The Rest of the Story: Pika Exit II
Off the glacier and on the tundra! Looking at our day’s route down the Granite Glacier, Triple Crown Pass out of sight to the right, Exit Pass visible in the center/left.
Although I’m usually a big proponent of first-hand beta, where you earn knowledge through sweat and struggle and Type II fun, I was eager to get all the info we could before our trip. Based on blog-based trip reports and conversations with impressively well-traveled Denali rangers, we knew we would face three cruxes. The first, descending Exit Pass, was behind us. The second would be the ascent up Wildhorse Pass, with avalanche-prone slopes that regularly cause groups to rethink and reroute. The third crux would be the bushwhack down to the Kanikula River. Once on the river, we figured we’d be home free.
After the sustained exposure on (threading through crevasses) and exiting (picket-protected descent) the Pika, the upper Granite Glacier was a joy. Clouds continued to swirl overhead, and we caught peeks at the steep spires towering above us – the backsides of the giants we’d stared at while on the Pika. The smooth glacier surface gave us smooth travel.
Upper Granite Glacier.
Soon, however, our snow began to run out, and the middle and lower Granite became a grind. There were no major crevasses, but a jumble of moraines and unconsolidated softball-to-microwave-sized scree. Echoes reverberated as rockfall and wet slides tumbled down the valley walls above us. As our pace slowed to crawl, we joked about miles losing their meaning. Armchair-planning sessions, Google Earth sleuthing, and average pace calculations were irrelevant here. But with neither weather nor daylight a limiting factor, we could slog onward for as long as we needed.
The terminal moraine of the Granite.
After about a 15-hour day, we trudged our way up through steep ribs of muddy tundra and slide debris to a verdant perch overlooking the Granite Glacier. The views from this campsite alone were already worth the effort. Sharp dark peaks of Little Switzerland were cut with white ribbons thickening to dirty avalanche debris. These black and white vertical walls were crushed and combined into braids of gray, turbid water draining the equally-gray hodgepodge of still-moving moraine. We’d made it to where the mountains transformed into rivers.
Sparse alders spindled upward from gravel bars and scree piles, rapidly colonizing the valley flanks we’d scrambled up. Underfoot, yellow-green tundra erupted from the alpine bench, our first real vegetation of the trip. We saw our entire day’s route stretch out behind us. We saw the cliffs halfway down Exit Pass, the bench where we looked for a rumored cache of abandoned gear, and the stripes of repeating snow-tundra-scree leading up to our campsite.
Ahead of us, slushy snow still coated the upper meadows. Denali rangers have affectionately dubbed this zone Rivendell. This early in the season – first week of June, vs. the usual late July or August – Rivendell was dormant under a melting blanket of snow. We caught glimpses of jewel-blue tarns and mats of tundra just starting to emerge. Also emerging: large mammal tracks (mostly moose and bear) that highlighted our first signs of non-human travelers.
The next day, we meandered through the meadows and soon saw that, sure enough, Wildhorse Pass was protected by cornices and loaded with un-slid snow. The first clear skies of the trip meant that the slopes were already heating up by mid-morning. Although head-on angles can be deceiving, the entire wall seemed primed to slide, so we decided to try a different option. A ribbon of still-shaded snow snaked above an exposed scree slope and gained a narrow saddle just to the north of Wildhorse. We kicked our crampons into the firm snow and soon popped out above an expansive, unnamed drainage curling down into the Kanikula Glacier.
With no more elevation to gain, we gleefully pushed our showshoes to the limit, glissading down steeper hills, crossing knee-deep running water, and tromping over tundra. As we descended and snow receded, we strapped our snowshoes to our packs and plunged into vegetation. Our time traipsing through open tundra was glorious but short-lived. Patches of stout bushwhacking gave way to recent melt-out where plants had yet to spring back up. Just emerging from the soggy detritus of the previous growing season were Devil’s club buds, fiddlehead chutes, and naked wiry branches. These temporary openings in the alders would likely close up in a matter of days, but for now, they provided a welcome chance to rest and regain our bearings. We continually checked our maps, and found a steep rib running down to the Kanikula.
A 50-degree slope would normally be untenable with a fully loaded backpack, especially when the runout is stacked with refrigerator-sized scree. Across the valley from us, I stared at intimidatingly steep gullies that terminated in cliffs, with handfuls of mature trees at the base giving a helpful yet alarming sense of scale. Fortunately, our side of the valley was almost completely covered with overgrown alders, rather than the cliffs and conifers opposite us: bushwhack belay. We downclimbed with little trouble, often finding ourselves suspended midair with limbs contorted to grab branches and backpacks contorted to avoid snagging gear on those same branches. If I’ve learned one thing from my years of exploratory bushwhacking, it’s that alders may appear to be your worst enemy, but are actually your best friend. Accordingly, we thanked our alder friends as we descended.
A brief break in the bushwhack.
The toe of the Kanikula Glacier.
We jubilantly burst through the branch-wall onto a gravel bar, right at the toe of the Kanikula Glacier. Avalanche Spire towered at the headwaters, a familiar face seen from a new angle. Whereas the Granite Glacier revealed ice walls, moulins, and giant boulders near its base, what we could see of the Kanikula’s terminal moraines appeared evenly covered with small scree. Where were the big rocks and glacial erratics?
We got our answer soon after launching our packrafts. One flatwater curve abruptly gave way to a churning mass of silty gray water. This high on the Kanikula, we were in uncharted territory, and we quickly found ourselves in solid Class III whitewater. Multiple stacked features – turbid glacier melt pouring over big boulders that had been flushed partway down the river – meant constant movement. A number of holes spanned a solid proportion of the narrow channel and looked like they could flip a packraft. With a steep gradient, rare eddies, and scoured banks, it was a committing run but still well within our abilities. After a few miles of adrenaline-pumping waves, the Kanikula River mellowed out (becoming the Tokositna River) and we soon reached the confluence with Wildhorse Creek. From here, it was a straightforward, mostly flatwater float.
The outwash from huge glacial systems (from the Tokositna, Ruth, Buckskin, and Eldridge) joined in, pushing us further away from the spiky peaks on the horizon. Our luck with the weather held out, and we drifted lazily past shrubs giving way to full forests. We camped on a mid-river sandbar, picking Devil’s club thorns from our hands and gawking at the Tokosha Mountains completing the Whale’s Tail – so many lines to ski! A highway of moose tracks connected our island with the surrounding boreal forest, and I felt like we’d made it back down into summer.
A sudden glut of riverside lodges and cabins revealed the park boundary – we’d reached private land. A few turns later, we joined the massive Chulitna River in a massive complex of sandbars, braids, and partially vegetated islands. Travel was unnervingly fast, approaching 7 miles/hour without even needing to lift our paddles. Impressive logjams stacked up on riverbanks, dangerous-looking guardrails that separated river channels. The Chulitna funneled into an unexpected (for us) and beautiful gorge. As the gorge flattened out, our sunshine turned to torrential rain. We cruised past a big raft and a few motorboats and began spotting houses.
Our 65-mile float was over much faster than I’d thought, and before I knew it, we were catching the Main Street beach eddy in front of a half-dozen bewildered tourists. We closed our trip plan at the Ranger Station, picked up my truck at TAT, and joined the swarms of summer visitors for Saturday night in Talkeetna. With dry clothes on and a slice of pizza in hand, it was a pretty comfortable reintroduction back from the wilderness.
