Basecamp-ish in the Wulik Peaks, Western Brooks Range

I got a glimpse of the Wulik Peaks five years ago when Sarah and Josh Mumm and I hiked and packrafted from the Ambler River to the coast. We arrived at the Wulik River mid-rainstorm and hid in our tents for several days—moving the tent to higher ground as the river level rose. We never got a great view of the mountains, but what we saw was compelling enough to plan a return trip.

The 23/24 winter was a tough one for us; a hip injury for me, work stress and mystery illness for Sarah. We didn’t know how hard of a trip we could handle, so we planned a “basecamp-ish” visit to the Wuliks. I sent a last-minute invite to Will Koeppen knowing that he was underemployed and planning a trip to Alaska anyway (check out Will’s report from our 2020 trip).

The plan was clever … we’d cache food at the landing zone and hike two multi-day loops with light packs (no packrafting gear) and then packraft down the East Fork of the Kivalina River to the coast. This approach would give us a ton of flexibility in terms of pace, pack weight, and objectives. The “basecamp” part of the strategy meant that we brought some luxuries, but the “ish” part meant that we might end up wanting or needing to carry everything to a different location. The luxuries included non-dehydrated food, a bear fence, crocs, two-way radios (in case someone wanted to go for a solo hike), and my drone.

A big unknown was that we weren’t guaranteed to fly to our preferred air strip. There are two main strips in the Wuliks—the northern option has better hiking but the southern option is more reliable if the weather is bad. We packed our basecamp luxuries in a separate duffle in case we had to land at the southern strip and wanted to send the duffle back with the pilot.

I monitored the snow cover leading up to our departure (with Sentinel EO Browser) and was concerned about the snow at the northern strip. But we arrived in Kotzebue on a not-too-windy day and our pilot was confident that we could land. After flying low through the mountains (and spotting two grizzly bears), we crested the final ridge and got a view of the strip. Eric said, “That’s a lot more snow than I expected.” The strip had likely melted out earlier that week. We hopped between rocks while unloading the plane to keep our shoes dry.

We set up camp and climbed the nearest peak to get a sense of the landscape and snow cover. Unexpectedly, it looked like going north would bring us into less snow—lower elevation hills. I was excited for that option because I’ve always been curious about the quality of the hiking on the slopes north of the Brooks Range. Easy ridges or terrible tussocks? We packed six days of food and buried the rest in a snow bank.

The northern loop was cold, windy, and sometimes a bit wet, but we almost always had animals to watch. Our relaxed pace (“half the miles with half the weight!”) meant that we could stop and watch, compare fossil discoveries, etc. We saw a bear, many groups of 10-20 caribou, the same cluster of muskox three different days, and a ton of birds. I saw my longest view of a wolverine … maybe 30 seconds. The hiking was excellent—some of the best I’ve experienced in Alaska. You could choose between ridge crests—the firmest ground but windy—or lower pods of firm ground connected by necks of grassy tundra.

We made it as far north as Mt. Kelly, which, at 3,152 feet, is the tallest in the area. The weather was perfect and the summit was part of a three-mile ridge so we had a lot of time to appreciate the landscape. We could even see ocean fog over the Chukshi Sea just 35 miles to the north.

Even though we appreciated the relaxed pace and lighter packs, Sarah and I both expressed some nostalgia for covering ground on our A-to-B routes. It was somewhat disappointing to return to the landing strip instead of continuing to new terrain. But the view as we transitioned from the north slope back into the mountains was a treat and the travel just couldn’t be beat.

Our next objective was a loop to the Wulik River. We had spotted major caribou highways along an east-west corridor in Google Earth and sketched a route to walk the trails. We hoped to see more caribou, but we only saw a single animal for the rest of the trip—a lone porcupine.

We followed caribou trails over a low pass and around a steep valley. The highlight was “Will’s ridge,” which he spotted on the topo map and kept us high for 2.5 miles before escalator-ing us to within a mile of our intended camp on the Wulik River.

The Wulik had much more water than the Kivalina. We chose a strategic wading site and crossed to a bench that has been mapped with lithic scatters, archeological artifacts. We poked around on the ridge but didn’t see anything very convincing. There was a higher-than-normal abundance of chert, but none of it was shaped into something we recognized as a tool. And we had seen naturally scalloped chert throughout our hike, so the human influence was unclear, at least to me. Will is more confident that we were seeing tool-making fragments.

The most memorable part of the return trip was being too hot! The sun was intense! I had to make a shade shelter whenever we took breaks and Will wore sun protection arm sleeves. After a week of cold temperatures and no bugs, it was like a switch was flipped and it was instantly too hot and a little buggy.

It was decision time back at the landing zone. I’ve been putting a lot of energy into learning about decision making as relates to risk and incidents (“the human factor”). But having so many options on this trip made me appreciate the challenge of decisions that don’t matter. We had to decide where to go on each loop or side-hike, and for how long, but these decisions really didn’t matter—there was no wrong decision.

One insight is that, when the decision doesn’t matter, it is a great time to let other people decide. But we struggled with this strategy because we were all truly okay with each option and didn’t want to step on others’ toes. The next step is to solicit ‘slightest preferences.’ My slight preferences seem to come down to regret: woudl I feel like I really missed out if we went south instead of north? But this doesn’t feel right either, making decision based on potential regret. I’m going to keep chewing on this.

Our biggest doesn’t-matter decision was which river to float out. Our plan was to float the East Fork of the Kivalina directly from the basecamp. But even at peak snow melt, it was too shallow to paddle. The nearest notable tributary was eight miles down river and it looked like a trickle in satellite imagery.

We considered hiking fifteen miles to the Kukpuk River, which we’d seen on our northern loop, and would take us to Point Hope. But we hadn’t prepared for that option … we’d have to carry our basecamp-ish loads and navigate the river with cached low-resolution cell phone imagery and no other resources. Doable, yes, but inconsistent with our preparation strategy that has been so successful.

Our third option was to hike six miles to the West Fork of the Wulik, which we’d seen on our eastern loop. The West Fork first drew our attention on the flight in, when Eric pointed out some rock outcrops and mentioned that it might be a good float.

The choice boiled down to a hike of unknown distance down the Kivalina or a known distance up and over to the West Fork. We waffled like crazy and didn’t make the final decision until after we were all packed up and couldn’t procrastinate any longer.

The West Fork of the Wulik was AWESOME! I was giddy. It hadn’t rained in several days so the water was crystal clear as it rolled through three limestone canyons. It was so cool that I advocated for a snail’s pace so that we could explore all of the river features.

Instructional digression: Preparing to run a river that we hadn’t researched

We wouldn’t have pivoted to the West Fork if we didn’t have downloaded satellite imagery. This was mostly luck because the West Fork was between the two rivers that I had prepared for—the downloaded tiles happened to include the West Fork.

Will and I independently ‘flew’ the river on our phones and dropped waypoints at locations of interest or concern. Then we AirDropped our points to each other to check for missed features.

Specifically, I look for ‘white’ water (rapids, tongues, or waterfalls), wave trains, shadows that might indicate cliff walls, bedrock, constrictions, and sites where the river is deflected by rock walls. Here are some examples:

We checked our location on the phone as we descended, announcing and slowing down for each point of interest/concern. The redundancy was good … Will had a zone of higher resolution than me, and I put more emphasis on water flowing into rock walls (though none of these turned out to be any issue).

The first canyon stood out in the imagery with several waterfalls and shadowed banks. I dropped a waypoint at the start labelled “get out!” But the imagery didn’t prepare me for how pretty it was. The canyon walls are interlayered limestone (gray) and chert (black), channeling clear blue water, and bound by lush green vegetation.

We eddied out and scouted from the bank but it was soon obvious that we wouldn’t be paddling through. The entrance rapid was doable. I was confident I could run the second rapid too, but thought it might be out of reach for Will and Sarah. The third rapid was a beautiful waterfall ledge, something I would try with my full safety kit and experienced partners. But then the canyon chokes down to three-feet across … twice! I appreciated that the canyon was so clearly unrunnable so that I didn’t feel torn about portaging.

The next canyon had a single Class IV rapid which I paddled while Sarah waited in a safety position. The final canyon was, unexpectedly, Class II, and a treat to bob our way down.

While scouting the canyons, I used the risk assessment prompts that I teach: “What could go wrong and what are we going to do about it?” I decided that the most likely thing to go wrong was that I would hit my head. I didn’t have a helmet because Plan A, the Kivalina, was expected to be Class I and II water. But we had switched to a more challenging river, and I regretted not having a helmet. I rationalized that the water was still below my skill level and that I was unlikely to swim. Even so, I ordered a lightweight helmet for future trips as soon as I got home.

I was sad to watch the riverside cliffs shrink in height as we continued down river and reached slower water. But the sky and water remained clear.

We camped each night on firm dryas benches and even spotted an ancient circle of rocks for what I assume was a teepee-style caribou-hide shelter. We merged with the Wulik and started to catch fish. We took advantage of our last hiking options where ridges reached close to the river for easy access.

We camped a few miles from the village of Kivalina and paddled into town a few hours before our flight. It was a surprise to find a cold coast and dense sea ice after experiencing such warm weather in the mountains. The other surprise was the number of seal carcasses along the beach; apparently we just missed hunting season.

We spent a night in Kotzebue and eased our transition back to the big city. Showers, burgers, a walk along the ocean. The hotel room felt too clean, too white, but it was quiet, which is what I wanted because my previous rented room in Kotzebue shared a noisy wall with a restaurant’s kitchen.

We split up to run a few errands in the morning and I stopped by the store to grab fresh fruit for breakfast but there was none. Sarah and Will laughed when I showed up with three V8’s.

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I still really like our original basecamp-ish plan and the idea of exiting down the East Fork of the Kivalina. I’m interested in going back for that trip, packing light so that it would be easier to walk down the river. But I’d also like to check out the Kukpuk, or float north, or hike east. It seems like you just can’t go wrong—another decision that really doesn’t matter.