Other People's Great Adventures

No doubt most have you have seen this:
 

 Makes Tasmania look like the great packrafting destination that it is. There have been a handful of adventurers reporting on their Tassie trips over the years, from whitewater creeking, to mult-day river trips, to traditional hike and raft, to modern coastal trips, to this wild canyoneering trip.


 And what about Europe? Besides Forest and Moe's fantastic looking exploration of Bosnia

 

there is the couple who seem to be prepping for a grand Eurasion or round the world trip with their packraft, too (this looks like a marvelous destination fro traditional style packrafting):
 

 Really looks good, Europe does, for packrafting and their seems to be more and more of it happening.


But the trip I have been keeping tabs on is that by an athletic and skilled Alaskan couple, Pat Farrell and Caroline Van Hemert, who left Bellingham, Hig-and-Erin style but with Skurka speed, in March.

They are headed for Kotzebue by way of the Yukon. A PhD scientist, Caroline is from Anchorage and studied English in college. Pat is a carpenter and studied art. Together they have done some amazing trips, like building a birch bark canoe and paddling out from some wild river in the Yukon Territory, or sailing into and climbing Mt Waddington, and climbing Mt. Fairweather then walking and packrafting the Lost Coast to Gustavus. Anyway their blog is worth following as they unveil their adventure.

Oh yes, and rumor has it Luc and crew made it to the summit of Logan on their self-contained journey from Yakutat to McCarthy by packraft and ski. Looking forward to his return and the fruits of their adventure in story, pic, and vid.

Gradient (ft/mile): elevation vs. distance plots

The Local Anchorage Creeks:

The Mat-Su Regulars (Little Su, Upper Willow, Kings Magic Mile)

The Talkeetna Fly-in Creeks (Disappointment, E Fork Iron Ck, Damnation):

The mid-Alatna Valley Creeks:

The Arrigetch Creeks:

I have been using Spruceboy's USGS maps over Google Earth to estimate gradient, then R to make some contour plots of local steep runs and some creeks in the Arrigetch-Alatna Area. Too satisying.

I should have gone paddling, but no, I made these graphs instead.

They are pretty informative and suggest that the Arrigetch offers up the closest to California style granite creeks we have in Alaska. What makes the Arrigetch unique is the paucity of glaciers combined with steep glacial carved terrain, much of it above tree line and so wood free.

It looks like the two local boofy-creeks, Lower Ingram and Upper Willow, aren't as overall steep as they feel, while the granite boulder garden creeks, Little Su and Kings, are steep. This holds for Disappointment and E Fork Iron, too, as Disappointment is not as overall steep as East Fork Iron Creek, surprisingly, but is bigger volume and more pool drop. So pool drop, ledgy creeks hide their steepness on these gradient plots, while boulder garden creeks tend to be steepest.

All the kayakers already know this, of course, and this is just like a little homework assignment to see that clearly.

The Aiyagomahala Creek (aka Hot Springs Creek or South Arrigetch Creek) is super steep at top where it's full of slabs and slides and waterfalls. Just above its hot springs it's a boulder garden, like Magic Mile. Upper Awlinyak, I have not yet seen, but I expect that it is a gorge full of granite blocks, like the the Deceptive Pass branch of Awlinyak. Arrigetch Creek is least known to me. It's hidden in the bushes and glimpses I get of it are broken gneiss, rather than boulders.

All the little Alatna Valley creeks offer up a bunch of variety. None seem too hard for beginners, except the inner gorge of Nahtuk, which I have seen and expect to be Class III+ if not IV. Unakserak and Kutuk look like class II, maybe some wood, and Pingaluk is Class III (walked that a couple years ago). Awesome game trails in the Pingaluk. So a basecamp in the Alatna valley offers everything from Class I on the Alatna to Class VI in the Arrigetch, all in a ten mile radius.

AlaskaCross 2012

Unless you're a PJ or one of the "Luc Mehlons", the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic is a 5-7 day challenge of sore feet, sleepless nights, and a wet butt. It's a big commitment and for first timers and vets alike, it can be a disappointment to drop out due to lack of prep.

For those who aren't sure they want to commit to the main event (July 16), or for those who want a little prep, or if you just want to travel light and fast with other like-minded folk, there's the new Alaska Cross June 16 at 10 AM, starting near the old Valdez Creek Mine, north of the Denali Hwy-crossing of the Susitna River.

From there, head east through the Clearwater Mountains (there are sure to be scads of ATV trails), then south on the MacLaren. Or head south on the Big Su for thirty miles, then east across scenic high ridges of the Alphabet Hills. In either case, the goal is the Gulkana River drainage and the finish at Meiers Lake, just south of Paxson Lake.

Last weekend at Doug Buchanan's Memorial a scientist informed me that he had some good imagery, "a lot better than Google Earth" as he put it, and that the route "looked brushy". He's an experienced skier, climber, and winter traveler, but so far as I know he has yet to do a summertime Classic, nor paddle a packraft for that matter.

He sounded  like the pilots out there who fly around and look down and tell you about "all the trails" they see or how "that area doesn't look so good". Often -- unless these folks are into ground truth trekkers, like Bob Kaufman or Chris Flowers -- what they say looks good is not, and what looks bad is actually not so.

In other words, imagery is great. Flights are great. But without the experience to interpret the images from air or space -- well, let's just say that the Thompson Pass to McCarthy route also "looks brushy." And so does Hope to Homer, Mentasta to McKinley, Chicken to Circle, Chena to Circle, and all the rest of the routes over the years, except Nabesna to McCarthy.

In fact, if a route doesn't "look brushy", then it's likely not very interesting to me. Because the "Bushwhacker's Race" is just that. It's not a trail race -- well it is, but you have to find and hold the trails, the animal trails, and you need to know how to stay out, get out, or make peace with the brush.

And if a route "looks brushy" to a snowmachiner who doesn't packraft, well, my feeling is we are likely not really speaking the same language, nor may we be able to communicate without some collaborating experiences.

So, if you are interested in a short route of 3-4 days (24 hours or less maybe for a PJ or "Luc Mehlon") mixing swift glacier headwaters of the Susitna with the clear headwaters of the Gulkana,  write mdr65n@yahoo.com and get the full details for the 2012 Alaska Cross.

It looks like the best new route to come out in years.

Apple's Lion and TOPO!

Getting a new operating system on my Mac often freshens the experience so much that I feel like I have a new computer. That's certainly been the case with OS X 10.7.3, Apple's Lion operating system. It has many new features, especially in the browser and the interface with the swipe pad, that really feel new.

In fact, it seems that new OS on old hardware could be the model for future economic growth without resource consumption. For example, imagine in the future if we could keep our old car and yet when we have the cash upload a new "look". That way status-conscious could upgrade their status, yet the new look would just be software -- now that's sustainable growth. The growth is people buying and consuming (i.e., the 20th century economic engine model) but what they buy is not extracted from the Earth, but rather from people's imaginations, which seems like a sustainable resource.

Anyway, that digression aside and back to reality, Apple's Lion operating system and TOPO! aren't yet compatible so I have been forced to look at Google Earth alone for Alaska trip planning.

Which brought up an old email from Hig:

Hi All,
 I was talking with a GIS geek this week and he mentioned that you can get
 a feed of all the Alaska topo maps for Google Earth:
 > http://kml.gina.alaska.edu/
 (There's some other cool stuff here too.)  If you zoom in, it will give you progressively more detailed maps, right down to the 1:63k.
  It's a bit sluggish, but otherwise it's a pretty incredible and free tool
 for exploring Alaska.  Maybe you all know about this already and I'm just
 out of the loop, but it's not exactly an easy thing to find, so I thought maybe
 not.
 -Hig

"One on One" with Charles Wohlforth: KAKM: Sun. 4/29 at 6:30 pm & Weds. 5/2 at 10:00 pm

This may be a bit more narcissistic than usual, but during a seven day period back in March, I did three different story-telling venues, two of which were recorded.

One was the pleasure of an interview with author Charles Wohlforth for his local TV series 1on1 ("One on One") on KAKM TV here in Anchorage.

 Here's a preview:

 

 The show'll be on Sunday, April 29 at 6:30 PM and again Wednesday at 10 PM.

 I haven't seen it yet, but its host, Charles, is the author of The Whale and the Supecomputer and The Fate of Nature, two excellent books. He's a "life-long Alaskan", educated at Princeton, and a really engaging, likable personality

Doing the interview was as almost as much fun as participating in the Arctic Entries, but I got more than 7 minutes and was encouraged to tell more than one story. The guys doing the production, like Travis and Pat Yak, were professional and gregarious.

If this clip is representative, then the production team did a pretty good job of hiding most of my dorkiness.

2012 Winter Wilderness Classic (Photos by Forrest McCarthy and Derek Collins)

Recent texting between me and an accomplished backcountry ski pioneer regarding the 2012 Wilderness Ski Classic--

Me: "That Luc Mehl is effin' studly."

Chris: "You didn't wup him?"

Me: "Nah. Didn't want to hurt his feelings. He's the sensitive type, you know"

Chris: "Yep. That's why I let him break trail. We are becoming more empathetic with age. BTW do lunges 4 yer hip problems."

------------------------------------

My frozen thumb-tip is not yet healed enough to hit the space bar as I write this (my index finger is working that purpose well), but my lips are healed enough to smile, and my feet enough to keep down to bang out this brief report of the Brooks Range Ski Classic.

So the first and obvious question is "What was I thinking?"

Off the couch and into new boots (Salomon X-ADV 6) back in early March, I figured I had plenty of time to get ready for a 200 mile ski trip across the Brooks Range. After all I'd done that before: skied hundreds of miles across untracked arctic winter wilderness from Kaktovik to near Galbraith Lake (start of this year's Classic), in fact.

I'd even done Winter Wilderness Classics before, too. Hell, they'd originally been my idea: "Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic" (AMWSC) way back in the late eighties, but had become an event organized exceptionally well by Dave Cramer for the last couple of decades.

And training? Figured I could ski to work, and the days I rode the fat bike, I could ski at lunch. Commuting plus an hour a day for a few weeks would do it. Right?

Wrong.

What about winter travel and camping in the Brooks Range? How hard could that be?

Sure it was -22 F in Anaktuvuk the week before the event (can't quite call it a race for me). But wasn't I the guy who's skied across ANWR for three weeks when it never got above zero during a record breaking cold snap? I had the experience, even if was from another century (millennium?).

I even had the gear: a Go Lite 4 season Adrenalin down bag, a sled, some new mittens (toasty warm), a brand new set of Stephensen vapor barriers (top and bottom), and two puffy jackets and puffy pants. I even had modified my Jet Boil and would -- in emulation of the new style of Classic ski racing -- forego a tent.

Problem was, the last time I'd winter camped was 2002, when Isaac Wilson and I, both on the adventure racing Team Earthlink, had entered the AMWSC in the Wrangells and dropped out on day two when we couldn't get out of our NNN bindings after skiing through a bit of overflow.

So at the ripe old age of 51 I headed north with the big bad boys to prove to myself I could finish.

Except I didn't. Instead I made all the mistakes a noob would make.

Carl's advice: "Better get out and ski some miles in those boots -- make sure you don't get any blisters." Hmmm. Guess my commute and half dozen lunch-hour skate skis weren't enough.

Cody Roman's observation: "Dad, you could barely keep up with me on the University ski trails at lunch." He's being generous, actually.

Peggy: "Why are you doing this? You're going to hurt yourself."

Forrest on Day 2

It was -24 F at the noon start on the edge of Galbraith Lake, North Slope of the Brooks Range. Andrew Cyr and Aaron Wells of Fairbanks had bolted, breaking trail across the undulating hills.

Luc and John Pekar, his partner in most of the Winter Classics (this would be their fifth Classic and their fourth win together -- Luc also won last year when John couldn't make it), cut west early, their plan to stay on the Slope until Anaktuvuk River.

The first night, when finally arriving at the camp of Wyoming's Forrest McCarthy and Derek Collins (they'd caught the Fairbanks duo of Andrew and Aaron near dark), I climbed into their two person tent in desperation.

"Thhhh thhhhh tthhhh thanks, Fff fff fforrest. Yyy yyy your ss ss saaaavvv vvin mm mm my ass."

"Yea, well you saved mine last time, buddy."

Here Forrest was referring to the 2009 Summer Classic when his knee went bum on day two. Forrest, from Wyoming, is the only one from Outside Alaska to finish both the summer and winter events. Not only that he took second in each on his first time entering. He's tough and talented.

That night it was at least -25 F (felt like -30) with a breeze, nipping my thumb on a metal gaiter snap as I struggled to get boots and gaiters off and into the tent.

Soon after that nip, my modified Jet Boil nearly caught fire when the copper heat transfer modification melted the plastic while calm, cool, and always happy Derek heated water for me with the melting Jet Boil to soothe my violent shivering.

All of this with us three crammed into one of those tiny Black Diamond Bibler-style tents.

The next morning, in return for the favor of keeping me alive, I broke Derek's carbide ski pole tip. That way he'd be handicapped like me.

"If that's the worst that happens to me," he quipped, "I'll be happy."

One of my tips had broken, too, the day before and on the second day I broke the other as the baskets on the quarter-century old poles crumbled. Not a good sign so early in an event that's mostly on river ice.

An hour later Derek left to catch Forrest, who'd left us to warm up (it was -25 F that morning). I wouldn't see either one's face again until Wiseman, three days later, when Forrest would ski into the Dance Hall in Wiseman with both skis frozen to his boots.

Later that first morning I caught up with Thomas Bailly, a Girdwood/Anchorage backcountry skier who had entered the race last year and had a most miserable time.

"Yea, that first night it was thirty below and Doug was wet from falling face first into overflow. We crammed three of us into a two man tent. It was frosty and tight and we just shivered violently in our plus twenty bags long enough to doze a moment or two, before shivering uncontrollably again." Sounded horrific to me.

"If we'd had a sat phone I would have called for a rescue. Instead I learned that I could survive a hell of a lot of suffering."

I asked him why he was back this year.

"To wash away the demons, really. I was messed up in the head for months after that. We suffered every night from cold and every day our feet were just destroyed. I really like winter and wanted to get that good feeling about it back. This time I have a neg-twenty bag, not plus-twenty."

Same with Luc and John. They've gone from plus 20 to "neg 20" sleeping bags, and, like Thomas and I, carried canister stoves and no tent.

Five toes mean wolverine.

The two of us ended up travelling about the same pace, following the trail of a pack of wolves and cutting wolverine tracks every few hours. I'd given up on keeping up with the Wyoming Team.

Thomas and I travelled the same pace, but not because I could keep up with him, me pulling my dumb-school sled with piss-poor conditioning.

But because I cut the corners on the Itkillik River's bends.

Because I milked the downhills with shallow descents.

Because I never stopped to sit down.

Because, other than drinking and eating, I didn't bother to take care of myself, to spread any sunscreen on my lips (it was frozen too stiff to rub on), to retape my feet rubbed by new boots.

By day two we were holed up together at Summit Lake on the Arctic Divide, and I was suffering physically and emotionally.

"Yea, I think I'm gonna head down the North Fork to Wiseman," I whined, "skip Anaktuvuk, or maybe go back and follow those snowmachine tracks over Oolah Pass. I'm not ready for this. I was falling asleep on the trail today and feel like I am just crawling along. But I'm going to take a 12 hour nap here anyway, see how I feel tomorrow."

"Really? Twelve hours?"

Thomas pulled off his socks and showed me a nasty blister under his foot. "Think I should pop this?"

"No, don't pop it tonight. Maybe tomorrow. You should think about a twelve hour break, too. Might give that blister a chance to heal. You'll definitely feel better after 12 hours."

He admitted to crawling along too, but the fact that in my near-dream state I had caught and passed him spoke to that.

We'd make great Classic partners: the kind who meet on the race because their pace is well matched.

And while we'd begun unbound and selfish, we'd likely finish together and sharing, like partners.

Looking back from Peregrine Pass

Twelve hours later I felt great. "Yea, I think I'll go over Peregrine Pass, head to Anaktuvuk," I announced.

The night before I'd tried to talk him into going down the North Fork with me but Thomas said he wanted to go to Anaktuvuk. He'd never been there before.

In the morning he said, "Funny, I was just thinking I'd go down the North Fork, but that'd be great to have you along and go over Peregrine"

So that was that. We skied past small bands of 'bou and followed the Fairbanks-Wyoming teams' trail up and over Peregrine Pass together.

On the way down to Grizzly Creek I fell, rolled over a pole and broke it in half. This was no problem for a couple miles of wonderful trail to the start of Grizzly Creek overflow, but then fearing I'd break a rib after slip-sliding on the steep ice without metal edges or any ski-pole tip, I climbed out of the canyon and we cut the corner to Ernie Pass.

The cold snap had broken and while maybe 10, 15 below zero it felt far warmer than -25 as we clambered over sastrugi and bare tundra.

Around midnight we stomped out a bivy pad at Ernie Pass and put in another 12 hour camp.

It was nice to lay there as Thomas melted snow and heated water, passing me food and hot drink beneath clouds too thin to snow more than the flurries that fell, but thick enough to make the sub-zero night feel warm.

By Ernie Pass my boots, out for blood, had bitten and chewed my tender foot flesh and the beautiful tour into Anaktuvuk turned into a painful shuffle.

Wyoming and Fairbanks teams in Anaktuvuk Valley

At first we made a good ten miles in two hours with a tail-wind and a downhill on wind-blown snow followed by blue ice. It was exhilarating, but also clear from counting skate ski tracks that the Luc-John and Fairbanks-Wyoming teams were already heading toward Wiseman after tagging Anaktuvuk. It felt like they were a good two days ahead of us, at our pace, and we were only on day four day into our race.

At this point in the event I felt like an amateur who takes art and music classes not to make art or music, but rather to appreciate the artists and musicians who can: wilderness artists like John and Luc, Andrew and Aaron, Forrest and Derek. They awed me.

If we had found the others pushing on from Anaktuvuk over the pass to Tinayguk, then I would have followed, but I had neither the time nor pain threshold to break trail on our own to Wiseman.

And I had no interest to ski back this way, uphill into a head wind, with just a single pole -- a pole that lacked a tip.

On the blue ice I called out, "Heh Thomas!! can I borrow a pole!"

"NO!" he called back over his shoulder and poled quickly away.

Well it was my own hubris that led me to bring my old Excel poles from the 80s, poles with sun-rotted baskets and snapped carbide tips.

A few moments later, he must have remembered that what I had was more like a stick then a ski pole, as he dropped one of his carbide-tipped skating poles for me to pick up.

Thomas and I had not been racing after Day 1, really, and enjoyed the tilted, layered mountains all around, crusted in frost that soared above us in brilliant blue. The warm sun in our faces and wind to our backs, made for an enjoyable 25 mile day following hard snow, blue ice, ski tracks and snowmachine trails.

At one point three monster snowmachines, each pulling sleds and one pulling two sleds full of action packers and fuel stopped alongside me.

"Hi there," I said.

"How's it going," asked one as he stopped his motor.

"Great. Nice day. Park Service?"

"Naw. Not quite."

"Where you going?"

"Kotzebue and on to Nome."

"Wow. See any other skiers?"

"Yea, four of em on the other side of Ernie Creek. Another two passed us when we were camped up at Bombardment Creek."

"Yea they're racing. And those guys are animals. They're skiing like 50 miles a day with sub-thirty pound packs and no tents."

As I shuffled into Anaktuvuk in the fading 10 PM light, a young Nunamiut girl in her PJs walked up pulling a sled with her younger sister.

"Going sledding?"

"Yep," she smiled and added, "your friend is waiting for you."

"Thanks," and I shuffled on.

"You're very old," she called after me as I gimped onward with short strides and sore feet to catch up with Thomas and see what we had next in store for us on this adventure.

Which was where to camp in Anaktuvuk.

I struggled to remember names and finally a truck pulled over. Its driver told me where the Nome-bound snowmachiners who'd come to town earlier that day were.

"That brown house over there. At Juste the Norwegian's place."

I knocked at the door.

It opened.

"Hi! Are you Juste the Norwegian? Is this the hotel?" I half joked.

The man at the door squinted his eyes at me, "Do I know you?"

"Maybe. You look familiar. My name's Roman."

"Roman......Dial?"

"Yea. We just skied over from Galbraith and need a place to sleep. Feel bad to impose this way, but could we give you some money to sleep on your floor? We don't have a tent."

And of course Alaskan Bush hospitality held the day.

Thomas and I swapped stories and gear lists with the snowmachiners and our hosts, school-teachers for 17 years in Anaktuvuk. It was warm and lively and an excellent interlude on our arctic adventure.

Luc's video:

The next day we caught a Wright's Air flight to Coldfoot ($200/each), where Luc and John picked us up from the truck stop where Lance and Dick Mackey held court with stories of their recent dog-mushing caribou hunt on the Slope.

Telling Lance that I was an admirer of his style, I mentioned that Luc and John had just skied over 200 miles in less than four days, the same four days that the Mackey men were recounting as gnarly-cold days to be in the Brooks Range.

"Yea, well those distance skiers, they are hard-core, especially up here. I need dogs to pull my sorry ass around. Ha ha ha!" said Lance.

John and Luc had finished the 200 mile course in less time than it had taken us to ski less than half the distance and fly the rest. And while John looked a bit like a sleepy, disheveled wolf, Luc looked like the Wolverine character from then X-men movie, as if the wilderness had changed him into a beast.

Yes, they were wild animals indeed, those two, champions of a new era of wilderness ski racing in the Winter Wilderness Classic, perhaps the most challenging adventure race in the world.

Alaska Mountain Wilderness SKI Classic: the first two

This years marks the 25th birthday of the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic, an event that begins early next month in the Brooks Range.

The first race was in 1987 across the Chugach Range from Eureka Roadhouse to Valdez. The route was the idea of a couple Valdez adventurers (Brian Teale and John Weiland), whom I thought would show up, if that was the route.

But they didn't show up, of course, and the route had avalanche danger, so the second year course was through the Alaska Range, "the Denali Dash".

The Dash Route (1988-1990) was the route I had envisioned since 1981 and the route that Audun Endestadt and I skied in 1986 in about 3.5 days, making two, 12 hour camps en route (Black rapids Pass; Susitna-West Fork Pass). That was an amazing ski trip and the route is a great nordic mountaineering adventure: up the Black Rapids, down the Susitna, over to the Gillam or over to the West Fork and the down the Yanert. This is the route Luc et al did in the summer classic across moraine, bare ice, and river by foot and packraft last summer in the 2011 Classic.

But as a ski trip in springtime it is a TRUE classic.