The Best National Parks You’re Not Visiting #1: Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve

September 22, 7:16 PMNational Parks Recreation ExaminerRandi Minetor

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You can’t get there by road—no roads go there.  You can get there by plane, but you’ll need to hire one of only a handful of bush pilots with the training, experience and confidence to fly into the 2,500-foot deep caldera. To get to Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, you have to want it—and you have to research, plan, pack and prepare to be sure that once you get there, you can get home again.

The caldera, a massive crater that formed 3,500 years ago when a 7,000-foot mountain collapsed during a volcanic eruption, holds a deep, aqua-blue body of water with an appropriate name: Surprise Lake.  It’s a remnant of a lake that scientists believe once filled this crater, then shrank from the impact of continued volcanic activity that created the cinder cones and corrugated lava flows you can see in the caldera floor.

If the weather is unusually clear and the winds are relatively calm, you can land in the caldera, but it might be several days before storms, wind and rain permit your pilot to return.  You must bring everything you need to survive—food, shelter, warm clothing to get you through wet, 40-degree nights, even in July.  While there’s been no new volcanic eruption in this park since 1931, the warm waters flowing into Surprise Lake will remind you that there’s still magma activity below the surface. (The force of the 1931 event sent ash all the way into Alaska’s interior, 700 miles away.)

This is Aniakchak, 450 miles southwest of Anchorage on the Alaska Peninsula, and by now it may be clear why this rugged-beyond-reason unit of the National Park System is one of the least visited, with just 60 brave souls facing its elements in 2006, and a mere 26 recorded visitors in 2007.

If the idea of boarding a bush plane and landing in a big, deep hole leaves you cold, there’s another alternative: Rent a power boat (or better yet, find a guide with one) and motor into the surrounding preserve from one of the villages along the peninsula’s Pacific Ocean coast. You’ll navigate a portion of the Aniakchak National Wild River through some 586,000 acres of treeless tundra and windswept wilderness.  You can hike as you wish—there are no trails, and you can camp wherever you like and fish for Alaska’s famous salmon, in a land with no evidence of human habitation or disturbance…as long as you keep an eye out for bears.

Most visitors come to raft the river from the top, starting from its headwaters in the caldera and riding the current out to the ocean.  This is Aniakchak’s “signature” activity, and it’s not for the inexperienced.  If you’ve rafted the Colorado River and you’re looking for your next challenge, this three- to four-day trip might be just the thing:

• First, get yourself and your raft into the caldera—depending on weather conditions, you may wait a few days before your pilot will make the drop.
• You’ll raft from Surprise Lake to “The Gates,” the violently windy gorge in the caldera wall through which the river flows out and down.
• In the gorge, the river drops a precipitous 75 feet per mile, and you must work your way around huge boulders much larger than your 12-foot raft. 
• Once you’re past the Gates, the next ten miles will seem easy…until you reach Hidden Creek, where boulders and sharp bends will restore your adrenalin. 
• Your last five miles are calmer as you approach the Pacific Ocean. You’re sure to glimpse sea otters, seals, bald eagles and all manner of seabirds on your way out of the preserve.
• Don’t forget to arrange for transportation out of the preserve at the end of your trip.

Are you up for the challenge?  Contact the National Park Service in King Salmon, Alaska, or call them at 907-246-3305 (Alaska time is one hour earlier than Pacific, and four hours earlier than Eastern), to get the information you need to begin to plan your excursion to the peninsula wilderness.

In addition, there are 17 companies that serve Aniakchak visitors with day and multi-day guides, transportation and food service.  Check at www.nps.gov/ania for websites, phone numbers and details.

This is the first in a weekly series on National Park Service properties with low visitation and high quality experiences.  If there’s a park you’d like to know more about, leave me a comment and I’ll look into it.