Pack Rafting and Hiking in the Lynx Creek Area of the Kenai Mountains

This was a five-stage foray: run, pack-raft, hike, pack-raft, run.  Run from the Johnson Pass trailhead to the Center Creek Bridge, float down to the junction of Bench and Lynx Creeks, hike up the Lynx Creek mining trail, check out some turn of the century mining remains, bag Peak 4451 and return to our rafts, float down the East Fork of Sixmile Creek to the commercial rafter's put-in spot and then run bike trails back to the Johnson Pass parking lot.  Of course, you can check out Cory's Smith's pictures too ... here.
This was a good, quick (8 hour) day trip.  The total distances were approximately: run - 7.5 miles, hike 9 miles, float 7.5 miles.

We ran the Johnson Trail to the Center Creek bridge.

Cory heads out of port.

Tame water here ... but I soon learn that Cory goes "looking for trouble".  He likes riding the big waves !!  He lives to "go big" !!

  

At Lynx Creek we left our boats and began the hike / climb.  There was once (early 1900's) a lot of gold mining done in Lynx Creek Valley.  Here is a pile of pipe - the kind that was used for feeder lines for hydraulic water-blasting mining.
An old miners cabin.  If you expand the picture and look at the roof - you will see that they used flattened 55 gallon drums for roofing material. Inside the cabin is pretty trashed out.  And it was inhabited ... you can just see the cabin dweller in the right center of this picture. Here's a closer look of the current cabin owner.
The valley has a lot of water line feeder pipelines.  The pressure head from these mile or more long pipelines that dropped 1000 feet or more are what powered the hydraulic mining nozzles.  For a good picture of hydraulic mining in action in the old days, click here. A mining road climbs into the valley.  If you are alert, you will notice that you are hiking past dams that were used to trap water to be fed into the hydraulic lines.  Here are a couple of overflow culverts that drain one of these holding ponds. This picture, taken just before we spooked a black bear, shows piles of rocks left over from when the streambed was mined.
An old tank way lying in the middle of the valley above tree-line.  No other signs of mining were around. From "The History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula" (page 75):

"[In the winter of 1900-1901] a snowslide came down on Lynx Creek and killed five men: Dick Lane, Ulysses Graham, Hank Willoughby, Michael Hogan and Fred Shackleford.  They had leased the claim above Morgan's that belonged to Fred Smith.  Two men survived, Frank Flaherty and Gill Devoe.  Flaherty finally dug his way out.  A crowd of men came to dig out the bodies.  They rescued Devoe.  He was buried by snow, but the tent wall was built up with logs and left some space for air.

The Morgans sold their claim, as his wife could see where the slide hit the men and she did not want to stay there any longer.  They returned to Washington in 1901."

 Great hiking - snow mostly melted, vegetation just starting to grow, clear and not too hot.
   
  We found a very old cairn on the summit of Peak 4451.  
Here's the panoramic shot from the summit ...
  The snow was fast for descending.  Cory said we were dropping close to 400 feet per minute.  
 
In the valley there is a relatively recent, but pretty ragged out, cabin.   Peak 4451 at the head of Lynx Creek Valley ... with weather from the southeast starting to roll in.
     
  Photos and web page by Tim Kelley