Charley River

I didn’t need to look at a single photo to know the Charley River is worth visiting. If Fast and Cold author Andrew Embick considered it one of his five favorite rivers to paddle, I figured it had to be worth the trip.

Rising from the very remote mountains to the northeast of Delta Junction (good luck finding their name on a map), the Charley River runs north over a hundred miles before joining the Yukon ten miles upstream of the historic Slaven roadhouse and several dozen miles upstream of Circle. Entirely protected within the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, the Charley feels like a novelty: It is a clear, non-glacial river flowing through stunning mountainous terrain with outstanding hiking. Improbably, the hiking opportunities just seem to get better as the Charley winds through the mountains past high cliffs, innumerable swallows, and furtive peregrine falcons.

The wolves were less elusive. Their tracks were everywhere and they serenaded us at our first campsite. As the river dropped from rolling alpine terrain into forests and cliffs, we saw numerous sheep lounging on rock ledges hundreds of feet above the water. Sheep trails also guide us—if you’re hiking, just look for where ridges come closest to the water, and follow them upward toward the alpine.

There are two easy ways to fly into the Charley: The upstream strip, small, curving, and primitive, is called Three Fingers. It’s only a half mile over to the river, which at this point on the ma is the largest tributary of thr Charley, but is unnamed. We flew in June 4th on a high snow year and had enough water to float all the way down to the main Charley, but not by much. The first ten miles are pretty flat with slow current, then the river picks up speed and gradient as it drops through about ten miles of continuous, easy (Class I-II) whitewater. 

It’s a fine balance to find the Three Fingers strip dried out enough to fly into but with enough water in the upper river to float. About a half day float downstream of the confluence, the Galvin strip may provide a little more flexibility in timing for fly-ins.

Although it’d seem like hiking would be best starting in the alpine, there are great hiking options along the whole river, with the exception of of the last few miles before the Yukon. The high country has extensive tussocks before getting to ridge lines, but easy walking after that. Lower down, numerous ridge lines and meadows drop down to the level of the river. I’d suggest glance at the topo map, pick a general destination in the mountains, and just look for the best spots to pull over and hike along the way.

The Charley has outstanding gravel bar campsites the length of the river, and many have the bonus of adjacent, soft camping up on in the forest just above the gravel bar. In early June we didn’t have many mosquitos at all until getting down to the Yukon River, though I’d definitely recommend bringing a bug net enclosed kitchen if going any later than early June.

There aren’t hard rapids on the Charlie. Downstream of Galvin’s a ways, there is a series of three rapids that are perhaps Class III- in difficulty, and that was at an elevated but not flooding water level. We had a variety of boats—Alpacka Forager (with two people), Wolverines, Classics, and Valkyries. There’s a lot of good surfing on the Charlie, and single boats are nice for rock dodging. But the Foragers are really comfortable, and more than sufficient for the easy whitewater. Your greatest challenge may be adjusting to a Type 1 trip, if you’re used to slogging for joy.

Point 4893, which is about an hour or so hike north of Three Fingers strip.

Wild sheep country as the man stem Charley winds through canyons.

About as big as the whitewater gets.

 

The Charley has fantastic avian habitat, including miles of cliffs for swallows and peregrine falcons. You’ll see and hear numerous other species, such as Swainson’s thrush, northern water thrush, northern yellow warbler, varied thrush (this one surprised me; I’m more used to it in our coastal rainforest), and juncos.

Slavens roadhouse

We flew into Three Fingers and out of the Coal Creek airstrip that’s a three mile walk upstream from Slavens roadhouse. Slavens is a ten mile, two hour or less float from where the Charley joins the Yukon. Slavens is a beautiful, well-restored public use cabin maintained by the National Park Service. Mosquitos are bad in this area, so it’s nice to have the cabin even in early season. 

Golden Eagle Air can fly you in from Delta or possibly Fairbanks; check with the pilot Jesse. You can also fly in with 40 Mile Air from Circle, which only requires one flight but many more driving hours. We drove to Delta during the day, flew in that evening, spent five full river and hiking days before getting to Slavens. It was easy to pack up and catch a flight back the following morning, so we had the fairly strange logistics of seven days out in the Charley with the two days on the ends including driving. You could make the trip take as long as you want with hiking; five days of paddling from Three Fingers to Slavens is plenty of time, at least with relatively good water in early June in a healthy snow year. It could be very, very slow at lower water, with hundreds of gravel bars to drag across.