The Alaska River Guide: Canoeing, Kayaking, and Rafting in the Last Frontier (Alaska River Guide: Canoeing, Kayaking, & Rafting in the Last Fronti) (Paperback)

by Karen Jettmar (Author) "The rich tapestry of Alaska is threaded together by 365,000 miles of waterways, from cascading mountain streams to meandering valley rivers, from the meltwaters of..." (more)
Key Phrases: intermediate boaters, charter floatplane, charter air service, North Fork, Fort Yukon, Yukon River (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is dream material. Imagine canoeing the North Fork of the Koyukuk. You can put in near Mount Doonerak…and drift through the Gates of the Arctic National Park. The Alaska River Guide will make you want to do it.” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

“ This book, by Karen Jettmar, will help to preserve Alaska’s precious natural heritage.”
President Jimmy Carter

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
The most up-to-date, authoritative information for planning every kind of river trip in Alaska, from a mellow float to a month-long expedition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 302 pages
• Publisher: Alaska Northwest Books; Revised edition (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882404970
• ISBN-13: 978-0882404974
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,088,584 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #68 in	Books > Outdoors & Nature > Outdoor Recreation > Rafting
  #96 in	Books > Outdoors & Nature > Outdoor Recreation > Kayaking > Excursion Guides

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding guide book, June 24, 1999

By A Customer

Great book on numerous trips on both slow and fast water. This combination makes the book a worthwhile purchase. Living in AK for five years and doing a number of the trips makes this a great way for me to stir up a few memories. Put-ins and take outs are accurately marked. Overall excellent book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The bible of river travel for Alaska, November 23, 2004

By	Iain Jensen "Iain" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

I love this book, and wish the author would write a sequel, describing more rivers. I have used the Alaska River Guide for several years to plan trips all over Alaska. The maps are great, the trip descriptions fascinating, and the pre-trip preparation information essential, especially for people new to Alaska.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too many errors, February 24, 2009

By	Woodstock (Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Alaska River Guide: Canoeing, Kayaking, and Rafting in the Last Frontier (Canoeing & Kayaking Guides - Menasha) (Paperback)

The hallmark of a good guidebook is how accurate it is. Unfortunately, this book contains more than its share of errors - some are merely nuisances, but others are more serious.

I bought this book because I wanted to expand my knowledge of Alaska's river systems. I live in Alaska, and enjoy exploring new waters; I try to get in at least one major trip each year. This book offers a brief survey of over 100 rivers, with an effort to cover systems in each of the major regions of Alaska.

Most of the river descriptions are 2 to 3 pages; the information usually contains a map showing the most common put-in and take-out spots, then a brief description of the overall character of the stream with some of its standout features. A few paragraphs of historical notes are often added. Following the description of the river is a section of useful data: appropriate USGS topo maps; the best seasons for floating; specific safety issues; prominent fish and wildlife likely to be seen; and a list of the government land management agencies who oversee the river and adjacent territory.

The book also contains some nice sections at the beginning on trip planning, with sections on appropriate gear for a river trip, trip safety, and ethical camping practices.

The structure of the book means it probably shouldn't be looked at as a detailed trip planner for any specific river system in Alaska; instead, the book represents more of an encyclopedic listing of float trips, with some background advice common to all river trips. It's a nice book to have when you're facing a question like: "I want to do a trip, but which river should I choose?" It's also a nice book to keep by your favorite chair, to browse through and to dream about the dozens of quality excursions in Alaska.

The river maps are a definite plus and are helpful. Consisting of black and white sketches, they usually cover one column in the two-column page layout of the book, so the maps are oriented longitudally. For orientation, a north-arrow pointer is placed on the map. This means that rivers which run in a mostly-east or west direction are shown with the easterly direction oriented toward the bottom of the map. That's fine I guess, but it would have been nicer if the maps were printed in a more standard fashion: for rivers running predominately east or west, the maps could have been printed so they spanned the width of the page across both columns; for north or south-flowing rivers, the maps could be oriented in the standard longitudal fashion. In either case, the maps would then be oriented with north at the top, east to the right, etc.

This leads to one aspect of the book's maps that is a mystery to me: some of the maps for rivers that run in a north or south direction are oriented with north at the bottom (down) of the page. What purpose does this achieve? Why can't the map be flipped around, to be printed the standard way, with the northerly direction at the top? I don't get it...

But apart from the map issues, it's the number of errors in the text of the book that presents the most serious deficiency. I have no way of knowing how many mistakes the book contains because my first-hand knowledge - and consequent ability to catch mistakes - is limited only to a fraction of all the waters covered. Nevertheless, when I concentrate on the places well known to me, too many blunders begin to jump out.

Some of the faults are very minor, like the description of the Situk River fish where distinct runs of both "steelhead" and "rainbow trout" are mentioned (there are no runs of rainbow trout in the Situk, and the population is very small. All the trout that ascend, or "run" in the river are steelhead).

And then are other errors - again relatively minor - that are merely annoying, like places where the text is mistakenly repeated (e.g. page 275) or where a river is misnamed in the middle of the description (page 163), or places where the text is worded in a way that you wonder if some of the author's stream-of-consciousness notes somehow made it into print (page 277).

But the most serious mistakes I found involve specific descriptions of some of the rivers. The location of rapids is sometimes misplaced, roads are occasionally misnamed, geographic features are goofed up, and sections of text appear under the wrong heading. Again, I found these mistakes in the small number of rivers that I am familiar with. I am left to assume that the rate of inaccuracy is equally high among the other rivers where I don't have first-hand experience. This begs the question: what good is a reference book when the data is fraught with errors?

I checked with the publishers and their web site now offers substitute pages that help correct some of the mistakes. People who already own this book will want to download the pages. Be advised, however, that the substitute pages only cover a portion of the book's faults.

To sum up, I think this book might have value to those of us who want to use it as a "dream book" - a sort of a listing of "what's where" and the possibilities for wilderness trips in Alaska. But I urge caution to anyone who needs to rely on the book for cold facts. I would hope that subsequent editions of this book (if it someday gets printed again) will be more carefully researched and edited.