Tracing the Heart of Alaska - A journey around Cook Inlet

Start date: March 27

End date:  Perhaps late July?

Latest Update:  See the latest update from Erin, Hig, Katmai and Lituya on our Facebook Page and the Ground Truth Trekking blog.

On Malaspina Glacier, in November's snow and rain, we brainstormed designs for packable, beach-capable carts and wagons while struggling down Malaspina's beaches without them. We circled Alaska in our minds, looking for an idea grand enough to sweep aside the gritty truth of snow and rain and bears and whining and wilderness diapering---something to shrink all those difficulties to mere obstacles in service of a larger vision.

Expeditions are how we frame our lives. It seems like half the talk on any given expedition is spent dreaming up the next one. I feel naked without those plans---never quite comfortable until we schedule the next adventure.

Exploration rig entering Kachemak Bay

We watched this bizarre vessel get towed by on its way to Homer. Eventually it will be moved to upper Cook Inlet to drill oil and gas exploration wells.

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800 miles at Preschooler Speed

Now Katmai is four and Lituya is two, and we're walking and packrafting around Cook Inlet. On Google Earth, it's a thin line tracing 800 miles of coastline, from Dogfish Bay to Cape Douglas.

Back in 2001, when I was a new college graduate, I hiked 800 miles on my first big Alaska expedition, from the Drift River to Chignik. At the time, I was proud of that vast-seeming distance. This time (although he'll ride in the packraft for sections), my four-year-old will be hiking it on his own two feet. We've planned for about 8 miles a day, figuring that he might walk 5 or 6 on a good beach, and the slack will be taken up by times that we all packraft. Like most plans, we expect it to change.  So far it's looking good though - Katmai can cover 7 miles in a day fairly reliably, and we can make up for difficult days with a bit of packrafting, as long as we get calm weather.

Cook Inlet---the Heart of Alaska

Why Cook Inlet? Cook Inlet is the heart of modern Alaska. It has Native villages and Russian villages, hippie towns and tourist traps and Alaska's biggest city. Cook Inlet is our home. It's home to oil rigs and natural gas plants, coal mine proposals, wind turbines and tidal power proposals, endangered whales and abundant bears, salmon and melting glaciers. It's home to most of Alaska's population, and hundreds of miles of nearly unpeopled wilderness.

The future of Malaspina Glacier is clear. The future of Cook Inlet is muddier and more conflicted, and more important. It's a place where all the diverse issues of Alaska's future collide with the diversity of all its people---where we can ask them what they think.

Pig pile of berry picking kids

Katmai and Lituya clamber over eachother to pick lingonberries on the ridge above Seldovia

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Help us Out

Do you live or work on Cook Inlet? Do you know someone who does? Would you be willing to meet up with a family of grubby hikers sometime between March and July, 2013?

We're hoping to visit people in every community along the way, to hang out, and to see what you think about the future of Alaska. On the practical front, we also need legal places to camp or stay (passing through the more urbanized parts of eastern Cook Inlet), and places we can get a resupply box to (on the west side of Cook Inlet). Please contact us or FB if you can help us out.

Date Created: 19th January 2012