Week of Camping and play in the AK Part II

July 24th, 25th.     We drove to Talkeetna in hopes of getting on a Denali flight tour but the weather once again had different plans and the planes were not flying. The lady said stick around for a day and hopefully there would be a break.  Living up here, I knew better than to believe a word she said and we abandoned the Denali flight seeing tour and headed further north to Cantwell were we gassed up and hit the Denali Highway over to Tangle Lakes. Once at the lake we launched the boat and headed down to the outlet and found a nice camping spot, albeit, no where near level, but nice enough. Considering there were blueberries everywhere, we were pretty happy with it!   We quite happily enjoy the first afternoon without any rain and hung out. Our first real break in nearly 36 hours. A cow moose come out onto the lake late evening to feed and we buzzed over in the boat to get a closer look. She wasn't very amused by our curiosity! After a few drinks and fresh Copper River Sockeye I caught a few days prior, we crashed for the night and again woke up in the rain. A quick buzz back to the boat ramp and soon we were on our way to the Tonsina River where my friend Erin had a cabin that we could shower up at. We stopped at Sourdough and since the weather was holding up we decided to toss the boat into the Gulkana River and buzz up river for a bit to check it out and shoot a couple rifles to play around. The little excursion was pretty uneventful other than you get to go under the pipeline as you go up near the launch and I did manage to smack a rock coming down but it wasn't too big a hit. The Gulkana is full of boulders so its pretty much guaranteed to scrap one or two unless you run that river constantly.  After our two hour Gulkana River run, we finished off the drive and enjoyed a hot shower while we re-organize our gear for Kennicott ice climbing and camping.  We met up with my friend Erin in Chitina at the Cafe and had a burger and then hit the road to McCarthy. We were a bit pressed for time since the last shuttle up to Kennicott was at 7:00pm but we made it. Got our gear hauled across the foot bridge and ready for shuttle bus with fifteen minutes to spare!  The weather was pretty decent our here. I was glad we abandoned the Denali area or we would have still been stuck in the rain.  The four of us piled our gear into the near shock-less shuttle bus and graciously took the ride up to Kennicott sparing us from the eight walk in (well worth the ten dollars).   We

wasted no time in headed on up valley and before long we were at the fork for the Root Glacier access and Root Glacier trail.  We took the trail and followed it up close to where Erie Mine was before stopping for the night. Probably a good three or four miles. With all the bear activity, it was decided that we would cook and stash our gear near the trail and then set up camp a couple hundred yards down the slope near the glacier.  We cooked a feast of pineapple, red pepper, mushrooms, Sockeye Salmon, and fresh Prince William Sound

shrimp.  We ate until absolutely stuff and then raised a bag in the nearest acceptable tree with all the food and settled down into the tent for the fourth night.