Scenes from the Alsek and Tatshenshini
Photographed by Liz Beatty
Epic Girls’ Getaway
(by Liz Beatty for AARP Magazine)
Four miles in from the broad mountainscapes of southwest Yukon’s Haines Road, our van heaves and creaks down a steep tree-lined track, then plows through a pond-sized puddle below. A quick hard left through deep black mud brings us to Dalton Post — “Shäwshe” to the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations people who’ve fished here for 8,000 years. This is our ‘put-in’ on the shores of the Tatshenshini, about 10 miles from the headwaters of what river elders dub North America’s wildest river system— no permanent human habitation for 160 miles beginning to end, and coursing through the world’s largest wilderness preserve, its biggest non-polar icecap and Canada’s highest mountains. Four veteran guides check riggings, pass out lifejackets and review safety tips. Our van driver Angela waves goodbye.
We have reached our point of no return. Once we push off, the river, less than 100 yards wide here, goes but one direction and save a $15,000 helicopter evacuation, we’re all in for the ten days it takes to spill out into the Gulf of Alaska. Like toddlers stuffed in snowsuits, we wait to board with snug PFDs strapped over ill-fitting rubber rain gear, our still-clean river bags in hand. My friend Roadzy leans in, “Rock ‘n roll Lizard.”
Roadzy and I first bonded over cheap Chianti on the floor of our dorm hallway, wrestling the riddles of western philosophy. It was first-year university and with every sip, we were smarter, more fabulous — a heady, transformative time. Thirty odd years later, still craving transformation and lamenting the detritus of life that in very different ways has clogged our creativity (hers visual, mine in words), we uncovered our shared fascination in far north. Oddly, it was bottle of more expensive chardonnay that brought things into focus. “Let’s do it!” Roadzy blurted. “An epic girl’s getaway.”
Now, as the Dalton Post clearing disappears behind the river-rock shores and stunted aspens of the “Tat’s” next bend, I see our adventure ahead as very much a leap of faith —in ourselves, in our friendship and in ways we have yet to discover.
“Lie face down, hands over your neck and legs spread eagle.” says our lead guide Mike. “If that doesn’t stop him from flipping you over, time to fight for your life.” This matter of fact climax to our “bear talk” about a region with the highest population of grizzlies in North America is sobering. This first night, we don’t venture 50 yards alone from our compact expedition tent.
But as the river grows, so does our threshold for wild unknowns — like the torrent funneling us through the upper Tat’s long narrow canyon. Amid the quiet serpentines that follow into prime moose country, peppered with spruce and beaver marshes, we learn to call out “Ay Oh, Ay Oh” with every step ashore, giving notice to furry ones. Along ever-morphing outwash planes where timber wolf, arctic fox, and massive grizzly prints abound, we grow accustomed to nightly rituals like removing “smellies” from our tents — hair products, even clothes with food spills. And every time we do all this and nothing happens, we understand better Mike’s blasé assertion: “If we follow the rules, likely they will too.”
By day six, hair stiff with river silt, we hike into the bush, over bear scat and up one of countless unnamed mountains, dotted with white dall sheep. Six hours later, we celebrate riverside over boxed wine and pork tenderloin. “Bear!” calls fellow traveler Margret. Silently, we marvel — the massive brown grizzly lumbers over pebbled flats, pounds into the river, barely loosing ground to the current before emerging just 100 yards up stream from our “groover”, the camp loo. About an hour later, I disappear to do my business, just another creature, and into the twilight I belt out what has become my private twist on “Ay Oh” — Cry Me a River.
Great journeys build to culminating moments that alone can justify why we go. We find ours beyond the merging waters of the O’Connor, the Tkope, then the Henshi Rivers, where the Tat transforms from surging tributary to enormous spectacle. Mike leads the four rafts, standing oars in hand, scanning our route through myriad outwash braids across its half-mile breadth. The sun and a rare tail wind propel our record run, almost 50 miles from Sediments Creek to the Confluence in one day. Our destination — Petroglyph Island, a tiny mystical nub with prehistoric rock drawings, a few hundred meters before the Tat joins with the even broader Alsek. Three sweeping glacial mountain valleys, two massive rivers, two parallel fault lines more active than the San Andreas, 27 glaciers (or so we counted) and a grizzly superhighway, all merge in what feels like the bellybutton of the universe.
Time here is dreamlike. Cloudless skies, bald eagles soaring above, we hike to the island’s farthest downstream edge. Minds clear, hearts full. I write. Roadzy draws. We collect river rock and banter about the past, now and what’s next with the eagerness of two people who haven’t just spent the past eight days in the same tent. And on our late return to camp, a guide hands us Big-Gulp-sized G&Ts in plastic mugs. From my river bag, I grab an egg-sized speaker with my solar-charged iPod. Soon, with bare feet and long shadows, our entire Tat family dances riverside to Earth Wind and Fire — twelve grateful specs smack in the middle of a titanic panorama.
Three days later, on an airstrip of glacial scree just short of the Pacific, we board a 40-seat Hawker then fly low through clear skies, back over the calving glaciers of Alsek Lake, and the rest of our beloved rivers. Then from Whitehorse, we’re Toronto bound. Roadzy and I have long forgotten— it’s 30 years since we’ve spent more than 36 hours together. “Come to my place tonight,” I ask, not ready to loose our Tat bubble. “I have Chianti. We’ll debrief!”
Roadzy smiles. “Let’s do it.”
