Missoula River Runner Dodges Grizzlies and Glaciers

When she started working as a river guide on the Clark Fork River, 17-year-old Mandela van Eden probably never realized shooting the Alberton Gorge would be the least of her worries on the water.

Nowadays, she's survived multiple runs on the dangerous and remote Alsek River starting high in the mountains of Northwestern Canada and running a jagged, and constantly changing, course to the Gulf of Alaska.

And this week she'll be giving a first-hand account of the adventures, and how the Alsek is the perfect point of what's happening in a changing climate.

Get our free mobile app

"It's not clamping"

“We start our expeditions in the Yukon Territory. We end them in Dry Bay on the Gulf of Alaska, 160 miles of glacier white water," Mandela recalls. "By the time we hit the Gulf of Alaska, the river flows well over 100,000 CFS (cubic feet per second)."

And it gets ever more gnarly

"Since all the water is fed by the ice field we get a temperature spike, the river could come up three to four to 500,000 CFS overnight. So it's true expedition rafting."

Different ways to die

"It is an expedition where no one's necessarily behind you," Mandela relates. "You have the highest density of grizzly bears in North America, and it is also the most protected river in the world. And it's the largest protected biosphere in the world."

Flowing through the only non-polar ice cap, their river is different every time, and there's no way to use charts, prior knowledge, or even scouting very far ahead.

“You nailed it," Mandela tells me. "You never know. We navigate high-volume-rated rivers that dump into lakes that are formed by glaciers. These glaciers pour into the lakes and icebergs calve off. And the wind can blow those icebergs to the top of the lake, which can actually block your entrance to the lake. So there's a lot of opportunity to die up there, to be completely honest with you.” 

What about the famous portage at "Turnback Canyon"?

 "Understand is that there is what's called a mandatory helicopter portage. So we have to go. around a rapid. Or actually a canyon."  

Turnback Canyon was first run in 1971 and declared "impassable". But that hasn't stopped a handful of kayakers from making it through during low water. Mandela and the other guides say it isn't worth the risk for guests.

 "Basically all this river, all this flow gets constricted into a tight gorge. One side of the river is some of the tallest coastal mountains in the world, and the other side is what's called the Tweedsmuir Glacier," Mandela explains. "So it's 7 kilometers long of Class 6 whitewater."

That's the highest on the scale.

"It's just one massive rapid after another, and mostly it's actually boils and surges, so all this water's constricted and you know, you could end up underwater for quite a long time.”

Beauty and an Unfolding Story

The Alsek has already changed course because of the melting glaciers, with more changes to come. Mandela says that's the environmental part of the story.

Mandela will be relating her trips on the Alsek during this month's "Cartography Comes Alive" at Xplorer Maps, 1245 S. 3rd Street West, Wednesday evening from 6:30 to 7:45 pm.

The presentation is free and open to all ages, but seating is very limited. So it's best to stop by the Xplorer Maps store in advance for a free ticket.

RELATED: Darby Man Survives Face-to-Face with a Polar Bear