River Crossing - Utokok River
Utokok River, AK
June 19, 2006
Crossing rivers in June is not the ideal means of travelling through the Arctic. Snowmelt causes high water volumes and cold water. Cool temperatures and high winds further contribute to the risk of hypothermia.
But river crossings are necessary in order to make reasonable progress.
"Rules" of river crossings in such a remote area may not always reflect best practices. We keep our packs strapped to our bodies to improve stability, we use no aid lines, we do not cross in a line parallel to the current lest a fall by the upstream crosser takes out the other two like an errant bowling ball.
Instead, we rely on scouting crossings that are as safe as possible, and on our experience and familiarity with reading rivers and negotiating their currents.
We do not fight the currents, but let them take our steps where they may. Hip-deep or deeper crossings, like this one of the Utotok, are cold and dangerous.
For all of our deep crossings, we dress in all of our layers during the crossing to keep warm (think: wetsuit effect) and keep walking when we get to the other side to warm up and dry out.
On this crossing, we did not have the luxury of low morning river levels or "walking dry", since the airstrip for Ryan's pickup was located on the other side of the river, and we needed to camp at the airstrip. Thus, we were crossing in the worst possible conditions: high water, cold temperatures, and no opportunity for activity after crossing.
After the crossing, we changed into dry insulating clothing, built a warm fire, and ate hot food to warm up.
Roman said, when packing his camera up for the crossing, that "I'm just going to check it out."
We knew better.
Translation: "I'm crossing here. Hopefully it will go!"
This crossing was particularly deep. Roman (shown in photo) will be up to his chest and bouncing along the bottom for most of the rest of this crossing. Ryan is four inches shorter...needless to say, Jason and Ryan negotiated a slightly shallower, but equally swift, and cold, crossing, a few hundred yards downstream, and Ryan still got to enjoy the feeling of tap dancing downstream in chest deep water.
