cheater, mine got planted two weeks ago. Don’t tell!)
• your plant defense arsenal includes a bottle of Plantskydd and in certain (mostly rural) cases, an electric fence.
• camping weekends have already been blocked out on the calendar. If I survive my four-day camping trip and float of the Gulkana River, I’ll let you all know. To rally my spirits, the husband has shown me YouTube clips of people losing their coolers and dumping their rafts over on that river. I’m feeling really confident about the whole thing, as you can see….
• you have water-skied on a lake so cold your lips turned blue.
• you anticipate attack every time you step outside by our official state bird, which long time Alaskans know is the mosquito, or Gigantus bloodsuckerus. Continued exposure to attacks results in chronic twitchiness and occasional, random waving of arms around in short bursts of paranoia.  Your out-of-state family members begin to look at you with concern.

• you have gone dip-netting, an Alaskan residents-only fishery.
• the snow no longer hides your two junk cars, elderly Arctic Cat snowmachine, boat trailer, and badly listing wood pile. On the up side, you found that [thing] you were looking for during the winter that was buried under snow.
• the motor home has come home.  Or maybe, if you didn’t take it to an offsite storage company for winter, you have at least yanked off the blue tarp cocoon that swaddled it over the winter.
• the chirping of robins keeps you awake at night.
• Alternatively, the famous midnight sun keeps you awake at night.  Those needing darkness to slumber invest in curtains, shades, or in a tacky pinch, aluminum foil across the window.

• you know what devil’s club is, and want nothing to do with it.  (Gold stars awarded to those that know it is a plant, demerits for those that assume it is a wicked, prince-of-darkness endorsed motorcycle gang/book group.) I threw in a very recent picture (above) of a stem before the leaf unfurls.  The largest spiky stalk I saw was over my (6 foot) head. 

The undersides of the leaves develop spikes as well.  Or is it prickers? Since I can’t find my botany book from college and am too lazy to find the answer on the computer, we may never know. I still have childhood memories of running through the forest and stumbling into patches of this.  Not good in short pants and short sleeves.

If you have experienced 79.85% of these items, you have, or were, or should be, an Alaskan.  Congratulations!  Or is it condolences?

 

What makes the locals unique where you’re from?

I had a dream

*The Last Frontier Gardener, on the advice of her attorney, would like to assure the readership, both the accidental and purposeful variety, that this dream is perfectly office appropriate.  One’s aged neighbors will not be rushed to the ER if they catch a glimpse of your screen.  And your young children may read over your shoulder without harm.  If you allow that sort of thing…. 

Furthermore, The Last Frontier Garden and Christine B. disavow any consequences up to and including boredom that may arise from reading gibberish, blather, nonsense, and any other content on this site. Additionally, heavy usage of italics, bolded type, and parentheses may be employed. (Just because.) The site owner will assume no responsibility for occasional exclamations of “when does this end?” or “I don’t understand” by readers.

Don’t you adore a good disclaimer?  There must be a whole legal industry devoted to crafting those 5,000 word missives we must/should/don’t read upon accepting any free computer software, entering any contest (be the prize a small order of French fries/Porsche/trip to Hawaii), or joining an online community.  There is no rhyme nor reason to have a disclaimer for a garden blog, as far as I can tell, but then reasonable and rational are not selling points for this garden blog.  On to the dream.

Last night I dreamed a dream. Whether it was a dream of the “I ate hot salsa late at night” or the “profound and meaningful” dream variety, I leave that to you to determine.

In my dream, I saw a tulip. And a handkerchief tree (or dove tree), in bloom.  Some might automatically assume I was in a zone 6 dream, but I don’t need to be unconscious to dream about zone 6.  The tulip was an heirloom variety, probably one that doesn’t exist anywhere other than my brain but since I’m not a tulip historian and currently feel no inclination to research this tidbit, we may never know.  It had elongated and slightly twisted petals and a dramatic maroon throat.  The white blooms of the young handkerchief tree, or Davidia involucrata, were waving in the wind in my dream and situated next to the single gorgeous tulip.

Now to get to the exciting bit.  I have a book (a gift from a sister with a sense of humor) entitled, “In Your Dreams: The Ultimate Dream Dictionary” by Mary Summer Rain.  I intend no offense to Ms. Summer Rain, author of over 20 books, when I write that I laughed like Woody Woodpecker when I opened my birthday package and read the title.  But oh, the dividends!  Every bad dream, every ominous object, every scenario and detail no matter how mundane with a definable meaning.  Sort of.

Firstly, according to the aforementioned dictionary, a tulip flower “stands for self-confidence; encouragement; motivational factors; may also point to a beautiful beginning.”  The beginning of a bona fide spring would feel pretty terrific right now.  I’m not holding my breath.  Is the universe telling me not to plan that move to Arizona, that spring will indeed come even to Alaska?

Secondly, there is (are you surprised?) no entry for dove tree or handkerchief tree, but not to be deterred, I looked up all three terms for your interpretive pleasure. Dove is defined as “a peaceful nature or condition”, handkerchief as implying “preparedness”, and tree “symbolizes life force; living gifts; natural talents.”  So how can I account for that?  Shall I prepare myself for a peaceful talent? Or should I be at peace with my prepared life force?

Thirdly, I’m glad I didn’t dream about an angioplasty, an icicle, or a ticket scalper and not just for practical reasons.  You’ll have to take my word on this unless you want to check out the book because, yes, they are all real entries.

Or I could just say “phooey” with the whole interpretation book and conclude this dream was about an unfulfilled need. The need for green things. The need for flowers. The need for days above 50 degrees Fahrenheit and nights above freezing. And mostly, the need for the lingering layer of unwholesome-looking, feces-, twig-, and gravel-ridden snow to finally melt. Even wet, brown grass would be an improvement.

To counter my discouragement with both my shoddy dream analysis and our tardy spring, tonight I plan on dreaming of a zebra with a fear of burglars, riding a moped whilst listening to hard rock music.  If that fails, I’m turning to the hot salsa after 10pm.   

 

Ever dreamed of plants? What’s your dream plant?