This day the group split up and we really did not keep to the
agenda. The Lion's Head hike was to be today, but since most of the
group wanted the full day of ice climbing on the Matanuska Glacier, the
hike which we did not go on was moved to the previous night. For Marina
and myself, Marina brought up that old itinerary had talked about a
rafting trip on Matanuska River and Ophir arranged for us to go on
this. This was a good decision as it was much better than the other
class 3 trip that we did outside Denali NP. The condition of the
equipment was superior, the guides were better, and the pictures were
better and more reasonably priced. The rafting outfit was Nova Alaska River Rafting Adventures.
We thought that cool as our son David was guiding for another Nova
Rafting, this on out of Minturn Colorado. William hung back that
morning in the camp to relax. In the afternoon, Marina, myself and
William took a walk on the glacier, guided by the same outfit that took
the rest of the group on the all day ice climb.
Here is the map showing the raft route, the location of the campsite
and the glacier
The length of the raft trip according to what I drew is about 9.6
miles. The good class 3-4 rapids are from where Caribu Creek joins the
river, around Lions Head to around even with our campsite, then the
river calms down to class 2-3 and we got our pictures taken. I find
Google Earth does a good job of showing what you can expect as it has
fairly high resolution photos. If you wanted to "fly over" this route,
the coordinates are as follows: Start 61 48.001N, 147 40.504W / Finish
61 47.680N 147 52.416W.
Pictures from the rafting
We had one of the passengers "bulldoging" for this part of the river
What a great sequence of pictures. These were much superior to the 2nd
raft trip up in Denali.
All rights to these pictures are reserved.
This page maintained by Don Samuels