Solo Canoe Trip on the Tatsenshini River

Mount Fairweather looms over Alsek Lake

The next bend in the river proved me wrong. From the little I could see in the rapidly-fading light and from the sounds that thundered out of the twilight, I knew I must be approaching a passage of monstrous proportions. A quick glance at my surroundings told me there was no way out. In my haste to leave the last gravel bar, I hadn't bothered to pack everything properly so that now I couldn't even kneel in the canoe for all the gear piled up in the cockpit area.

I madly scrambled to stuff the gear under the spray cover and closed the cockpit. The first wave hit my canoe broadside and smacked me on the side of the face, drenching my glasses. I was now maneuvering through huge standing waves, in the dark and blinded by water streaming down my glasses. I braced through the next few waves and decided that if I was going to survive this rapid I would have to exit now! Summoning the last of my reserve strength, I edged the canoe towards the eddy line and in one final gut-wrenching stroke, pulled the canoe into a back eddy. Shaken and semi-blind, I jumped out of the canoe and sank up to my knees in wet sand. Adrenaline pumped freely now as I slogged through the quagmire to drier ground farther up the bank.

My new camp site for the night now consisted of a narrow sand bar, approximately 20-feet wide by 100-feet long, sandwiched between the roaring current on one side and a high cliff on the other. "At least there won't be any bears here," I consoled myself. I hastily put up my tent by the light of my headlamp on a flat part of the bar. I was about to retire when I decided to do a quick check for bear activity to appease my overworked imagination. Just behind the tent, in a dry channel, fresh bear tracks leaped into the bright spotlight of my headlamp. "How can this be!!" I exclaimed aloud as I threw a quick glance towards the cliff wall behind me.

In resignation, I crawled meekly into the tent clutching a can of bear spray, and zipped myself into my sleeping bag. It was going to be a long night. Lying there on that precarious perch, with the sound of the rapids pounding in my ears and with fresh bear tracks just 5 feet from my tent, I had never felt so vulnerable in my life. My fevered imagination conjured up images of being swept away by a sudden surge of ice cold water; I struggled to curtail the morbid details of a savage grizzly attack through the flimsy walls of my tent. Eventually, I drifted off into a nightmarish sleep but awoke several times during the night in a cold sweat.

At the first light of dawn, I had arisen and broken camp. The first rays of morning light streamed through the clouds and lit the cobalt peaks across the river. The land was bathed in a surreal golden glow. In the distance, the craggy fingers of Walker Glacier rose from the river in the early morning mist. I snapped a few quick pictures to record the scene and paddled off in the turbulent current towards it. I paddled past the glacier and did not stop to explore as I was still shaken by the events of the day before.

The rest of the day was spent picking my way around the countless fireweed and willow covered gravel flats that choke this 2 to 3 mile wide section of the Alsek River. The uninterrupted views of jagged, steep mountains and hanging glaciers helped me regain my composure, yet I remained acutely aware of bears whenever I stopped on shore.

Towards the end of that afternoon, I began to make out the faint outline of a glacier in the distance, its sinewy surface stretching down to the water's edge and disappearing into the glare of the late afternoon light. I knew then that I was now approaching Alsek Lake. An hour later, the irregular tops of several icebergs appeared on the horizon. As I approached the lake, I saw that the current flowed directly towards a large icepack in the middle and I was forced to pull out on a gravel bar for fear of being drawn into the moving mass of ice. From my vantage point on the bar, the scene before me looked strangely like massive ice cubes cooling a giant gin and tonic. I pulled out my binoculars to look for a way around the choked mass as getting caught amidst the bergs could be serious. A small channel on the extreme right bypassed the main pack and I steered my canoe safely in that direction.

Once on Alsek Lake, I marveled at the incredible beauty of this magical place. The lake teemed with icebergs sculpted into every fantastic shape imaginable and painted in hues from pure white to turquoise blue. I spent the next two days drifting through the ice in my canoe photographing this glacial wonderland. How beautiful the icebergs were! How ephemeral too. On the first day, I photographed two large icebergs, both the size of small apartment buildings and the next morning when I set off to paddle across the lake to the ice cliffs of the glacier, they had rolled over and almost disappeared. Only a tiny portion of their mass remained visible above the opaque green water.

Alsek glacier boomed and roared in the distance as it calved yet another iceberg into the lake. Once across the 3.5 mile wide lake, I gave the ice cliffs a wide berth as house-sized blocks of ice detached themselves from the glacier's serrated leading edge and tumbled in slow motion into the lake.

The trip to Dry Bay on the Pacific and the take out for this incredible trip was uneventful except for one unavoidable rapid that sent my canoe into a 360 degree spin and had me bracing to stay upright. "The last of the Tatshenshini's unpredictable rapids," I told myself as I looked back at the churning water and the fading outline of Alsek glacier in the distance.

As I paddled slowly towards the Pacific, I reflected on the previous 5 days and the events that had made the Tatshenshini one of the most remarkable trips I had ever done. That the river had challenged me to the limit of my abilities, there was no doubt. In fact, I felt I had pushed those limits and gained valuable experience and confidence as a result.

While I had been forewarned of the river's unpredictable nature, I was taken aback by the sheer power of the forces that shape this immense watershed. I also did not expect to be confronted by those forces all at once. Given all the factors that come into play at the same time on the Tatshenshini -- its icy waters, unpredictable crosscurrents, trough-like channels, dangerous sweepers and high winds -- I feel that the river defies traditional river classification. One author classifies the Tatshenshini below Lower Canyon as being "not over Class II white water." In my opinion, the classification should be increased to Class III , as this would give canoers a more accurate assessment of the challenges to expect on this mighty river.

Another factor for paddlers to be aware of is the high concentration of bears in the area, especially at the confluence of the Tatshenshini and the Alsek rivers. This junction is rapidly becoming a hot spot for bear encounters as more and more people paddle the river. Members of a rafting expedition I met on the river told me they had seen 8 bears in 2 days in that area and that at least one encounter had been a close one. Through my own bear experience on this trip, I have developed a new awareness and respect for these beautiful and powerful animals. They are as unpredictable and potentially dangerous as the vast landscape in which they roam. I felt extremely vulnerable whenever I wasn't on the river, as evidence of their presence is everywhere.

Would I paddle this or any other river with the same degree of difficulty solo again? That is difficult to say. Despite the challenges I encountered on the Tatshenshini, I never felt that my life was in imminent danger. The river demands constant concentration and taxes your canoeing abilities. This constant attention takes away from the simple enjoyment of the Tatshenshini's incredible surroundings. In this respect I would say that paddling this river solo in a canoe is not the ideal way to enjoy this truly beautiful watershed. The Tatshenshini is one of the wildest and most remote rivers on earth and to paddle its length within the safety of a group would be both reassuring and liberating.

Luc Bedard resides in Vanouver, BC, Canada when he is not solo paddling wild Alaskan rivers. He has been paddling for over 25 years all over Canada and the U.S.