A new logjam on the Beaver Creek float wants your boat. Here's how to dodge it.

The upper Beaver Creek float is the kind of trip Alaskans daydream about: roughly 100 miles of clear water winding through the White Mountains, no roads, no crowds, ending on a gravel bar where a bush plane comes to pick you up. This summer it comes with a new wrinkle — one the Bureau of Land Management would very much like you to know about before you're on top of it.

Sometime in 2025, the river carved a new channel just upstream of the Borealis-LeFevre Cabin, and it's a mess — "chock-full of logs and debris," as BLM puts it, with a current that "will likely pull you towards it if you are not paying attention." In other words, the river will try to steer you into the one place you don't want to be. The fix is low-tech: where the river splits, get out and line or portage your boat along the gravel bar upstream, and let the bad channel keep the logs to itself.

Getting to the water takes a little planning, too. Nome Creek Road, the way in to the Ophir Creek Campground and the put-in, is closed on weekdays through September 30 — open only on weekends, federal holidays, and during the September 1–15 moose hunt — and even when it's open, expect flaggers and waits of up to 20 minutes.

Eyeing Birch Creek instead? That Wild and Scenic run has its own surprise: a hazardous channel found back in 2023, below the Upper Birch Creek Wayside off the Steese Highway, that may cost you a quarter-mile portage. Either way, the smart move is the one seasoned floaters already make — call BLM's Fairbanks office before you launch and ask what the river's doing right now.