We ditched our packrafts and extras down at Arrigetch Creek, and headed up into the mountains for the ten mile hike to the Arrigetch Peaks. The Arrigetch remind me of Hatcher’s Pass on steriods. Huge granite spires, with mounds of boulders & blueberries lining the valley floor it is a climber’s and hiker’s paradise. The name Arrigetch comes from the Inupiat language meaning “fingers of the outstretched hand.”
Our first good glimpse of the Arrigetch with Arrigetch creek flowing out.
We lucked out and had hot, sunny weather for the hike in.
We made the mistake of not looking for the bear trail that follows the creek up and went high instead, bushwhacking through alders and tussocks for two hours. We then dropped down towards the creek and found the much easier bear trail. It’s 100% worth it to locate this trail sooner than later. We took a leisurely 7 hours to do the hike, stopping for snacks and pictures along the way. It could easily be done in 5-6 hours if the bear trail is found early on and not so many breaks [not the 12 hours we were assured it would take as the portly ranger in Bettles told us 🙂 ]
The Maidens.
Kasey and Boone at one of many creek crossings. Dry feet are not an option.
Kasey’s and my tent up in the Arrigetch. It leaked like a sieve, we would find out in the next two days of pouring rain. We ended up having to sleep with dry bags on top of our down sleeping bags to prevent the rain hitting soaking them (thus rendering them useless) and packing up everything into dry bags while we were gone from the tent.
I’m not sure what these bright pink plants are. They resembled blueberry bushes, but pink and no berries. I found a whole field of these cool plants. As for blueberries, there were tons throughout the Alatna valley and in the Arrigetch. We enjoyed grazing, and they made delicious additions to our oatmeal in the morning.
Boone and Dan scouting out our hike up Mt. Ariel the next day.
The next morning we got shut down on a summit. It was nice at our tents, for a little while.
The rain quickly moved down valley, making talus fields treacherous. Eventually, the whole valley was socked in and the peaks were all hidden from view.
The next day we thought we had a chance. There was actually some blue sky directly overhead.
We got shut down again by rain and the low clouds that moved in. We ended up hiking up to this bench over lots of slippery talus to catch a glimpse of some glaciers for a brief moment.
Looking back down the valley to the low lying clouds.
The rock was covered with brilliant orange lichen.
Interestingly, on the whole hike/packraft from the headwaters of the Alatna to Takahula lake the only time we ran into other people was in the Arrigetch. We met two different groups there, one group of two people doing a similar trip as us. The other group had been there a week, went up in the mountains on the one nice day, and got shut down the rest of time, not being able to make the mountain pass they had hoped for, ending up in the same place as they began. The Arrigetch Peaks were amazing to see, even though we got shut down from any summits or climbing.
The fourth day in the Arrigetch we woke to sunshine on our tents and down valley, but again, the mountains up from our tent had low lying clouds and rain. We packed it up, and headed back for our boats to continue the rest of our adventure to Takahula Lake.