Alaska Summer '12: Rafting the Chuli

Denali State Park offers many great adventures, from the memorial right on the Parks Highway to a 27mi long hike of Kesugi Ridge and even a float along the Chulitna River. The latter is what I have been doing for the past three days, for work of course. The float started at the East Fork of the Chuli which is beyond the park boundary, but it is the closest put in. The float started in the clearwater and we could see many King Salmon swimming up river to die after spawning. Their bright red color is easy to spot through the clear blue water, but at this point in their life they are starting to turn white, which means death is close. I took a dip in the river at our first stop, which was chilly at about 40 degrees! After a few hours the East Fork which we were on meets up with the Main Fork and that is where the dirty water begins. The divide in the water was beautiful, but it didn't last long before you could no longer see the bottom.
The first night was spent on an island, which was more of a sandbar with fresh bear tracks in sight. We will just say I was the last to sleep and the first to arise. The next morning we continued down the river and made a few stops along the way. One of them had bear tracks and cub tracks, we followed them to a rock ladder that went up onto higher land. Looked something like a bear highway up there, the vegetation was packed down and it was evident that bear use was high in the area. We collectively decided not to camp there, but we did camp further down on another island, this one had more vegetation and no bear tracks, but moose tracks. I slept a little better this night, but was still the first to arise. On the third day I got to try and captain the boat. I did fairly well for my first time, but got into the shallows once and had to be dragged out! Further down the river we spotted a bear, upon a closer look we saw a spring cub as well. The grizzly bear was very blonde, while the cub was so dark it was almost black! It was exciting to see my first bears in the true wild. We were blessed with beautiful sunny skies for the first two days, and another rain free but not as sunny day for the third. This is a trip I will never forget, and just another adventure that will pull at me to come back here.