MUST PADDLE LIST - Tangle Lakes/Delta River

Interior Alaska abounds with almost unlimited opportunities for wilderness outings on our lakes and rivers. On everyone's Must Paddle list who lives here, because it's so accessible, yet still beautiful and wild (at least after the first few miles), is the Tangle Lakes/Delta River trip. 48 kilometres on lakes and a river through the heart of the Alaska Range.

Erik and his two younger kids, Shane, 12, and Megan, 10, and the whole A.P.R. staff decided to give this a try last Labour Day weekend. Erik and the kids, along with Mattie and Homer, would be in a canoe, while

your lead editor would follow in his Alpacka pack raft.

Erik likes to drive his trusty old 1984 Volvo DL casually, as you can see, on the way to pick up the canoe.

Of course, it's a five hour drive from Fairbanks to Tangle Lakes. 160 km southeast to Delta Junction, then 140 km south on the Richardson Highway to the take-out spot on the Delta River (where we had to leave the Volvo, so we could load everything on it when we reached the end of the paddle, then drive back to my vehicle at the start).

We reached the Tangle Lakes campground, 38 km west of Paxson, on the Denali Highway, around 6 pm. It was pretty crowded with the holiday weekend and hunting season.

But this is where we had to put our craft in, for the beginning of the float trip. So, in spite of the crowd, and noise (people's generators in their campers mainly), there was an upside.

Just over a ridge from the campground, we figured there would be blueberries. We were not disappointed! We spent an hour picking, and Erik made us some fantastic pancakes bursting full of them. Very tasty!

Logistics for float trips can be tricky. We couldn't leave the Volvo at the takeout spot on the Delta River, next to the Richardson Highway, on the way out, because my Ford Escape wouldn't fit everyone and all our gear. So we had to drive to the campground/put-in spot first, set up camp, then stage the vehicles.

So after dinner, we drove both vehicles down to the take-out spot, and left the Volvo there. On the way down though, Erik had to pull over quickly, and I'm glad he did. High-Latitude sunset emergency! Here in the high latitudes, our long twilights give us beautiful drawn-out scenes like this, which demand picture-taking. This was just looking west off the Richardson Highway, near Summit Lake. We were very lucky this weekend to have the weather cooperating. Weak high pressure ridging promised relatively mild weather with a chance of a shower, but no steady, hours-long rains.

Sunday morning, after a leisurely breakfast and getting everything stashed in the canoe, we set out paddling south on Round Tangle Lake, the first of the two large Tangle Lakes to paddle through. The bright, sunny weather, fall colour, and lack of headwind, made this quite enjoyable. You'll note our intrepid assistant editor Mattie swimming behind the canoe, with me rounding up the rear.

For reasons unknown, Mattie decided to be a real challenge on this trip. She had never been on a float trip before. When she was in the canoe, she would whine and squirm, wanting to jump out. When she was swimming or running along onshore, she would still be whining and squirming. What to do? We just tried to manage her as best we could, and of the 48 km we did this trip, she probably swam/ran at least half of them. She has a good lifejacket with a handle on top, with which we could pluck her out of the water and drop her in the canoe at times, which helped.

This is looking north down the Narrow Tangle Lake, which is the second of the two. It is much longer, but narrower, than the Round Tangle Lake. At times it becomes quite narrow, almost like a stream, but it is almost still, current-less, so you have to keep paddling. The two lakes take up the first 14 km of the 48 km total for this route.

After about six hours of paddling and breaks, Narrow Tangle Lake transitioned into the Delta River. At this point, we decided to call it a day and set up camp. Erik recommended a real nice bench 30 metres above the river. It had a great view, up and down the river, as you can see, and the exposed site let more winds through, keeping the clouds of gnats from being too bothersome. This is looking downriver, just around the curve at the end, is where the mainly class II rapids begin, followed by a portage, where you have to put out and haul boats/supplies a kilometer on a rocky trail, which skirts some un-navigable rapids.

We had a great time at this beautiful camp spot, we were able to get a nice fire going all evening, so we stayed around it, having a big dinner and hanging out. It didn't look like any weather was due, and when I last worked the previous fri., our models indicated it should stay dry. Nonetheless I felt an urge to prepare my tent for rain, and shelter my pack, etc.., and urged Erik to do so as well.

Sure enough, around midnight, a heavy shower came through, for over an hour. Mattie and Homer, sleeping out, wanted to come in, but I had no room in my tent for wet canines. Mattie was able to shelter underneath the vestibule of my tent's rainfly though.

The next day, after the rain, donned foggy and chilly, around 1-2C or so. My camera stopped working, the battery drained for some reason. So all the pictures from the second day came from Erik's hands/camera. He snapped this beautiful picture of the morning mist clearing across the river shortly before we packed up and headed out.

We only paddled north about 2 km monday through the first small rapids, I and II's, before reaching the take-out spot for the portage. We hauled everything up onshore. Erik decided to bathe and shave in the river, while I made fun of that, since we'd only been out two days. But he always manages to look clean and neat, unlike yours truly.

After that, he started preparing all his and the kids supplies for the haul up the trail, while I readied mine. Here is where the only real misadventure occurred. We both were focused on these tasks and weren't really aware of what Shane and Megan were up to. I was hauling some of Erik's packs up some rock stairs to stage them there, while he was still unpacking some things. We neglected to coordinate with them and tell them we need to all stay together. After I hauled some loads up the first steep rocky part of the trail and staged them at the top, I noticed Shane and Megan were way up in the distance. I just decided to then take my Alpacka and backpack all the way to the put-in spot, a kilometre up. Unfortunately, they had gotten off the main trail, which I didn't know. I followed them, to keep an eye on them. Shane was up ahead on some faint trails, so I followed him, and we both lost sight of Megan. After some bushwhacking and cursing, we got tothe put-in spot, so then we had to get back and find Megan, and catch up with Erik.

By this time Erik had hauled the canoe up the main trail, which I hadn't been on, and we caught up. He didn't know where Megan was! And Shane had split up with me to go back and find Megan. It then took us over 90 min. to finally get all together with our supplies. Erik was rightfully upset. Had one of the kids been injured in some way, we would have been in a bad spot, hours from help. We both should have paid attention to them and coordinated. I haven't spent much time with kids in the wilderness, so I lost sight of the fact that they easily wander, and need to be kept around. At least Mattie and Homer helped though, they kept running back and forth between us all, and would have been there in case of any bear problems (we only saw one, at a distance, the night before, a medium-size black, when we first set up camp).

We finally got ready to put back in at 230 pm. Here is where the heaviest rapids are, right at the start of this put in. Since my camera wasn't working, I couldn't get any pictures, and Erik was too focused on loading all the supplies, Shane and Megan, and Homer and Mattie, into the canoe. He decided it would be best to line the canoe (walk it through the worst rapids, the water was only knee-thigh deep), then start paddling about 50 metres down, where the rapids were a little gentler, class II instead of II/III. I did the same with my Alpacka. Of course I got soaked, but it was sunny, so I wasn't too worried.

Once we got through that, we had a couple fast fun kilometres of class I/II rapids, which while not overly dangerous, did require us to pay attention to what we were doing and paddle different directions to get through them the most efficiently. Mattie actually stayed in the canoe during this, fortunately. Homer was a perfect gentlemen, on the entire trip, regally poised in his spot, never complaining or squirming.

This picture sums up that situation quite well, notice how Homer is so calm and is questioning why Mattie is so stupid as to keep jumping out of the canoe and then whining while swimming after it. A few hours after the portage fiasco, I got ahead of Erik and the kids, and when we caught up again, Mattie was going full bore swimming and running to keep up. She had put Erik and the kids in jeopardy earlier by squirming in the canoe, almost causing them to capsize. So she had to be taught a lesson, and was not allowed back in for awhile. It didn't help that much, unfortunately!

After a break at 2:45 pm, we all made guesses as to how long it would take to reach the take-out spot. I knew had 30 km more to go, and guessed 4 hours. Erik guessed two, and the kids three. There was quite a slow stretch after this of what seemed like 8-10 km where there seemed to be almost no current. That alone took a couple hours.

This beautiful fall colour picture Erik took sums up that section quite well, you can see how clear and calm the river is here.

That meant I had to paddle hard in the Alpacka to keep up with canoe. Canoes slice through the water, and a paddler in one has about a four-to-one advantage over a packrafter paddling their little craft bobbing on top of the water like a leaf. So my arms were getting pretty tired.

Around 4 pm, the first silty stream out of the higher glaciated mountains of the Alaska Range merged in to the Delta River, and it lost its clarity, and became the silty, braided river, we usually associate with Alaska range river-courses. At this point, with all the braids, it required alot of attention to keep in a deeper channel, and not ground on shallow gravel or rocks. Which I did frequently, occasioned by much cursing, and heavy pushing with my paddle to keep moving, or getting up and pulling the raft back into a deeper area. Since I had been soaked most of the day from the waist down, I was getting pretty cold when we stopped on breaks. Paddling though, I was staying warm.

After our 4 pm rest/food break, Erik and the kids got way ahead of me, and I never caught back up. The final kilometers here to the put-out were in the silty, braided, but fast, shallow section of the Delta River. It was quite beautiful though with the sunshine, fall colour, and steep terrain. I finally reached the take-out spot at 645 pm, about 15-20 min. behind Erik and the kids. So my earlier four hour guess was the most accurate (and even then I thought we'd be lucky!). But the river was pretty fast the last 10-15 km or so, easily 10-15 km per hour I'd guess.

This is looking north from the put-out spot to 2900 metre Mt. Silvertip. You can see the braids in the silty river.
I was relieved to be done when I spied Erik and the kids, my arms were tired, and I was cold, so it was a good time to finish.

Still, I knew our trip was coming to an end, which is always disappointing when having fun in a place like this.

Looking north from the put-out spot, you can see 2000 metre Rainbow Ridge, a beautiful sheer rock wall jutting up above the east side of the Richardson Highway.

It only took us a few minutes to pack up and load everything in the Volvo, to drive back to the Tangle Lakes Campground. Where we could pick up my Ford Escape, and then commence the return journey.

We got everything separated and loaded into the two vehicles at the campground around 830 pm, and then stopped at Paxson. I took Shane and Megan, so I could drop them off in North Pole, where they live with their mother, while Erik went south back to Valdez. Since it was already late on a monday night, and the kids had school the next day, I gunned it and went 120-150 kph on the Richardson highway, until reaching Fort Greely. There was little traffic, which helped. I didn't get the sleepy kids back to their house until 1130 pm though. But they had a great time, and the A.P.R. staff headed back to the comforts of our Chena Ridge Research Centre. Which we reached at midnight. We all had a great time in the beautiful scenery and late summer/early fall weather. And learned the importance of managing children in wilderness settings more closely. All in all, a great success.

Next year though, Erik and I want to do traverse/floats with just our Alpacka's, and no kids or canines. Multitudes of options there! Cheers.