Almost a year before this trip, somebody from this crew sent me a message on Instagram.
Which is kinda how a surprising amount of my life works now. haha
We talked here and there, eventually started talking about them coming up to Alaska, and then suddenly I was waking up at Skilak Lake with a group of people I barely knew before the trip who somehow already felt like friends.
The original plan was Crow Pass.
I was gonna show them around, do some hiking, teach them some packrafting stuff and make a pretty proper Alaska adventure out of it.
Then it rained.
A lot.
Crow Pass was very much not the move anymore.
So... pivot.
We went down to the Kenai Peninsula instead and basically started making the trip up as we went. Honestly, very glad we did.
We took a boat out to a public use cabin and paddled around waterfalls out toward the ocean with sea lions and sea otters swimming around us. We packrafted the Kenai River with salmon below us, camped at Skilak Lake and ended the trip with some whitewater on Six Mile Creek.
There were bears and moose mixed in there too because... Alaska.
The weather kept changing the plan and nobody really cared, which might be one of my favorite things to find in people I travel with.
Some folks get really attached to the itinerary. These guys were basically just, okay this isn’t happening... what are we doing instead?
That attitude makes Alaska a lot easier.
You can plan the hell out of a trip here and the weather will still occasionally tell you to fuck off.
I also just really love getting to show people this place. I’ve lived around landscapes like this long enough that sometimes watching somebody else see them for the first time is what makes me look at them again.
And I think that’s a big reason I keep teaching and sharing way too much of my life online.
Sometimes somebody sends you a DM.
Then a year later you’re standing next to a river together in Alaska wondering how the hell that happened.
First step? Just reach out. :)