The upper part of the river flows westerly to a point near Telegraph Creek and then heads southwest and then south, crossing the Coast Mountains. The river is a transboundary river protected under a cooperative treaty between the United States and Canada. It must remain open to commercial traffic. The river is a multi-channeled river and is about 0.9 miles wide. Its glacier-fed waters are heavily laden with silt which is dumped, along the way, onto sand bars and at the mouth of the river.
Glaciers still encompass the mountains and descend down to the shores of the river's valley.
These two ice fields contain more than 2,500 square miles of the glacier-covered area within Alaska and cover a large area in British Columbia. The Stikine ice field spans the crest of the Coast Mountains for about 120 miles from the Stikine River to the Whiting River. The ice field is composed of about a dozen glaciers of 10 miles in length or more. Several of the large glaciers descend to sea level from high elevations of a mile or more, terminating in the Frederick Sound and Stephens Passage fjords. Shakes Glacier and LeConte Glacier are one glacier.