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< March-April 2007
	Features
Soul Searching Beyond the political controversy surrounding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a land of tundra, grizzlies, and rivers that flow due north. Last fall, a team of rafters set out to explore it. By Shane Patrick

A hush consumed the raft. Fog swallowed half-finished

laughter. As we passed by and observed the pile of smooth rocks holding a cross made of driftwood on the bank, nobody spoke. It was a silent sentinel of this wild place.

The wind seemed to stop and the rain drizzled straight down from the low-lying clouds. This is where it happened, where that couple was killed by a grizzly last summer. Everybody mentioned it when we told them we were going to raft the Hulahula River in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The mauling was the first topic we talked about when we landed for lunch.

We chose the Hulahula because we wanted to float from the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean and explore the landscape concealed behind this political controversy. ANWR is among the most remote and unharmed lands left on the planet. The rivers that run through it offer enough whitewater to keep the skilled paddler interested without overwhelming the novice. The memorial, however, is a sobering reminder of the risk associated with exploring such an isolated area.

Getting There: Coldfoot, Alaska, lay in a broad valley on the Middle Fork of the Koyokuk River. Its central location on the southern side of the Brooks Range makes it the ideal jumping-off spot for trips above the Arctic Circle.

We arrived there after a seven-hour, kidney-shaking drive north from Fairbanks and piled out of the van, happy to stretch. Clouds had moved into the area, which would prevent us from flying out the same day. Fortunately, sunshine woke us the next morning, and the group prepared breakfast wrangled, weighed, and rearranged tents, sleeping bags and a gun on the plane.

This took time. But it was necessary.

We were headed to some of the wildest land in North America. To get there, we’d be flying over some of the wildest land in the world.

Our pilot, Dirk, throttled up the 1956 DeHavilland Beaver and rolled down the runway. The plane left the boreal forest and its skinny spruce trees behind as it climbed over the Brooks Range. Because of the harsh climate, trees can only survive on the south side of the northernmost mountain range on the continent. The mountains are geologically young; and, as a result, their features are sharp, their faces steep, their ridges knifelike. The slopes and glaciers feed vast drainages that are no less spectacular. One could spend a lifetime here and never repeat a river.

The Hulahula flows from the Romanzof Mountains north to the Arctic Ocean. Fall comes in August on “The Slope,” as Alaskans refer to the lands north of the Brooks Range. The snowfields that feed the rivers are long gone. We are left with only glacial melt and the fickle fall rains to push us along. The low water level will be a gamble. Dragging boats with better weather later in the year, we agreed, is much better than high water and mosquitoes earlier in the year.

We landed six miles from the headwaters at Grassar’s airstrip, near the mountain valleys where Dall sheep roamed with one last day of immunity from the hunters. Many of those hunters were buzzing through the sky in single-engine Supercubs, searching for the best spot to prey.

Jen, Michael, Brooke, and I hiked up a valley, zigzagging between the riverbed and the rolling tundra toward the headwaters. The river looked narrow and braided with stiff penalties for choosing the wrong channel. Boat-dragging, we decided, was in our near future.

We found wolf and bear tracks along the river. They weaved through weather-stunted willows, the closest thing to trees in this harsh landscape. We kept up a steady banter rather than yelling, “Hey bear!” over and over where the willows were thickest.

Entire hillsides were rich and vivid with blood-red bearberry leaves that signaled fall’s arrival. The tundra thinned, giving way to lichen-covered rocks and scree.

The Importance of Packing: As we prepared to launch the next morning, some of the hunters came by to see how we could get two tarps, six ice axes, with crampons to match, five tents, 11 people, a dozen five-gallon pails, and a mountain of dry bags into three rafts. Lee and I shared the lead boat with Jen, who stood in the raft, searching for the best routes. The current was slow enough that we could take our time to study the rocks, riffles, and glacial silt, then paddle hard to stay in the deep water.

We found a beautiful camp full of bear signs, where thick willows lined the river, and numerous little gullies flowed from the tundra above. Huge piles of dirt scarred the hillside where grizzlies had used the mass of muscles in their humps to tear through tunnels looking for Arctic ground squirrels. Hunger, fatigue, and safety in numbers helped us choose a safe place to rest after our first day of continuous Class II-III rapids.

Top of the Food Chain: Arctic grizzlies are known to be particularly ferocious because they need to protect a large area to find enough food to sustain them. We started our trip in grizzly territory and it would end where the polar bear is top of the food chain. Each member of our group carried a can of bear spray. We traveled in groups of at least four when hiking or visiting a restroom with a world-class view. Much to the hunters’ relief, we also carried a lever-action .45-70 caliber rifle as a last resort.

We floated to the top of a canyon that held the most intense whitewater the trip would offer and enjoyed a two-day layover. Some of us hiked, did laundry, and took sun showers while the rest of the group took the mountaineering gear to the base of Mount Michelson.

We stayed up late the next night, our two groups glad to be one again. We laughed when our four mountaineers pantomimed their summit attempt—four people crammed into a two-person tent, waking at 3 a.m. for a granola bar, roping up in a steady, Alaskan downpour. Apparently the guidebook’s “easy snowfield final approach to the summit” had turned into a near-vertical headwall of ice towering over the weary crew. We countered with our story of watching a sow grizzly defend her cubs against a boar on the ridge across from camp.

We were sad to leave the raw power of the mountainous landscape, but seeing the Arctic plains in the distance was exciting. Our focus returned to what awaited downriver—pool-drop Class III-IV rapids, the inherent dangers of swimming, and the added risks of near-freezing temperatures with the closest medical facility more than 300 miles away.

We eddied out just past a screaming left-hand turn that was pushing all the water at a pillar of jade-green stone and admired the gyrfalcon nest on top of it. Fall colors, brightened by their contrast to the gray skies, welcomed us. The evening sun captured a lone caribou in a silouette.

Several drainages poured into the river, which added speed on the flats, fun wave trains at confluences, and a little wiggle room to dance around the rocks. The headwinds really started kicking mid-morning, forcing us to roll up our pack rafts and add our horsepower to moving the 14-foot “Rainbow Pig” down the river.

A Memorial: Something made us look back to study a small eddy and a gravel beach; a spot like hundreds we had passed, except for one crude detail: A small cross, constructed with driftwood and twine, poking from a pile of rocks.

The cross memorialized three lives—Rich Huffman, his wife Kathy, and the bear who was shot while defending their bodies a few days later. The Huffmans, experienced backcountry enthusiasts from Anchorage, were celebrating their 16th wedding anniversary in June 2005 by taking an inflatable-kayak trip down the Hulahula. Early on June 23, a grizzly attacked them in their tent.

With the image of the cross still emblazoned in our minds, we saw a grizzly when we landed to scout camp for the evening. The bruin moved off at a good clip when it saw all of us. After 24 brutal miles of battling cold sleet and headwinds, our fingers fumbled while we stacked buckets to create a wind wall in order to boil water.

Bottles filled with hot water wrapped our toes in warmth. Three inches of snow fell during the cold night, which sent us scampering to refill our water bottles and stuff them in our jackets and down our pants, where we kept them all day. In the distance, we could also see a blue mirage that we decided must be the pack ice.

Pack Ice Means What Again?: Pack ice meant polar bears, which spend their summers on the sea ice. Pregnant females den on land and have been known to travel farther inland than our put-in. Males often hunt on land in the fall and winter before riding the sea ice out in the spring. The hunters back at Grassar’s strip had already warned us of polar bears roaming the airstrip in the village of Kaktovik, just eight miles along the coast from our take-out.

We decided to set up a 24-hour polar-bear watch on the eve of our departure. Researchers don’t agree on what exactly will happen when polar bears and humans interact in the wild. What they do agree on is this: Polar bears are curious and predatory.

As such, we wanted as much warning as possible so we could gather our whole group in hopes that sheer numbers would be enough to deter the bear.

John established a schedule by playing “spin the bottle” with the rum. We formulated a response plan and tried to memorize the driftwood stumps. Then we went to our tents, eager for the warmth of our bags and as much sleep as possible before our respective shifts.

Our hour-and-a-half shift passed quickly. Lemmings were active through the night, and owls hunted them constantly, often within yards of us. We watched while sitting still on our little knob above the tents and took turns straining our eyes, looking for movement, knowing full well that while we were here, we weren’t at the top of the pyramid. The day was already brightening when we passed the rifle and the binoculars to John and Jules just after 3 a.m.

Jealous of Those Who Stayed Behind: Thick fog down to the deck meant that the first planeload of us wouldn’t be flying out until late that afternoon. In the first minutes of the flight, we spotted five grizzlies working the coastline, unaware of the uninvited visitors above. Blueish-white pack ice shimmered in the sun.

The plane banked south and shifted our views toward the Arctic plains and their ever-changing blend of yellows, greens, and reds. We stared out the windows all the way to Coldfoot, jealous of those who stayed behind.

The weather worsened, and Dirk had to wait three days to get the rest of our party.

While we became experts on the Coldfoot truck-stop culture, the others continued to immerse themselves in a land that erases time; a place where a glance at a driftwood cross can slice through your psyche.

They had three more days to let the vastness seep into their souls, to bond them to it and all wild places.