Gravel Creek

We carried our boats up and ran the bottom 7.05 river miles, according to GPS. The Matanuska at the Glacier Park bridge was at 3.2', with most of the water coming from the glacier. Gravel Creek looked from the confluence and felt on the run like a solid medium flow. There was a little bit of good class 3 early on; most of the run was fast-moving current with few obstacles. Hiking up, we wasted a lot of time looking for the best way to procede. Were I to carry up again, I'd start on river left (hiker's right) and look for an old ATV trail to follow. We bushwhacked for a while before we found it, then walked 20 yards to the right and discovered we'd been paralleling it. After a couple miles, the ATV trail leads back to the creek and ends. We stayed on river left and followed game trails until the brush got too thick, but when we crossed to river right, we immediately found another ATV trail to follow. From there, I'd recommend staying on river right if possible. Our ATV trail led us back to the creek, so we crossed over and back one more time, but the going on the other side was slow, and as soon as we were back on river right again we found another ATV trail. We eventually ran out of ATV trail, and followed game trails for a while longer. We'd been at it for 8 hours, we knew we weren't making it all the way to the glacier, and the going was slow, so we put on and paddled down.

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