Day 9: Little Nelchina to Divide Creek
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| Arthur scratching his way out of the Little Nechina canyon |
“Hey look I’m a newborn caribou!” Art had just stepped out of the tent on the morning of our ninth day. He was barefoot and stiff and was making slow wobbly progress over to his socks that were hanging from a nearby bush. I laughed out loud.
A group of ten caribou moved across the hill behind us as we packed up camp. The immediate task ahead of us today was to ascend the Little Nelchina to a pass that would lead us into Billy Creek. This would turn out more difficult that I had imagined at home from the comforts of my laptop. The creek was fordable as we made our way upstream. Deep and steep canyon walls became more pronounced the further we went. Up ahead we could see that the creek disappeared through a narrow slot in the canyon where the walls were almost vertical. “That doesn’t look good.” said Art.
“Yeah, let’s pick our way-up over here.” I pointed with my hiking pole to a crude caribou trail that switch-backed up a nearby slope of the canyon wall; It looked okay from below. My thinking was that if caribou can skedaddle right up to the top of the canyon rim then we can too.
Up we went planting our poles into the crumbly scree. Towards the top it got rather steep and I wished that I had an ice ax in my hand instead of this ridiculous hiking pole. There were two “crux” moves with at least a little exposure that made for an exciting climb. The problem on this particular pitch was that nothing was solid; The rocks, the bushes, and the dirt couldn’t be trusted and would crumble or pull-out or both.
After topping out on a dicey section, I found a ledge and waited. I didn’t want to knock anything down on Artie. Art was digging out each foot hold; loose clods of poorly bonded dirt tumbled below him crashing into the creek below.
After topping out of the canyon we took off our packs and took a break. Just then something caught my eye high on the hill across the canyon. “Hey Art, check out the bear.” A big blond grizzly was across the valley and up a couple hundred vertical feet. It was working on something and we weren’t quite sure what. There was no sense of urgency in its movements; Maybe it was digging up some roots to eat. We watched it from the relative safety of our canyon perch. Art got a few photos albeit far away.
From there we would make our way up and around several tributaries that cut deep into the mountainside. The last one involved a rather extensive detour up-and-around some steep cuts in hillside. We finally found a route down to the creek and even got to do a little glissading in some loose sediment on the way down. We picked our way up the other side and topped out near a lake in the pass that overlooked the Billy Creek valley. We ate some food and watched a few caribou mill-around on nearby ridge.
Billy Creek was wild country. We made our way down the valley staying fairly close to the creek. For a mile or so we were able to hike in the creek bottom and it was lovely terrain with caribou trails winding among sparse low-lying bushes. Soon the creek began to spill around big rock outcroppings so we climbed back up onto a ridge on the Eastern bank.
This part of the valley was interesting. High above us, to the East and spilling all the way down to the valley floor were a series of giant boulders ranging in size from washing-machines to small houses. They were all charcoal-black and were covered with their own wigs of mosses and lichens. Since a rolling stone gathers no moss (quite literally), I figured they'd been there a while, but I couldn't figure out the geologic event that would cause such a strange disbursement of large rocks.
Our route would keep us next to the creek for several more miles and that is where I found the fossil. “Wow look at that”. He said. Art took several photos and got all excited as only he can do. “See, this whole place was under water!” Art had been telling me about the giant prehistoric inland lake called Ahtna; it was approximately half the size of modern day’s lake Ontario. When the glaciers receded at one point there was a giant flood and some parts of the Susitna Valley were thought to have been under 600 feet of water for over two weeks as the lake drained. Our thoughts and discussions centered around this large fossil and its place in prehistoric Alaska as we continued down the valley.
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Ammonite of some kind. |
A month ago in the early stages of our route finding efforts we went over to Brian Okonek’s house to pick his brain. Brian and his wife Diane have trekked over much of the terrain we were planning on hiking through and was able to provide us valuable information on what to expect and where to go. Brian had about ten maps laid out on his table. “What does that say?” He was pointed to a small tributary that spilled into the Little Nelchina. Art and I both looked and couldn’t read the small letters. Later that night at home, I was able to zoom-in on a topo-overlay on Google earth and could clearly see “Cardioceras Creek” written in small letters. The creek adjacent to it was called “Cadoceras Creek.” A little further up the valley was “Ammonite Creek.”; I looked them up.
Without getting too far into the weeds I discovered that both cadoceras and cardioceras are examples of ammonites. Wikapedia says this: Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish)
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We were both excited about finding such a cool fossil and as we made our way down the creek I found myself looking for more without success. The further we went the bigger the canyon walls got. We could still ford the creek so we decided to ride-it-out and try our luck staying in the creek bottom. The canyon walls on both sides had many deep cutting tributaries and we knew that it would be a complete thrash picking our way up and around each of them. "Looks like we're committed now," Art looked at me after a particularly harrowing crossing of the creek.
"I guess so,"I said.
Much like the upper Little Nelchina, we found ourselves getting canyoned-out again. This would be our word-of-the-day. There were still game trails and so we held out hope that our route would “go”. At one point Art waded along the creek with his hand on the canyon wall and peered around the corner. It didn’t look good to me from where I was and I was expecting him to retreat and come back to find another way. He didn’t return so I followed him around the corner and was amazed to discover that in front of Arthur, the entire creek disappeared under a snowfield. I watched as the water flowed underneath. “Hey check out the Aufeis,” He said. Aufeis is a German word than means "ice on top." This deep cut of the canyon was at the bottom run-out of an avalanche chute. It looked like a snowfield and I thought that maybe it would hold our weight. Art was already headed that way and I watched him step onto it near the canyon wall. He didn’t appear to be sink-in at all. I was fascinated to discover that it was a glaciated ice field over five feet thick in places. Apparently repeated avalanches filling the shaded valley floor was a good recipe for building glacial ice.
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| See Arthur on the right? |
We walked near the edge and could see the blue ice in established cracks running deep down. It was a delightful few minutes of wonder and awe as we walked easily up and over the ice and then back down to the creek on the other side.
On the very next bend of the creek I found an old Dall Sheep ram horn. Two bends further down there was a big moose shed with both antlers laying on the gravel within 20 feet of each other. Down the creek we went; "What would we discover next?" I wondered.
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| Old ram horn |
As we walked on boulders around the next corner we could see the creek pinching into a ten foot wide channel only to disappear into what had turned into a slot canyon. Hundred foot walls went straight up; Together they snaked around the corner. The water had gained volume and momentum and there was no beach or banks to speak of; It was wall-to-wall rapids. Our only choice was up.
Once again we found ourselves scratching our way out of a crumbly rotten canyon wall. Soon enough we made it above the fracas and into the safety of the alders. We followed solid moose trails to a ridge overlooking our next obstacle: Caribou Creek. A sense of relief overcame me when we saw a four wheeler trail on the other side of Caribou Creek as we descended the ridge. “Enough adventure for one day,” I thought. A cow moose nonchalantly trotted out of our way as we made our way down to the valley floor.
After unsuccessfully trying to ford Caribou, we decided to packraft across. We agreed that it looked too aggressive for us to float so we found a suitable stretch with a good eddy on the other side. Glad to have crossed safely we packed up and hit the ATV trail. It was late in the day and we were in march-mode again. After several miles of following the river, the trail headed up a small valley away from the river. Without thinking, or bothering to check the map, we followed it. I assumed that the trail would loop around to the river at some point. I was wrong. We continued down the trail another 2.5 miles until we decided to camp next to a small creek. We wouldn’t realize our mistake until the next morning. This would be Divide Creek camp.
