Alaska - Day 9

 One of the best things to come out of Trek was our white water trip to Six Mile Creek.  We had a conversation with the Trek photographer about our trip to Alaska and he recommended Six Mile Creek with Nova river guides. I would do the same to anyone who wants some crazy white water rafting in Alaska.
I've not really done much river rafting other than the Boise River which doesn't really count and the Payette River down from Banks which barely counts.  Brent certainly has more experience than I do, but he still said this was the hardest river he had ever ran.  It had class IV and class V rapids, which is the highest class with class VI being waterfalls.  It had 3 canyons we went through.  The first 2 were so great and shorter and after a little over half of the people got out of the boats, the rest of us did the 3rd canyon which was long and full of rapid after rapid that took a lot of skill to maneuver.  Luckily, we had fellow Idahoan Henry for a guide.  He was great. The canyons got so skinny at some points that the rafts barely fit through them. It was awesome.  We were swallowed up in the rapids so many times so luckily we had dry suits on.  As you can see by the perma-smile on my face I was having a great time.

1st Canyon

 2nd Canyon

 3rd Canyon

 Rafting was the perfect way to finish up our time on the Kenai Peninsula. If we go back to Alaska, we may just spend all our time there because it is so awesome.  The rest of our day was spent driving East a good distance across Alaska on the Glen Highway towards our next destination of Valdez. An hour and a half outside of Anchorage or so we were pleasantly surprised as we came around a corner to the Matanuska Glacier. It was definitely one of our favorite glaciers.  It comes for miles out of the Chugach Mountains and takes up this whole huge valley.  I wish the picture even began to illustrate how amazing it was.  It just looks so little here but it was anything but that.

 
 Our first view of the mountains of Wrangell St. Elias National Park.  Most people have never even heard of this National Park but you will be blown away in a later post when I give you some statistics.