The Siskiyou Land Trust’s monthly slideshow series is pleased to present the spectacular landscape of Canada and Alaska in “Facing Ice” on Wednesday evening, January 14. Join us at 7:00pm in the Sisson Museum in Mt. Shasta. This SLT fundraising event has an $8 suggested donation.
In August of 2014, 15 adventurers traveled north for a two week rafting trip down the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers through the Pleistocene like wilderness of the St Elias and Fairweather Ranges. We begin our journey in the Yukon and descend into British Columbia and finish by dropping into Southeast Alaska and Glacier Bay National Park.
Trip leader, Dennis Johnson, and boatman, Steve Bollock, will present a talk and slideshow about the nature of this vast wilderness full of Grizzly Bears and Glaciers. Discover the defining differences between this environment and what we, in the lower 48 states, call “wilderness.” There is good reason the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers are known as class III rivers with class V consequences.
Local adventurers, Debbie Desrochers, Kim Solga, Michael Murray, Sue Maurer, Tom Griggs, Marty Sochet and Carol Jenkins along with Dennis and Steve were joined by six friends to push the edges of their comfort zones at the end of the “Alaskan” boating season. Only one other rafting group was seen during the 140 mile journey. Due to a heavy rain event the river had doubled in volume right before the launch, peaking around 190,000 cfs. Evidence of this flooding was abundant in the Alsek drainage, while the icebergs in Alsek Lake were thick due to a 6.0 earthquake earlier in the summer.
