Bob phoned and said a group of Israelis were doing the Alsek River and heli-portaging Turnback Canyon. This meant an empty helicopter ride for us back to Haines Junction and a relatively cheap trip. I wondered if I was good enough and he said, “Well sometimes you’re good and sometimes not; you’re not consistent ”. I assumed I wasn’t going after hearing that, swimming was not an option in Turnback Canyon. Then I heard from others that I was going, so I phoned Bob back. I wanted to be sure I didn’t have to run the canyon if I felt the river was too high. He assured me that he might not even run it.
Bob and I paddled down the Alsek fast to catch up with the rest of the group: Graham Baird, Dallas Eng and Pat Doyle. We ran into the group of Israelis and helped pull their boats across a windy Lowell lake. We spent a night with them and had delicious kosher stew. They made tea and asked me, “Are you sure you want sugar?” I said yes and then they dumped a load of sugar into the teapot. It was the sweetest tea of my life.
It went down to -12 Celsius that night and the one Israeli was laughing, holding up his frozen long johns in the air. They were told to bring extra clothes, as it was cold, so they brought extra T-shirts!
Bob and I went ahead, ran Bill and Sam rapids and got to above Turnback where the others were camping. Graham told me that they scouted the first rapid the S bends and it didn’t look that bad. Pat was freaking out because of all the feeder streams with water in them and thought the river would be too high. In addition, he was really scared of grizzly bears and was packing a homemade stone axe.
The next day we decided to paddle and check out the first rapid “the S bends.” I tried a practice roll in the freezing cold water and came up to see everything in double. The mountain range in front of me was blurred and turned into two. I felt a bit nauseous and thought I was getting sick but Bob said it was just nerves. I actually felt better about knowing that.
We scouted “the S bends” and then Bob took the lead going down the rapid. He looked a little wobbly going in. We all followed, stayed in the middle and everyone ran it well. The next rapid to scout was Dynaflow. It looked like a churning mass of boils with a hole, top of the rapid, to skirt around. Dallas decided to portage it but the rest of us ran it. When he saw we all made it through successfully, he went back up and ran it. Somewhere in the next rapids, I ended up doing an unintentional old-fashioned ender and Pat Doyle was laughing. I had to pace myself and hang out in eddies a little longer than the guys so I could keep up enough energy for the challenging paddling. We were all feeling great and pretty confident.
The next big rapid was the hardest, called Hair. We took a break as the helicopter pilot Doug Makkonen came down, landed on a rock on the side of the river and picked up Bob to scout the next rapid. Bob came back with big eyes, telling us, “There is some real Class V coming up”.
We were following Bob and I saw him paddling hard, windmilling down a drop, there was no time to stop and scout as we were too far down. We had entered Hair, it was an intense section of confused whitewater, holes appearing and disappearing in front of you and Bob didn’t even flip! I didn’t see a lot of this rapid as I was upside down for most of it. I managed to roll up just before the hourglass where the whole Alsek River piles through what seemed like a 10 ft. slot. I squirted through and then the river was completely flat!
I saw Pat Doyle and Graham Baird swimming along a wall. The current was crazy fast and driving me towards the same wall, which happened to be slightly undercut. Bob was yelling at me to get away from there but I couldn’t hear him. Dallas was with Bob on the safe, smart, side of the river. I ended up swimming out of my boat and dumping my gear to swim like mad to shore. Graham saw me swimming and realized he could get out there too. He lost his boat but still had his paddle. Pat Doyle lost his paddle but managed to hang on to his boat along the undercut wall and got out where we did. Graham gave his paddle to Pat so he could finish the canyon. He was upset by this because he went to rescue Pat and in turn, ended up swimming and not able to finish the canyon. Graham and I went up a draw and found a place where the helicopter could land to pick us up. Dallas and Pat continued down the canyon, mainly fun Class 4. Bob was paddling down on his own chasing gear when he heard a clunk as my paddle surfaced below his boat. He collapsed the breakdown paddle and continued down the canyon. He found Graham’s boat, my boat and hooked on. When he came to a rapid he unclipped the boats and picked them up at the bottom. We couldn’t believe that he had rescued all our gear!! We all united at the end of the canyon and the Israelis were calling Bob the “Angel of the Yukon”.
Doug Makkonen showed us hotshot kayakers a wild helicopter ride through the canyon. He banked it super close to the canyon walls, then ran low over the rapids. He flew very close over Goatherd Mountain and then did a big drop down towards the lake where you felt like you were diving. I had an exhilarating ride in the front seat but didn’t realize Bob was motion-sick in the back. He happily jumped out of the helicopter when we landed!
What an incredible trip to remember for a lifetime and Bob made it happen. He was an amazing kayaker and you could always count on him for being there first and pulling off the most difficult rescues.
What an awesome story!