Donjek - Day 4

Donjek River to the Glacier

August 5, 2015

I got up at second light (05:00) and read my book with a coffee for an hour until the rest of the camp got stirring. We set out, once again at 08:00. The river was substantially lower in the cool morning, so when we came to the first impassible section on our side, we could somewhat easily cross to the far bank and then back again a little later when we reached the Donjek River valley. Travel along the river bed went quickly as we walked along the gravel and sandbars, with easy shallow creek crossing whenever the main channel braided. In the distance we could see the goal of our journey, the Donjek Glacier itself. We saw a large vegetated morraine at the toe so we decided to push for that, intending to climb to the top so we could have lunch looking down at the ice. As we approached however, we saw that the raging main watercourse of the Donjek River had placed itself between us and our objective, so we instead picked a shady spot along the cliffs at the riverbank. After lunch we continued on, but about 500m further we saw that river came right against the cliff, so we turned back to look for a place to climb. It turned out that the best place was a stream leading directly up from our lunch spot. We walked up the stream gully with steep mud sides. A couple of sections of short class 3 scrambling and then we found a way to scramble up the sides onto the plateau above. We bushwhacked through a beautiful mossy forest for another 500 meters until we stumbled onto an old horse trail which ran parallel to the river. We followed this for the rest of the day. It wound through lovely meadows which gave us stunning views onto the glacier, and extremely dense overgrown alders that scratched, bit, and even stole Krista's GPS receiver as we made like meese to push our way through. At another open meadow, Krista noticed her missing device so her, Glenn, and Marc went back while the rest of us found a patch of shade for a snooze. They were only gone for a few minutes, as they found the GPS hanging from one of the alder branches a short way back along the trail. We continued along until we found a clear running stream with some space for the tents in the woods above. The view of the Donjek Glacier is surreal. It appears that everything beyond our immediate view is just a projection on a giant backdrop screen. The size of this piece of ice literally causes a hestitation in your breath. Sounds of groaning and booming as the river of ice shifts and cracks are occasionally heard above the roar of the stream. What is even more amazing is that we are only looking at the very toe of this glacier. It snakes through the mountains for more miles than are depicted on the map sheets that we carry.

Hoge proves easier to cross in the early morning.