Weird, Wild Yentna

Weird, Wild Yentna

Yentna River Report 1/11/15

    Roger Phillips- Deshka Landing trail Report (Facebook) Jan. 11th. -  Got home (a few miles above Northwoods Lodge) about 11:00 last night. WHAT TRAIL........Yentna river was pretty good all the way to about 2 miles below Lake Creek. THEN Overflow, Overflow and More Overflow. Flowing Water over Ice.. I am done hauling I believe, for a while.

    For some strange reason I seemed to have developed a sudden interested in hydrology.  

Heading towards
the Yentna fog.

    As we pulled onto the Yentna River the fog was winning the battle with the sunrise and it was a spectacular sight to behold.  It was time to go home. We were all packed up and ready to head back up river to the McDougal trail.  From there we would be dry-landers and the remaining forty miles would be a breeze. On Friday, a few days prior, the five mile ride down the Yentna to the cabin had been solid. The trail was essentially hard-packed snow and ice; not particularly fun, but safe.

     We were leaving now and there had been no fog at the cabin that morning.  It appeared that the fog was contained to the Yentna basin and we would soon see why.  The river-fog was making visibility poor but this didn’t turn out to be our main concern as we motored out of the mouth of Indian Creek onto the Yentna itself.   Imagine our surprise when we discovered that the Yentna had risen overnight..six inches or more was my guess!  What?

    All the low places had filled up with water as far as the eye could see.  There was standing water, grey slushy water (typical of Yentna overflow) and there was even water running over the top of the ice where the day before there had been none.

     How could the river rise so much overnight?  I thought.  It’s not like there was a major weather event like a rainstorm or a heavy dump of snow. a big dump of snow could press down on the river-ice making cracks and pushing up water from below.  The low 30’s temperatures with no precipitation whatsoever seemed like a recipe for stability to me.  

     These were all afterthoughts by the way.  What I was really thinking about was; “how the hell are we going to get over all this shit?”  

     If we couldn't make it to McDougal then we would have to retreat back to the cabin.

   “You’ve got to keep your speed up!”  Bryan was the water skipping coach.  As it turned out we had to blast over four different wet places.  Our up-river progress looked like this;  I would ride out front and stop to inspect the watery section of the trail.  I would blast across and find the best place to cross. Bryan, bringing up the rear was the skip coach and would line everyone up for a straight-line blast across the water.  “THIS HAS TO SAY 25 AT LEAST.” Bryan’s finger was tapping on mom’s speedometer.  He was shouting over the sound of the motor idling and I could hear him from the other side.

   Keep in mind that solid ice was confirmed underneath all of these splashy crossings.  Snowmachine tracks were visible under the water at two of these places and solid ice under the rest.  The worst-case scenario was that I would get to use my new winch!

     As luck would have it, we made it unscathed. We scooted over the last of the overflow taking us safely to Mcdougal.

    “At least we don’t have to worry about our snowmachines getting dirty.” I quipped.  We had splashed our way to cleanliness and now we would head down the trail crossing swamps and creeks and following seismic lines all the way back to Amber Lake where the truck was waiting for us.  Observation of note: several of the other drainages we crossed had risen in water level too.  This baffled me.  I knew that I needed more information.

     Scotland shares (roughly) the same latitude as us.  As it turns out the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), conducted an extensive hydrological survey of their creeks and rivers spanning from 1961 to 2008.  The Scots have undoubtedly discovered what we have; the earth is warming.  In their study they have looked at such factors as snowfall (depth), winter temperatures, and hydrology (flow rate) of their major rivers and creeks.

    “Snow can play an important part in the dynamics of river flows in catchments which extend to high elevations.  Precipitation falling as snow is stored within a catchment and generally released more slowly than run-off resulting from rain. A reduction in snowfall is likely to increase the number and magnitude of flood peaks in rivers where snow has historically been a significant water store. A combination of increased winter rainfall and higher temperatures (as forecasted

in most climate change scenarios) is likely to result in increased flood risk in some catchments.”

    Does the Yentna extend to higher catchments? Yes, I know this to be true; both the East and West fork of the Yentna flow from the snowy crags of the Alaska Range.  If my non-scientific observations over the last twenty four years of traveling the Yentna in the winter have any merit, it seems that the Yentna has historically been a significant source of snow-based water storage.  Usually the snow is super deep.  The last two years specifically, have seen the lowest snowfall accumulation that I’ve ever seen.  In addition, temperatures have been warmer and rainfall has become almost as regular as snow.

    Apparently all of these factors can cause the water level to rise greatly overnight without a major weather event, essentially without warning. Weird.  

    After years of traveling the frozen Yentna I was counting on a certain level of predictability gained through experience but from what transpired this weekend all bets are off.

Bryan, celebrating the last of the watery crossings, takes to the air
spreading his wings on his Dad's 600 switchback.  

Corey relentlessly attacking a defenseless beer can at the site
of our Iditarod camp.

Once again, we did not starve.

Yours truly displaying a nice moose shed, and my newly
mounted winch on the back of the superwide.

Thanks Matt Clark for capturing us at the base of a giant
erratic boulder on the way home.

You don't see this every day.  The tier 2 moose hunt was in full

swing on this weekend.  Matt Clark said it best: "Why wouldn't

you bring a sled?"  We were able to salvage a small amount of

meat off of the kill-site from a different moose.

   
Matt Clark extraordinaire.

Solid Ground

Solid Ground

Breaking the Trail Part 2

December 29th, 2014

“What’s up bub?” From what I was looking at I knew something wasn't right.  The truck was packed and snowmachines were loaded on the trailer.  Corey had on all his outergear and I had sent him out to the truck that was warming up.  By the time I had gathered the last of my things, and left the garage myself, he was lying on the ice in the middle of the driveway like a washed up beluga whale.

    “I don’t feel so good,”... shit.  I had seen a similar look from his mother during the last week.  Tamra had been fighting this same bug for quite some time and I was hoping that the rest of us wouldn’t follow suit.  All-said Corey soldiered on at least as far as the the gas station. In the end, after a few nibbles of the coveted gas station breakfast I had promised him, I took him back home.

   It would be just Mom, Dad and I this time.  We were excited to be headed back to the cabin again, the second time this winter.  The weather had been unseasonably warm but the trip in was solid.

 There was a foot of new snow and it was obvious to me that no one had been on the trail since our last trip two weeks prior.  

    Breaking trail always holds a special place in my heart.  Aside from the thought of doing-it-first (such as a first-ascent on a mountain to a much lesser degree), breaking trail is a spiritual thing.  What lies ahead?  What critters have been running here?  Are we equal to the obstacles in our path?

   The Kahiltna River was just as we had left it, but Upper Indian Creek had blown out a bit...especially after I skirted over it in Mom’s sled.  We had found a solid place to walk across. The plan was for Mom and Dad to walk over and I would shuttle the machines to the other side utilizing my take-no-prisoners approach.  

    On the first pass, with Mom’s 550, I knocked a big plate of ice free, dancing to the far bank otherwise unscathed.  We all exchanged forlorn looks after seeing the watery path I had opened up.  Nevertheless, with a careful planned launch I was able to ditch-dive the other two machines up and over the far bank.  Whoohoo!  

    Several miles later after driving over long runs of wolf tracks (they were after snowshoe hare) we popped out at McDougal and then onto the Yentna River.  It was just as we had left it with one notable exception.  As we came nearer to our turn-off spot I noticed something that stopped me in my tracks.  Two upturned snowmachine ski tips were frozen into the overflow right at our turnoff.  At first glance I thought it was a snowmachine sunk up to the skis, but upon further inspection I noticed that it was a trail groomer.  It was easy to see what happened.  Someone was grooming the trail and got caught in overflow.  The groomer was ditched altogether and bonded nicely with the river in a tight new friendship.

Wayward groomer

    Carefully and swiftly, I drove past the groomer on top of hardpan ice and found our turnoff trail.  After I confirmed its solidity I returned to collect Mom and Dad who were still trying to figure out what exactly the ghostly looking groomer was.  We pushed into the mouth of Indian Creek itself and headed up to the cabin. 

Several bends up we pulled over to inspect a recent moose kill on the creek.  Dad and I are staunch moose salvage critics and we wanted to check it out.  The hunter on this kill had done a decent job field dressing it and there wasn’t much left.  It was probably two days old and I looked around for any salvageable meat on the hide.  There were a few small hunks but the defecation of the birds prevented us from salvaging anything at all.   We saddled up and pushed onto the cabin. 

Unfortunately for our neighbor and Iditarod musher Jim Lanier the entrance to his trail was particularly soft and a portion of the creek-ice broke away as we drove over it.  Jim has been calling frequently to confirm the safety of his route so he can run his dogs to his cabin which is right next to ours.  Maybe next week Jim.

    To make matters worse, all that night through to the next morning, and all the next day it rained.  After prolonged coffee and breakfast banter we finally decked ourselves out and braved the wetness to harvest some firewood.  As we brushed out the ridge trail we were able to fill the toboggan halfway with firewood.  We are situated among old-growth forest and each year there are plenty of casualties that succumb to the will of the wind. “Let’s go over the hill,” I suggested.  I knew there was lots of dead-standing-spruce along the edges of the swamps.  Once below we would have to get the heavy sled up a formidable hill but I wanted to try out my new winch.  

SWT

   This year I bought a new snowmachine.  The Ski Doo Skandic Super Wide Track otherwise known as the SWT or simply Superwide, has quite a cult following, at least among the people of Northern Europe and interior Alaska.   Sporting the widest track on the market (24 inches) the SWT has terrific flotation and is touted as a work/utility sled.  I knew I wanted a winch on the back, which is offered as an add-on, but I wasn’t excited about paying the additional $1800 price tag for it.  I was able to order a  3000 lb Warn winch on Amazon and fabricate my own setup for a mere $350 bucks.  Not bad for a P.E teacher!  The winch pulled the 800 pound sled up the hill without hesitation.

    We were gone no more than two hours and we were completely soaked.  I think it was noon.  Needless to say, we spent a lot of down-time in the cabin that day reading, playing cards, cooking and otherwise conserving energy.  I made some fresh rolls infused with kalamata olives, sunflower seeds and freshly minced Jalapenos to go with the wonderful moose stew that had been stewing away on top of the wood stove all day long.

     Well before we crawled upstairs into our beds it was pitch black again outside and pouring rain like there was no tomorrow.  Ahhh December rain.  Tomorrow as it turned out was on our minds foremost because we had to reverse our trip on the river to get back home.  I texted Tamra earlier in the day and told her that we may have to stay an extra day or two to get back.  

   But as-is often the case, the situations we build up in our minds fall short of reality.  After coffee and a delicious specialty McMuffin sandwich laden with bacon, egg, and other accoutrements we fired up, and made our way down the trail to face our fate head-on.  “If I should die now,” I thought, “at least I have bacon in my belly.”

    As it turned out the quality of the river ice hadn’t changed as much as it had in our minds in the last couple of days.  There were long runs of pooled rainwater to blast through as we pushed up river to McDougal but nothing gave way and the trail was solid.  

    Finally we were off the river, pointed towards the truck and once again glad to be on solid ground.