Harding Icefield Skiraft

 

        While the main focus of my packrafting since 2017 has been technical whitewater, I have tried to not lose sight of the reason packrafting became a thing in the first place - exploring complex landscapes where paddling is a useful component, not necessarily the center piece. Starting in 2020 that original concept transformed from background inspiration into primary interest in the form of skirafting. My first skiraft trip, naturally, featured class IV packraft approach and exit to a Colorado Rockies wilderness ski adventure. On that trip the whitewater was more remarkable than the skiing, but the very best element wasn't any individual component but rather seeing so much varied landscape in combined fashion.

  With that thread in mind, I've since pursued ski-packraft landscape traverses in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming and Idaho. Heading up to Alaska was the next goal, and our first skiraft trip in the 2022 spring season focused on the Kenai mountains' Harding Icefield in south central Alaska.

    The core of the Harding Icefield features several hundred square miles of ice and mostly easy travel - low gradient and few crevasses. However, gaining access to the Icefield is another story, now that the singular easy and convenient route - Exit Glacier - has degraded in recent years. On our north to south traverse of part of the Icefield we used packrafts for a lake crossing on the front end and an easy river exit on the back end.

    A short crossing on Skilak Lake leads to a skirafter's convenience - a very short distance on trail between water and snowline over which we had to carry packraft and ski kits on our backs.

First camp above Skilak Lake

    The small price for avoiding a cracked up glacier entrance is one steep pass and easy gliding for 20 miles through a precipitation-shadowed part of the Kenai mountains.

    We gained the Harding Icefield via Iceberg lakes which delivers us straight to the accumulation zone on the Skilak Glacier, just above the higher gradient and cracked up mess of the lower glacier.

    A short moraine descent delivers us to ice. After a few miles as a rope team it makes sense to blow up raft-sleds and travel unroped.

Ultralight equipment falls victim early on

    

        Given the balance of carrying and towing packrafts over paddling them, it was convenient that our trip coincided with the release of Alpacka's newest boat, the Refuge. It's by far the lightest packraft they offer that features cargo fly storage and a whitewater deck. The lighter tube and floor construction held up just fine on ice snow and river, though one of the stern panels did get heavy rash from a ski edge on a descent. A smattering of other ultralight equipment across the camp-clothes-ski-paddle spectra all held up well aside from one snapped carbon ski pole. Aside from the Refuge, my stand-out gear selections for this type of trip were my Voile skis (Objective BC: ski mountaineering capable, light at 1.1kg and fishscales are very efficient on low angle terrain), Aquabound Whiskey (drops almost a pound off my breakdown Werner, and I still feel comfortable up to class III or IV), and the MSR reactor stove which is an absolute boss at fuel-efficient snow melting.

Trip Video (click to play)

    Our original intention with the middle half of the trip was to go after some combination of side objective skiing and/or pushing far south on the Icefield to rivers like the Sheep or even the Wosnesenski. However, as we made progress over the first and second day on the Icefield itself in fair weather, the forecasts were deteriorating. We made the decision to pull off two more long ski days and descend towards the Fox River.

    Stable weather persisted in advance of the incoming pacific storm, but a healthy marine influence edged in from the Resurrection Bay side, up to and over the crest of the Icefield.

towards the last pass before our descent, relying on compass/phone navigation

    Fortunately the final pass before dropping onto the Chernoff Glacier was clear for the steeper packraft-sheparding descent.

    Skating and gliding for 10 miles down the Chernoff Glacier was very simple and fast - even the toe had snow cover and no cracks. Between the end of the toe and the point where we thought we could start paddling was barely over a mile. However, the combination of complex terrain and brush meant that mile would take us almost the entirety of the next day.

    My personal constraints on the trip had forced us into the very early end of the window to pull this trip off, and that finally took a toll in the form of low flows emanating from the glacier itself. We had to walk down river along braided bars for miles before enough flow from adjacent melted out boggy terrain yielded boatable flows.

    For flatwater paddling, skis mounted along the side tubes is simple and works well enough. The refuge with its shorter length and narrower tubes is less willing to swallow skis inside the tubes like other packraft models can, so on trips with rapids (not this trip), I make sure my heels and toes can be removed (plates and inserts).

    On roadside runs and on expeditions with heavy whitewater, we never compromise on safety gear: spare paddle(s), type V pfds, full drysuits, throw bags, whitewater helmets. However, as a packrafter it is tempting to at least have the conversation about bringing less-capable ultralight gear or even leaving some of it behind. It is not a universal opinion that I hold, but I do feel comfortable having those conversations with my team with the idea that overall kit weight and bulk is itself a safety consideration on long backcountry trips in environments that are potentially severe and are hard to extract from. When I consider a down-grade or eliminating a piece of safety equipment, I always critically evaluate the following: (1) Am I, or my teammember, paddling at least 1 or 2 grades below my capability  (e.g. Class IV paddler in a Class II environment), (2) For each piece of gear (e.g. mountaineering helmet vs. whitewater helmet), what are the specific scenarios and potential consequences that come in to play for that specific gear item choice on our specific itinerary, and what is the risk of that happening on this trip, and (3) Is the weight savings advantage worth that gear downgrade? 

    Another strategy that I adopt when I'm evaluating safety gear choices for a trip is to look for reasons to bring that gear from a packrafter's perspective - can I come up with a secondary use to justify bringing it? For example, can a spare breakdown paddle be used to anchor a tent in the snow, or set up a pyramid shelter? Can a throw bag also play a role in a rope team crevasse rescue kit? Can I use pogies as ski mitts, or will my drysuit be useful as a camp layer in a downpour? Can a breakdown paddle shaft be used as a ski pole?

    On this trip, after a conversation as outlined above, all four of us left behind helmets. Two of the four of us left behind a drysuit, and only three of four of us brought pfds. There were good justifications for bringing along what we did and for leaving what we did.

         Onward. An absolutely stunning landscape with simple skiing and paddling in a complex landscape allows for the combined adventure of a lifetime. A week later Michael and I set out on our south to north skiraft traverse of the Talkeetna mountains (blog post incoming). Next year we set our sights on the Wrangell range - seemingly the ideal combination of big mountain environment surrounded by challenging whitewater.

Skirafting the Winds

 

    As much as any other multisport, skirafting critically relies on an alignment of several conditions: snowpack stability and coverage, temperature ranges, weather and stream flows. On the heels of perfect conditions in alignment on the Idaho skiraft and the San Juan skiraft I felt overdue for a reckoning with the weather gods, and the Winds delivered in spades.

    I was asked by trip partners to lock in a rigid start date for a northern winds ski traverse-to-packraft weeks in advance, which felt like a mistake but it's all we could manage as a group.  Despite punchy snowpack in the trees the morning we began late May, we were able to crush through a dozen miles from the trailhead through blowdown riddled forest and across mush-capped lakes to the base of the climb to Indian Pass. 

ascending towards the divide at Indian Pass

final water collection for a few days

storm sets in on Bull Lake Glacier

    A committing traverse across five passes and seven glaciers in a remote setting wasn't going to marry well with a well-advertised prolonged storm. It started in phases though, and a great evening weather window at our first glacier camp along with some fresh laps kept route-alteration thoughts at bay.

A brief clearing

He's smiling because he won't see the sun for another 4 days

        Given that this route was 80% skiing and 20% paddling, the other four members elected to pre-stash most of their paddling gear near our put-in in the Bridger Wilderness. I carried my full paddling set-up, which wasn't entirely pointless since my 15 oz. pfd was a useful camp seat, paddle can be used to set up pyramids, and I was considering using my boat as a sled on flats and to ferry the group across the Green above our eventual put-in. Allen and Michael both carried their drysuits, which turned out to be distressingly necessary survival gear during the storm.

        Due to the extreme weight consciousness required of skirafters, we elected to use three pyramid tents for a group of five. With the best snow camp construction techniques floorless tents can still be problematic with blowing and accumulating snow. There is a fine, or even vanishing line between shoveling out from tent wall burial and allowing too much spindrift.

Approaching the most worrying bergschrund and onto Sacagawea Glacier

Crossing towards Helen Glacier

    A bit of spindrift accompanying 4" of fresh at our first glacier camp dampened our bags slightly, but a welcome lunch hour dose of sunshine on Sacagawea glacier the next day allowed us to nearly recover our bag loft.

    As we approached the next crux pass a gale set in, creating visibility and windload concerns for our descent towards our second glacier camp. We regrouped at the pass and enjoyed the first half of the 1900' descent in fresh snow, but the warm temps of late May in the beginning phase of a storm yielded punchy snowpack towards the bottom. 

Blaurock Pass

    We spent half an hour in the barren valley bottom below searching for boulders to provide the best wind shelter but every new giant boulder we spotted at the edge of fog visibility turned out to be disappointingly small on approach. We settled and dug in, agreeing to compare notes on our tent platform/wall/trench construction ideas the following morning.

Looking for camp below the Sentinels

    Those notes would have been embarrassing. The heart of the storm arrived overnight, providing a further foot of dry snow in windless conditions and luring us into digging out too thoroughly around midnight. Sporadic stiff gusts followed, and all five of us failed to prevent serious spindrift and sleeping bag accumulation in the absence of bivvy sack armor.

    The following morning we were faced with a serious set of decisions as a group. Visibility and wind were pressing concerns, progress would be tough in any direction with all the new snow, and the ratcheting danger of windload instability was serious given the new accumulation and transport. And at least two of us had developed unrecoverably wet sleeping bags overnight, so we were on a deteriorating comfort vs. survivability trajectory if further unforeseen problems with travel or equipment were to develop. There were several options - wait out the weather, return to the start point via one of two routes, exit the range on the side we were on through forest, or press on over the divide and down to the Green River, the intended route. We quickly narrowed the options to the latter two, and given that the first three miles for both of those overlapped, we broke camp and downskinned while individually weighing our arguments and concerns.

    From my perspective, the greatest difficulty would likely be approaching the divide up high, navigating across glacier in whiteout, which might necessitate an overly exposed emergency camp. I have some experience with this, and it isn't easy. The untested descent route off the divide into Tourist Creek was the most serious concern for others, but given that the slopes were windward we considered it an option still despite growing avalanche danger. 

    In the crux moment of our discussion, a hole in the clouds opened up and a red mylar balloon appeared, drifting just over our heads in the direction of the forest exit. I'm not one to trust in omens. But I'd bet all five of us though were weighing the look of disregarding that omen or the temptation of following it blindly. In the end, we decided to press over the divide with the idea that there was enough time to retreat back to trees before nightfall in the face of impassible obstacle or condition.

Grasshopper glacier, scour-exposed blue ice, approaching the divide and a face melting whiteout

        It was a relief to finally have a decision made, even if we didn't yet know if it was the correct one. Months later, maybe we still don't. We took turns breaking trail and could now settle in to making step by step decisions and evaluations with that overarching route indecision shelved for the moment. Fast progress up and onto the final glacier, nearing the divide, was very welcome. Finally on the divide, we inched forwards with Liz leading blindly in thick fog while I followed with a compass and map, shouting direction instructions with the goal of finding our descent through a narrow gap between large cliffs leading to tourist creek basin. Fortunately, we found the steepest slope to be scoured rather than loaded, and mostly free from exposure to avalanche terrain. Switching to crampons, we booted and scraped down through a boulder field, returned to skis, started losing elevation and were quickly below cloud level.

 

Off the divide

approaching the Tourist Creek wall

    We made fast progress down the upper half of Tourist Creek, but snowpack coverage became problematic as we wandered through the giant talus pile underneath the massive north facing wall at the mouth of the canyon. The character of our route was transitioning from obvious, clear pathway into frustrating unskiable talus maze.

    We reached a point where we'd have to switch to boots and risked running short on flat campable terrain, so after brief debate decided on camp at a bench near some tall spruce along the creek. This turned out to be a good decision, since the remaining 2/3 mile into the Green River valley bottom would nearly take a further full day. However, camping again on snowpack with only three dry sleeping bags for five people was a grim prospect. After dinner, Allen and Michael put on all their remaining clothing, pulled on their drysuits save the neck gasket, and slithered into their drowned down cocoons for the night. They barely but successfully staved off hypothermia. I still shiver at the thought of that experience second hand, so I can't imagine how they feel about revisiting it. Maybe it's one of those things that's uglier to think about than to actually experience, but I'm probably wrong.

The boulder maze we spent most of a day navigating

    We felt like we had nearly accomplished our descent to the safety of the valley, and we had in terms of mileage. Boulder hopping with full packs and a fresh coat of powder proved to be the most significantly underestimated challenge of the trip though, and we reached the Green River late the following afternoon despite it being one good frisbee throw from our tourist creek camp.

Green River headwaters

    We used a single boat and a throw bag to ferry people and gear across the Green (too deep to wade) so we could access the CDT in order to bypass the log filled gorge below the meadow.

On to the CDT

the better part of a bridge on the CDT

Allen looks for a good spot for his bag to continue not drying out

        Finally camped on dry ground next to the Green River with the storm seemingly breaking, a great sense of success and relaxation set in. We were in safe and familiar territory, but a great deal of work remained.

The Forager Skimorager gets ready to swallow five pairs of skis and boots, axes, shovels, poles and a few packs

Good thing we have a packraft that requires four people to carry for the 20 upcoming wood portages

Squaretop with a fresh coating as the storm clears

        The better part of the day was spent paddling downriver and across the Green River Lakes. My memory of my previous descent of this river stretch, though, had failed to include the abundant log population. A hundred pound packraft was painful to shepherd through those reaches.

Dano pilots the crux rapid

Green River Lakes

        As a team we were left wondering if it was worth the effort to paddle out of the range rather than walk, but I think on the balance it was the best option. On long trips with loads of gear I hate the prospect finishing with a slog and sore back and tired feet, and the river and lakes had better views than the forested trail. I've had discussions this year with two other seasoned adventurers about trip retrospective - one claims that the measure of a great route is that it's appealing to complete a second time, while the other claims that a great route is identified by having no drive to repeat. I'm still deciding on this one...