Trying to find Gladiator Basin...

Well as this was the first weekend of personal time since being in Alaska, I decided to try and do some exploration of a known area before I venture out into areas that are unknown. AAA runs trips up Kontrashabuna and into Gladiator Basin so I got some insider information on good camping locations and where to start bushwhacking when I reached the end of the lake.

My plan was to leave mid afternoon on friday paddle a ways up the lake, camp over night, finish paddling in the morning and make my way up into the basin in the afternoon/late evening. On Sunday I would come all the way back out and back to Port Alsworth. Unlike a normal trip where you are limited by sunlight, here you do not really have to worry about it ever getting dark, as the sun "sets" around 3am, and "rises" again around 430am.

I was late leaving on friday due to finishing late packing gear for another trip and then a flight came into town with a case of beer on it for us, so I could not leave right before some beer would show up.... While this may seem weird that I waited around, everything has to be flown into PTA, so getting anything "fresh" is worth sticking around for as there is no store or anything of the sorts here.

I was paddling by 9pm and it was gorgeous. The lake was as smooth as glass and the reflections were perfectly mirrored. I camped on a tiny gravel point and went to bed around midnight- it was still quite light out.


I was up and back on the lake by 7am and paddled right to the end of the lake. The lake is 15 miles long and I probably only did 3 miles the night before, so I had a little bit still to go. I took my time and enjoyed the sights.

I reached the headwaters of the lake around 2pm and packed up my backpack and cooked some food, and was hiking by 3pm or so. I was told to stay towards the right when you get into the headwaters and then look for the confluence of the Gladiator river and the main river flowing into the lake-that's the best place to cross. Right away I saw some very large bear prints (I was just told that area is on the path for the large brown bears towards to coast to catch the incoming salmon) and quite large moose antler.



After some time of walking on gravel drainages I entered the brush, and found out why it was called bushwhacking. I spent close to an hour pushing my way through the stuff only to be deadended by a stream which I really didn't feel like trying to cross (probably chest deep); so I turned around and headed all the way back to my boat with the intention of trying to paddle around all this "stuff". This whole time I can see the basin located a few thousand feet above me with a gorgeous waterfall streaming out of it. After paddling far right and up some bradded channels- which all started to form a river- I started to have a feeling that I had gone too far up river and had missed the confluence I was looking for. The river was full of log jams, strainers, and had a fairly swift current, so I figured AAA does not bring clients up this far. So rather than turn around and continue trying to find where to start hours of bushwhacking I pulled ashore and ambled around for a little while. I saw lots of moose tracks, bear tracks of all sizes and what I thought were wolf tracks. It wasn't until a little later that I saw some more human tacks so the supposed wolf tracks might have been just dog tracks (but who knows).

Around 6pm I decide to set up my tent shelter (just the tent fly and ground sheet, no actual tent body) and am casually bringing my gear from the boat to where I am going to sleep for the night. Towards the northwest I started to notice some dark clouds forming so I casually make sure my tent is together and put everything inside of it, but I am no means worried about anything (I'm not even wearing shoes, just wandering like Muir, barefoot). As I am poking around by the boat all Hell breaks loose- and I mean that God bent me over and spanked me- the rain comes in sideways, thunder and lightning start, and the winds... well lets just say that I watched my tent take off and fly down the beach with everything in it flying out.

I finally managed to catch my tent, and throw a few items back inside, and then I stand braced against the pouring, driving rain and wind for 20+ minutes with this thing bending and in full suspension in the air while I hold it. I finally managed to get a guy-cord tied around a shrub (note: always keep guy-cords on your tent, as I do on all of mine, and know how to tie a taut line hitch which is probably the most useful quick knot to tie) and during a quick break from the deluge I got another one tied off, I could finally gather up some more of my belongings from the beach. After that maelstrom I made sure that the tent was bombproof!


After all of that fun I cooked some food and moved the boat higher up the beach because it looked like the river had risen some. I woke the next morning early to try and not spend all day paddling the 15 miles back uplake; but it was raining, so I went back to sleep, and woke up an hour later to more rain, and repeated this a few more times. Finally at around 930 or so it stopped long enough that I thought I could get all of my stuff back into the boat and get off my beach before any more rain came. I didn't have breakfast because I did not want to face cooking while being dry and then having to get into a boat in the rain; i'd rather get into a boat dry and then have it rain. The river had risen 5 or 6 inches by now and was definitely faster flowing, so I wanted to get back onto the lake as fast as possible to avoid having the river really rise on me. This could have potentially been a bad situation on many levels... Many basins drain into this river so flash flooding can and there is lots of evidence of it occurring, there were many stream hazards which I did not want to try and figure out when and where I might find them, and I had a friend's SAT phone which I had to get back to him so if something had happened and I had had to sit tight that would have put a big time crunch on things. But since I am writing this, I managed to get out just fine and as luck would have it, it started raining as soon as I hit the lake! I paddled all 15 miles in a varying headwind, and rain, but still managed to make the trip in 5 hours. I got home by 530pm and had my stuff drying shortly thereafter.

WOOHOO my first Alaska adventure!

Next time I will bring chacos because there are lots of stream crossings and random things where chacos would be nice. Also dry bags and kayaking go together... next time I will bring them. And if you were wondering, headnets are amazing things, as I have no bug bites on my head (but 19 on one hand alone).

Cheers
Thomas