Natural Hazards

Posted by Erin on 11 May 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, southwest alaska



Crossing paths

Crossing paths

When it was day-old tracks in the mud, he yelled “Bear!” And when it was an actual bear, he whispered “video camera”. Hig will claim he was actually trying to get across both concepts - that I should both pass him the video camera and ready my pepper spray. All I can say is what I heard. Unable to see from my vantage a few steps back in the willow brush, I thought Hig had seen a moose, or maybe a cute little fox he wanted to film…

The bear soon rendered any question of his identity moot, with a slow lumbering run across the tundra. Towards us.



May snow

“Our first spring bear.” Hig said, mostly for the benefit of the video camera.

The pepper spray’s bright orange safety clip lay discarded on the remains of yesterday’s snowfall. I was poised, thumb at the ready, waiting to see what the bear would do.

You’re supposed to talk to a bear. It lets him know you’re a human - or at least that’s what all the books will tell you. But what do you say?

“Hello. I’m a human. And I’m holding something that will make your eyes water, so perhaps you shouldn’t come over here and take a swat with one of those paws that looks about twice the size of my head?”

Or “Hello. I’m a human. And we humans have been using technology to kill you guys for generations, so you should recognize me as more than the fragile slab of meat that I might appear to be?”


Walking a beaver dam


Or “Hello. I’m a human. And whatever you do to me, bears that mess with humans usually don’t end well, so it’s not a good idea?”

Hig was busy with his video camera, leaving me to do most of the talking - which ended up as a series of mostly inane and rather unconvincing attempts to tell the bear to leave.

I wasn’t sure quite what it meant - but I was pretty sure that the drool streaming from the bear’s mouth was not a good sign. He circled, cautiously. Slowly inching closer, stalking behind the willows to peer out at us under the branches… Taking his sweet time deciding.



Cottonwood sunset

He started to leave. He started to return. I held my breath, silently willing the bear’s decision… Then it was finally over. He turned abruptly, and we were treated to the familiar and welcome sight of a bear butt galloping away through the bushes.

We backtracked along his platter-sized tracks, crisp and perfect in the remains of the early May snowstorm.

Erin: “Wow - that’s an enormous bear. Somehow it’s easier to see in context, looking at the tracks, than it is to tell from the bear itself.”

Hig: “I don’t think the ears grow as much as the rest of the bear. So when you see really small ears, that means it’s a really big bear.”



On the bear’s path

I’m sure we’ve encountered well over a hundred bears through the course of our various adventures. This ranks up there as one of the few most frightening. But for a close encounter, also reassuringly normal. As improbable as it seems when I stand face to face with an animal that could crush me with one backhand swat, bears almost always do run away.

The snow has melted. The grass shoots are coming up. Bear hunters are being flown in to all the lodges out here, brimming with dreams of killing a bear like ours. Spring is here.

A mountain spread thin



Aniakchak pumice field

First we saw the names on the map. Pumice Creek. Lava Creek. Cinder River. And as we stepped out of the last cottonwood forests, we stepped onto Aniakchak volcano. Gusts flew down the Cinder River valley, stirring up plumes of fine volcanic sand. Between patches of tundra, we walked on plains of bare pumice gravel. Even 3500 years after the eruption, the kinnikinnik and cranberry plants are still struggling to spread over the empty ground.



Brushy tent

From the ocean, the rim of Aniakchak caldera is hardly a noteworthy mountain. Just a low snowy ridge, far off in the distance. But on the beach, we walked beneath fluted cliffs of pumice, pumice cobbles sinking into the sand beneath our feet. What had once been a great mountain was spread thin across the whole landscape - in the form of pumice, ash, and crushed rock. Hig the geologist scrambled up the cliff to shoot picture after picture of the remains, carefully placing his ice axe as a scale bar. Pumice floats, and at the mouth of each creek, the drift line was almost entirely composed of this strange weightless rock. Washed up on shore were the remains of Aniakchak, a few pieces of cedar floated in from southeast Alaska or Canada, and from across the Pacific - glass balls.

A weighty addiction

Clink, clink, clink… Three netted glass balls swung from Hig’s pack, slapping against one of our narrow drybags. Awkwardly tied on to the outside of his backpack, the drybag was also full of glass balls. The big orange drybag that comprised the majority of Hig’s pack was also entirely stuffed - glass balls, glass balls, glass balls, and a sleeping bag thrown in for padding. My pack was similarly encumbered with as many glass balls as I could fit around our hiking gear. Luckily, we were only 10 miles or so from Port Heiden, and had run just about out of food (save for some peppermints and a small bag of very salty dried salmon), so we had plenty of room.



Sunset grass

Why the addiction to Japanese trash? The sparkle of a glassy green-blue sphere on a field of pumice, lying on the beach, just begging to be picked up… This one frosted, that one an intense shade of green, one with barnacles, with bubbles, with funny indentations, streaks of color, stamps on their base… All just a little bit different. And in some places, they’re a rare beachcombing treasure. Here?

Jack, who runs the grocery store watched us unloading our pile of over a hundred to mail to Seldovia. “I have hundreds in 5-gallon buckets at home. When I want to send them in the mail I usually pack them in apple boxes.”



Fluted pumice bluffs

“Usually about 80% of them make it through the mail without breaking” said one of the teachers. “We’ve got a pile of 1500 in our backyard in Anchorage - we put a fountain in the middle.” Another teacher was planning to sell her horde of 300 to a shop in Oregon. “I might be able to get $5-$10 apiece!”

The postmistress lifted our packed full boxes onto the scale, slapping on a ‘fragile’ sticker. “As long as they don’t rattle too much, they’re generally OK.”

We’re planning to make a window out of them.

Mothers



Japanese trash

My mother and I were joking on the phone the other day about how she could get a new job as an expedition logistics manager. For the past 11 months, she’s been storing a pile of our gear in her basement, mailing out shoes, skis, maps, socks… Running to the store to buy things we can’t find in 50 person villages. We’ll breeze into town, and I’ll call or email, often starting the conversation with some version of: “These are the things we need in the next village, here’s the zipcode, and could you do it soon so it gets there in time?” Only later do we get a chance to catch up on life and news.

So this Mother’s Day, I’d like to take a moment to thank Niki, Dede, Faith, Carolyn, Bert, Edythe, and Janine. All our mothers and grandmothers who are helping, watching, and supporting our journey. And to Huna, who passed away while we were traveling.



Port Heiden school

Schedule

As unpredictable as we’ve been this past year, we are indeed nearing the end of our journey. I’ve just updated the Schedule page to reflect the latest plan. This time, we even have a deadline - tickets to take the ferry from False Pass to Seldovia on June 29, arriving in Seldovia July 1st.


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Hoping for Spring

Posted by Erin on 02 May 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, environment, southwest alaska



Ugashik marshes

“April showers bring May flowers”

A rhyme clearly written for a distant land. May is already upon us, and still the only shower is the flurry of blowing snow outside the window of the Ugashik community center, dusting the bare tundra white.

We walked into Egegik across a river of ice. We walked out on frozen banks along a ribbon of open blue water. Candle ice crumbled into the water with a soft tinkling hiss. Ducks and geese bobbed by in the current. Seagulls wheeled overhead, screeching and screaming. They quietly flew past us all winter, but somehow now, their voices have come back. The sound reminded me of the summer ocean.





Egegik

The river meandered in long lazy bends, and we took off on a shortcut across the grassy marshes. One tuft of grass was a solid ice lump underfoot, while the next squished down into a muddy pool of ice water. Done with ski boots at last, we were ecstatic at the nimble movement afforded by our ordinary hiking shoes (Montrail Hardrocks), though a bit less ecstatic at the long stretches of ice-cold water we had to walk through.



Walking shoes!

The warm sun overhead was quickly melting the land. Sandhill cranes strode through the marshes, their continual stuttering cry like a wet finger squeaking on glass: “I’m a crane! I’m a crane! I’m a crane!” They were the first cranes we’d seen since last fall’s southern migration on the Stikine Delta near Wrangell. The sounds of a dozen other birds we didn’t recognize filled the air as we set up camp in the long evening light. I thought it was spring.



Ice pile on Becherof Lake

Hot springs

As I bundled up against the blowing snow on the flanks of Peulik volcano, I realized we still had a long way to go. I snapped pictures of the first pussy willows, the first few sprigs of wild celery poking through the dirt… But most of the land was still bare and frozen. The bears were nowhere to be seen, a foot of ice covered most of the lakes, and a day above freezing was still something to be longed for.



Pussy willows

We have had terrible luck finding hot springs, and we joked about our chances as we followed Hot Springs Creek through Ugashik caldera. Hig stuck his hand in each promising patch of water, the slick of red slime on the streambed making us hopeful.

Hig: “Hard to tell… It’s warmer than the air, anyway.”

Erin: “So what you’re saying is that this liquid water is above freezing?”



Ukinrek Maars

Hig: “All I’m saying is that there’s still heat in the earth.”

We walked further - past tiny bubbling springs, puddles with a sulfurous tang on the toungue, strange green algae, and everything covered with a thick coat of orangey-red. The only real heat came from a frothing pool, shiny black sand bubbling out of the depths. Unwilling to strip down in the blowing snow, we waded in ankle-deep, warming our feet (still in shoes) as we used the heat of the pool to thaw our frozen snickers bars.



Snowy caldera on Peulik’s flanks

From there, we had thought we might detour out to the Pacific coast again. But deep postholing snow on the hills and the cold wintery weather sent us on a shorter path - along the Ugashik Lakes to the 12 person village of Ugashik.

What the land can swallow

But before we turned, we made one last detour, to visit the old Mt. Demian oil camp near the headwaters of Ugashik Creek. We climbed through willows on a snowy ridge, photographing a few rusting boilers and bits of machinery, and the piles of used up “clinkers” from the coal used to run them. The last remains of a nearly 80 year old oil exploration boom, being swallowed by the land. Rust consumes machinery, and roads vanish into the brush.



Hot springs snow tunnel

The boom and bust of resource exploitation is part of the history of Alaska, ever since the Russians came for sea otter furs. It’d be hard, probably impossible, to find a creek or a beach that hasn’t been visited at some point by a prospector hoping to strike it rich. Large deposits of metal ores lie beneath the tundra. Oil, gas, and coal deposits have been identified all across the state. But Alaska is a difficult place to work. In far-flung places like here on the Alaska Peninsula, many large deposits remain buried. Only a few particularly easy targets, like the oil at Mt. Demian, have even been touched.



Colors in Hot Springs Creek

Most of the traces of long-ago prospectors have already vanished into the land. But as mineral prices skyrocket, the gold, copper, oil, gas, and coal sitting under Alaska’s wilderness isn’t being ignored any longer. A modern resource boom is ramping up.

And modern means big. Mountain-sized operations replace the gold-panning mountain man, creating mountain-sized piles of potentially dangerous waste. And modern means global. Fossil fuels we dig or drill here come back in the form of a changing climate, acidified oceans…


Mt Demian oil camp

We’re lucky up here. We have the chance to look back at the decisions made in other parts of the world. A chance to do things better. Alaska still has an abundance of healthy ecosystems and renewable resources, and a relatively small population. Doing things better doesn’t mean an end to development, and it also doesn’t mean developing every resource that might make someone money. We need to think about how we can live sustainably.



Living within our means



Caribou on the tundra

Sustainability is the equivalent of fiscal conservatism - of living within our means. As a world, we’re on an entirely unsustainable course of consumption, and by definition, anything unsustainable must come to an end, one way or another. We might try to control how gently it will end, and what will replace it. However, it will end.





On the edge of breakup

Sustainability is something Hig and I think about a lot out here, as we talk to folks in these remote communities - all looking for ways to help their village survive. Bristol Bay is one of the few places in the world where there still are cannery towns - flooded in the summer with people, many from Seattle, coming to fish the abundant wild salmon runs. But though the fishing is sustainable, the fuel needed to run the industry and bring goods and people back and forth from such a remote piece of the world is anything but. We see people setting up windmills. We hear people talking about geothermal energy from the volcanoes, methane gas from the swamps, tide-run ice-making machines. No one knows all the answers. But we have to try.


First shoots of spring


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Signs of Spring

Posted by Erin on 20 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, southwest alaska



Bristol Bay bluffs

I bent down to look closely at the muddy beach, examining the fresh imprint of a wolverine’s paw - left only a minute earlier by the dark loping shape we’d watched run along the base of the bluffs.

“Bear!” Hig cried out from beside me.

I looked up, my heart starting to beat a little faster. I quickly scanned the beach for an ursine form, my hand straying to the pepper spray clipped to my chest strap, preparing for a close encounter with a large, potentially irate grizzly.



Abandoned cannery

“First one of the season!” Hig continued, gleefully.

Puzzled, I slowly followed the line of Hig’s gaze. Not along the beach ahead of us, but down, onto the mud. And there, each toe filled with a tiny puddle of water, was the clear impression of a bear’s front foot. It was clearly older than several sets of wolverine tracks, older than the fox tracks, older than the last high tide…

“Don’t say it like that!” I admonished. “Yelling ‘Bear!’ when you’re looking at a track…”



Photo by Bruce A. - us on tundra

“I’m sorry,” he apologized sheepishly. “I was excited.”

Signs of Spring

We’ve left our skis behind - sitting at Ann and Chris’s in Naknek, where they can hopefully be used by some intrepid local kids on future winter camping trips. I was lucky enough to borrow shoes to walk this 50 miles of coast. Our own Montrail shoes were waiting in the Egegik post office. And now Hig’s ski boots, carried long past their natural life span (apparently about 3 weeks), can finally meet their proper end in the Egegik dump.



Last of the trees

We scanned the ground carefully as we walked the tundra, eyes peeled for the first touch of green - debating whether the few green sprigs of club moss were new this year, or just uncovered by the snow. Too early for spring greens, we snacked on the newly-thawed fruits of fall. Last year’s cranberries still clung to their stalks, slightly fermented, staining our fingers with red juice as we knelt down to pick them.



Last of the ski boots

Clinging to depressions in the tundra, small piles of white ptarmigan feathers waved in the wind. Heads dark, and bodies still white, the ptarmigan look suspended betwen the seasons, molting piece by piece to match the newly snow-free ground. Startling us with their unexpected cries (Hig thought it was the voice of a small child at first), a flock of geese fought the wind as they passed us overhead, returning to their summer feeding grounds.

Or perhaps the real sign of spring was the pair of embroidered thong underwear we found in the drift line on an ice-choked shore, making us wonder about the story that led to that particular item being lost on the Bering Sea…

Of Mud and Ice

On the bluff tops between Naknek and Egegik, we were surrounded by plains of golden grass and red-brown tundra, broken only by a few small patches of brush. It almost looked like farmland - until we turned to look down on the swirl of jumbled sea ice, extending over the horizon of Bristol Bay.



Bering Sea beachcombing
(glass ball and embroidered thong underwear)

The parallel lines of a 4-wheeler ’suicide trail’ ended abruptly at the edge of the cliff. Elsewhere along the bluff tops, abandoned cabins clung precariously to the shrinking edge. Looking up from the beach, we could see a room-sized corner of a house from underneath - the ground below it already eroded into the sea. As the sun warmed the sandy bluffs, a rain of dirt tumbled down their steep face. Every year, the storms wash up against the base of the bluffs, and the Bering Sea claims an ever bigger bite of the land…



Bluffs over ice

We’ve passed through the winter and returned to a half-frozen world. Jumbled sea ice is piling on the beaches, mixing with the dirt raining from the bluffs, and turning the shore into an oozing slippery mess of mud. Ice floes are swirling in strong tidal currents, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, covering the mudflats as far as we could see… It reminded me of Knik Arm, and made me thankful that we had no need to try and paddle this chunk of the Bering Sea.

Connaisseurs of Wind



Jumbled sea ice

Smooth and steady, quite dry, cool but not cold, with a strong, robust flavor…

That was the wind we had on the way into Egegik. Leaning into it, wading upstream against the current of air sweeping across the tundra, I reflected on our choice of route. Following the Pacific Rim, through the Lost Coast, the mountain passes, and heading down the Alaska Peninsula, we’ve chosen to pass through some of the windiest possible places.



Last year’s cranberries

We’ve become connaisseurs of wind. Wind that sweeps up from behind, shoving us along. Wind that drives in from ahead, stinging our exposed cheeks and noses. Wind that rattles the brush and flattens the grass, wind that sets the water into a frothing chop, and wind that sends swirls of hissing snow streaming across the ground. Wind that blows for days, as if you’ll never hear silence again. Wind that leaps up in an instant, a roaring tempest that ends as suddenly as it began. Wind that blows sand, or snow, or leaves, or rain, or nothing at all. Wind that funnels through narrow notches in the land, where you can walk from a gale to dead calm in a matter of minutes. Wind that seems to fill the whole world.



End of the forests

Wind blown, wind swept, wind scoured… We’re passing the last few scraggly trees - beyond the “limit of wooded country” marked on the map. Into a land of tundra and volcanoes, and into one of my favorite parts of the world.



Videos

Jumping back in time - a few videos Eric put together from our clips from February:

Grocery shopping in Eagle River

Anchorage to Beluga

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Moods of the World

Posted by Erin on 12 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, southwest alaska



Under a snowdrift

Blowing rain pierced my eyeballs. Hot sun shone on hills of sparkling snow. Frost caked our fur ruffs in near-zero air. A gentle breeze propelled us floating along cobbled sea cliffs. Swirling snow drifts buried our shelter. Fog and snow flurries whited out the world.

As each shift in the weather transformed the land around us, it seemed like we could have seen it all without moving a step. We were moving through the moods of the world. And for the first few days, it seemed that not moving - physically - might have been a much nicer option.



Into the wind on Gibraltar Lake

Moods of the World

I squinted out of the eyeholes of my smurf-blue balaclava, a wet fringe of fur ruff drawn tight against my face, the hood of my coat as battened down and cinched tight as it could get. And I saw my feet. Squelching in soaking wet ski boots, I carefully maneuvered across hillocks of winter-brown tundra, pools of slush and patches of melting snow in between.



Pass above Amakdedori

I looked up, slowly widening my squint to try and get a look ahead of me. Blowing rain stabbed at my face, forcing me to blink, eyes watering, and quickly return to my foot-focused stare. The wind screamed. Howled. Roared. Blinded by rain and sleet, we leaned into the gale, struggling to make even a few miles of progress. Our skis were useless on the snow-free ground. They stuck up as tall triangular peaks above our food-heavy packs, serving only to make us stumble as they were caught by the wind. A day and a half into this leg and barely ten miles from town, I thought wistfully of Kokhanok’s warm school buildings.

And that ten miles was in entirely the wrong direction.



Through snow-drifted boulders

Detours

Dreaming and scheming with a computer and a map, we’d come up with half a dozen different plans to trek through Katmai Park between Kokhanok and King Salmon, each one more indirect than the last. The Pacific coast at Amakdedori wasn’t even on that original list.



Amakdedori cabin

On the third day of fighting against blowing snow and rain, the idea of continuing east to the ocean was quickly losing its appeal. We stopped for yet another discussion in the lee of one of the few small spruce trees, its top whipping in the gale. I was in favor of ditching the plan and turning west toward King Salmon. Hig was still set on Amakdedori. I agreed to go along for another day. Mostly because if I’ve learned anything on this journey, it’s that for good or bad, sooner or later, conditions will always turn around.



Amakdedori shore

Kamishak Bay

Luckily, this time was sooner.

Augustine volcano appeared from the clouds, as sun shone on the flat calm waters of Kamishak Bay. Waterfalls from melting snow made curtains of rain below overhung cliff tops. We paddled alongside, staring up at walls of jumbled concrete - rounded cobbles protruding from sheer faces that hardly looked like they should even hold together.

On top of the bluffs, hundreds of ptarmigan flew from alder patch to alder patch. On the ground, they were like white butterballs running along white snow slopes, visible mostly because of the shadows they cast. Their zigzag trails left the dragging prints of bird feet on nearly every square inch of snow. The trilling chuckle of their calls sounded like a thousand giggling chickens.



Cliff, toppled and cracked

McNeil state game sanctuary. In the summer, tourists pay for the chance to win the lottery to watch bears here. In early April, we shared it with ptarmigan. With fox, otters, tracks of the elusive wolverine, a moose standing alone on a flat grass island not much bigger than a suburban yard… The bears are still asleep. The tourists are still home, dreaming of summer. And the villages that used to speckle these shores are long-abandoned, only small labeled dots on our map. Amakdedori… Chenik… Kamishak… We had heard from Gary, an elder in Kokhonak, that Amakdedori had been abandoned after a flood from the ocean. A flood that left logs 100 feet up on the slopes-perhaps the 1883 tsunami from nearby St. Augustine volcano. Limited by our short visit, but unable to resist a story of disaster, Hig peered at the coastline for evidence. Why were there beaches perched 30 feet above high tide? Why did the low-lying plains near the ocean look scoured?

From Blank to Blowing



Navigating the whiteout

It was like the turning of the tide.

The world was blank as we skied a shelf above McNeil River. Fog hung over the slopes, snow flurries blew in from the ocean behind us, and nearly all the bushes had been long-since buried by the winter’s snow. The sky was the same flat white as the mountains - as white as the snow under our feet.

“I see a something!” Hig cried excitedly - squinting into the distance for the hint of a scrubby alder.

But the somethings were few and far between. Sometimes there was literally nothing to see but Hig’s bright backpack and dark drysuit - cut out against a paper-white world.

We barely had a chance to notice the calm. Suddenly, the world fell silent. Fat snowflakes gently drifted straight down, settling on our hoods and sleeves, tapping quietly. And within twenty minutes, the world had turned around.



Raiding Kulik Lodge

Low pressure on the Bering Sea sends warm wet air streaming west across the Alaska Peninsula from the Pacific Ocean. Low pressure on the Pacifc sends cold dry air streaming the other direction. It was as if someone was trying to even the levels in two glasses of water: having poured too much in from the Pacific side, they quickly turned to pour it back the other way. And in a mountain pass above McNeil Lake, we were right in the spout.

Tent Archaeology





Alpine sunset

I mumbled sleepily at Hig as he tried to explain why we needed to switch the direction of our feet and head in the middle of the night. Something about snow, and tearing walls, and suffocation…? We wriggled around and returned to sleep, ignoring the swirls of snow still blowing on our sleeping bag through the tiny cracks in our well-chinked walls. The thin nylon walls of our pyramid sagged inward under an ever-increasing load of blowing snow.

The switch of the wind had caught us just before dark, and high up in a blank white world, the shelter from the storm we’d managed to find amounted to exactly two boulders. But after an hour spent digging and building a six foot tall snow wall to sleep behind, we figured we’d done the best we could.



Camp in the willows

We woke in a space the size of a small dog house. Bedding down behind a six foot snow wall, we arose in the middle of a six foot snow drift - only the peak of our shelter still standing against the weight. While Hig stepped out to take pictures, that collapsed too.

“I found a cooking vessel!” Hig cried, holding up our blackened cookpot.

“Can you tell by its decorations what sort of culture it originated from?” I replied.

“It must have been an impoverished culture… only soot blackening on this dented aluminum pot.”

Half a kayak paddle in my mittened hands, I was busily shoveling snow off another corner of our flattened shelter. Carefully trying to retrieve all our buried gear, it felt like we were performing archaeology on ourselves.



Cottonwood forest

But the change in the wind brought in the cold clear air and the bright sun. For the next six days into King Salmon, we anxiously awaited the next shift in the air - the next storm to hit us. So far, it hasn’t come…

Buttery Goodness… Gone Bad?

Meager in calories and overpackaged, I’ve never liked Mountain House, or any freeze-dried meals. After eating nine of them over the past few days, I like them even less.

Logistics are hard here. As we travel through southwest Alaska, the villages are small, and stores are often non-existant. The thousand-ish population of King Salmon/Naknek makes this a bustling metropolis compared to where we’ve been and what lies ahead.



Cliffs along Naknek Lake

So we had to estimate, order, and ship food far in advance of when we’d eat it. Inevitably, we calculated wrong. And in this case, it led to a couple of bags of our favorite buttery goodness snack making it all the way from Anchorage to Kokhanok to sit in too-warm a building. And in our usual flurry of activity leaving a town, we didn’t check it.

Sitting on the porch of the closed down and empty Kulik Lodge, I dug to the bottom of the dry bag for one of our last items of food - a big heavy bag of buttery goodness. Breaking off a chunk, popping it in my mouth, a grimace spreading across my face… Ptooh!

I watched the spit out chunk of inedible food land on the snow, with the sinking realization that we were still over 70 miles from King Salmon. And that we had very little left to get us there.



Crossing a pressure crack

Immediately, we switched from the idle curiosity of people poking around a closed-down lodge, to the focused ursine curiosity of people hunting for food. We unscrewed and rescrewed the plates holding doors shut, finding fishing gear, clothes, bedding, toiletries… Searching for anything edible. Eventually, deep in various cupboards and closets, we managed to find 9 packages of Mountain House, a few hot cocoa packets, half a jar of wheat germ… Even the 9 Mountain House “meals” sounds like a lot, it’s only 750 calories x 9 = 6750 calories, a little over half a day of food for the two of us. Not much, but we were lucky the lodge was there. Thank you Kulik Lodge! We did our best to be polite unexpected guests.



Naknek Lake sunset

Luckily, the long ski on Naknek Lake went as smoothly as we could hope for, and though we arrived in King Salmon hungry, we’re refattening now… As I write, Hig’s off trying to figure out where on the Peninsula we’ll be able to buy food in the future, and what we’ll need to mail now. This time, we’re tasting any food left sitting for very long!

King Salmon/Naknek slide show

For anyone local, we’re giving a presentation with a slide show of photos from the trip on Monday night, 7 PM, in the Naknek School Auditorium. Come!

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For a Glimpse of the Ocean

Posted by Erin on 29 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, environment, southwest alaska



Pass above Williamsport

The Aniakchak Effect

Whooosh! Flap flap flap flap! Hisssss…. Each gust pummeled the thin nylon walls of our shelter, sending them whooshing in and out. The wind strained to lift the stakes anchoring the whole fragile creation to the snow - threatening to send our roof out to sea. Swirls of snow blew in under the narrow gaps between the tent and the ground, leaving thin drifts on top of our outer sleeping bag. It was 5 AM. I groaned, and rolled over, tucking my head in the bag so as not to be reawakened by the wet sting of snowflakes on my face. Our shelter was as tucked into the alders as we could get it, but they offered scant protection in this windy corner of Iliamna Bay.

Of course, we knew better.



Pile Bay on Lake Iliamna

We call it the “Aniakchak effect”, in honor of a memorable night we spent on the floor of Aniakchak crater in a late August gale back in 2001. Intuitively, it seems like hiding a camp from the wind should be the simplest thing in the world. Find a lee, and get behind it.

In Aniakchak crater, knee-high vegetation was the best we could get. But we were sure we’d be fine. We had a really big lee to hide behind. A 500 foot cliff, in fact. At first this seemed like a great place. Just an occasional gust. But as the storm grew, we realized that the gusts were in some ways worse than the steady screaming of the wind on the open crater floor. The wind poured over the edge of the cliff and swirled in great eddies behind it. We’d escaped the steady blow, only to place ourselves at the mercy of enormous and unpredictable gusts that came from every possible direction. It was a long, cold night.



Ptarmigan tracks

Here, we were just around the corner from the wind funnel of Williamsport, behind the lee of a high ridge. And we’d put ourselves squarely in the same situation. Seven years later, our camping gear is light years better than it was on that first adventure. And we slept quite well despite the racket and snow. But as we listened to the howl of the wind, all thoughts of paddling this chunk of coast were soon erased from our minds.



Portage road to Williamsport

To Glimpse the Ocean

It was just a peek at the ocean. Just the smallest sliver of a stormy sea we hadn’t been on since Knik Arm. But in this weather, it was all we were going to get.

Two days earlier, orange highway signs had warned us against winter travel on the snow-covered portage road between Lake Iliamna and Cook Inlet. Heavy snowfall. Extreme cold. Tell someone where you are going and when you expect to return. As if to make the point more clear, the wind had tossed the signs off the road, where they lay askew, displaying their message to the skies.



Pass above Williamsport

A cold spell on Lake Iliamna sent freezing drainage winds pouring through the passes, funneling down the valleys, and ripping out of the ocean bays. Packrafts stowed away, we kept our feet firmly on shore, walking gravel beaches rimed with wind-sculpted sea ice. We almost went back the way we came. Instead, we traveled just a few miles of coast to the next small bay, where another pass would return us to lake country.

Invisible Lines

We’d reached the ocean on a summer portage road. Sometimes invisible under snow, sometimes a gap in the brush, and sometimes marked by the white-frosted hulks of abandoned cars and boats. Where we crossed back over, the map marked a long-gone trail from the long-gone site of Dutton. And all the way from the drill rigs to the coast, we were paralleling a line marked only on the maps of the Pebble Partnership.



Iliamna Bay

One of the main reasons we’d made this strange zig-zagging return to Cook Inlet was to follow the proposed road route from the proposed Pebble Mine. But how do you ground truth an invisible, unfixed line that follows a route totally impractical for a brush-shy skier? We left the forest to ski on the smooth snowy lake, content for now to visit the villages in the area and the general region.

Winter in Spring



Ice on Iliamna Bay

Wind whipped at the puffy sleeves of Hig’s coat as he slowly rotated on the peak, clicking away with the camera. I looked down at the intricate shapes of frozen lakes – Iliamna, Kokhanok, Copper. We could see a tiny blue triangle of the Pacific Ocean, a corner of Mt. Douglas… Spruce trees were scattered like sparse decorations on the hills and gullies around us, descending into forests as they approached Lake Iliamna. Huge flakes of frost sparkled under every bush. The warm sun was winning the battle with the chill of the wind, and we smeared sunblock (a substance we’d not used in many months) on our exposed noses and cheeks.



A peek at the ocean

The long light, the bright sun, the beautiful snow for skiing… I might feel differently when we reach the realm of slush and breakup. But for now? I’m convinced that winter trips are best in the spring.

Kokhanok

In 2001, we were almost here in Kokhanok village. And I’m sorry we missed it. We had a great day at the Kokhanok school, and gave an impromptu slide show presentation before last night’s bingo game – meeting the adults in town. I even won $50 at bingo! We’re delaying our departure for half a day to attend a meeting of the Alaska Peninsula Corporation - listening to presentations by Pebble representatives and Full Metal Minerals. Next, we’re off on another zig-zag through beautiful country, to King Salmon and Bristol Bay.


Above Kokhanok Lake





Busted ski boots (again)


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Answering questions

Posted by Erin on 20 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, southwest alaska



Skiing Lake Iliamna

Children

The Iliamna/Newhalen elementary clustered around us in a tight circle on the floor of the classroom - about 15 students firing question after question over the sound of the electric basketball pump working to blow up our packraft. (we’d forgotten to bring the inflation bag)

“Are you scared sleeping outside?”

“You’re married?”

“How old are you?”

“What do you eat?”

“Have you seen any wolves?”

“Do you have any kids?”



Snowless by Iliamna

“How come you don’t have a real house?”

We barely had time to half-answer each question before we were hit with the next. And then it was action time. Hig directed a handful of kids in staking our the tent to the classroom desks, while I worked on the raft, answering a steady stream of questions while I tried to corral the five different kids who’d each ended up with a piece of the paddle - coaching them on how put it together the right way round. Teachers cameras clicked around us.



Basalt columns on the lake

“How do you wash? Do you wash in the lakes?”

I turn to the little girl who asked the question, thankful that I got a chance to both shower and wash clothes in Iliamna before we hit the school.

“Not when it’s winter. The lakes are frozen!” I replied. As I said it, I thought to myself that we rarely wash in lakes even in the summer. We’re used to dirt, and taking the effort to get clean rarely seems to be worth it with all the other things to do in the wilderness…

“Well how do you wash, then?” she asked.

“We borrow showers from nice folks when we get to towns.” I replied, thinking I might take another soon. Sweat was beading up on my face, and I’d already stripped down as much as I could. At this time of year, we aren’t carrying any clothing appropriate for the great indoors.

“How often is that?”

I shrug. “It depends on how far apart the towns are.”

The little girl gave me a quizzical look, clearly unsure to what to make of an adult woman so unconcerned with personal hygiene. The fact that I was addressing her while wearing the baggy top of our homemade fleece long underwear, the bottom half of a drysuit, and muddy ski boots probably didn’t help.



Lunch on the lakeshore

We talk to kids in the schools along the way whenever we get a chance. I like to think that we might inspire a few of them to get out and explore the wild country around their own homes. Perhaps we just teach them that only crazy weirdos like us go out and walk in the woods. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

Adults

I pushed hard on the pedals of my borrowed bicycle, struggling to cover the same five miles to the Newhalen school that had been so easy earlier in the afternoon. Snowflakes stung my eyes as I pedaled into the wind, gusts sending me wobbling. Small drifts of snow formed on the road, whose smooth pavement and bright yellow line seemed incongruous in a town of only a couple hundred. Hig was behind me somewhere on the road, forced to run back to our host’s house to repair his broken bicycle handlebars. Even in the village, our no motorized transport rule left us subject to the vagaries of the weather. We were sure to be late to our own talk. Luckily, on village time, it didn’t matter.



Creek at Pedro Bay

We spoke to a small group of folks who’d gathered at the school, borrowing a projector to show a modified version of the slideshow we’d given in Anchorage. This afternoon in Pedro Bay, two days later, we did much the same thing - happily without the 5 mile bike ride.

The adults asked somewhat more probing questions than the kids - curious about the gear we were using, the toughness of the packrafts, how we slept warmly enough, money… How do we fund this trip? What do we do otherwise? Where do is understood to refer to a paycheck-producing activity that one performs from a fixed location. So I bring up the book I’ll be writing, our sponsors, bits and pieces of this and that… But the main truth is that a bill-less, house-less, transportation-less life is about as cheap as you can get. And though we don’t intend to keep our no-motorized transport rule forever (despite the frequent questions, we are Not walking back), we don’t intend to “settle down” any time soon.

We talked to one guy today who said he’d heard about our trip way back when we’d left Seattle, and wondered if we’d ever make it up here. It must have seemed crazy at the time. Sitting here, roughly 3300 miles later, I have a hard time even picturing the perspective of my Seattle self from that first newspaper article -when it was all still plans and dreams. We’re nowhere near done, and the roughly 700 mile expedition remaining would seem a daunting challenge under most circumstances…. But after all we’ve seen, spring is returning, and we might almost call it the “home stretch”… :)


Pedro Bay post office

Spring

We’ve just passed the equinox. And this year, more than ever, I find it strange to imagine the whole world sharing the same amount of daylight. I feel so far from the rest of the world. Here on Lake Iliamna, we woke up to snow on this first day of spring, and the temperature has just barely crept up above the single digits. I don’t think we’ll be ditching our skis just yet.


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Hilltops and Helicopters

Posted by Erin on 18 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, environment, southwest alaska



On Groundhog Mountain

On an Ocean of Clouds

We woke to blankness. Our tent was a patch of color on the flanks of Groundhog Mountain. Ten feet beyond where we stood, the white of the slope vanished into the white of the sky. Our strewn gear seemed like the only thing grounding us in all that nothing. Walking away, I felt like I was about to fall off the world… As if we and our gear floated in an endless mist.

The damp chill of the fog set us hurrying to pack, stomping to keep our feet warm. Thick frost formed quickly on our gear, lacing Hig’s hair with white streaks. But above us, we could glimpse a weak hazy sun - a hint of blue in the sky that enticed us to climb.


Tent in a blank white world

We took off our skis, clomping up the ridge beside the tracks of a fox, winding between mostly-buried frost-rimed rocks. The subltle shadows of ever thinner clouds raced along the ground. The sun grew brighter as we climbed, and a pair of tight bright circles of colored light ringed our shadows. When it’s ice, not liquid water, in the air, “rainbow” doesn’t seem the right word.

And on the top of Groundhog Mountain, we were in a place that anyone would want to be. We basked in the warmth of the sun, standing alone above an ocean of clouds. Mt Iliamna and its neighboring peaks stood on the far side of our ocean, the closest things tall enough to join us above the fog.



Climbing through the fog

But the constant roar of helicopters reminded us that there was a whole other world beneath our sunlit peak, and we skied down through the clouds - into the thrumming whirring roaring bustle of industry.

Pebble Mine Exploration

Long cables swung beneath the four helicopters as they flitted constantly between the drill rigs, lifting, lowering, delivering, never seeming to pause for more than a moment. A half-dozen drill rigs ran day and night, their humming joining the gurgle of the water at our campsite on Upper Talarik Creek. A small red plane buzzed back and forth on seemingly endless fuel runs.





Iliamna above the clouds

When I realized that running one of those helicopters for a day costs more than our entire expedition…? It’s enough to make me feel very small. But then again, we work for ourselves. Free to wander anywhere we like. To climb the hills, and peer out over the small specks of people pinned to the drill rigs.

I was nervous when we approached the first drill rig, hanging a few paces behind Hig as he went up to say hi. I needn’t have been. The workers were no more out to get us because we think Pebble Mine isn’t a good idea than we were out to get them because they’re working the drill rig. I shook their blackened hands with my equally grubby glove (feeling far less self-conscious about my grime and stink than I might in a village), and had great conversations with several of the workers who weren’t too busy to talk.



Drill rig at the Pebble Mine prospect

They’re still exploring out there. Still finding more gold and copper, still expanding the already enormous size of this proposal. And with that enormous size comes an enormous amount of toxic waste - chemicals, tailings and waste rock that needs to be carefully contained - carefully kept separate from the groundwater and streams that feed Bristol Bay’s extraordinary fish resources. “Modern mining” has a shaky track record in protecting waters even for a few decades. And we would have to trust them for thousands of years. Through earthquakes, storms, and changes in climate… Through changes in corporations, generations, and even entire civilizations… Alaska gives permits to mines (like Red Dog Mine), that will require water treatment “in perpetuity”. But forever is impossible. And in hundreds or thousands of years, after the political and economic structures that keep the mine’s remains safe have shifted or dissolved, there may still be people there who need the fish in the streams and the animals along their banks.

Bold and Oblivious Wildlife



Oblivious wildlife (porcupine)

Barely ten feet from the alder bush under which it sat, I peered at the motionless snow-dusted ball of a porcupine through the camera’s lens.

“Is it alive?” I asked Hig.

“Yes it’s alive.”

I took a step closer. “Are you sure?”

Finally the snowy ball erupted, turning to flash us its backside full of quills.

“I guess so.”

We took a few more pictures as we retreated, leaving the porcupine to nap on its bed of chewed twigs.



Bold wildlife (fox)

We’re constantly moving, passing quickly through the landscape in an envelope of our own sounds: the scrape of skis on icy snow, the crashing of alder bushes, often the chatter of conversation…. And we don’t carry a powerful telephoto camera lens. As a result, we only photograph bold or oblivious wildlife.

Oblivious fit the porcupine quite well. Here, bold was the foxes. A pair of red forms circling closer and closer as they came to check us out, pausing downwind to sit cat-like in the snow, fixing us with their adorably skeptical expressions and sniffing the air. They followed us for 20 minutes. Perhaps these two knew humans and their potential as a source of food scraps from the drill rigs. But foxes are bold even far from people.



Paddling the Newhalen River

Lake Iliamna

Today we talked to the kids at the school here in Iliamna/Newhalen, and a few of the adults who could show up to see slides on a few hours notice. But the smooth expanse of the frozen lake beckons us… We’re headed back east now, following roughly where the proposed road for Pebble might go, next to Pedro Bay (which we should hit in a few days if the wind cooperates)




Frost on alders


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“Flying” to a Meeting

Posted by Erin on 10 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, environment, southwest alaska



Approaching Nondalton

“Flying”

Actually, we were certainly the only out-of-towners not flying to the meeting in Nondalton, but it felt almost as if we were being carried by the air. Stealing a push from the wind.

“How fast do you think we’re going?” Hig called out as we rode the wind down the ice.

No sail needed - pushing with our ski poles for an extra boost. He was staring at our new GPS. Our fancy new toy was convinced that it was in Missouri, in the middle of the night, two weeks ago. But when we finally got it re-oriented to the world…


Icy Sixmile Lake


“I don’t know. It seems pretty fast. Four miles an hour?” I guessed.

“Five and a half!” Hig replied triumphantly.

Even a flat road will only bring us up to 3mph. After nine months without motorized transport, and five and a half feels wonderously fast, ridiculously fast. The hills and points of Lake Clark flew by at a speed rivaled only by an occasional piece of river travel. When we camp, we rarely look at exactly how far we’ve gotten. But this time, I did, reveling in having traveled 22 miles from Port Alsworth in an easy afternoon.

A Meeting on Pebble Mine



Mapping resources

Within five minutes of our arrival in Nondalton, Nunamta Aulukestai began a day-long meeting on the Pebble Mine issue. We only heard about it in Port Alsworth, so our arrival was merely a happy coincidence. And despite the short notice and full schedule, folks were kind enough to listen to Hig’s presentation about earthquake risks (setting down his adventurer hat for a moment to pick up his geologist one), and to watch a slideshow of our trip.

Home Ground



Pebble proposal site 2006

I won’t say much about the Pebble Mine issue now, because we’re headed back to the proposal site shortly. And because I’ve said so much before. On this journey, this is the closest we come to home ground.

What is home ground for a pair of perpetual wanderers? Perhaps it’s a place where there are pictures already in my mind. A place where when I see it under the blanket of winter, I will remember the flowers of summer and the berries of fall. Or perhaps it’s just a place where I already know the way…

A poem from Anne Coray



Nunamta board

We visited Anne and Steve in their remote cabin on Lake Clark, and Anne sent us this poem about our visit:

March Visitation

It was evening when they arrived,

the first dark form emerged

from the lip of one of many pools

collected on the ice in this too-

warm weather. I looked out and down

from our cabin window, caught

the movement and the tall shape,

thought What strange animal

is this? before it registered: human.

Unaccustomed to company this time

of year, I was trying to construe

what coyote, wolf, or bear could have transformed

into a biped. Later, the months of sweat

in their clothes and boots mingling

with the scent of soggy leather,

after they’d showered, fed,

and spoken of their long and strenuous trek

—by raft, by skis, Seattle

northward: B.C., Southeast, over

rivers, Icy Bay, past glaciers,

the Copper Delta, into the Chugach;

Manker Creek, then Anchorage,

around the arm, down

the west side of Cook Inlet,

through Lake Clark Pass, to us—

What, I asked, had been

the least appealing?

The Glenn Highway, they said.

They told me they could smell the road—

asphalt, rubber—long before it could be heard.

They were ancient animals arisen,

speaking a troubling, modern tongue.

For those who just checked in - read on for more photos and the journey through Lake Clark Pass

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Off the Road Again

Posted by Erin on 07 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: environment, southcentral alaska, southwest alaska



In the spotlight on Moose Ridge

For the first time in a long while, we have a segment of the journey dominated not by the obstacles we encountered, but by the wonderful things we’ve seen. Daylight is returning to us, more and more with each passing evening. Minus 20 temperatures are fading into a fuzzy memory. Far off the highway system, we seem to be passing into more and more amazing landscapes. As we approach 9 months of travel (our original estimate for the entire trip), I feel a new inspiration for the thousand or so miles yet to come.

Not that this leg has been without obstacles, of course…



Chuitna site marshes

Chuitna Coal

Our skis make a rasping grating over the thin layer of icy snow. Our skis skitter sideways on the bumpy melt-scarred snow, breaking off the thin glassy edge of each small ripple. The bottoms of the packrafts we’re pulling as sleds start abrading away from the ice (discovered later). We walk the skis over frozen lumps of sphagnum moss blown completely free of snow. I jokingly yell to Hig over the racket of skis and sleds:

“They better not develop the Chuitna proposal - or they’ll destroy the only decent place to ski in all of Southcentral Alaska!”

Luckily, better traveling was soon to come. But Chuitna was a wonderful place to ski.



Mt Spurr from the Chuitna site

Before we reached Beluga, we knew little about the Chuitna coal proposal, other than that it was a plan by PacRim Coal to build a large strip mine in an approximately 30 square mile area encompassing several tributaties of the Chuitna (Chuit) River on west Cook Inlet. Some of the main concerns about the plan we heard about from folks in the area were the large-scale dewatering of the wetlands at the site, the effect of the daily dump of 7 million gallons of water from the mine into the Chuit River, and coal dust from the conveyor belt and barge landing sites.

These local environmental concerns are huge. And as for many proposed developments, if the first project is approved, industry’s plans for the mining “district” are far larger than the original Chuitna proposal. But stepping back from the immediate and local questions: what is the future of coal in Alaska?


Mt Spurr above the Chuitna River gorge

Some have called Alaska the “Saudi Arabia of coal” - with large deposits in the western Arctic and Cook Inlet, among other areas. With world oil supplies depleting and prices rising, the interest in developing these deposits is quickly rising. Yet, as Alaska sits on enormous coal deposits, it also sits at the crosshairs of global climate change- warming faster than the rest of the planet. Burning coal creates more of the carbon emissions that cause climate change than any other fuel. Coal fired power plants in Asia are already sending mercury and other pollutants drifting Alaska’s way - and they’re the major market for any coal mined here. In this day and age, a big coal project isn’t just an issue for the Chuit River. It seems to me like the wrong direction for the world.



Evening on the Cook Inlet flats

Lost in the Chuitna Hills

We’d been skiing back and forth on top of the hill for at least 20 minutes, drawing compass roses in the snow, passing the map back and forth with puzzled frowns.

Hig: “I think we’ve eliminated all the possibilities.”

Erin: “We can see everything from here! How is it possible we can’t figure out where we are?”

The Lone Creek marsh flats we’d skied up earlier that day, Cook Inlet, the Chugach Mountains, Mt. Spurr, Lone Ridge, and a myriad of unidentifiable small hills and gullies… We really could see everything, but as the sun was setting on our hilltop perch, we still had no better idea than that we were probably somewhere in the Chuitna proposal site.



Birch fungus

Part of our whole “ground truth trekking” idea is that we don’t want to just read about the issues and places we’re interested in. We want to tromp around in them. We make observations while we’re there, and take photographs of course… But it’s more than that. In a way that’s hard to explain, being literally surrounded by an issue, moving through it at a couple miles an hour, sounds and smells and intimate views, gives me something different. A visceral feel for a place, to add to the facts, maps, and diagrams.

The next morning, we skied off from our camp at the base of the confusing hill, headed in a compass direction that would be sure to eventually tell us where we were. It was a couple hours of skiing before we figured it out, photographing the shadows of trees as they bent across a snowy gully that was unmistakable on the map. We wound our way through gullies and marshes to the Chuit River, watching the tracks of rabbits, moose and otters. Swishing through a thin layer of powder atop a hard crust of snow, watching the tiny tips of alder brush beside me, I felt pleased to finally be in a place where winter travel was actually easier than it would be in the summer.



Mt Spurr from Moose Ridge

Flipping to “Awesome Mode”

Hop, hop, sliiiide…. Hop, hop, sliiiide… The river otter tracks crisscrossed the snowy slopes of Moose Ridge, a thousand feet above sea level, and miles from the nearest patch of open water.

Erin: “What are they doing up here? They don’t hunt rabbits, do they?”

Hig: “I don’t think so. Maybe they just come up to play in the great snow here.”

I was suspicious of the alpine “shortcut” when Hig proposed it.

Erin: “I think we should just go around in the marshes. It’s more straightforward. We don’t know what it’ll be like on the way up. Or down…”



Sunset on Moose Ridge

Hig: “But the views up there will be awesome. Look at how snowy it looks up on top. And it’s shorter… I know we’ve had a lot of difficult sections in the past couple months. But I think it’s made you too conservative. Going places like this is one of the reasons we go trekking.”

A few hours later, I paused to take the thousandth photo of Mt. Spurr in the evening light, skiing past river otter tracks in a world of sculpted snow, looking at the Cook Inlet flats stretched out below us.

Erin: “Hey Hig, I’m sorry I argued against coming up here.”

We’ve discovered that on an expedition, we exist in one of two modes: “Oppression mode” and “Awesome mode.” In “oppression mode”, obstacle follows obstacle, in a seemingly never-ending chain. We approach each new spot with more than a little trepidation: Will the next pass be impassable? Or just nearly so? Will we run out of food? Will we have to turn back? Walk the highway? Beautiful moments still happen, but they seem mere flashes of relief between the difficulties. Problem solving has its own attraction, but when you’re always in that mode, the attraction slowly wears thinner and thinner.



Morning camp chores

In “awesome mode” we move from one amazing and unexpected experience to the next. Map miles move by, and we feel the flow of moving through country. Obstacles pop up, but each seems finite, surmountable, even amusing… The spice of the journey. We’re excited to see around each new bend.

After the difficulties of Copper Basin, the trudge of the Glenn Highway, the insurmountable obstacle of Knik Arm, it’d been a long time since we’d truly existed in awesome mode. The Chuitna site started our climb back up. Watching the sunset from the top of Moose Ridge, I realized that the switch had flipped - bringing renewed inspiration to my world.



Pizza delivery to Lake Clark Pass

Passage to Lake Clark

A pizza fell out of the sky for us in Lake Clark Pass. On the third pass of the now-familiar Lake and Peninsula airplane, a white plastic bag trailing yellow ribbons fluttered down to us where we were packing up a late morning camp near the headwaters of the Big River. Perhaps the best cold pizza breakfast I’ve ever eaten, and almost certainly the first pizza delivery to Lake Clark Pass. Thanks Lyle!

Rarely visited on foot, Lake Clark Pass is the primary corridor for air traffic to and from Anchorage in the Lake Clark/Lake Iliamna region. As we skied between the mountains lining the Big River and Tlikakila valleys, we were right in the flyway - waving to the small planes as they buzzed overhead, recognizing their colors and stripes before we’d ever seen the pilots. Shortly after our unexpected pizza delivery, John and Leon flew in and landed for a short visit, bringing both conversation and a large amount of bread and cheese. As a result of all this generosity (we were also fed by folks in Beluga, the Chuit River, and later on Lake Clark), this is the first two-week leg we’ve ever done where we finished with extra food.



Lake Clark Pass glacier

“Whoah!” Hig yelled, skis swishing at a very moderate speed down a very tiny hill to Summit Lake “That was so weird!”

Not because the slope was taxing to even our very modest skiing skills - but because even in broad daylight, we had not a clue that it was there. In the flat light of an overcast and snowy world, the sky and the ground were an identical smooth white. No texture marked the ground. Only the thin black lines of cottonwoods outlined the mountains, giving us the rough shape of the terrain. Looking at our feet was useless. It was impossible to tell if the ground in front of our skis was flat, up, down, or sideways. It was broad daylight. But with each small gully or rise, the ground surprised us.

Wrong Way to Lake Clark

Perhaps Moosepasture Pass wasn’t the wrong way to Lake Clark. But we certainly went the wrong way. Reading the river bends wrong in the low-detail topography afforded by the Lake Clark Park map (the map’s fault, I swear!), we turned what should have been a short and straightforward climb to the pass into a mile-long traverse. Through what seemed doomd to become an infinite series of gullies.


Skiing past Lake Clark Pass glacier

Deeply incised, nearly impossible to see until we were staring down into them, perhaps a dozen gullies blocked our way forward. Corniced edges dropped away before us, forcing us to climb higher and higher to find shallow crossings. I dug my heels as deeply into the snow as possible, my vertigo not allowing me to emulate Hig’s quick slides down. We trudged up the far side, straining against the weight of our packraft sleds on the vertical slopes, wondering how many of these we had left.



Flat light on Summit Lake

In the winter, everything is amplified. Fast travel is faster on skis than it ever is on foot. And slow travel is far far slower. We took until 3:30 in the afternoon to inch our way up Moosepasture Pass. And quickly flew several miles in the last few hours of daylight in the beautiful snow of the upper valley.

Wind, Water, and Ice

You wouldn’t think that a day spent entirely on a frozen lake would be complicated. But as we descended to Little Lake Clark, a warm wind blew into the region. Melting snow, thawing ice, sending the treetops whipping violently, and screaming down the lake.



Tlikakila valley

How do you travel down a sheet of glare ice with several inches of standing water on top in a strong tailwind? Easy. Just stand on your skis. How do you stop? Another matter altogether.

When we ducked into the lee behind a point, the traveling was nearly perfect. An almost effortless 5 or 6 miles an hour, pleasant except for the very soggy ski boots. When we were out in the brunt of the wind, we only wished we could go so slowly. Leaning heavily on a ski pole between my legs, ice chips flying, metal tip grating against the ice, leaving a long scratch that slowed me down hardly at all, using the other ski pole to attempt to steer into the deeper pools of water or slush (which slowed us down a bit), water planing up around the tips of the skis. I winced at the horrible grating sounds as the skis flew into patches of windblown sand.



Skiing the Tlikakila

But we made the social rounds of Lake Clark, being generously hosted by Ann and Steve, and by Bella Hammond at their wilderness homesteads. Drying my boots and socks above each warm stove, enjoying a roof and conversation… And by the time we were ready to cross to Port Alsworth, the wind had died, the ice had dried, and sun was shining on our heads. We hope for the same on the rest of our journey down the lake. :)





Tlikakila avalanche



Mountainside light patterns



Climbing gullies



Wrong way to Moosepasture Pass



Above the Tlikakila



Cottonwoods in a snowy pass



Open creek



Chokotonk River



Lake Clark pressure ridge



Bella Hammond’s house



Skiing Lake Clark


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On the Path of Dogs and Snowmachines

Posted by Erin on 20 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: trip reports, southcentral alaska



Erin skiing Knik Arm near Eklutna

Knik Arm, the final chapter

Where we finally crossed Knik Arm we barely got our skis wet. We skiied across near Eklutna, where only the ice boulders, and a few narrow rivulets of overflow, told us there was an ocean channel beneath us. Afternoon sun sparkled on the ice boulders, casting strange lumpy shadows across the moonscape of the frozen channel. We wiggled the rafts through narrow gaps between car-sized chunks of ice, and flew quickly through the wind-packed open areas. Ice pans stuck up like knife-blades from the snow, leaning together where pressure ridges buckled the surface of the ice. As Hig said, it looked like a landscape that had been crumbled by giant hands, and frozen in the midst of the destruction. The Chugach mountains rose up beyond the flats, the highway hidden from our low vantage point. Every few minutes our paths would separate and rejoin as we angled to photograph and film eachother in the beautiful light.


Knik Arm grass flats


Erin: “Ok, now I want you to ski past me here while I video.”

Hig: “Then you head out to the right, and I’ll get a picture of you with the mountain in the background as you ski past.”

We jokingly complain about how much “photo bushwhacks” like this slow us down. But after only a couple weeks in Anchorage, the days are so much longer than when we arrived. The weather is warming, and we’re gaining time.



Skiing the ice boulders on Knik Arm

When the sun sets, lights on the hills surround Knik Arm. Between Anchorage and its suburbs, this chunk of Cook Inlet is the most developed area in the state. Which makes Knik Arm one of the more strangely unpeopled wilderness areas we’ve encountered on this trip. With so many human neighbors, almost no one visits it. It seems like very few are even looking. When we spoke to people about our difficulties with Knik in Anchorage and Eagle River, a few folks mentioned the currents, but no one appeared to have thought about the ice. Even while we were standing on the coastal trail, overlooking Knik Arm in downtown Anchorage, we talked to people who didn’t seem to have noticed that the ocean was frozen.

Back in time a little bit - another Knik Arm video from Eric (of the first attempt). Glad we’re beyond it!



An icy slough

As we skied across the last slough on the west side of Knik, the network of civilization suddenly rematerialized. Snowmachine trails laced the grass flats, and followed the base of the slope. And ever since, we’ve been back in the land of people, where all the trails have been already broken.

A little bit famous

Ever since Craig Medred’s article about us in last week’s paper, our yellow packrafts sliding along the snow have made us instantly recognizable. Folks have been eager to chat with us. Who would pass up an opportunity to get their picture snapped with a couple of grubby skiers, their hair sticking up on end, and clothing oddly distended from cameras and waterbottles? I guess we’re getting a little bit famous. :)



Hig on the Iditarod trail

A nice couple with a cabin at Knik (Thanks Karen and Randy!) saw us skiing past and invited us in for coffee and gave us a laminated map of the snowmachine trails in the area. Since all our maps had been printed based on the erroneous assumption we would paddle Knik Arm, we had nothing at all which covered the area we were actually in. Traveling mapless ends up being a not uncommon hazard in our unpredictable wanderings, but we were happy to be saved the difficult decision between going out of our way to get back on our maps, or taking a blind guess route to the west.

Dogs



Skiing the gasline trail

A dog team swished past us as we skiied the Iditarod trail near Knik… Musher: “Hey! I read about you guys! You’re the ones walking to…?”

Hig: “The Aleutians!”

And with the swish of a sled and the pattering of several dozen dog feet, she was gone. Dog teams are fast. And quiet.
Something we repeatedly appreciated as we found ourselves in the middle of a dog team race. Over a hill or around a corner, I’d catch the first glimpse of furry faces - yelling to Hig behind me: “Dogs!!” We’d jump off the trail, hurrying to tug the packrafts up on the bank before the dogs flew past, pulling sleds with race numbers and the words ‘Goose Bay’ written on them. On what might have otherwise been a long and boring section of trail, it was fun to watch them all go by, teams of peppy dog faces in the morning followed by teams of tired and distracted dog faces in the afternoon, lost dog booties scattered across the trail. I was glad we were going the opposite direction, though - we’d never have heard them coming up behind us.



Birch bark

Snowmachines

At Flathorn Lake we turned off the Iditarod, and into the land of snowmachines. We’d seen snowmachines all along, of course, but here they were everywhere. Parked on the lake and fishing for pike, zooming here and there with sleds pulling coolers or fuel. Seeing all that activity, it was hard to believe we weren’t still on the road system.

From there it was smooth going to Beluga. As we slid along the slushy snow, the only obstacles we had to navigate were the irregular lumps and ski-catching furrows left by the snowmachine sleds. We even managed to get in half a day ahead of our original estimate! (which, as anyone who’s been reading for awhile knows, is completely unheard of)

Where’s winter?

Our new warm clothing languished in our packs. The skis anchoring our tent threatened to pull out as the snow melted away around them. In the marshes, patches of grass stuck out through the quickly thawing trail. I put on my drysuit top for the rain. Just when we thought we were figuring out how to deal with winter, it seems to have temporarily left us. Now we’re left wondering if we’ll end up in a world of half-frozen obstacles again, if the rivers start breaking up before the cold returns.



Beluga power plant

As we leave Beluga, we’re headed up towards the proposed site of the Chuitna Coal Project. Something I don’t feel I know nearly enough about. But we’re quickly getting educated by our generous hosts Judy and Larry here in Beluga. With global climate change upon us, and the need to move to sustainable sources of energy, it’s hard to imagine how any new big coal project could be a good idea. More on that when we’ve had a chance to wander around and get our feet slushy at the mine site…

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