From the map the Talkeetna appears like so many other others. A minor glacial river, draining a small section of central Alaska, before emptying into the larger Susitna. But it's more than the sum of its parts. It's almost mystical.
In his book Fast & Cold, Dr. Andrew Embick describes a canyon with fourteen miles of continuous whitewater. Local river boater Steve Mahay powered up this canyon in a hot jet boat, but had to retrieve it with a helicopter. He did the same thing through the class VI, Devil's Canyon on the Susitna a few years before. If he said the Talkeetna was too difficult to descend, it's just gotta be a fun spot. You can't let all that water rush to the sea and not ride it.
I had been trying to talk my wet minded friends into a Talkeetna run for a couple of years but had no takers. If only I had remembered the magic words earlier, "it's a great place to hunt." I come from a long line of Alaskan outdoor providers who will gladly part with megabucks for the opportunity to chase Bambi through the woods, but meaningless fun like white water rafting is just meaningless fun. I confess that I've strayed from this most hallowed Alaskan path. Not that I mind hunting, I was just never any good at it. But with my cataraft I find myself aiming for spots almost twenty feet wide. Even I can hit that. Besides, the Talkeetna is a good place to bag a caribou, moose, bear or wolf and even hook a few salmon. This proved to be just the bait I needed to attract a few boating partners.
Hunting season started Aug. 20, and while I would have preferred an earlier and usually drier date, if I had suggested it, my motives would have been suspect. We had each put down a hundred and fifty dollars for the two short rides in a Cessna 185, and now, Steve Parker, Mark Cummings, my father (Dick Strutz) and I, plus a little gear and two small catarafts, are on a nice little airstrip on the banks of the Talkeetna, just below the confluence with Yellowjacket Creek. I didn't think our stuff would all fit in that small plane, but we really had packed pretty light and ended up with a little room left over. I should have brought the rest of the rowing frames, I guess, but a few small spruce trees will easily do for the low stress parts. Dad notes that this is the first time he has flown with Hudson's Air Service since the forties.
A few hours of logging and lashing and we are on the river. And a nice river it is. Swift, little glacial silt, and crystal clear side streams. We quickly pass an old placer mine, and camp after a short drift. We don't want to float through all the prime caribou country today, as we can't hunt until tomorrow. We have only one caribou permit, and want to fill it before the canyon.
It's sunny and warm, and driftwood is plentiful for the campfire. We brought a small stove and rain tarp just in case, but don't need them. The tent site is soft and level, and the stream running up the hill behind us looks like it should have salmon in it. As we can't seem to coax them into biting so we eat spaghetti.
I never sleep well the first night out, and it seems morning will never come. Funny how late 6:00 a.m. seems on a thin camping pad.
As it gets a little lighter we notice a very fresh set of caribou tracks running right through camp. I thought I had been awake enough to hear everything happening, and even imagine a few things that didn't. But that stealthy little 'bou had run by here not six feet from my head, totally unnoticed. This is a good sign for the hunters among us, but there is lots of other sign on this river too. Every time we stop on the river bank we see both brown and black bear tracks. Every time! And often there are caribou, moose and wolf prints as well.
After brushing the frost off our gear, and a breakfast of fresh picked blueberry pancakes; we are on the river again. The only difficult part of this section of the Talkeetna is picking the best channel between the gravel bars. Many of them run dry in anything less than a flood.
After twenty minutes of fast, but uneventful river running, we spot two large bull caribou a hundred yards below us on a gravel bar. We pull out and they stare at us, more curious than nervous. Even after shooting the largest, the other one just stands there watching. This is surely one of the easiest and nicest hunts ever. We skin, gut and bone him next to the creek, and are back on the river in less than an hour from first spotting him.
We decide it would be best not to shoot a moose above the canyon as a long and unknown class IV river might be too much in heavily loaded boats. A small black bear however would be a nice addition, and there certainly seems to be plenty around.
The upper part of the river is billed as class II, but we find it only class I except for a short piece where the river drops faster and creates some waves. This whole section would be better in a canoe as it becomes tedious in our catarafts. Of course we could have brought more caribou permits. We see several more, now that we aren't hunting.
