Sunday, July 09, 2006

Drama on Denali

Editor's Note: Ray has embarked on a bold adventure to reach the highest peak in all 50 states without the use of any motor vehicles. He began with a successful summit of Denali. Below are his notes from his Denali trip. More dispatches coming soon!

1 JUNE 2006, Day 1, 17,200 camp on Denali, 11 PM

My partner is worthless! I have many stronger phrases I could use to describe right now but they would be unprintable. Five hours ago I was psyched to be at the top of Denali, 20,320 feet, the highset point in the U.S. and North America. For weeks I thought I wouldn't make it. I'm a strong hiker but apparently slow to acclimatize to altitude. I'd spent all winter living at 8000' and ski touring up to 11,500' a couple times a week. I thought the thin air wouldn't be a problem, and it wasn't until I started climbing above what I was used to. Above 12,000 was hard, I was worthless when I got to the 14,200 camp. The first time I tried to climb to 17,200 camp I was dizzy and seeing colors. But after a few days I could breathe easier and a week of skiing and waiting out bad weather (60 to 80 MPH winds and snow that buried our tent) at 14 we moved up to the 17,200 camp, waited out another bout of weather for a beautiful, calm, warm (only -10 degrees) summit day. Summit day was no picnic though. I woke up this morning and reset my barometric altimeter and it read 19,500'. Almost 2000' higher then the actual altitude. This happens due to the thinner atmospher at the extreme Northern latitude (62 degrees North) where Alaska is located. The summit of Denali is equivalent to 22,000 to 23,000 in the Himalyan. I moved slowly all day.


Everthing moves slowly at altitude, your feet, your thoughts, your speech. Past another rock, up another rise, across another flat, past some descending climbers who I know from camp but don't recognize in my current hypoxic state. Finally up the summit headwall and I'm on the knife edge summit ridge. I question my ability here, steep dropoffs on both sides. Careful steps, balance on my ice axe for a while and then there is no more vertical to be gained. My partner is there and Tim, a climber who was camped next to us at 17 and whose partner turned around this morning. We take summit photos of each other. I try to take in the view but my brain isn't functioning well enough to make out any landmarks. I just know I can see really far and there are mountains and clouds way below. We head down. I tell myself 'No falls, make every step count'. We make it down the headwall and across the large flat of the "football field". I feel beat. I come across my partner resting on a small rise with another climber, Justin. "I thought coming down was supposed to feel better." We snack and drink some water and head down. We're all completely spent from the ascent and I practically stumble down the next 1500' of elevation loss. At Denali Pass my partner and I retrieve the rope we left this morning and invite Justin and Tim to rope up with us for the icy traverse back to 17 camp. They gladly accept the safty of the rope. We plod down from Denali pass, making delibrate steps, clipping into each of the fixed snow pickets placed by the park service. Finally back at 17 camp, I strip off my harness and put on another layer, melt snow for water and dinner and dive into the tent for a good night's sleep.

ray klukoske
Camp above Granite Glacier...


Then my partner makes an annoucement, "I'm not going to do the walk out from basecamp."

This is why I am pissed. The Denali trip I had originally planned was a long route that involved climbing the entire mountain, not flying in, on a remote route and then floating back to Talkeetna on a raft, a true wilderness adventure. When the third member of our team had to back out after a drunk driving ticket and my partner had concerns about time, money and her poor technical climbing ability I conceded to climb the "standard route," with the crowds on the West Buttress, then get the wilderness experience by skiing and hiking out instead of flying. Now I was stuck having done just the West Buttress which was exactly the way I had not wanted to climb Denali. I came here to get outside into the wilderness and the West Buttress has up to 200 people at each camp and a hard beaten trail up the glacier. She had several excuses why, but really they were just rationalizations for the fact that she had never intended to walk out at all. Her goal was the summit, not a wilderness adventure, and so that achieved she bailed out on the rest of the expedition.


2 JUNE 2006, day 2

I'm not on friendly terms with my tentmate this morning. I pack up and head down to 14 camp alone. I leave her the extra tent, extra stove, food and fuel for the descent to basecamp. We had planned to ski/ride down the glacier unroped anyway so she should be fine on her solo mission down to the airstrip at 7000' while I sit in camp 14 for the day and consider my options. First I dig out the tent we left here from under four days of snow. I'm in a sort of limbo now because the descent from Denali was actually just the start of a yearlong expedition for me. My intention was to link the highpoints of all 50 states without using a motor vehicle for any travel. After Denali I'm to bike to the lower 48 and start ticking off the Western states this summer before a Grand Canyon rafting trip, then head northeast through the fall and south for the winter and finally back to the West coast next spring for a Sailing passage to Hawaii.

ray klukoske
Descending fixed lines above camp 14...


ray klukoske
Camp 14 from ridge, Kahiltna Glacier beyond...


Total milage would be close to 18,000 without ever setting foot in a car or plane. The itinerary is long and ambitious for sure but I'd hoped to stick with it as long as my mental state, physical endurance, and credit cards allowed. Flying out of basecamp isn't an option if I'm going to continue on my trip, but solo travel on the glacier below basecamp, off the beaten path, seems suicidal. My only hope is to find someone on the mountain who is willing to make the walk out. I spend the afternoon asking around the 200 or so climbers in 14 camp with no luck.


3 JUNE 2006, DAY 3


A storm is predicted to come in tonight and last for a few days. Since I couldn't find any new partners yesterday I decide to descend to the airstrip and try to catch someone on their way out. I pack up and head out around 3PM. The descent is tough. Because all the group gear belonged to me I'm carring out two people's worth of expedition climbing gear by myself. My load is heavier than what I carried in and is divided halfway between my sled and my pack. On the steeper sections I can snowboard down, lowering my sled ahead of me, but on flat and low angle sections I used a variety of methods including pulling the sled, riding on the sled, and occasionally cutting the sled loose and letting it take its own path down. It takes me seven hours to descend the 7000' to basecamp.

ray klukoske
Storm up high...



4 JUNE 2006, DAY 4

I hang around basecamp all day and try to convince some poor sucker into walking out with me. Everyone is spent from their climb and just wants to fly back to burgers and beer in Talkeetna. No one has the energy, time or food for another six days of hiking even with the incentive of saving the $200 on the return flight. I stay up late tonight and watch the moon come up and move across the sky. In anticipation af the hike out I want to change my sleep schedule to days so that I can travel on the glacier when the snow bridges are frozen solid with the colder night time temperatures. It's preaty easy to stay awake all night because it never really gets dark at night in the summer this close to the arctic circle. I can read at 2AM without a headlamp.


5 JUNE 2006, DAY 5

I stay in base camp all day. I'm feeling well rested and restless. Again no one is into the idea of hiking out. In fact base camp is almost empty right now. Everyone has either flown out or gone up. Most of the people I met higher on the mountain, while I was climbing, flew out today. There is one other party here who have been somewhat amusing to watch. A group of six Japaneese climbers who speak no English and apparently have never been mountianeering before are being led by two American guides who have to communicate to their clients through a translator. They've been going over all the basics of roped glacier travel and winter camping skills for the last two days and the guides have been amazingly patient with their difficult job. I can't imagine trying to do their job.

ray klukoske
BC at 7,000 feet



6 JUNE 2006, DAY 6


Last night a commercial guide, Rob, showed up at basecamp with two clients. They couldn't handle the rigors of the Denali expierence and he had just escourted them down from the 14 camp and put them on a plane back to Talkeetna. The protocall of Rob's company is that he cannot travel the glacier unroped so I offer to hike back up with him today. We leave aroud 7AM. With light packs and both of us being well acclimatized we make it up to the 11,000' camp by noon. I carry bivy gear, some warm clothes, and a couple day's of food with ambitions of another possible summit bid or some skiing above 14'000 ft and hopefully find a new partner on the trail. We pass about 50 other ascending climbers, slowly hauling their sleds, ladden with heavy expedition loads, but no one coming down. No prospects for a hiking companion. I noticed the snow. It had been very warm last week and all the snow bridges had sagged or broke over the crevasses, exposing their locations that had been completely hidden when I first climbed here three weeks ago. Rob and I moved off the beaten path in several places to take shortcuts or pass other climbers.

ray klukoske
BC


We safely and easily crossed the smaller, sagging, but now frozen, bridges on our skis. I began to formulate a plan for a solo journey down from base camp. The conditions were ideal, I can see all the bridges easily, and the small ones can be crossed safely and the big holes avoided altogether.

ray klukoske
BC


As we approach the 11,000' camp the weather is turning bad up high. We move into colder temps, snow and fierce winds. I had expected a nice day of travel. Rob and I stopped for a rest at the camp. I asked him how pissed he would be if I bailed out on him here. I didn't want to climb into the storm and up around the notorious "Windy Corner" in these conditions. Plus I wanted to go back and start on my trip out from base camp. Rob agreed with me, he wasn't psyched to go into the weather either and content to stay here for the night and tie on with someone else to go up tomorrow. I de-split my snowboard and headed down the hill. Got some fun turns in where it was snowing but encountered lots of hard variable snow lower where the weather was nice.

At the airstrip I set my plan in motion. I arrange to have my extra gear flown out on a plane and let the Ranger know what I'm doing. She seemed a little concerned but didn't say it was completely stupid. Denali climbing Rangers are unlike Public land officials I have encountered. The usual answer you get when inquiring about a trip that involves anything but walking on pavement is that "it can't be done" or "you'll never make it". Here they'll try to make you well informed of the conditions you'll encounter and send you out on your adventure.

I go into my tent to organize my gear and pack and when I come out aroud 6PM it's snowing. A bad sign. I stuff all my gear into two large duffels and leave them near the base camp manager's tent to be flown out. Arourd 7PM I pick up my pack, step into my splitboard and since it's snowing and no planes are coming I ski right down the airstrip to th main Kahiltna Glacier where I turn left/downhill/South/out. It's still snowing and visibility is about 1.5 miles which means that I can just see across the the mountains on the other side of the Glacier. This first part is easy. There is already a bootpack here from climbers going around the corner to Mt Hunter. I feel safe following it.

ray klukoske
Portrait


Too soon the tracks loop back to the rock walls and I must continue straight down the glacier into the unknown. I'm nervous, there had been hundreds of other climbers beating a path into the snow above base camp, now I'm on my own, breaking my own trail, over the unknown cracks.

I wonder how many crevasses I' m crossing. Hundreds? more, probably. To make matters worse its still snowing. Although it has only accumulated about 1 cm the snow is bad for several reasons. 1) The snow and clouds mean warmer temps and consequently weaker snow bridges, 2) Snow will fill in the sagging bridges, making it impossible to see where they are, 3) snow will fill in my tracks making it impossible for rescuers to see where I walked. I'm nervous. I take out my snowprobe. This is my radar into the world of hidden crevasses. It's essentually a 9' tent pole with a point on one end and a handle on the other. I stick the point into the snow as far as it will go. Eight feet down, solid ice. I probe again a step farther and find solid ice again. Another step and six feet down is nothingness. Six feet seems like a reasonable depth for a snowbridge and I continue along probing occassionally and keeping the probe out, carring it horizontal to the snow as if it will span a crevasse and catch me if I fall through. My primary crevasse spanning device is my skis, which are really just an old snowboard cut in half and outfitted with special hardware so that it can be used as skis for touring uphill, or reassembeled as a snowboard for making turns downhill. It is commonly known as a splitboard and while it is great for backcountry snowboarding it is too short and flexible to be really good for crevasse spannig. I wish I had real skis on, I wish I had 20 foot long skis on.

ray klukoske
Travel through talus on Granite Glacier...


Five miles down the Kahiltna I stop to refill my water bottle. I have a 1 Liter bottle I carry in my pocket and 2 liters ina water bladder in my pack. When I pull the bladder out of my pack to refill the bottle it is empty. There is a hole. Now there is 2 liters of water somewhere in my pack, probably soaking into my sleeping bag. I consider retreat but decide I can walk through the night and sleep tomorrow when its warm and I don't need so much insulation.

By 9PM I've covered the 7 miles to the Kahiltna Icefall. I have been told this will be the crux of the route and the line through is on the lefthand side. I look at my map and the line the Ranger in Talkeetna drew a month earlier start along the lefthand wall and curves back to the middle of the glacier. From my viewpoint I can't see the icefall at all, only a horizon line that drops off beyond. Like looking down a river towards a rapid. The route through is apparently clear from an airplane but my "partner" had insisted on sitting up front and was supposed to scope out the route. Of course she's not here now so I follow what the ranger drew on the map. Before long I find myself weaving my way through a maze of fins of ice. Searching for a path through the broken seracs. The cracks between the fins are 20' to 70' wide and perpendicular to my intended direction of travel. I move along one fin scoping out crossable snow bridges to the next one. I like to see strong bridges that goes far into the crevasse that I can see. Some though are obviously truly bridges, spanning the distance between two blocks of ice on a prayer.


I make slow progress often backtracking to find a better way through. When I cross a gap I can't help but look into the hole. I think I'd like to see a soft pillow of snow that would catch me if I fall. At best its a jumble ice blocks that would break many bones. Often I look down and see only a dark blue emptyness of dreadful depth that takes my breath away with fear. After an intense hour of negotating the ice fall I find myself on top of a serac, higher then any others around it, with nowhere to go. I can see far down the Glacier. The icefall goes on for a long way, below it looks flat and solid. This can't be what the Ranger had in mind. I rest here and enjoy the view of this crazy place and then backtrack all the way through the ice fall to find the real route. Going to the extreme left I find the "line". It is exposed to rockfall and avalanches from the mountianside but is a clean path of snow around the broken glacier.

Around 1AM I come across a huge, flat granite rock smack in the middle of the glacier. It looks like an oasis to me. I've covered 32 miles today since I left base camp this morning and I'm tired, so wet sleeping bag be damned, this is about the coolest campsite I've ever encountered. To save weight I've only brought the footprint of my tent to use as a tarp shelter. I stretch it between my skis and poles and ice axe to make a roof from the still lightly falling snow, cook dinner and fall asleep on my rock exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally.


7 June 2006, Day 7



A long rest after yesterday's skiing, I woke up to warm temps and an occasional flightseeing tour buzzing overhead up the Glacier. I figure it must be clear outside but I didn't poke my head out of my sleeping bag to see until my noon-o-clock start. Make water, eat breakfast, and I'm on my skis by 1PM travelling down the the Kahiltna Glacier with the goal of getting up onto the Pika Glacier today and up over Exit Pass. It's partly cloudy and warm. The snow I'm walking on is deffinitly not frozen solid. This concerns me somewhat since I still have 1500' and 8 miles of Glacier to descend before I start going up again and I can only assume that the lower I go the softer and weaker the snowbridges will be. Still after my trials last night I am walking confidently. The travel is relatively easy for the first 5 miles then I run into some trouble getting up off the Kahiltna and onto the Pika Glacier. From higher up I saw what appeared to be a very broken glacier with lots of open crevasses but it turned out to be hundereds of small "lakes" on the Glacier. I took this to be a sign of stability. If the snowmelt is pooling on top of the Glacier there can't be to many holes in it, right? I feel safe but the travel is a pain in the ass because I have to go around all the ponds and over the small hillocks separating them. Trying to find an easier path I cross some medial morains, areas of open crevasses and some some avalance/rockfall debris at the edge of the mountain.


ray klukoske
Walking up the Pika...


While travelling through a runout of avalanche and rockfall I noticed a bit of dirt with a plant growing in it. Actuall life! On the upper mountain with the exception of silly humans and a few birds that follow them up there, nothing lives. This is the first bit of life I have seen in almost a month. I feel like a sailor, who has just sighted his first shore bird after a long voyage and knows land is near. Around 8PM I leave the Kahiltna Glacier and begin ascending the side canyon known as the Pika Glacier. I call the Pika a side canyon but it is over a
mile wide and has several arms. I'm tired and stop to rest on some boulders at the bottom of the Pika.



I consider camping here but a breeze picks up and it begins to snow. Ahead is the Pika and Exit Pass. I have 1500' to gain in about 3 miles. I calculate that to be about the grade of a wheelchair ramp. A 3 mile wheelchair ramp doesn't sound so bad and it will probably be easier now than if it snows 6" overnight. I motivate and push on. It snows harder, a mile up the Pika there is already 2" of new accumulation and I'm travelling in close to a whiteout. There is an ice fall on the Pika that I have to travel through, but there is a nice path right up the middle that I could see earlier and took a compass bearing on my route when I could see. Now I'm following my compass, deadreckoning my way up between the cracks. Again I feel like sailor only this time I'm trying to steer my ship between icebergs in the fog. Only my "bergs" are actually the lack of ice, it's the holes I'm worried about. I have a GPS as well and it gets a signal for just a moment between the rock walls around me and the weather.

ray klukoske
Exit Pass


I am where I think I am, ready to make the left turn up the arm of the Pika to Exit Pass. I can't see up the arm and I don't know what's there so I decide to stop for the nigt and hope for clear weather in the morning. I probe a 15' diameter circle in the snow to check for hidden crevasses under my potential camp. I find about 6' of snow. No crevasses. I build walls of snow and lay my skis and poles across the top and stretch my tarp over them for a roof. Inside it is sheltered from the weather but also damp and cold. Make water, and dinner and I'm asleep at 1AM again.



8 JUNE2006, Day 8



ray klukoske
Talkeetna


I wake at 8AM this morning. It's still snowing lightly but much clearer. It actually has snowed 6" overnight as I had feared it might. I wonder what the avalanche potential is on Exit Pass. My snow walls settle with the weight of the new snow on the roof and the warm morning temps. When I see a crack in the wall next to me I jump out and clear off the roof before I get buried alive. Outside I can see Exit Pass and it doesn't look so big from here. Back inside I stuff my feet in my sleeping bag and make some water and a big breakfast of oatmeal, gorp and a little too much brown sugar.

Ideally I would climb over Exit Pass early in the morning after it froze hard overnight. But it didn't freeze last night, just accumulated more snow. I've been told it could be as steep as 60 degrees which theoretically is steep enough to avalance itself continuously in a storm. However this soft isothermal snowpack and 6" of new sticky snow could be hanging on the like a mousetrap waiting to smash me.

I like my little shelter but I not to psyched about sitting in it for another 24 hours hoping for a freeze so I decide to move up towards exit Pass and assess the snow conditions on the way. If it seems to sketchy I'll have to build another shelter and wait for a freeze. It's less then two miles to the pass but I have to go around another bit of icefall that I'm glad I didn't try to go through last night sight unseen. I make my way uphill through a bit of a maze, staying on top of the snowcovered seracs.

I see the new snow slough off of several of the steeper rocky slopes around me but Exit Pass seems pretty solid when I get to it. It's actually less then 45 degrees and only a couple hundred feet vertical. I'm able to keep my skis on all the way up. At the top I "de-split" my board, excited to make some turns. I clip into my binders and make a couple of tenative turns and approach a rollover. The slope gets steeper and I think about my ride down Rescue Gully, the shortcut between the 17,200 and 14,200 camps on Denali. The top of Rescue Gully is a steep rocklined chute and the bottom opens up into some major crevasses. We'd seen several people ski it and decided to ride down after taking a cache up to 17 camp. I belayed my partner into the gully from the top. She went down the first rope length on her skis and stopped out of sight. I gave her some time to set an anchor and the followed on my snowboard with my ice axe out in case I needed to self arrest.

As I passed my partner I saw she hadn't actually made any kind of an anchor and was just standing there tied into the rope. I suggested she at least throw a loop of rope over the boulder she was standing next to. I descended into a steeper part of the slope and suddenly discovered the shortcomings of my snowboard setup on this slope. There was about 8" of snow on top of hard blue ice. Skiers easily floated in the snow but my board cut deeper, all the way to the ice and the snow slid out for underneath me in small slabs. At this point I tried to dig the edge of my board into the ice to stop, except that on the 45 degree slope all I got for purchase was the toes of my plastic boots where they overhung the edge of my board. This caused sudden slipping towards the crevasses 1000' below and a frantic attempt tp self arrest on to hard ice. I slid to the end of the rope and the boulder that I had my partner throw the rope over held my fall. After that, much to the dismay of my partner who'd anticipated making fun turns the whole way down, we stayed roped up and swapped belys down until the slope angle lessen to where I wasn't breaking off any slabs and could use my edge.

From the rollover on the South side of Exit pass I can see the slope is steeper then the North side where I climbed up. Halfway down there appears to be a sort of drop off that I can't see past and then a large pile of snow and rock avalanche debris at the bottom. I have second thoughts about trying to snowboard this and hop back up the hill a few feet to some rocks.

I push a 30 pound rock down the slope and it immeadiatly slufs out the new snow in a 10' wide path down the hill, disappears over the drop off and re-appears, airborne and tumbles into the debris pile. I take off my board and frontpoint down the hill. Good choice it turns out, the drop off was actually the crown of an avalanche. I slid down the loose soil and jumped across the moat that had formed between the rock face and avy debris pile. I put my board back on and got to make 2 good turns before the glacier became too flat to snowboard on and I had to split it and start skinning again.

This side of Exit Pass is the Granite Glacier and I will follow it down to an elevation of 2000' before climbing up and over serenity pass at 4500'.

About 4 miles down the gliciers turns to the right and I run out of snow on what is known as a rock glacier. There is still ice underneath but the surface is covered with talus that has accumulated from the moraines. It is on big jumbled mess of loose rocks with the occasional vertical ice wall of a serac. I find it to be extremely difficult to travel on. I keep taking my skis on and off as I find small patches of snow to cross then have to add the 13 pounds to my pack again when I get back on the rock. The rock is all unstable and I fall down several times when a boulder rolls out from underneath my foot. Finally around 7PM I see the terminus of the glacier next to me and I realize I'm out onto solid ground. Hell yea, in the last three days I've covered 30 miles of glacier, solo. I feel like I've really accomplished something and having solid ground beneath me, even though it's still loose talus, is an awesome feeling. To celebrete I find a big boulder overlooking the toe of the Granite G and make camp early at 8PM.

I realize the problems of being off the glacier immeadiatly. First I'm not surronded by a water source and I have to go hike to get water. Second, mosquitos. I walk down and check the end ef the glacier when I get water. This is one of my favorite things to see. The verticle wall of ice with all its cracks exposed. The rocks that have been entombed in ice for ages that are now melting out. The water surging out from under the ice starting a river. It's like a history, physics, geology and geography lesson all in one.


9 JUNE 2006, DAY 9


This morning I took the snowprobe off the waist belt of my pack and replaced it with a can of bear spray. Bear spray is like industrial strength pepper spray that will supposedly deter a bear. The only stories I've heard about it in use, (or rather misuse) are the guys who tried to use like a bear reppellent. One sprayed himself with quite unconfortable results, and another guy who sprayed it around his camp and the diffused scent smelled like food and actually attracted a bear. I've never heard of a story where it has stopped an attacking bear but I feel better having it.

I've already seen tracks yesterday on the glacier and anticipate I might start seeing the big mammals today. My first two hours are spent negotiating loose talus up hill till I'm back on snow and headed to serenity pass. The snow here is wet and sloppy. Without the glaciial ice below to keep it colder the snowpack is rotten to the ground. Even with my skis I sink with every step and the snow sticks to the my boots and accumulates on top of the ski so that I'm dragging an extra 10 pounds of weight on each foot. I do see lots of bear track in the snow covered meadows but no animals. AsI climbed up to Serenity Pass I'd hope the snow would get more solid with the higher elevation but no luck.

The headwall up to the pass is about 1200' and half of it has avalanched to the ground leaving dirt and rock exposed. The rest of the snow is wet, rotten to the ground, and seems dangerous so I ascend a rib of exposed rock to avoid an avalanche. The rock is steeper, but safer and a much more aesthetic line from a climbing point of view. From Serenity pass I can see my route down Wildhorse Creek and into the Dutch Hills. I try to snowboard down the south side of Serenity and again I am shut down by a lack of snow on the sunny slope. I walk down a grassy slope and get two turns at the bottom. I try to push myself along in the deep wet snow with my ski poles for a bit, eventually giving up and spliting the board again. I have 8 miles to go to the Dutch Hills where I'm supposed to be able to pick up an old mining road but it all looks covered by snow.

The hike is a slog in the sloppy wet snow. I descend to 2500' to Gold Creek. I have to take the liners out of my boots and roll my pant legs up to cross the knee deep creek. Then up into the hills, one more pass to go. It's an easy climb, a mellow grade to 3500'. I cross the top at midnight and start downhill with a sense of relief. I think I'm gona' make it. Still no sign of the road and I stay on my skis till abut 2AM when I run out of snow and camp on a nice soft patch of grass.


10 June 2006 - DAY 10

I woke up at 5AM. Only got 3 hours of sleep but it was starting to rain so I got up and started walking. I find the "road" right away, but it's just a rough ATV trail that is hard to walk on and I'm glad to find an occasional stretch of snow and put my skis back on. I have to make it to civilization today because I'm almost out of food. I left on this trip with 6 days of food but I've put in such long days that I've eaten most of it already. I have one dinner left.

I pass some Beaver Dams and stop to watch the Beavers make their morning rounds, checking out their ponds. Around 8AM the road improves to a packed single lane of gravel and I can see a couple structures covered in blue tarps in the distance. The road drops into a ravine and crosses a creek where I get my boots wet because I was too lazy to take them off. I stop to rest next to the creek and doze off, waking up when it starts to rain on me.

I walk up the hill out of the ravine and to my suprise come to one of the blue tarped structures at the top. There is a smoking stove pipe coming out of the side. I don't know if I'm on a road or walking up someones driveway on their "Smith and Wesson protected" private property. "Hello" I call as I approach. A suprised, but friendly male voice answers from "inside". As I get closer I can see the "building" is just a framework of metal pipes, 2x4's and a truck with a tarp that covers 3 walls and the roof. The 4th wall is open. Inside is a man warming his feet under a woodstove and boiling a pot of water on top. I ask if I'm on the Petersville Road and he says I am. The highway is 40 miles farther and I have 3 more creeks to cross. We chat a bit and he tells me he just drove in two days ago, the first time the road has been passable. This is his mining camp and he stays here all summer.

I head on up the road, it's easy walking on the hard packed dirt and I want to get to some food today. I get out of the Dutch hills and into the Peters Hills. A couple ATVers pass me. I stop and talk to a couple others in the Peters hills. They're going to check on a cabin and see how it made it through the winter. I tell them about my trip and they're impressed with my hike and offer some much appreciated cold, leftover fried chicken and a beer. They also tell me there is a roadhouse 13 miles farther where I can buy a meal, and the highway is 19 miles past that. My goal for the day is hamburgers at the roadhouse.

Moving on, I'm going slow despite the easy hiking. The heavy pack and 3 hours of sleep are adding up. A couple comes by in a truck ond offers a ride but I have to decline. My trip requires no motor vehicles and it's way to early in the game to give up. I do however let them take my pack and drop it off at the roadhouse. They give me an apple and an orange as well.

The hiking is way easier after that and I cruise the last 6 miles. I meet a couple of bear hunters on ATV's and wonder if I haven't seen any bears because they're tired of being shot at and went deeper into the woods. Near the roadhouse I meet a couple of campers with mountain bikes. It turns out they have started a hiking/biking club in Anchorage in an effort to bring some land use and trail use issues to light in a city that has 35 ATV clubs.

They're excited about my trip. Part of my idea is that if I can boycott cars for a year while I complete this crazy 18,000 mile journey maybe it will inspire someone to try riding their bike to work or the corner store. With its harsh weather and large spaces Alaska is an especially hard sell for bicycle advocacy and its cool to meet some like minded people here. We have a great talk but I hear dinner calling so I head on up to the roadhouse. I get to the end of my 22 mile day and order two cheeseburger meals and enjoy. This is the 1st time in a over a month that I have eaten food off a grill, been inside a permenant structure, used running water and a flush toilet. I finish the burgers and feel like I could eat a lot more but it was expensive and not all that great so I retrieve my pack and head outside to camp. I meet up with the bear hunters, Jason and Chris, who are just cooking dinner and throw some extra meat on for me. One more burger, two hotdogs, and a chicken sandwich later I finally feel full. We shoot the shit around the campfire for the night. They are both from Anchorage up here camping and hunting for the weekend. Jason is an electrician and Chris is in the Army ready for a deployment to Iraq where he will "get tough while I spend all my time lifting weights and killing people." Ahh, back in civilization.


11 JUNE 2006 - Day 11


A nice long sleep last night next to a warm campfire. Jason and Chris treated me to breakfast and offered a ride but I had to refuse again, its's only two more days hiking to Talkeetna. They gave me their leftover food and took my mountianeering gear to the crossraods for me. I start walking a little after noon. I see lots more people today but they are all in a hurry to get home so they can go to work tomorrow and hardly anyone stops to talk. Halfway to the highway the road turns to pavement. I want to take off my hard plastic boots but my only other shoes are flip flops which seem inadaquate for carrying a pack. I improvise some foot wear by wearing my boot liners and tying the flip flops onto them for soles. I takes a couple of tries to figure it out, but seems to work okay and I end up walking all day in them. I make it to the Parks Highway (the road between Anchorage and Fairbanks) by 10PM. I've come 19 miles so far today and as the crow flies Talkeetna is only 6 miles away. However the 14 mile long road to Talkeetna is still 17 miles south of me. My goal is to be there tomorrow and I decide to hike through the night. There will be a lot less traffic on the highway at night. I buy some candy bars and energy drinks at a gas station and keep walking. The only traffic I see on the road is an occasional semi that comes as a relief when its accompianing blast of wind diffuses the swarm of mosquitos following me. 11PM, 12AM, 1AM, the mileposts tick by slowly. At 2AM I notice an object on the side of the road. One of the cool things about walking on the highway is the stuff you find. Already I have picked up 2 bungie cords plus a nalgene bottle, a yellow flashing LED light, a gas cap and a can of bug spray. I decide not to retrieve what I have just found, but I wonder about the scenerio the left 8" of vibrating pleasure discarded on the side of the road. Around 4AM I cross the Susitna River and the Talkeetna spur road is just a few miles down the highway. I stop for the night having covered, for the second time this week, 32 miles in a day.


12 JUNE 2006, Day 12

Slept in this morning. Noon-o-clock start. I walked to the Talkeetna spur road and got my pack from the gas station where the bear hunters had left it. There are terrible blisters on my feet from walking in wet shoes for two days and I have to put my plastic boots back on to carry the full weight of my pack. I re-up my supply of energy bars, beef jerky and water and take some pain killers for my feet and the muscles in my legs and push on to town. 14 more miles seems like nothing compared to what I've done so far and there is a path for non-motorized traffic the whole way. I walk into town around 10PM, 17 miles today and a new personal best of 75 miles in 3 days. I go to the pub and have a really good burger and a beer, then to the beach and lay down to sleep in the sand next to the river.

I'm proud of having made the walk out and glad to be done hiking, then realize this was only the beginning. I have a long way to go still if I'm going to do all 50 states. I have a feeling that I'll still going to get my ass kicked at times but nothing else should be as hard as Denali.