High Tide

Skyler Stark-Ragsdale - Written in Feb., 2020. Edited in Feb., 2023

This story first appeared in the May, 2023 edition of the Colorado College Outdoor Journal.

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"Paddle hard!" 

I turned. The black and yellow bow of a pack raft crested a wave, before plunging into the trough of the next. Sunlight shrouded the wiry man in the raft seat. His hands, white against the murky water, gripped hard on a fiber-glass paddle. The whitewater shifted around the man, springing into his eye line as he flew downriver.

I ripped my gaze from the cascading rapid, from the human at the will of The Kuuvak (Kobuk), and stabilized my pack raft in the eddy below the drop. I had paddled downstream first, leading the rest of the group — Charlie Good, ‘21, Nick Penzel, ‘21, Charlie Robinson, ‘21, and Liam Reynolds, ‘21, each paddling their own whitewater crafts — down what I, in my big-headedness, thought was a tame wave train. Both Nick and I boasted decent whitewater experience, having collectively run a number of class III-V whitewater sections around the American West. The Kuuvak, however, was not meant to be challenging. We’d done our research before embarking on our remote, 24-day expedition in the Gwazhał Mountains (Brooks Range) of Alaska.

In fact, we researched the region extensively, as required by the guidelines of the Ritt Kellogg Grant. The Ritt Grant provides funding for CC students to research, plan, and propose a self-supported, backcountry expedition of at least 12 days. We were lucky to receive funding from the Kellogg committee more than four months earlier. 

The Kuuvak River descends from the southern peaks of the Gwazhał. It weaves its way 280 miles west in a complex set of braids, before it fans into a delta and meets the Hothem Inlet of the Bering Strait. Its Inupiaq name means “the big river”, which is an apt description of the brown giant, as it flows at an average of 10,000 cubic feet per second and floods the river-side village of Laugviik every spring. 

According to trip reports, there were two notable rapids amidst the 122 mile stretch we researched, each only class II-III, an intermediate run at most. Yes, whitewater classifications are subject to change depending on water level and weather conditions. Yes, at this point in our back country excursion, the weather was — to say the least, torrential — and the water, rising. Still, from what I read online, from what I saw at the beginning of what turned out to be a half-mile-long stint of whitewater, everything seemed manageable. 

I turned back to Liam as he faced the brunt of an enormous whitecap. His paddle pierced the front of the wave, propelling deep into the opaque river in a vain attempt to leverage his boat through the swirling rapid. He stopped, his boat stalled by the force of the wave, teetering on top of the fluid pyramid in indecision. The current continued beneath him down the mossy river gorge, threatening to leave him balanced there, immobile in the center of the icy stream, before catching the upriver side of his pack raft and flipping the rubber vessel, tossing Liam and the two tents in his drybag into the unforgiving grasp of the Kuuvak. 

We’d been in the wilderness for almost two weeks, traveling through the most remote place I’d ever been. Until this moment, the idea of an emergency — or the catastrophic measures we would need to take if someone were hurt — hadn’t dawned on me. We’d started our trip in Bettles, a town just South of the Gwazhał Range. While looking down at the gravel airstrip our bush plane departed, at the lonely bar and the desolate airplane hanger that comprised that town of 23 people, I’d felt the doubts begin to itch at the back of my cerebellum. Did we have any idea where we were going, what we were doing?

There we were: five twenty and twenty-one year olds, flying into the heart of an untamed mountain range, intentionally submitting ourselves to the harsh reality of the wild. The truth of this realization didn’t set in until we stood on the pebble-littered shore of Big Fish (Walker) Lake just hours later, a light drizzle rupturing the surface of the stormy waters in front of us, our pilots returning to two presumably warm homes, the likes of which we would not see for nearly a month. The tales of the two bush planes disappeared into the fog.    

After parting ways with our pilots that first day on the lake, we bushwhacked 25-grueling miles up to a range of jagged, granite giants: the Arrigetch. They flirted with the heavens like a set of teeth prepared to snap on any unsuspecting plane buzzing overhead. We’d planned part of this expedition around climbing. Charlie Robinson and Nick were set on attempting a climb up Xanadu — one of the tallest rock behemoths in the range. After they gave it a solid 30 hour effort, they returned to the base camp where Charlie Good, Liam and I remained. Ten days after our initial bushwack towards the peaks, we set our blister-ensued feet back on the shores of Big Fish Lake, returning the way we left.

We expected our time on The Kuuvak to be the easy part of the trip. Done with the hiking, we could float our way back to civilization. While I watched our food and my two friends drift towards the next steep drop of the flooded rapid three days later, it was safe to say the trip hadn’t yet proven successful.

“Swim right!” I shouted, or maybe Nick shouted. It was hard to tell. Liam was barely visible between the troughs of whitewater. Charlie Robinson bobbed behind him, followed by his unoccupied ducky and the entirety of our now-unsupervised food. In less than a second, the Kuuvak had yanked our meticulous trip plan from under our feet.

I peeled out of the eddy downriver after our cargo. Nick paddled hard somewhere to my right, bearing down on the churning drop ahead. Unscathed by the previous waves, Charlie Good followed suit. Liam and Charlie Robinson were swept downstream, the tow of the river dragging them towards the horizon line of the next rapid, its unyielding tide indifferent to the gnats in its web. They pulled hard at the water and made it to shore just before the river fell from sight. The rest of the group, myself included, tumbled through the next gauntlet of explosive whitewater, its hackles raised and mane reared, baring its fangs at the unfortunate individuals in its midst.

I stood on the bank of the river 30 minutes later, cold, wet, frustrated, relieved. I unhinged my hypothermic grip from my paddle. The tightly-wound ball in my stomach slowly unraveled. The billowing swells upstream continued to roar.

We avoided catastrophe — but narrowly. The Kuuvak swallowed us, paddles, helmets and all, but by some stupid luck we remained unharmed, intact, with our gear at our sides. The tents were not lost. Nor was the food. There would be no emergency outreach call on the satellite phone. There would be no helicopter rescue. There would be no lengthy explanation to the Ritt Kellogg committee of what went wrong. There would be no hospital visits, no phone calls to parents or relatives.

I breathed in. I breathed out. 

The National Park known as Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve sits on Inupiat, Dënéndeh, Gwich’in Nành, Kuuvuan KaNianiq, Koyukon land. 

Kuuvak is an Inupiaq name; Gwazhal an Ashabaskan. Both of these names come from language families, not singular dialects.