Weekend in the Deltas

Nighttime walk near the Gulkana, College Glacier, and the Rainbow Basin

Aug 10, 2026

A hiker in a teal backpack, holding a trekking pole, climbs a steep slope of rock and low green tundra in the foreground, backlit by low morning sun that throws a lens flare across the frame. Below and to the left, a braided glacial stream threads through a wide gray gravel valley. Bare, layered ridges with lingering snow patches fall away toward distant peaks that fade into cloud under a pale blue sky. — Cassidy hiking above College Creek in the Delta Mountains

This summer has gone by fast. I’ve been having some true moments of panic thinking about how much time is left, especially considering all I want to do before winter sets in.

We left for the Deltas Friday night, this time with Elliott, Cassidy, and Cassidy's mom Sarka and sister Lucie. Our plan was to hike out to the College Glacier, possibly out to the boulders I found last year if conditions allowed. The following day we were going to find another hike, possibly the Castner Fels Divide or something in the Miller Creek, Rainbow Basin area.

What made this trip different: I forgot to pack my Trazodone. I had my other anxiety and depression meds and the blood pressure ones, but the moment I pulled out my pill container I realized the one I rely on to fall asleep wasn't there. It helps with anxiety too, less so, and that was the smaller loss. The real problem is that without it I don't get sleepy at all. But try telling someone with severe anxiety that one missing medication isn't a big deal.

I can’t go further without noting the view on the drive down. We had a late start on Friday night, passing by Delta Junction shortly before sunset. Just before 11 pm, when the sun was only slightly above the horizon behind us, we had one of the tallest rainbows I’ve ever seen, due to the sun’s position on the horizon as we entered the Alaska Range. And it was bright.

A broad rainbow arcs almost fully across a pastel pink and grey twilight sky, a faint second bow just visible at right. Below it, black spruce and willow ring a marshy basin of still ponds and mudflats that mirror the pink light, with low forested hills and dark mountains along the horizon. — Rainbow and partial double in front of the Donnelly Creek Campground | Prints and Wall Art

End of the rainbow | Prints and Wall Art

The spiky silhouettes of black spruce line the bottom of the frame against a sunset sky, a band of warm orange low on the horizon fading up through pink-lit cloud to cooler grey above. — The sunset behind us | Prints and Wall Art

We found a place to camp near the Gulkana/College Glaciers trailhead at midnight. Cassidy, Elliott, and I set up our tents; Sarka and Lucie were sleeping in their cars. That’s when I discovered the missing Trazodone.

I think I first mentioned it to Cassidy when I overheard Lucie saying something about how she hadn’t been able to fall asleep before 3 am. She had been in Australia for the last year and had returned about a week ago. I certainly had no chance of falling asleep anytime soon, so the two of us decided to take a walk out along the Gulkana Glacier Trail.

We chatted while we walked, Lucie about her travels in Australia and Southeast Asia, and I talked about the area and some of the trips Cassidy and I had done recently. The air was crisp, and the wind calm as we slowly walked out to a local climbing boulder up on an old moraine.

In low twilight, a person sits hunched on top of a large boulder with knees drawn up, gazing out across a broad gravel-braided valley toward dark mountains streaked with old snow. Talus and scattered rock lie below the boulder, and a few clouds catch faint light at right in a dimming blue sky. — Lucie sitting on the boulder looking over the Gulkana Valley

Turning around at about 2 am got us back to camp a little before 3. I think it was my first time crossing the suspension bridge in the dark.

From camp, noctilucent clouds stretched across the sky. Noctilucents are high clouds, 250-280 thousand feet (76 to 85 km) in altitude, that are lit by the sun long after it’s dipped below the horizon. The long twilight hours this time of the year are what make them observable.

High in a dark sky, electric-blue noctilucent clouds spread in fine wavy filaments above a band of darker low cloud. Along the bottom of the frame, black mountain silhouettes show patches of snow near their summits. — Noctilucent clouds over the Gulkana Glacier Valley

A deep blue night sky streaked with pale, rippled noctilucent cloud rises above a black silhouetted ridge, a jagged rock spire breaking its skyline. A small tuft of cloud near the center catches faint pink light. — More noctilucents over the Hoodoos, a rock formation near our campsite

These clouds only exist in summer. The polar summer mesopause is the coldest place in the whole atmosphere, colder than the winter one, because the mesospheric circulation drives upwelling and adiabatic cooling up there in summer. That's cold enough, around minus 130 C, for the tiny bit of water up there to freeze onto dust. So, counterintuitively, the highest, coldest clouds we get form in the warmest season, and traditionally only at high latitudes, though in recent years they've been spotted much farther south.

I didn’t sleep. Not one minute.

The rest of the group started waking up shortly before 8 am. I worked on my coffee to feel a little more alive. Eating breakfast has been difficult for me on most of my outdoor trips. I’ve struggled to have much of an appetite at all, and the missing sleep didn’t help. The appetite and sleep trouble are patterns of anxiety and depression for me, which is the strange part, since being out in the wilderness usually settles me rather than the reverse. I snacked on some granola, but couldn’t really stomach anything else.

A steep, snow-plastered peak rises against a clear deep blue sky, flanked by lower grey ridges streaked with old snow. Rolling green slopes of willow and low tundra fill the foreground. — View of Institute Peak from our campsite

We were on the trail at about 11 am. Actually, there’s no trail to the College Glacier, but it mostly involves following College Creek up the valley. This was my third hike out here, and I always forget how much harder it is than the distance suggests. It's only about 4 miles, a mile more than the nearby Gulkana Glacier hike, but the valley is narrower, the route harder to read, and you don't see the glacier until you're nearly on top of it. The gnats were absolutely atrocious the whole walk out. Impossible to keep out of your eyes, nose, and mouth.

The group stopping to rest. Cassidy was pointing out how blue the sky was.

A macro view of a small-flowered anemone seen from behind, its cupped petals pale green-white washed with bluish purple on the outside, held on a hairy stem above a whorl of toothed green leaves. The forest-floor litter behind is thrown out of focus.

Small-flowered anemone (Anemone parviflora)

A shallow, fast glacial creek runs over cobbles down the center of the frame, a large green-grey boulder at left and a cluster of magenta dwarf fireweed on the near bank. Grey moraine slopes and willow scrub rise on either side toward snow-streaked peaks under a clear blue sky. — One of the stream crossings approaching College Glacier as we enter recently deglaciated terrain

A hiker in a teal pack and brown pants crosses a broad, rubble-strewn valley floor, stepping over grey cobbles between a low band of dirty remnant snow and a braided meltwater channel. A second figure crouches on the rocks behind. Beyond, the debris-covered valley runs back to green-and-brown ridges and snow-streaked peaks under a hazy blue sky. — Lucie crossing the terminal moraine

A hiker in a teal top and brown pants strides across a broad expanse of dirty, sun-cupped snow, trekking pole in hand and casting a long shadow. A second, smaller figure crosses the snow further back at left. Behind them a tall, near-black wall of ice-cored moraine rises, furrowed and streaked and patched with old snow along its top, under a deep blue sky. — Crossing a snowbridge to gain the glacier toe

A wide view across a foreground of colorful glacial rubble — grey, rust-orange, and white cobbles — sloping down to a snow-covered glacier basin. Snow-plastered peaks ring the head of the valley, a broad tongue of dirty snow and ice curving down its center, all under a cloudless deep blue sky. — Getting the first views of the glacier basin from a large medial moraine

Three hikers with packs and trekking poles climb a slope of pale, jumbled rock debris, a black-and-white dog picking its way among them. Behind and above rises a vast, dark moraine face grooved with near-vertical furrows and streaked with old snow, filling the frame in bright sun. — Elliott, Sarka, and Lucie hiking up the moraine

The snowline was at 5190 feet, almost exactly the same elevation as we found the snowline on the main trunk of the Gulkana, only 2 miles apart, two weeks earlier. The shaded College basin was melting out more slowly than the sunnier Gulkana trunk. Unfortunately, this left us about a quarter of a mile short of the boulders we had hoped to hike to. I attempted to find an agreeable path through the isothermal and saturated snow, but it would have left us all soaked.

The view of Peak 8100 from as high up as I ventured through very wet and deep snow. Prints and Wall Art

The western side of the basin | Prints and Wall Art

Nunatak-like ridge on the eastern edge of the glacier | Prints and Wall Art

The group turning around on the moraine. Icefall Peak in the background.

Cassidy and I decided to try to find a new route back to camp on the other side of the valley, based on an area we saw on a hike earlier in the season. It was certainly going to require more elevation gain and would likely be a bit longer and more difficult, so the two of us broke off from the rest of the group.

We walked along the western margin of the glacier, stopping at a narrow channel incised into the ice, where the stream dropped into the glacier and re-emerged from its base about 300 meters away.

A hiker in a green puffy jacket and dark pants stands on the dirty, debris-strewn surface of a glacier, hands in pockets, beside a gap where meltwater has cut down into the ice and pools below. To the right, a dark hollow shows where the stream runs beneath the ice; a rubble-covered slope and remnant snow fill the valley behind under bright sun. — Cassidy standing next to the disappearing stream. You can see the outflow channel in the background.

A hiker in a bright green jacket walks down a broad slope of grey rock debris and grimy remnant snow, trekking gear in hand, casting a long shadow. Behind, a dirty snowfield sweeps up to a row of snow-plastered peaks and dark spires against a deep blue sky. — Walking off the glacier

From the glacier toe, our plan was to go up to a ridge along the hillside and follow that out to the old lateral moraine on the Gulkana Glacier, the same one that the boulder sits on that Lucie and I visited the night before. Or, I guess technically, earlier that morning.

Backlit by a bright sunburst at the top of the frame, a hiker with a pack is silhouetted climbing a steep slope of dark scree, one hand reaching to the rocks. Beyond and below, snow-streaked ridges fall away into a wide valley under a deep blue sky. — Cassidy climbing the steep hillside

Hiking up the loose talus field was steeper than I had expected, but after a while we were on the ridge, which offered much easier walking on alpine tundra and some snow.

A hooded hiker in a pale sun shirt and dark pants, teal pack on, walks across a patch of old snow on a green tundra bench. Above, a mountainside striped in rust-red, ochre, and grey rises to a dark summit, a snow-filled gully threading down it under a clear blue sky. — Crossing snowfields in a green valley

A hooded hiker leans forward against the weight of a pack on a steep tundra shoulder, gazing down into a deep green valley where a braided meltwater stream winds between rounded, grass-covered hills. Low sun rakes across the slopes, and distant ridges fade into haze at the head of the valley. — Descending to a new ledge

A small hooded figure with a pack walks down a green tundra slope toward a wide valley of grey rubble and braided meltwater channels. Across the valley, a long mountainside is marked by a clear horizontal line where scoured grey rock below meets vegetated slopes above, snow patches lingering along the crest under a bright sky. — Traversing the valley. Notice the obvious delineation on the valley wall showing the glaciation trimline. That’s also 3-4 miles from the current terminus of College Glacier.

The route dumped us out near the old lateral moraine overlooking the Gulkana Glacier. We could have cut across, angling down toward the river, but I really wanted to get a look at the Gulkana from an angle I haven’t seen it from yet, so we detoured to the top of the moraine.

From atop a dark lateral moraine, a long tongue of grey-white glacier ice curves down its valley, streaked with dark medial bands of debris, flanked by rock walls and rising to snow-covered peaks and a rounded snowy dome at its head, under a clear deep blue sky with a single wisp of cloud. — Looking over the Gulkana Glacier | Prints and Wall Art

Two hikers pose close to the camera, one in an orange cap, sunglasses, and lime shirt, the other in a pale hood and cap, both smiling. Behind them the Gulkana Glacier sweeps down its valley between snow-streaked peaks under a bright blue sky. — Selfie in front of the Gulkana Glacier

The walk back along the moraine felt like a real slog on very unstable footing and big talus. Perfect for our tired legs and feet.

A hiker with a pack picks a way across a jumble of large, dark, unstable boulders on top of a moraine, trekking pole in hand. Beyond, low sun floods a broad braided river bar and silhouettes the mountains ringing the valley, sunbeams slanting across the frame. — Return trip along the moraine

Layered ridges of rust-red, ochre, and grey rock rise across the frame, their lower slopes streaked with green tundra and cut by steep gullies, a small snow patch lingering in one shaded draw. A field of dark talus fills the foreground under a clear blue sky. — View of the College Creek hills

It wasn’t a terribly long hike; we finished at 12.3 miles and 3058 feet of elevation gain, but my feet were hurting at the end from all the talus scrambling.

We met up with Elliott and Lucie, who had just beaten us back to camp by 30 minutes, even with our excursion out over the Gulkana. Sarka had left for home. The four of us packed up camp to head for Red Rock Canyon to camp and get ready for the next day.

Rainbow Basin

Everyone was tired the next day, including the dogs. Elliott and Lucie decided to call it and head home with the exhausted pups, and maybe find a short hike to do on the way back.

I slept, but only a few hours. And not well. Somehow I still had some energy in me, though. Cassidy had wanted to go up into the Rainbow Basin since I did my late-night into early-morning hike earlier in the month. Despite also being tired, she still wanted to give it a shot. Especially given my description of rolling alpine tundra.

A narrow footpath winds through low green tundra and scattered brush toward a broad valley of grey glacial debris and braided meltwater, the rubble-covered Canwell Glacier stretching into the distance. Dark, snow-streaked ridges rise on either side under a bright sky. — Walk along the footpath from Red Rock Canyon over the Canwell Glacier

It was about a 3-mile walk up the Canwell Valley before turning up into the Rainbow Basin area. As soon as we hit it, we crossed a small meadow filled with wildflowers.

Several slender reddish flower stalks rise from a low clump of round, scalloped, deeply veined green leaves, each stalk carrying small white flowers with dark reddish centers. Behind, out-of-focus tundra and a lichen-spotted rock catch bright sun. — Richardson's Brookfoam (*Boykinia richardsonii*)

A hiker with a teal pack, seen from behind, walks down a slope of green tundra and scattered pale boulders toward a broad valley. Ahead, rubble-covered slopes rise to snow-streaked peaks and a glacier under a bright, mostly cloudy sky. — Walking across the alpine tundra

We were both dismayed by my poor memory of the terrain. I definitely remembered it being much more rolling and less consistently steep. Some of that was probably exhaustion from the day before. But I think I was also just wrong. We took lots of rests.

A hiker lies back on a tundra slope with eyes closed, head near her pack and hands folded on her chest, a cap shading her face. Behind her, a rubble-and-snow slope climbs to jagged snow-covered peaks under a partly cloudy sky. — Cassidy resting in the tundra. McCallum Peak in the background

Maybe only slightly redeeming, we did hit rolling alpine tundra for about the last half-mile of the hike. So, I was only 90% wrong on my assessment.

A hiker with a teal pack, seen from behind, walks up a gentle slope of green tundra dotted with grey rock toward a dark, jagged ridgeline. Patches of old snow cling to the slopes under a blue sky streaked with thin cloud. — Finally getting a bit of a break for our legs on less steep terrain

A hiker crosses a broad bench of grey rubble and sparse tundra toward the head of the basin, where a sharp dark rock spire stands to the left of a large snow-plastered peak. Debris-streaked snowfields fill the middle distance under a bright, partly cloudy sky. — Daytime view of McCallum Peak and the rock formations in the basin

A dense green cushion of moss campion, studded all over with small magenta-pink flowers, grows tight against the ground between angular grey and rust-colored rocks, seen from directly above in bright sun. — Moss Campion (*Silene acaulis*)

We started hiking up a talus field toward a ridge, not really having a plan. It kept getting steeper and was very exposed on loose rock. As tired as we both were, I didn’t feel like it would be safe to keep going, knowing it would definitely be more difficult to descend. We decided to come back and try again another day when we were more rested.

A hiker in a pale hooded shirt and dark pants leans into a steep slope of loose grey scree, a hand on one knee, climbing beside a dark rock rib. A few small yellow flowers grow among the rocks, and thin cloud streaks the deep blue sky above. — Cassidy at our turnaround

A hiker in a hood and large teal pack stands on a slope of loose rock, looking out across a snow-filled basin toward jagged snow-covered peaks. Old snow patches streak the slopes below under a clear blue sky. — Cassidy looking out over McCallum Peak from the talus slope

Two hikers pose close to the camera, one in a pale hood and cap with a nose ring, the other in an orange cap and blue shirt with a sunburned face and an orange satellite messenger clipped to his chest. Behind them a snow-covered peak and glacier basin rise under a bright blue sky. — Selfie with McCallum

Last look at McCallum | Prints and Wall Art

I have no idea why the combination footpath and Jeep Trail along the Canwell Glacier valley always feels so long on the way back, but this day was no exception. At least my company was good, and we had some great conversation along the way. I’m hoping that we’ll have another trip out here this year, but with so much to do and things going by so fast, I’m not sure where it sits on the priorities.

A close view of several blue-violet flowers with darker purple veining and pale throats, nodding on thin stems above rounded green leaves and dry grass in soft light. — Alaska Violet (*Viola langsdorffii*)

Full Trip Photo Gallery

Field notes from the north

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