Copper River 2010

June 4-11.
The previous week we heard a group of rafters had to hack their way through the ice on miles lake... we were going regardless.

Lonnie and Kevin push through the wind towards spirit mountain -day 1

The first night we camped in a new place on a silt bar, river left.  It was out of the wind and a gorgeous little spot.  We were all happy to be there.

Camp 2 we made it to Dewy creek by lunch time.  We had a nice hike and came back to a fairly wind free dinner.  In this pic our new 15' rafts, double tied, against the currents.

Next day we shot through the Tasuna delta faster and with easier than ever before.  We set up for lunch on a snowy bench, river right, just below the Tasuna and midway through the Bremner Dune.

Lonnie scopes out our lunch spot...hmm. Lots of snow!

Camp 3 was just downstream, tucked into the alder, away from the winds.

Next day we weaved our way down to the Werneke river camp which had great vies of Mt. Williams.

Just before dinner we got to watch a black bear romp through the slough and up a stream drainage close to camp.  Pretty awesome!

Camp 4 at Werneke we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

After the sun went down, I headed back to the tent for a read before my head hit the pillow hard.

Next morning we woke to major rain but the day improved.  We all had a great day relaxing on our werneke layover.

Just before dinner we had two groups float by.  Our first people spotting of the trip.

Night 5 was beautiful again and Keevin treated us to some capfire tunes.

Day 5 was glacier day.  We also, spotted a brown bear with two cubs near Abercrombie Rapid.

In this pic Lonnie is teaching the clients about glaciers with Miles glacier in the background.

While at lunch at Miles Glacier had the biggest calving I've ever seen. We ran to our boats and got on them just in time as a pretty good breaking wave tossed our boats all over the place and up onto shore.  Luckily we got them back into the water using the surging waves to help.

Next we floated past Childs Glacier.  You can barely make out Kevin's boat infront of the massive front of Childs.

Camp 6 was just below Childs.  We had good weather and a nice dinner as we watched icebergs float on by.

The next day we floated through the delta to our take out at 38 mile. We had to line our rafts upstream for a bout 2 hours to get to the take out spot.  The low water created some uncrossable currents for us to contend with.

Eventually we made it back to Cordova, a little later than expected, and got on the ferry bound for Valdez.

We arrived in Valdez about 2:30AM and went straight to the boathouse to get some much needed zzzs.