Kantishna... OH, Kantishna.

Ahhh, Kantishna….where to begin?

This sweet little valley is tucked below a line of hills just to the northeast of Denali and the Alaska Range, so though you can’t see the peaks from where we stayed, a short, exhilarating hike (or do I mean exhausting?  Remember Jim’s comment about the lack of switchbacks in this realm?) gets you high enough to see the whole lineup in all their glory. The Kantishna River is fed by Wonder Lake and springs coming down from the mountains so it runs clear, not milky like the many glacially fed rivers in the area. Tons of wildlife, in fact we watched a mama moose and her yearlings feed along the river for quite a while one morning. There is also a VERY active beaver pond, footage of which we’ll try to post.  It is late autumn here and the hills are covered in color, much of which turns out to be blueberries and cranberries.  SO yummy and seemingly endlessJ    

Upon our arrival at Kantishna, we first met Matt, a very welcoming and wonderful man, who seems to keep everything moving in the right direction for the Kantishna Air Taxi (KAT) and their charming Skyline Lodge, perched California-style on a very steep hillside above the river.  He greeted us warmly, showed us the way to our camping spot on the little dirt road leading back to his cabin and invited us to make ourselves at home.  As Matt was heading back to the lodge to finish out his day he says “By the way, we’re having a party here tonight to honor two of the locals who have made this place possible.”  When we asked if there was anything we could do to help, it turned out there was, so the four of us got busy and by the time he made it back we were pleased to surprise him with a stack of firewood, Jim’s solar Christmas lights strung around and a couple plates of hors d’orves ready for the guests.  It was really a treat for us to be able to use our well honed “party on wheels” skills to contribute to the event.  And what a fun party it was!  This is a small, tight knit community of maybe 30 people, living far from any one else in a very amazing and special place.  We felt honored to be there to begin with, then to have the opportunity to get to know everyone in such a relaxed, celebratory fashion was just incredible.  Amazing places draw amazing people.

Greg, who owns KAT and the lodge, has been flying around this area for 14 years.  Through luck (and being a genuinely good person) he was able to buy enough land from one of the original homesteading families to build a modest, really beautiful lodge (6 guest rooms) which also houses the office for the air taxi.  They fly folks all over the place (not just sightseeing) and will get your sled dogs and materials where you need them, too.  His girlfriend, Elise, has been a wilderness guide in Alaska for about the same number of years and was an incredible source of information about regional geology, history and wildlife.  The guests of honor, Mike and Carol (originally from Broomfield, Colorado)  first moved out here in the 70s and lived in a cabin with their five kids, hauling water from the river, trying to grow food and mining the property for gold, at which they were apparently fairly successful. (Kanitishna was originally established as a mining camp in 1900 or so with a population of almost 3000 people at it’s height.)  Then there’s Aine, Connie and Jered the bush pilots for KAT and Jeff and Kristy who cook delicious meals for the staff and guests.  All of them amazing people.  Oh yeah, and Matt, in addition to being an extraordinarily kind and magical person, is also a truly skilled artist whose work will be gracing our home, once we get one again.

So the party is great, so great in fact that Jim is nursing a pretty significant hang over Monday morning and Susan is only slightly less wounded.  But then comes the best news we could imagine: JC and Tim, who both need to be out by today for work, have managed to arrange flights out with one of the pilots. Matt, because he is who he is, requested a three day pass for Thumper (rather than the one day we had thought we would have) and has extended the invitation for us to stay until it runs out.  Unbelievable! We are in a place so few people even get to see and now we get to stay!  Somehow that eases the headaches (along with a couple Tylenol and an Emergen-C) and we manage to hike up the back hill to a wonderful spot where the mountains can be seen and the blueberries are especially sweet.  

Turns out to be a great place to nap in the sunshine as well.   J   Elise came through as she was out “walking off her hangover” on a ten-mile hike on the ridgeline of the mountains in her back yard.  And when we finally made it back to the lodge, we ran into Greg who looked at us, made the sign of the cross with his fingers and said “Oh No!  It’s the whiskey people!”  Guess we were not the only ones wounded last night.

Meanwhile, back at KAT, Matt is working hard and has a couple of folks that want to do a flight-seeing trip that evening, but not enough to fill up the plane.  He runs down the hill to our camp and says “I have room for 2!”  Well, we had been thinking about doing some sort of flight somewhere, but not really knowing how that would play out (or if it was really in the budget). It does seem like a no brainer, doesn’t it?  So we get to fly in a 6-seater plane for an hour, in a mostly clear blue sky, around the highest mountain on our continent-20,240 feet above sea level and with the valley floor below checking in around 3000’ that’s a lot of mountain to see. 

Then there are the glaciers and the cornices and the snow covered peaks of 14,000++ heading off in either direction from ‘The Great One’ and the oh-so-lovely clouds and the rivers shining far below.  At one point Aine (who I am so happy to say is a woman pilot) took us up the valley of one glacier and did a long sweeping turn in the bowl of the mountains surrounding it.  I was just completely blown away .  Even sitting here now thinking about what we saw up there brings tears to my eyes (just like it did then).  I hope Jim’s pictures can relay a fraction of this experience… But really, I wish you all could be there and see it for yourself.

The next day Matt lent us his truck and we headed down the road to Wonder Lake-site of many of the famous pictures with Denali reflected on the water.  We wandered around there for a good while, had a great picnic lunch and headed back to check out the previously mentioned beaver pond.  Those guys are serious workers!  And really could care so not-at-all about humans.  We watched them for a long time and when a busload of camera toting folks came along, the beavers slowed down for a minute, one did a tail slap on the water (a sound that is kind of startling) and back to work they went.  So cool to get this glimpse of life as a beaver when usually they are so shy you don’t get to see them at all!

We did go back to Wonder Lake that evening for photographs and to revel again in the beauty of these mountains against a clear blue sky.  Oh, we are so Blessed!!  It was going to be hard to leave in the morning, it always is, but made harder this time by saying goodbye to our new friends.  And just to make sure we didn’t forget them (or was it to get even for all the Pendleton induced hangovers on Monday?), there was a bit of a party that night involving a ping pong tournament and several bottles of bourbon.  Fortunately, we made it back to Thumper mostly unscathed ;-)