Caribou Creek Packraft

Caribou Creek has been on the radar for quite some time as a fun class III+ run with a few hiking options. In the summer of 2023, Luke and I had thrown out floating it a few times, but the time I had available never lined up with a water level that made sense. Fast forward a year, and I get a text from Luke about floating it the next day with his buddy, Hank. A quick check of the water levels revealed it should be running relatively low based on a reading of 1.7ft on the Matanuska's rivers gauge. Things were looking up!

We wanted to give ourselves plenty of time for the float so we got up at the crack of mid-morning and met in Palmer around noon to go over some last details and share GPS coordinates. Given the rolling start we were off to, we opted for the shorter route which is about 3.5 miles hiking in and 5.5 floating out. After a beautiful drive up the Matanuska valley we had our bags packed and began our hike upriver.

There was an interesting atmosphere on the trail that day as snippets of Creed, Pink Pony Club, and Stained's "Its Been a While" were sung throughout and the miles were marked off with a grating harmony of "its been a mile!". The trail is an ATV trail, and the miles went by easily. Some of us were going through a more personal battle walking off the previous night's festivities but by the time we were dropping down into the canyon, everyone was feeling quite on top of things and ready to do some paddling.

The descent off the ATV trail and down to the creek is quite steep with an established trail. Our paddling forefathers were rad enough to put in a hand line that extends down just about the entire thing which was really helpful. Down at the water, it was time to get geared up and inflate our boats.

Me and Luke have paddled a lot together and felt comfortable with the difficulty of Caribou. Hank is newer to boating and this Creek was going to push his grade. We had all discussed this beforehand and me and Luke felt confident enough we could stay in our boats to prevent anything too disastrous from happening and Hank was excited to go out and challenge himself. The part that made me nervous was the first mile of our float.

In a nutshell, we would put in and have about .75 miles of class 3 rapids and some tight bends in the river to navigate before a mandatory portage around a 20 ft waterfall before hopping back in for another couple miles of class 3s before mellower water to the car. We all agreed that a swim over the waterfall would be a big bummer indeed, and to really try not to do that. With that agreed upon, we began downriver with a more serious tone than the hike in.

A couple of bends down the river took us through some extremely fun whitewater, and Hank took a dunk but was able to quickly get back in his boat. We briefly regrouped and then continued on our merry way. With no more mishaps, we got out in the right spot and began a short but steep portage around the waterfall. Luke went up first but quickly discovered the footing was packed gravel that was hard to get good footing in. Needing to use hands and feet to clamber over, we broke out a throw rope to raise and lower boats over the ridge.

On the other side, once back to the water, we took a second to admire the steep canyon walls towering above us and the waterfall we had just avoided. Luke broke out the drone but the weather gods must have seen him do it because it started a torrential downpour that immediately turned to hail. He still got some cool footage of the falls though, and the wild mixture of sunlight coming through the canyon and backlighting the hail made for a cool moment in a beautiful, hard-to-reach spot.

With the waterfall behind us, we were back in motion! Continuing downriver brought us more of the fast, steep creek we were having such a blast on. Before too long we hit a large river-wide pool with a giant mud deposit on river right. A massive mudslide had ripped out a section of the canyon wall and constricted the river down to a narrow channel about a boat length wide. This appeared to be quite recent and given the heavy rain we were actively experiencing, standing around there felt like asking for trouble. We got out for a quick scout, and boy, oh boy, was that mud sticky and bottomless.

The mudslide constricting the river down.

Luke and myself decided to run it and Hank opted to battle it out with the mud and portage around. The constriction ended up being quite fun and had a sort of rodeo bull water slide feel to it. At the base, we regrouped and continued through another couple of miles of challenging white water similar to the upper section before it mellowed out to some splashy twos. With the meat of the creek behind us we loosened our thigh straps and kicked back to enjoy the ride to the car, and then the ride to beers in Palmer. All in all, it was an extremely fun day, and Hank absolutely rose to the occasion and crushed his hardest water to date! Not a bad way to spend Labor Day, and another tick for a new creek explored!