The Stikine is the fastest free-flowing river in North America, a muddy river with lots of glaciers dumping silt into the water. The headwaters are in the Spatsizi Plateau in the remote northwest corner of British Columbia in Canada, running 379 Miles (610 km) before emptying into Alaska’s Inside Passage, near Wrangell. It is an international river running through a very sparsely populated wilderness.

Isolated fishing cabin in Canada.

Telegraph Creek, in British Columbia, is the only permanent settlement along the entire river, home to about 400 people, a mixture of mostly Tahltan First Nation people with a few other homesteaders. The nearest town by road is Dease Lake 90+ miles (150 km) away on a narrow dirt-and-gravel road. The closest town by water is Wrangell, 160 miles (260 km) downriver. This is remote, wild country.

This is the old town site; there are a couple of new collections of houses on the plateau above the river.

Jim Leslie, the owner and operator of the Wrangell-based Alaska Waters, has been a guide for 20 years, touring up the Stikine and in adjacent areas. His boat, the Chutine Warrior, is a jet boat, powered by twin 350hp diesel engines and water pumps for the jet drive capable of filling an Olympic-size swimming pool in four minutes. Jim’s wife Wilma and friend Scott were the crew. Jim gave us the safety info and the boat was underway. We dawdled along for a few minutes while the engines warmed up. For the crossing of the Stikine delta, we needed to be seat-belted in. The boat would be traveling at 30+ mph; if it hit a sandbar, we’d decelerate rapidly. Once we were on the river, seat belts were no longer necessary.

Two of the three Australian couples on the trip discovered they had friends in common and lived only a mile apart, in Melbourne. Funny to finally meet in Alaska. There were also three kayakers who had floated down from Telegraph Creek and had hired Jim to take them back to their car. The Stikine River draws kayakers and canoeists but is underestimated by many: there are not rapids of any difficulty, but the current is strong and you can find yourself in the wrong spot pretty quickly. That happened to these people, with one capsize and some tense moments in the fast current.

This late in the summer, water in the river was fairly low, so Jim Leslie had to pay constant attention and “read the water” as the river wound its way up the often broad lower valley and sometimes narrow canyon, avoiding all of the many snags poking out of and just under the water. The river is constantly eroding the river shore and bringing trees down river.

Jim makes a hard left turn to avoid a snag just under the water.

A pile of the many, many trees that get washed out of the shore and start making their way downriver, mostly during high water.

Shortly before the planned hamburger barbecue lunch on a gravel bar, the boat suddenly slowed—moose! There were a bull, cow, and calf moose swimming across the river. A moose trifecta.

Over the three days, other than the moose, wildlife were pretty hidden except for ducks flying south and chipmunks looking cute. But, if you didn’t see the animals, you knew they were around from the footprints in the damp sand of the sandbars: moose, bear (both black and grizzly), river otter, wolf, mink….

I took my recording gear along…but, unlike cities, teeming with people and sound, sparsely populated country like this is quiet. No jets overhead, no traffic jams, no trains, no busy-ness, a slower pace of life. It is quiet. About the only sounds were the jet boat, and the occasional old car rattling on the dirt and gravel roads, or the gentle sound of the river rolling toward Wrangell…or maybe just the sound of your own heart.

The sand and gravel bar we had lunch on was covered with an amazing array of different rocks carried her by glaciers and the river. This rock almost looks painted.