ALASKA: EXPLORING TANGLE LAKES & THE DELTA RIVER

Lately, I’ve been wondering why life seems to move faster the older I get and how I might slow it down. I’ve come to realize, it’s partially due to the predictability of routine and fewer new experiences to help mark the passage of time. My routine can blend and merge my days, weeks, and months into an abyss of sameness. When I’m on a trip or experiencing something new, a day can feel like a week which is one of my favorite feelings. So here’s a tale about a two day river trip that felt like an actual lifetime.

My uncle and I decided a year ago to canoe-pack a river in southcentral Alaska. He said he had been wanting to bon voyage down the Delta River starting at Tangle Lakes and I said I’d go with him the following summer. A year went by in the blink of an eye and a couple weeks before our trip I started researching our route getting increasingly nervous about my lack of canoe experience the more I read. A week before I left for Alaska, I casually checked in with my uncle to see if he was good to navigate the tougher portions of the river including a canoe portage. He said yes, so we were all set to leave in a week. Three days before I arrived in Alaska, our friends with a second canoe that were going with us had to drop out. My uncle and I decided we were still going to go even though it made the trip a bit more dicey without a second boat.

Fast forward to arriving in Alaska, I learned my uncle had a larger three to four person canoe that was heavier than what we could portage. Adding in the unknown waters and lack of a second boat, my uncle said we should call the trip off and head to Homer to halibut fish for a few days on his friend’s ocean boat instead. I had been anxious about this trip for a year and had finally worked up some courage to go on this adventure. I said we should still go but cut our four day trip to two and do the first half which avoided the waters and portage we were worried about. After collecting the last of our supplies, we set out on the five hour drive to Tangle Lakes the next day.

The drive from Palmer to Tangle Lakes is stunning. Located in the Alaska Range, the Tangle Lakes are accessed off the Denali Highway and are connected by the Tangle River which flows north into the Delta River – I thought it’d flow south!

The Delta River is designated as a National Wild and Scenic River. Our original canoe trip plan, with the right gear, was technically a relatively mild three day canoe from Tangle Lakes to the takeout at mile 212 on the Richardson Highway. Given the larger canoe we had and the lack of water experience I had, the few miles of class 3 rapids, the half mile portage and the last 12 miles running glacial waters, doing the whole trip felt a little too risky but I’m very happy with the part we did!

We were welcomed to Tangle Lakes with a hail storm and after it cleared up, we put the canoe in the water. This canoe hadn’t seen water for ten plus years so I was very excited to see she still floated. There is a sign in book at the boat launch that had no entries in it meaning either people decided not to sign in or no one was headed down river on this multi-day adventure.

It was 7pm before we got on the water. The waters were calm after the storm and the weather turned out to be beautiful. We paddled out a couple miles and dropped some lines in to fish for grayling. We canoed, chatted, fished, ate snacks, saw beavers and various birds, and took in the beautiful views all around. It truly felt like we were on untouched lands in the middle of nowhere. We canoed until 11pm before heading back to camp. It was still daylight as it was summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and in Alaska that means almost 24 hours of sunlight.

I got a new iPhone before this trip for the ability to satellite text in case of an emergency. I didn’t know it allowed you to satellite text anyone- I thought it was just search and rescue- until my uncle decided to satellite text me from his tent the next morning asking if I started the coffee. It made me chuckle and realize that it’s increasingly rare to be truly out of range of technology.

After breakfast at camp, we packed up our tents and continued to canoe, explore and fish for more grayling. A couple of hours passed before we headed back to the boat launch to take the canoe out and drive back to Palmer.

I’m unsure why this two day trip felt like a lifetime. Maybe it was all the newness and being ultra present on this remote river. Maybe it was the 24 hours of sunlight that put me in a time warp. Regardless of the reason, I came back feeling like I experienced a whole new beautiful world. I came back realizing that the key to lengthening my days and slowing the perception of time lies in filling life with new experiences, no matter how big or small.

I spent the rest of my time in Alaska doing a solo trip down to Homer which was 11 hours from where we were on the river. I hiked, ate lots of delicious food and made some new friends. Before flying home to Denver, I got to see and hike with two of my favorite Alaskan hiking buddies who I met on a trail when I was living in Alaska for a month in 2021. Jason just beat cancer (as of this week!) for the third time. The way he and Julie live so fully inspires me to add more life to each day we’re lucky to have.

Until the next tale… Happy trails.

-Hannah