Wasilla/Willow/Eagle River, Alaska

Simyra and I set off Sunday for a road trip to Wasilla. After driving through snow and rain we reached the newly budding town of Wasilla five and a half hours later. Luckily we had a place to stay, close friends of Clint's. They offered us wonderful hospitality throughout our stay.
Monday morning we met with our packrafting instructor Jim. After watching part of a safety video we donned our dry suits and life jackets and headed to the lake. A packraft is a single person mini raft (becoming very popular in AK). Simyra and I had already packrafted before (in the glacial lake last fall) but Jim taught us different paddles and strokes. Then we had to practice capsizing. Thank goodness we had fleece layers under the dry suits. Capsizing was fun and we learned how to get back in the boat.

Then after lunch we drove to Willow Creek where we launched our packrafts in the Class I river. We focused on sweep paddling into eddies and controlling the packraft. Later that night we went to the Palmer High School to practice rolls in a whitewater kayak. I was able to roll with a little help but couldn't quite grasp how to roll with the paddle. More to learn!

Willow Creek

Hiking down into Willow Creek

Tuesday we practiced rescues: self rescues and with throw ropes. We each tried throwing the ropes as the other floated down the river. We felt more confident after learning the rescue skills. Then we drove further up Willow Creek to the red gate section in the canyon. We launched into Class II waters. It was a little scary because it was more whitewater than we had experienced in the packrafts. We paddled successfully and were rewarded with pheasant for dinner!


Snow banked Upper Willow

Wednesday we started at Mirror Lake for the whitewater kayak class. We learned how to paddle in the kayak (different feel than in the packraft) without tipping over. Then we headed to Eagle River to do some whitewater kayaking. I was a little apprehensive because I didn't know if I could handle flipping over in the whitewater and rolling back over. Everything went smoothly and I started handling the kayak as an extension of myself and touched on the kayak "fu" as our instructor called it. Then we hit a class III rapid but luckily the water was pretty low so it wasn't too bad. I followed Jim and saw him flip and get pinned but he eventually rolled out. On the spur of the moment I decided to not follow his route and go the other way (we had previously gotten out to scout which way to go) and had no problems. Yay! Success. The only time I flipped was when I was practicing kayak surfing. After an event-filled packrafting and whitewater kayak course we drove back to Homer the same night. [We saw a total of 31 moose on our trip!]