Rulander chronicles extreme trek for film

Group tackled wild river, remote peaks, glacier crossing on trip

SANDPOINT - The e-mail seemed harmless enough as it popped up in Scott Rulander's inbox. Once opened, however, its contents would spark a three-week saga that swept four intrepid travelers through river gorges, up mountainsides and across glacial terrain in the Yukon and British Columbia before ending with a barefoot hike to the ocean at the Gulf of Alaska.

“Twenty days on the Alsek River,” the cryptic note read. “We're going to do a major portage and, best of all, we're bringing skis. It's going to be awesome. Make it happen.”

Rulander, a Sandpoint videographer and telemark skier, got the e-mail precisely three weeks before the adventure was to begin. As he learned later, others had committed to and subsequently dropped out of the trip. Perhaps it was the packing list that changed their minds: One river raft; two hard-shell kayaks; ice axes; crampons - and skis.

In Rulander's case, it was the diversity of the gear involved that helped set the hook. And as part of his own equipment, he would pack along a video camera, tripod and enough extra batteries to withstand the cold as he captured the undertaking for a short film that has since become a favorite in film festivals across the Western U.S.

“I thought about it for two days and then wrote back, ‘All right, I'm in. What do I need to bring?'” Rulander said.

The trek would be unusual in a number of ways. Originally devised over beers by a few Canadian outdoor enthusiasts, it was dreamed up as a way to combine whitewater rafting with extreme skiing in the course of one trip. Pulling that combination together required finding a spot where weather and geography conspired to create enough spring melt to get a river churning while still staying cold enough to leave the higher elevations wrapped in deep snow.

The search led them to a remote corner of the Northwest where the Yukon meets British Columbia - a place where a wilderness river called the Alsek is hugged by a glacier on one side and uncharted peaks on the other.

The journey would also include something that had never been attempted on the Alsek - an unassisted portage around a section of the river bearing the intimidating moniker “Turnback Canyon.”

“No raft has ever tried to run it,” Rulander said. “The water was running really high and there are about six miles of Class 5 and Class 6 whitewater, so we didn't even think about it.

“The typical group that goes down the Alsek is made up of about five, 18-foot rafts - it's a flotilla,” he added. “They've got coolers and lawn chairs on every raft. And when they get to Turnback Canyon, here comes the helicopter to carry them and all their stuff across for the portage.”

Similarly, most extreme ski outings begin with a helicopter ride to the ridgeline. These adventurers planned to pick out promising snow-capped peaks from their vantage point on the river and then climb and ski their way to the top for the run down.

For all of those reasons, when the four bedraggled young people piled out of their vehicle after a 32-mile drive up the Alaska-Canadian Highway and walked into the ranger station for final weather reports and information about the river level, officials there didn't try to hide their skepticism regarding the prospects for success.

And in these remotes reaches, where the waters were running barely a degree or two above freezing, success was tantamount to survival.

“Several of the rangers didn't want to issue a permit to our group, because they thought we weren't going to make it,” Rulander said.

But, since the actual approval had already been granted for the trip, the rangers just shook their heads, set a date for when they would begin rescue operations should the group not make contact by that time and wished them the best.

“It's your adventure,” one ranger said as the group went on its way.

On June 1, 2006, the travelers marshaled their gear and put into the river near Haines Junction. Joining Rulander were rafter Mike Zobott; snowboarder Andrea Kortello, who provided the original inspiration for the trip; and glaciologist Lance Roth, who showed a special interest in the upcoming portage across the massive Tweedsmuir Glacier.

They paddled slowly at first, passing stands of virgin timber on the left side of the river and the vaulting ice walls of the glacier on the right.

The river, however, grew more narrow and the water moved faster as they closed in on a tumultuous, Class 4 chute that has made the Alsek one of three rivers whose legendary rapids - including those along the Grand Canyon of the Stikine in northern British Columbia and the Devil's Canyon of the Susitna in Alaska - comprise the “triple crown” of big water runs in North America.

“If you don't paddle that stretch, you've missed the main area of whitewater on the Alsek,” Rulander said. “Basically, you have this gigantic river that gets pinched down into sections that are only 15-20 feet wide, so you have a huge amount of water shooting through.”

Paddling the raft along with Zobott, Rulander knew the importance of avoiding an accident. Should one of the kayakers take a “swim” in the frigid river, the team would have to make camp at that point in order build a fire and thaw the victim out immediately.

Overturning the larger craft, meanwhile, had even more serious implications.

“It was a little intense, because all the food, all the stoves and a lot of other gear was there,” said Rulander. “You didn't want to lose the raft. To lose the raft was to lose everything.”

Safely through the glute-gripping first section of rapids, the four stalwarts could concentrate on their next challenge - finding a mountain with snow that had never been carved by board or ski. A 6,000-foot ascent from the river to the top of Mt. Blackadar - named after the kayaker who made a solo run down the Alsek in 1971 - rewarded them with the epitome of untouched powder.

Starting at a snail's pace by bushwhacking through thick stands of snarled alder branches, they made their way to the peak, looking down on the river below before leaning into a pulse-quickening drop that took them the majority of the way back to the shoreline.

“We got to ski about 4,000 feet of vertical coming off of that,” Rulander said. “It was a huge run. And as far as we know, there had never been anyone who skied anything up there before that.”

At the mouth of Turnback Canyon, the group disassembled the raft, separated the gear into several loads and began what Rulander calls “the crux of the adventure” - a portage across the Tweedsmuir Glacier that would take three days and, over the course of numerous carrying sorties, rack up a total of 56 miles of heavy lifting.

Every move forward started out with the “scouting load” that was made up of lighter equipment such as skis, paddles and backpacks. Once a route was determined, the group would return for two more trips to move the heavier items, with Zobott packing the 85-pound raft, another member struggling with its weighty metal frame and the other two each carrying a kayak stuffed with gear.

“Camping at the mid-point of the portage, out there on the glacier, was the high point of the whole trip for me,” Rulander said. “The ice is 200 feet thick and you can hear air pockets releasing in it during the night. Other than that, it's complete silence. It was out of this world - like being on Mars.”

The team stumbled back down to the river carrying the burden of its final portage load and chalking up another first on its Alsek run.

Farther downriver, a long stretch of shallow water temporarily robbed them of buoyancy and they had to drag the raft along to make progress. It was at that moment - while muscling the raft across the nearly exposed river bottom - that one member looked down and saw what must have seemed like Manna from Heaven.

In this instance, it was Beer in a Booty Bag.

Some previous rafting group had obviously lost the well-stocked mesh bag overboard and the cans of brew sat hidden in the icy waters waiting to be found. Rulander's short film shows the group sharing a toast in celebration of both the unexpected discovery and the journey itself.

Having covered 185 miles through Yukon and British Columbia wilderness, the adventurers reached their destination and paddled to shore in Alaska.

“But when you get to the takeout, you're still five miles from the ocean,” Rulander said. “For us, getting all the way to the ocean was the defining moment that would really complete the trip.”

As they approached the Gulf of Alaska, the hikers kicked off their shoes and walked barefoot through the sand. Each of them fell silent, letting the waves pick up the conversation.

“For all of our joking along the way, that ended up being a quiet, introspective moment - a bittersweet moment,” the filmmaker said. “Everyone picked their own rock to sit on and just reflected on what we had done.

“Completing something like this really puts things in perspective,” he continued. “I don't think any of us would want to try it again, but to have done it once - in that way - was definitely the way to do it.”

Rulander's short film - titled “Alsek: The Grand Canyon of the North” and produced locally by Hot Shots Video Productions - chronicles the entire journey. The footage has been featured prominently in the Backcountry Film Festival, sponsored by the Winter Wildlands Alliance, as well as the Sawtooth Film Festival.

The film can be viewed in Sandpoint on the local program “Ski Flakes,” which airs intermittently on weekday evenings and throughout the day on Saturdays on cable Channel 5.