Gulkana River

The Gulkana River is managed by the BLM and is designated as a Wild and Scenic River. We drove across the Denali Highway, a 130 mile gravel road that cuts across the interior of Alaska. The road is known for destroying tires, and
it didn't let us down, we lost one just when we hit the pavement. We met Luke, Emily, Martin, and Sveta at a campground on Paxson Lake and paddled across the Lake 5 miles to the start of the river. The bugs came out at our camp that night forcing us to put on our head nets for the first time this year. We ate freshly caught lake trout and grayling, with taco salad, and Luke made some cobbler in his Dutch Oven for dessert.

The next day included a quarter mile portage and about 8.5 miles of awesome class II rapids. To date this is the most challenging and fun section of river we have paddled. Our homemade spray skirt came in handy. Martin and Sveta filled their boat with water on one of
the rapids, Sveta described it as "taking a bath." We were all getting wet and cold, between the rapids and the rain, so we stopped and made a fire to warm up and drank some hot liquids.

Our campsite that night was on a bluff with great views of the river. Scott almost got lost coming back from the bathroom behind camp, after stumbling through the woods for 5 minutes, he came out a half mile downstream from camp.

The river slowed down the next day and we joined up with some other forks of the river. There was motor boat traffic in the lower section all going after the Salmon. We saw some Kings jumping and Martin had one hooked briefly, but it got away. Another nice night camping along the river.

The next morning it rained on us on the paddle to the takeout. Crossing under the Alaska Oil Pipeline signaled our takeout was ahead.