The next, and last, stage of our journey brought us into a wild and woolly area called The Canyons.  Filled with rapids, flanked by towering cliffs, and filled with fish, this is the best of the best.

Finally, we reached Hell's Gate - the entrance to the Taluchulitna Canyons.

Hell's Gate was clogged with debris. We probably could've run it, but the log on the left had a bunch of sharp points on it that could puncture our rafts. We portaged around it.

At the bottom of Hell's Gate.

The water picked up speed and raced through fields of boulders.

In no time at all we reached the mouth of Friday Creek.

We started catching Arctic Grayling. We had caught a few small ones on the upper river, but these were sizable.

Andy with a Grayling.
 

Andy with a nice Pink Salmon. There were a lot more pinks in the lower river - not many made it past Hell's Gate.

We ran upper flipper rapids.  This is a series of 4-5 foot drops split by multiple large midstream boulders.   We had been making such good time that we came upon this rapids unexpectedly and got sucked in.  I got pinned on a boulder for a few tense seconds, but managed to spin myself off the rock and went down the final drop backwards.  Andy came through with flying colors.

While we were plotting our next move, Andy spotted movement on the far shore.  Sure enough, some kind of brownish animal was running up the bank toward us.  It was a grizzly bear cub.  We never saw the mother bear, but she was very close by.

 I snapped a few photos of Andy as he hurtled down Lower Flipper Rapids.  The two series of rapids are only about 100 feet apart.  The upper set is the more difficult of the two, and it sneaks up on you.

 A mile or so past Flipper, Andy suddenly yelled for a halt in a swift, necked-down chute.  I barely managed to wedge my foot onto a boulder before getting swept downstream.  But Andy's instinct was dead-on - this was a rainbow trout honey hole. 

Rainbow trout have been stocked and transplanted all over the world, but catching them here, in their native habitat, was a real treat. 

Our biggest rainbow was this 23 incher.

After getting badly beaten by a 25+ incher, I regained some of my pride with this 20.

The Canyon was amazing.  Towering cliffs loomed on every side as the river twisted and snaked its way through glassy pools and lively rapids.  We sighted a lot of ridiculously large kings in this stretch, but the pink salmon dominated the lower river.  Rainbows were everywhere, and Andy even saw a school of longnose suckers in one pool.  Finally, in the last mile or so, we encountered a few people.

 Pink Salmon.

 
We stopped in at Talaview Lodge, where Tyler's friend Pat works.  He treated us to a steak dinner!  Talaview was a beautiful place, with black bears around every corner.  One walked up to the window and looked in while we were having dinner!

We camped near the mouth the last night, and then paddled out past dozens of guided fishermen in jet boats to get to the Skwentna.  The trip to the takout point was a harrowing battle on this huge, glacial river, made worse by the fact that our pilot had given us bad directions to the pickup spot.  But we finally made it, and rolled up the rafts and put them back in their bags.  Before long, our journey was over, as our float plane came rocketing down the river.  It was tough leaving that beautiful place behind.