Friday, August 21, 2015

It rained overnight again but had stopped by the time we got up. We hit the river at 10 AM and floated the last two hours to our pull out at Delay Pass. We cut across the marshes and man was it rough, slow going.

Ready to pack up the packrafts!

We found out that the forest floor was more solid allowing us to move quicker, especially if it had a pale yellow moss growing on it, which we dubbed ‘Yellow Brick Moss’. But the large swaths of tussock would slow us down to a half-mile-per-hour pace. We’d try to walk directly on top of the mounds of grass but they weren’t big and our ankles would roll into the 12-16” deep wells filled with cold water that surround each mound of tussock. Then we would try to walk just in the wells but have to lunge over large 12-16” high tussock mounds. Either way the going was slow and treacherous for our ankles. Throw in some very wet bushwhacking and we got ourselves a recipe for misery!

"Golden Moss Road"

"Willow Hell"

"Tussock Hell"

 We noted a cabin on the topo map along the Glacier River so made plans to check it out for a possible place to stay the night. We reached the area at 7 PM but couldn’t find the cabin so we made do with setting up the tent on a gravel bar along Glacier River before the next raincloud came in, allowing us to dry some of our gear out.

Beautiful tussock hell

Drying out at camp along the Glacier River

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