Amy's So-Called Life: Backpacking trip to Alaska

Alaska Hiking Trip
August 25 – Sept 4^th, 2012

Back during the summer, I had gotten it in my head that I needed to go on another hiking adventure. Like most of my crazy adventures, something pops in my head and I must research it to the Nth degree and go full steam ahead in to planning it. Well, at some point during the summer it popped in my head that I HAD to go hiking in Alaska. So, I started researching places to hike in Alaska. It was starting off to be kind of difficult because unbeknown to me, most of Alaska ‘s hiking is basically off trail, meaning that there are no real defined trails to hike because they want to keep the landscape natural. I had never hiked off trail and it seemed a little dangerous to do that completely by myself. So, I did some internet searching and I found a hiking guide named Carl Donohue that would take groups of people out into the Wrangell – St. Elias Mountain range for hiking expeditions. Needless to say, my mom wasn’t very happy to learn that I had found some random dude on the internet to guide me thru the Alaskan outback all by myself. To ease her worries, I called a travel agency in Anchorage and spoke to a very nice lady who called around the area and vouched for Carl that he was on the up and up. After emailing Carl back and forth for about a month the plan was all set. I was to fly into Anchorage on August 25^th, pick up my hotel shuttle at the airport, stay at the Inlet Hotel near downtown Anchorage, get picked up by Carl on the 26^th and drive 6 hours outside of Anchorage to a small town called McCarthy, Alaska. Once in McCarthy we were to stay the night at a lodge and then the next morning take a brush plane out into the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountain Range to be dropped off. We would then hike for the next 6 days and be picked up by the brush plane at the end of our hike and be taken back to McCarthy. We would stay the night once again at the lodge and then drive the 6 hours back to Anchorage where I would be dropped back off at my hotel and wait for my flight back to Michigan. Sounds fun, right?

On Saturday, August 25^th, I had all my gear packed and ready to fly to Anchorage! Gary helped me and followed me to the airport. I left my Jeep at my work so that I had a way to drive home when I got back and so I could park for free for a week instead of in the airport parking lot. Once we got to the airport, checking in was pretty standard, except this time I had a bunch of hiking equipment in my luggage and I didn’t want the TSA to confiscate any of it. So, I let the guy know that I had a hiking stove and gasoline canisters. He tells me that even though they are empty, they cannot be checked. I was kind of upset, because now I didn’t have fuel canisters for my stove, but I would rather get them out of my luggage now then get to Anchorage and be furious to find out that they were taken out of my luggage never to be seen again. Other than that nuisance, everything else went fine with check in. So, I was off to Alaska on my big adventure!

Around 7pm I finally arrived in Anchorage. As we were landing I saw a Moose and her baby grazing not too far from the strip. I got my luggage just fine and called the hotel shuttle to pick me up. At this time, it had been about 70-80 degrees in Michigan. I had been watching the weather in Alaska and they were about 30 degrees cooler than us. Even so, I wasn’t prepared for what a shock that cool weather was going to be for me! When I got to my hotel and got settled in, I walked over to a small grocery store to get something to drink and eat for dinner, and possibly some other random snacks for the car ride to McCarthy. I could not believe how crazy expensive everything was! At least double what it is here in Michigan. Anyway, I grabbed some food and headed back to my little hotel room to watch TV and nervously go over all my equipment and pack my backpack for the next day’s pick up.

My hotel room

View of Anchorage from my hotel room

Around 8:15am on the 26^th Carl arrived at my hotel lobby to pick up me and my gear. He’s originally from Australia, so it was fun to listen to him talk with his accent. When I got out to his van to toss my gear in, the first thing out of his mouth was “I haven’t seen an external frame backpack in a long time! Where did you get this thing?” Sigh. I didn’t know that external frames were out of date and dorky apparently, but I got it specifically because of the external frame. Not having a lot of upper body strength, it’s easier to lift the external frame backpack because there is a bar to grab onto rather than just flimsy straps. But, I digress… Anywho, with Carl in the van was this lady named Cindy. She was from North Carolina and had decided to go hiking with Carl at the last minute. I was kind of glad that she was there because it was nice to have at least someone else in the group besides just me and Carl. So, after we packed up we headed out of Anchorage on highway 1 and towards McCarthy.

Driving towards McCarthy was really beautiful. Even tho it was raining that day and was probably about 50 degrees out, the scenery was amazing.

Anchorage to Fairbanks train

The Alaska Pipeline

After driving for several hours, we came to this little place in the middle of nowhere, which describes just about every place you see that’s outside of Anchorage, Called the Golden Spruce to rest and have lunch. Carl let us know that the next leg of our journey from that point could take us 1 hour or 3 hours depending on how the road was. The only road up to McCarthy was a 60 mile long, 2-lane dirt road! He said that this late in the season the pot holes and chatter bumps could be so bad that we could blow a tire or break down or just have to drive 30 miles an hour. Plan for the worse, and hope for the best I guess. Luckily, the road wasn’t too bad and we actually made decent time.

The Golden Spruce

Salmon Wheels along a river

60 miles of this. Thank goodness there was little traffic!

We arrived in the late afternoon in McCarthy to this lodge that Carl had arranged for us to stay at for the night. We didn’t have individual rooms, we just laid out our sleeping bags on couches in this common area for the night. We decide to go thru our gear and organize our stuff for the next day’s flight out into the brush. We decided to share one stove between all of us, so I could leave my stove behind and Carl also said that we didn’t need our water filters. Cindy and I looked at him like he was crazy. You cannot drink any water without filtering it or you will get really sick, and you do NOT want to be that kind of sick when you’re hiking and have a limited number pairs of underwear and a limited amount of toilet paper! But, he said that no one who hikes in the Alaskan mountains ever brings a water filter because there’s not enough people to pollute it. I was relieved to get rid of that weight, but I was definitely nervous about drinking unfiltered water.

Kennicott River Lodge and Hostel - McCarthy, Alaska
(Can you tell we drove on a dirt road for 60 miles?)

Then Carl said, “Oh my God, is that all the clothes you have for hiking?” I thought I had been really smart about packing all my winter gear. I had Under Armour long underwear pants and a shirt, two breathable t-shirts, another breathable long sleeve shirt, hiking pants, boots, 2 pair wool socks and liners, gloves, 2 buffs, and a rain jacket. I figured I would wear all my clothes at the same time and at all times, but he was very concerned that I still would not be warm enough. So, he gave me one of his fleece jackets. Then, he gave me a second sleeping bag to carry because he said that mine was not warm enough and I would have to put my sleeping bag into his at night in order to stay warm. I really could not believe that it would be THAT cold seeing as it was just labor day weekend and the weather had been around 50 degrees in Anchorage, but I would soon find out that he was totally right! The other thing he told us was that we were not allowed to carry anything on the outside of our pack because we could lose things going thru the brush. That really sucked because a lot of my pack is made to carry things on the outside. So I had to shove everything into the main body of my pack. This proved to be very hard for me and made my balance way off since my pack ended up towering above my head. But, he was the expert and I didn’t want to argue with him and I’m tough anyway so I just did it. It actually proved a good thing because Cindy later lost her water bottle when walking thru the brush because she had placed it in an outside pocket.

After getting all our gear organized, we decided to walk into ‘town’, check our flight schedule and get something to eat. McCarthy consists of about a dozen houses and the yearly population is around 20. During the summer, there are a lot of guides that live in town, so it’s much busier. None of the roads are paved and tourists have to park in a lot and then walk into town, which is about ½ mile. Most of the locals tooled around on quads and not in cars. I think it’s the first place I’ve been where I’ve seen more ATVs used then cars!

Community Church
(Sunday morning the 'lot' was full of Quads, not cars)

Walking into McCarthy

Downtown McCarthy!

The Golden Saloon
(Aka the only place to eat in town)

Yes, some of these houses are occupied

A unique fixer-upper opportunity!

Carl pointing out our hiking path on the map

After getting a good dinner, we headed back to the lodge and got around for bed. Since we were all sleeping in an open room, Cindy and I had to endure the loud snoring of Carl all night long (even though he denies that he actually snores, but he does). The next day we got up early, walked back into town for our last-good-meal-for-a-week, walked back to the lodge, grabbed our packs and headed for the ‘bus stop’ to take the shuttle to the airport.

Cindy at the 'bus stop' with her teeny tiny pack

Me with my super ridiculously huge pack

Once at the airport, we loaded our gear, loaded ourselves and took off for the mountains! Normally, I have a fairly strong stomach but because of the weather and the wind our little plane got tossed all over the place. Shortly after this picture was taken, I was not smiling because I was trying not to barf!

Me and Cindy in the 4 person brush plane

After about 30 minutes or so, we landed on this 2 track dirt ‘air strip’ and unloaded our gear. It was almost a little frightening watching our little plane take off and fly away thinking that I was going to be with these two people that I literally just met 24 hours ago, alone in the Alaskan wilderness, with only what we had on our backs for a week, before I would see that plane again.

The air strip - dropping off!

Unfortunately, it was raining / sleeting when we got off the plane and unloaded our gear. As I stood there in the rain, already wet and freezing in the first 5 minutes, Carl gave us hiking instructions that we were to follow for the next week. Basically, the only rule was to do as he said, when he said it, and ask questions later. He also gave Cindy and I our own can of ‘bear spray’ that we were to carry with us everywhere we went, even when our packs were off and we were walking around camp, even when we just had to go pee, we do NOT leave that bear spray out of our sight. After about 20 minutes of instruction, Carl and Cindy get out their rain pants to put on before we start hiking. “Where are your rain pants, Amy?” I didn’t bring any. Carl and Cindy looked at me with wide eyes. Oh my God, you don’t have rain pants?? At the time, I really didn’t see what the problem was. I have hiked before in the rain and I actually had a hiking instructor tell me that they never use rain pants. Weeeell, that’s all fine and good for Michigan weather and hiking on trails apparently, but hiking in Alaska, not on trails and thru the brush, rain pants are a must (which is what I found out the hard way).

So, we started on our way. Near the air strip were a few abandoned buildings left over from some small mining settlement, but once we got away from the strip, all there was to see was brush and grass. Right away I quickly realized that this was going to be a lot harder then I had ever thought in my entire life. It was raining and cold and my pants were already soaked thru from the brush rubbing on me as we walked thru There were no trails, the ground was wet and extremely ‘squishy’, like a sponge and we were constantly pushing the brush out of our way. My pack was so high above my head from stuffing everything inside of it that my balance was way off, in addition to my rain jacket being slippery from the rain and walking over uneven squishy ground, my pack was constantly shifting from side to side. I had to tighten my straps as hard as I could in order to keep my pack from sliding around. (Side note: after the trip, I noticed that areas on both my shoulders were numb from the straps of my backpack. As of December, it's almost back to normal but not quite. I'm not sure if the feeling will ever completely come back) It was so hard to walk and keep up with Carl and Cindy, I quickly realized that if there was a weak link in this trio that It was definitely me.

When we started up our first hill, I was already worried that I wasn’t going to be able to do this for the next 6 days. You think walking up a hill is hard? Try walking up a hill, on squishy ground, with 30 lbs of weight on your back that is constantly shifting because your jacket is wet, in the rain and the cold….and do it for an hour or two, just going up and up and up. And when I say ‘hill’ I don’t mean a gentle incline. I mean an incline sharp enough that we had to walk up it in a switchback fashion and we had to use our trekking pole to help keep stable when our foot slips on the squishy, wet grass. At least I very quickly got that ‘runner high’ feeling so I literally don’t remember too much about this leg of our trip, which is probably a good thing. I do know that I hate going up and up and up without any relief. I literally would just count in my head or repeat something over and over with every footstep. Like, “1, 2, 3, and 4, 1, 2, 3 and 4”. The rhythm helped me keep going. Sounds kind of crazy, but it kept me from not focusing on the fact that I already wanted to quit! After about 3-4 hours of hiking, Carl finally said that we had reached our first camping spot for the night. Thank God! (I signed up for this right??)

Scouting our first camp site

Once we reached our camping area, Carl instructed us where we would put our tents up. Then we went off about 50 yards to put up the cooking and eating tent. Since we were in bear country, we really needed to follow the back country rules. When you camp, your sleeping area, your eating area and your bathroom area need to make a triangle and be about 50 yards apart from each other. In Michigan, I never follow this rule, except to make sure to hang my food so little critters don’t get into it while I’m sleeping. However, since there were no trees where we were hiking, we had to keep all our food in these ‘bear containers’. That included all food, toothpaste, foot powder, soap and anything will a smell and that a bear would possibly eat….or at least be curious enough about to come and rip your tent to shreds to find out if it was something he could eat. Then, whatever wouldn’t fit in the bear containers, we put into these Kevlar bags that Carl had. Even so, you couldn’t just leave the bear containers and Kevlar bags in the cook tent overnight. Carl would take each container and bag and hide it separately away from the cook tent. The more that smells were spread out, the less likely the bears would come around. Let me tell you, I’m so glad Carl was there to do all this work because after a day of hiking in the rain and cold the last thing I give a crap about it whether or not a bear comes sniffing around camp looking for food. It was all I could do just to walk from my tent over to the cook tent to eat. Believe me, it eventually got to a point where I would debate whether or not to eat because I was so tired and cold and I didn’t want to walk that extra 50 yards to the cook tent. Anyway, while Cindy and I put up our tents, Carl set up the cook tent. Once we got our stuff organized, we took our bear containers over to the cook tent to make dinner, relax and eat. Just after one day, never in my life had a freeze dried meal tasted sooooooo good! After eating, there really wasn’t much else to do because it was raining. Cindy and Carl stayed in the cook tent to talk and I went back to my tent to get warm and doze on and off until the next morning.

The next morning I woke up to sunshine and a cloudless sky. I was so happy that we wouldn’t have to hike in the rain that day! However, there was something weird on my tent. I flicked the side of my tent with my finger and realized that it had snowed overnight and there was snow on my tent! I couldn’t believe that it had gotten cold enough to snow, but Carl said that that’s how it is in the mountains. The ground was cold enough that the snow stayed until the sun hit it as it rose over the mountains. Once we were up, Carl got the cook tent around and we ate breakfast. After breakfast, I gathered my things to bring back to my tent to pack. Once back at my tent, I needed to brush my teeth and ‘go to the bathroom’. All that food and walking had finally hit me! So, I walked a little ways out of view to take care of business. Once I was done and I started packing up my stuff, I realized that I had dropped my toothbrush somewhere in the snow. This may not have been a big deal, except that my toothbrush was white and It had fallen somewhere between my tent, the cook tent and my bathroom! I was so bummed because all I could think of was that I wouldn’t be able to brush my teeth until I got back to Anchorage! Carl said, “I’ll help you look, where have you walked?” So, he followed my footprints in the snow to back track and see if he could find it. I totally freaked out when he walked over by my bathroom area! He’s looking around at the ground for my toothbrush right where I just took a huge dump! How embarrassing, but there was nothing I could do except to hope that he thought some wild animal had been in the area. Anyway, I walked back and forth several more times to no avail. Finally, and I swear I’m not lying, I wandered a little bit off my footprint trail. Then I got a weird feeling and looked down. There, right in front of me was my white toothbrush. I don’t know who upstairs felt sorry for me, but I’m glad they did because I was so happy I found that stupid thing!

L to R: My tent, Carl's tent, Cindy's tent. Same day, but a little later so the sun melted the snow

Once that drama was over, we finished packing up our stuff and headed on our way. The next few days really just became the same. We would hike all day, anywhere from 4-9 hours, set up camp for the night, eat and relax, I would crawl into my tent to stay warm once the sun went behind the mountains, we would get up the next day and do it all over again. Everywhere we hiked posed new challenges. I would say out of the 6 days, there was really just one area that was actually ‘easy’ to hike over, and even that didn’t last too long. Most of the time, we were either going up and up and up for hours or going down and down and down for hours or going over rocks or ice or thru rivers. It was so mentally exhausting because every, single, solitary step you take had to be calculated. You just couldn’t blindly walk along, you had to pay attention to every step. And even so, Cindy and I still fell a few times. Of course, I think I held the record for the most falls, but that really shouldn’t surprise anyone. Where can I place my foot? Where can my next step be placed? Where can I place my trekking pole for balance? Should I go around this rock or step over it? Now do that for 8 hours. It was exhausting!

But, thru all that we saw awesome things. One day we came across an abandoned bear den. They are actually pretty shallow and in the spring when the bear emerges, they usually collapse in on themselves. The den was huge tho. It looked like a backhoe had scooped one giant scoop of dirt and then dumped it at the front of the entrance to the den. My entire tent could have easily fit inside this den. At another point in our trip, we were walking along and all of a sudden heard this whistling that sounded human. Carl pointed out a couple of marmots that were running down in the valley. When danger approaches they let out this super loud, human sounding whistle that alerts the other marmots that danger is in the area. We also saw a couple of eagles soaring around during the day. But by far, the coolest thing we saw were the bear. Carl was great at spotting them far off in the distance. They were always alone just walking around looking for food. They were usually off in the distance when Carl spotted them and they never even knew we were there, except for one bear, but that story comes later. J

My tent at the second camping spot

Carl and Cindy taking a break

Bear Foot prints

One of the hardest and kind of scariest things we had to do was cross ice. I think it was the 2^nd day and we were hiking up over a pass and we had to cross this section of ice. The incline was steep, the ice was hard and very slippery. I seriously thought Carl was insane for wanting us to cross this. Carl just warned us that if we slipped and fell to just get on your back and slide all the way down until you stop. Every step we made we had to ‘kick’ the snow to make a small ledge for our foot to go on. The best thing for me, was to just concentrate on what was in front of me and not think about how far down the slide would be if we slipped and fell. Cindy was the most nervous about crossing ice and snow. She was shaking with each step and really went slow because she was afraid of slipping. But after about 30 minutes we crossed this small section of ice which was our first ice crossing. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but I was so excited to get across this area. It was really hard and nerve wracking, but we did it.

Doesn't look like a big deal, but it was!

We also had to cross a couple of glaciers. Crossing the glacier was actually pretty cool and not too hard. It was getting on and off the glacier that was hard. Both glaciers we crossed had these rivers running between the ice and the land. These rivers were huge and raging and they were completely created from runoff just from the glacier. Luckily, Carl was able to find a foot path for us to get across each time we had to cross one of these runoff rivers. But, because the ice is constantly shifting and moving, melting and freezing, the path is never the same from year to year. Once we got on the glacier, it was apparent how big and forceful this thing was. There were fissures in the ice that were so big we had to walk around because it was too wide to jump over. And the boulders that this thing could move were as big as my house! You would come to a crack in the ice, hear rushing water, but see nothing. It kind of felt like we were crossing the moon.

Crossing the first glacier

Walking across the glacier

Carl moving a boulder with his bare hands!

On the very last day of hiking before we were going to get picked up by the plane, we had to cross one last section of a glacier. It was raining and sleeting out, I was freezing, I was soaked all the way thru, I was tired and I was D.O.N.E. We came to the point in the glacier where we had to cross the runoff to get back on the land. There were no easy paths across, so Carl started checking the depth of the river with his trekking pole. By this point in time, we had crossed several rivers. Crossing a river is such a pain when you can’t find a path to walk across. We would have to take our packs, socks and shoes off, put on water shoes, roll up our pants, put our pack back on and walk through freezing water that had a strong current and hope to God you didn’t trip and fall. As Carl was checking to see how deep the water was I had a moment of total freak out. I swear if he would have told us to ‘Crock up’ (put on your water shoes) I would have just dropped all my stuff and cried. That or just flopped dead in the water and hoped that the river carried me to the end of the hike. The water was way too strong and deep for us to cross on foot. So, Cindy and I stood in the freezing rain while Carl walked around to try and figure out how to get off the glacier. He decided that we could get off the glacier by walking down the slope of ice where the glacier butted up against the land and where the runoff river exited the glacier. Looking down on it, it was very steep and very slippery because it was raining. If any of us slipped and fell, we could have quite possibly slid down into that freezing river. I went first and even tho I was scared I made it in 10 minutes or so. Cindy was really nervous and Carl helped her part of the way before coming all the way down himself. As I was standing at the bottom looking up, I realized that Cindy was heading right towards the mouth of the river, which she couldn’t see from her vantage point. All I could think of was her slipping and falling into that river and we wouldn’t be able to get her out. Carl and I yelled over the roar of the flowing water and pointed for her to go more to her right. She made it down just fine but that was definitely the one time during the whole trip that I was actually, sincerely scared. And I was not about to point out where she had just walked because I didn’t want her to freak out either. From this point, we had less than an hour more of hiking before we would get to the landing strip where we would be picked up the next day. We had one final wide but shallow stream to cross. Again, Carl worked out the best path to cross it at. He wanted us to lengthen our poles to give us better balance while crossing the slippery river rocks. My hands were so frozen and wet I didn’t have the strength to twist my trekking pole to make it longer. Finally, when it was time for me to cross, I just gave up trying to keep my shoes dry and trudged right thru the water like an animal. I mean really, I was soaked to the bone, so what did it matter at that point. When I got across, Carl kind of scolded me about not listening to him. But I told him I couldn’t do it cuz my hands were frozen. A little bit after that, we finally made it to the plateau where we would camp for the night. I wanted to cry because I couldn’t believe that I had made it. I dropped my pack and started to pull things out in the rain to set up my tent. Carl and Cindy came over and helped me put it up cuz they saw that I was freezing so bad I couldn’t get my hands to work. They put up my tent and I was able to crawl in and set everything else up from inside. Because everything I had was soaked at that point, I literally took off all my clothes and got into my sleeping bag. I made a make shift clothes line inside my tent to hang everything on. Things weren’t drying very fast, so I took a couple of pieces of clothing and tried to dry them with my body heat in the sleeping bag. I warmed up and laid there for a while, not sure if I actually dozed off or not. At some point, I heard Carl yelling and calling out my name. Then I heard him yell “Bear! Bear! Get outta here! Get out of here!” I peeked my head out of my tent to see what was going on (by this time I did have some clothes on!). It had stopped raining at this point, but it was still freezing out. I see Cindy run by with her bear spray. I look around and I see something about 10 or 20 yards away. I realized that it was a bear up on his hind legs checking us out. I see Carl and he’s yelling at the bear and throwing rocks at it. Seriously, at this point I was so done that I really didn’t care if the bear ate me. I figured his stomach was at least warmer than being outside, so I shrugged and thought, “meh, they got it” and I went back in my tent to stay warm. A little while later Carl let me know that he was heating up water for dinner. I told him thanks and sat and debated whether or not I really wanted to eat because I did NOT want to put on cold, wet clothes. My Under Armour was kind of dry, so I begrudgingly put that on and my hiking boots and walked to the dinner tent. As I was sitting there, I could see steam rising from my legs cuz my clothes were obviously still wet. I shoveled down my food and ran back to my tent to get warm. Since I was completely dying at this point, Carl made a call on his Satilite phone to see if the plane could come and get us a little early. However, because the weather had been so bad up in the mountains, the shuttle service has not been able to pick up everyone on time, so they were way behind schedule; therefore, I had to just wait until the next morning when we were actually scheduled to be picked up. I literally did not move from that tent until the next day when it was time to pack up and wait for the plane to arrive.

Around 8am the next morning, Carl woke me up and let me know that the plane was on its way. I’ve never been more excited in my whole life! So we packed up as fast as we could and waited for the little brush plane to arrive. After about 40 minutes he showed up, we loaded up and we flew back to McCarthy.

Getting picked up by the plane!

Once we were back in town, we made our way back to the lodge where Carl’s van was parked with all of our stuff. While Carl found out which room we would be staying in, Cindy and I were overjoyed that we finally were able to use our cellphones and call home! I called mom to let her know that I was alive. Of course, she immediately tells me that she had been freaking out because while we were hiking there had been some story that had hit the news about some guy in Alaska that had gotten eaten by a bear. After our phone calls home, we tore into our bags to pull out clean clothes and get stuff around for a much needed shower. As I’m digging thru my stuff, I find all my snacks that I had in my carry-on for traveling. Fig newtons and dried fruit never tasted better! I literally almost ate the whole package just standing there. Carl came back with our room assignments and we headed to the lodge to dump our stuff and take a shower. It was so good to finally wash all the grease and sweat off after not taking a shower for 6 days. At first I didn’t think we must have smelled that bad, but when I stepped back in our room where all our dirty clothes were I could not believe how much it smelled like a men’s gym locker. I had to put all my dirty clothes out in the hallway so the room didn’t smell. After we pulled ourselves together, we headed back into town to get something to eat. We weren’t scheduled to head back to Anchorage until the next day, so we had all day to hang out in McCarthy and see the area.

About 5 miles away from McCarthy was another town called Kennicott. Here there had once been an old copper mine. After all the copper in the area had been stripped from the land, the mine went under and the town pretty much shut down. Today, it’s a national park and people come there to tour the old mine. There’s also a huge hotel and restaurant where people come to stay. There’s actually a lot to do in the area. Most of the summer residents are guides and they take the tourists on day hikes or out to climb sections of the glacier. And being that it was Labor Day weekend, there was also a McCarthy-Kennicott 5k race going on too. Even tho there couldn’t have been more then a couple hundred people in total, Carl said that the town was ‘packed’ because of the holiday weekend.

Kennicott abandoned copper mine

More abandoned buildings from the mine

The Kennicott Hotel

The Kennicott pizza and snack bus!

After spending the day in Kennicott we waited to take the shuttle van back to McCarthy. Since so many people were heading back at the same time and there weren’t enough shuttles, we ended up packing 21 people into this van. Apparently, according to the guides that were on the van with us, the record is 23. Thank god we didn’t have to go far because I’m pretty sure we were breaking about 10 different laws. Once we got back to the lodge, we kind of went our separate ways. I fixed a little bit to eat in the common kitchen and then just laid down and watched a movie on my iphone. The next morning, we got up, had one last breakfast in McCarthy and then headed out of town on our way back to Anchorage. Once back in Anchorage, Carl dropped me and my stuff back at the same hotel I stayed at when I had first arrived. What a weird feeling to have gone through a week’s worth of hiking with two strangers and then to be right back where I had started. It was very surreal. I thanked Carl and Cindy and we said our goodbyes. I took my gear inside, checked in and headed up to my room for the night. My plane was scheduled to leave at 5am, so all I did was eat, get cleaned up and watch TV until about 3am because I couldn’t sleep. The hotel shuttle then took me back to the airport, where I waited for my flight and my trip back home. I think it was around 8pm when I finally landed in Michigan. As I stumbled off the plane and headed toward the luggage carousals, there was my mom, David and Gary all waiting for me. My mom gave me a hug and a little present. I opened it and inside was a ‘gold’ medal for all my efforts in Alaska.

Overall, this hiking trip was by far the hardest thing I have ever done, but it also the coolest thing I have ever done and I’m really glad I did it. And I’m already thinking about where I can go hiking for next year J

What I learned:

Everyone in McCarthy owns a dog. The dog population is known to be higher than the human population.

I saw ATV’s with little boxes and cages strapped to them for dogs to ride more comfortably.

There is a law that no billboards are allowed in the countryside. It’s weird to drive 6 hours and not see a single billboard sign.

All residents get a stipend from oil sales and it’s based on each individual and how much is made each year from oil sales. So, if you are a family of 2 adults and 2 kids, you will check a check for 4 people. Even if the kids are under 18.

The weather in the mountains is so unpredictable. In one day we would see snow, sleet, and sun. We would be cold and have to wear all our layers and then be so hot that we are in a t-shirt.

It is so expensive. Each meal we had in McCarthy would cost about $20 per person. The nearest big box store from McCarthy is Anchorage, which is 6 hours away.

You lose all perspective in the mountains. Because you can see for miles, it’s really confusing as to how far away something is.

See the tiny, red circle? From where we are in the picture, it took us 6 hours to get there.

There were two hikers in the distance

A list of Carl-isms, Cindy-isms and Amy-isms:

"Derama" - The word 'Drama' as said by Carl. Any unforseen event caused by careless and stupid humans

"Crock-up" - Putting your water shoes on when Carl needs you to cross a creek, which in actuality is a raging river.

"It's kind of a project" - Just when you think hiking is hard enough, and these words are muttered, be aware that it's only going to get way harder to the point where you want to lay down, curl up in a ball and cry.

"Tor-till-aahs" - How Cindy and presumably all southerners say the word tortillas.

"Paahp" - Apparently the way I say 'pop', which in itself is a hilarious word to people who did not grow up in the midwest. I'm supposed to say 'soda' or 'coke'....whatever, it's pop.