Monday, September 19, 2016

Hiking the Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaksa, 2016 - PART 1





Monday, July 25th, 2016 – Sunday, August 7th, 2016

Monday, July 25th – Layover in Dallas:

I took off out of Grand Rapids around 8am on that Monday and landed at DFW around 9:30am. Because I had a 6 hour layover, I had contacted a friend of mine that I had met when I did a study abroad in Prague back in 2010. Jade and her mom, Laura, were available and agreed to take time out of their day to pick me up at the airport and hang out with me for a bit.

I really had wanted to go downtown Dallas, but they didn’t think that we would have enough time to that. So, they took me to this little quaint town called Grapevine which is just outside of the DFW airport.

We had breakfast first, then we wandered the main street of Grapevine just chatting and wandering in and out of shops. It was really cool to tour a little bit of Texas before they had to rush me back to the airport to get on my plane.
Downtown Grapevine
The only pic I could get of Jade's mom - she's a dinkus!
Me and Jade
Best Tourist Picture Evar!

They dropped me off at my gate and I got inline to go back through security. I was really nervous that it would take me forever, but since my checked bags were already in the system and all I had was my carry-on, I think I got through security in less than 30 minutes.

I flew from Dallas to Anchorage, changed planes, then flew on to Fairbanks. I arrived at the airport around 9pm. Fairbanks is one of the larger cities in Alaska, but I was shocked as to how small their airport was! I think it was smaller than the Grand Rapids airport….I say this because they only had 2 baggage claim carousals and GR has 3! Haha.
The prop plane that took me to Fairbanks!

The hotel had their van pick me up and take me to the hotel, which was only a few miles away. I got in, settled down and let everyone know that I made it alive. I really couldn’t sleep, since I had slept the whole time on the airplanes, so I just watched TV and hung out. I figured that because I was so much farther North that it would be light a lot later than normal. Around midnight, it was still pretty light out, which I thought was kind of cool and crazy.
Almost midnight and it's this light outside!!
Tuesday, July 26th – Day in Fairbanks:

That morning, I got up to wander around Fairbanks for the day. The town is so small, I figured I didn’t need a car and I would just walk everywhere. The first place I went to was this wooden bowl factory which I accidentally discovered was in Fairbanks. I’m so glad that I decided to go there! All their bowls are hand crafted and you can watch them make the bowl right on site. They use a computer and laser to burn pictures and words into the bowl. It doesn’t sound exciting, but I thought it was really cool. I purchased a few bowls and headed back out to explore.


My next stop was this place called Pioneer Park. It totally reminded me of some attraction that you would find along Route 66 back in the 70s. It looks pretty dated and kitschy, but I actually had fun touring the place! They had a lot of artifacts from the gold rush era and they had centennial homes from the pioneer days that you could walk through.
Well Hello, 1960!





After Pioneer Park, I dropped off my purchases back at my hotel and then headed out for downtown Fairbanks. There was a walkway that ran alongside the Chena River that I could follow the entire way. Once downtown, I walked to all the little statues and markers that were on my tourist map that I got at the airport. One of the places I checked out was the Clay Street cemetery. It was really interesting and sad because most of the cemetery was filled with people who had come to Fairbanks in the early 1900’s when gold was discovered there. Some of the grave markers only had the person’s first name and date of death. It was incredible how many young men flocked to Alaska for gold, only to die suddenly in a terrible mining accident.



Clay Street Cemetery Entrance



After that sobering tour; I started to head back to my hotel for the night. One the way back, I did come across this unique looking house that advertised selling Alaskan gifts. I went inside to check it out. I quickly realized that this house was full to the brim of nothing but crap. It was something that you would see in the movies. As I walked around, I didn’t even see one person, all I heard was odd banging from a distance room. After about 1 min I got the heck out of there before I was kidnapped and placed in the cellar! After that I just walked back to my hotel room, got some food for the night and organized all my hiking gear for the big meet up the next day!


Wednesday, July 27th – Flying to the back country:

The plan was for me to meet up with Jule, the hiking guide, at Wright Air Service. This was a private air service that was connected to the main Fairbanks airport. Once I got there, I spotted Jule and 2 other hikers organizing their stuff. Stephanie and Giles were from New York and this was going to be their first Alaskan hike. After introductions, we got all of our gear ready to be loaded onto the plane. The ‘terminal’ consisted of 3 service desks, weight scales, 2 single bathrooms and a handful of seats to wait for your flight. Once inside, Jule got our flight information and we just waited. At this time, we found our other hiker, Sonya, who was from Wisconsin and it was her first time hiking in Alaska as well.


Late morning, the 5 of us and maybe 6 other people boarded a plane headed North!  The plane was so small, that the flight was really turbulent for me to handle.  I had to keep my eyes closed the whole time so that I didn’t throw up!  We made one stop in some remote town, where a few of the people got off.  After that stop, another 40 minutes or so and we were finally flying into Bettles!
Plane to Bettles!
This town is something I have never experienced before.  There are no official roads going to this town.  The only way here is by plane.  In the winter, they do make an ‘ice road’ to Bettles from a distant highway, but that road didn’t exist when I was there in July!  The town has a dirt air strip, a couple of lodges and a DNR outpost.  Once we landed, we gathered our gear up and took it to the Bettles lodge where we were supposed to meet our next pilot who would be taking us out into the bush. 
Bettles Lodge!


We trekked over to the DNR office to have our back country orientation and get checked in with the park. The DNR guys just went over park rules and regulations, asked us what our itinerary was and got Jules backpacking license (which was a little bit of a hassle because she didn’t have it with her and she had to call Carl to fax it to the DNR – we were almost afraid that we wouldn’t even be able to go!). Anyway, after the DNR visit, we still had several more hours to wander and wait until our flight.

Finally, around 5pm our pilot was able to take us to the back county! We threw all our gear into this van, they drove us down to the float ponds, we unloaded at the dock, reloaded everything back into the float plane and climbed aboard! This plane was even smaller than the plane that flew us from Fairbanks to Bettles, so I really had a hard time keeping it together and not throwing up! After about an hour of torture, we finally landed at Circle Lake where our pilot dropped us off. When we landed, I noticed that Giles had sweat just streaming down the sides of his face. It wasn’t until we busted out of the plane that he said that he almost threw up too. I was glad that I wasn’t the only one who struggled!
Packing out stuff onto the float plane
Once we got everything unload, our pilot wished us good luck and that he would see us in 10 days!  When he flew off in his little plane, it was this weird surreal feeling of really being out in the wilderness alone with 4 strangers for the next 10 days!
See you in 10 days!
Since it was so late in the day, we decided to just set up camp right there at the water’s edge.  After we set up camp, we hiked over to a small wooded area to leave our pack rafting equipment for the next few days.  We didn’t want to hike all that way with stuff that we wouldn’t use, so we bagged everything up, Jule scurried up a tree and we handed her the bags so she could hang them in the tree.  If we would have left them on the ground, bears may have torn into them.  Even though there was no food with the pack rafts, the bears are just like dogs…they will be curious of the items and the smells and tear into them just to see what they are all about.  Afterwards, we just had dinner and retreated to our tent for the evening. 
Jule in the tree hanging our pack rafting stuff. Sonya, Giles and I watching her!
Our first camp site
Circle Lake
That first night is when I discovered that we were so much farther North of Fairbanks that it literally never got dark all night long.  It didn’t even get dark enough for me to ever use my headlamp.  When I would wake up in the middle of the night to pee, I would look at my phone to see what time it was because there was no telling if it was 1am or 6am.  It was all the same amount of light! I thought for sure it would get dark at some point between the hours of 1am and 5am, but it didn’t.  I guess the good thing was that we were never had to worry about getting to a certain destination by a certain time because it never got dark.  This was definitely the most bizarre thing that I have ever experienced.

July 28th – Hike to the plateaus
The next morning we got up around 8 or so, ate breakfast, packed up camp and headed out for our first real big day of hiking.  Our goal was to get to this place called The Plateaus.  The plateaus were these two rock formations that were perfectly flat on top and were maybe 4 stories tall and a 5 minute walk from each other.  One plateau was to be used for our camp and the other for our kitchen.  For 6 long, exhausting hours we hiked at a gradual incline towards the plateaus.  Now, this doesn’t sounds too bad; however, there are no trails and my pack was at its maximum weight of 50lbs.  We were averaging about ½-1mile per hour!! The biggest obstacles were Tussocks.  It’s like this ball of roots/grass that grows out of the ground.  It looks like you could just walk across the top of them real easily…like jumping from rock to rock across a creek…. but you can’t because they are wobbly and you would fall off.  So, you have to stomp your way around them so that your foot hits the ground and not the Tussock.  After crossing the field of Tussocks and pushing our way through some brush we came across this ‘social trail’ or ‘game trail’.  Even though this trail is not maintained by the park or anything, it was wonderful to finally have some kind of trail to follow.  You really do not appreciate how helpful trails are until you don’t have them!  Once we got to the trail, hiking was a bit easier, but we were still gradually climbing which was hard.  Just when we were mentally and physically at our wits end, we reached the plateaus!
Heading to the plateaus. Crossing the dreaded Tussocks...it's way harder then it looks!
Camp at the Plateaus - Pic courtesy of Sonya
We set up camp on the first plateau, then trucked all our cooking stuff and food over to the second plateau.  After walking all day, we needed to fill up all our containers with water.  Jule, Sonya and I headed back to the first plateau to grab our backpacks so we could more easily carry our containers down to the river.  Giles and Stephanie were going to take a minute to rest before heading down for water as well.  From the first plateau, you could look down and see the river….it was just right there!  It didn’t look like that bad of a climb down, so we were wearing our camp shoes instead of our hiking shoes (my camp shoes are Crocs…it’s nice to wear a more loose fitting and breathable shoe after hiking for 6 hours in boots).
Kitchen on the 2nd Plateau
At first, there was a path that we could follow; however, the path quickly disappeared, the landscape got very steep and the brush became almost impassible.  Jule was leading the way through the brush the best she could.  Several times, she would tell us to stay put and she would venture ahead; then she would call back to us and tell us how to traverse over the landscape.  At one point, we reached a dry creek bed and worked our way down that for a several feet…since it was actually clear of brush.  Jule was leading the way, I was behind her and Sonya was behind me.  All of a sudden, Sonya calls out “Rock Rock Rock!”.  As I turned and looked up the hill in her direction, this rock the size of a bowling ball came tumbling down the creek bed.   I turned and looked at Jule, who quickly dodged this rock that would have hit her square in the head had she not moved.  For a brief minute I had that weird out of body-this isn’t really happening-oh my god moment.  All I could think was: How the hell would we get her back up to the plateau if she was injured?  Does anyone know where the satellite phone is that she was carrying?  After that moment, we had to take turns going down the dry creek bed.  Once she got to the bottom and moved to the side, then I went down.  Once I made it down, then I called up to Sonya and she climbed down.  During that time, a few more loose rocks came tumbling down the creek bed, but we were on high alert and ready to get out of the way.
After about an hour or so, we finally found our way to the water to fill up our Nalgene bottles and water bladders.  Since it was such a torturous ordeal to get down there, I filled everything I had up to the brim so that we wouldn’t have to do that again.  I even have this folding camping bucket and I filled that up as well.  Jule and Sonya looked at me like I was insane.  There is no way that you can climb back up there with a bucket full of water and in your Crocs!  I figured we had to get as much water back to camp as possible and worse case I would trip and dump the bucket of water out. 
The water isn't THAT far away....
We made it to water!
Instead of going exactly back the way we came, Jule figured we should just go straight up from the river.  It was steep, but there was no brush.  She wasn’t sure where we would pop out at, but anything was better than going back the way we came.  I dug deep and plodded up this steep incline, in my crocs, with a backpack full of water containers and a bucket full of 2-3 gallons of water.  I felt like one of those pack mules you see slowing trudging up a mountain side in Argentina with the giant bundles tied to their sides.  After about 20-30 minutes we reached the top and my bucket of water was intact!  We were sweaty, scrapped up from the brush and exhausted.  We had popped out at the second plateau where our food and kitchen had been set up.  Giles and Stephanie were sitting there waiting for us.  They had started to try and catch up with us, but lost us on the way down to the river.  They decided the best thing was to wait back at the top for us to return and then go down together once we were back.  We told them what all had happened and how hard it was to get water.  I told them that I was so glad that they didn’t follow us down because how treacherous it was and I was glad they had stayed back at camp in case something bad had happened.  However, since we found that the way we had come up from the river was a fairly easy path to the water, they just had to go down the way we had come up.  In no time they were back with more water and they exclaimed, “That wasn’t so bad!”.  It’s funny now, but at the time I don’t think I shared in their excitement.

July 29th – Hike to the Valley of the Arrigetch Peaks – set up camp for 3 days


The next morning, we packed up camp again and headed out.  The plan was to get to the place where we would base camp for the next 3 days.  Although we were still steadily hiking up on an incline, we were able to keep following this ‘social / animal’ trail that made it somewhat easier.  To our right was the Alatna River, so it was great scenery and a nice break from staring at trees and brush all day.   This day ended up being our 2nd longest day of hiking.  After about 6 hours or so, we took a break to assess where we were and how much farther we had to get to our destination.  Jule checked her GPS and figured we had about 1.5 miles to go.  We were tired, hungry, exhausted and just wanted to be done for the day, but we trudged on.  At this point, we broke away from the main Alatna river and followed the Arrigetch Creek up into the valley where we would be camping.  After another 45 min of walking, we crested this grassy hill and the valley came into view!  There was the place we were going to set up for the next 3 days!  We were ecstatic!  There is nothing better than talking off your 50 lb pack after carrying it for 7 hours.  We were all so tired that we set up camp and got our dinner going as fast as possible.  Afterwards, we retreated to our tents around 8pm for the night, but I don’t think anyone minded.  

Making our way to the Arrigetch Peaks Valley
Sonya taking a way better picture then me during a break
My stuffing my face during our break.
Blueberries were in season and we would always stop to eat them!

Time to put your water shoes on and cross the creek and pray you don't fall!
PS: the water was freezing!
We are almost there!
Camp for the next 3 days!

July 30 – Hike to the South/West valley

The next day our plan was to take it pretty easy and just do some exploring in and around in the valley where we were camping.  We started out following the Arrigetch creek upstream to where it basically disappeared into the mountains.  Sonya and I started climbing up the rocks where the creek ended….she was convinced that there must be a lake or some kind of water source up in that valley.  As we climbed, we could hear rushing water, but most of time we couldn’t see it.  We kept following the sound and eventually we found where the water formed these cool little waterfalls as it rushed over the rocks.
There were a few times when we were climbing that we would hear loud crashes.  Avalanches were very prevalent in this valley.  After poking around for a little more, we eventually made our way back to the group and back to camp. 


Later that evening when we were sitting around eating our dinner, I was facing that South valley when all of a sudden I saw a huge movement along the side of one of the peaks.  I shouted ‘look!’ and about a second later we heard the crashing sounds.  A huge avalanche had occurred in the valley where Sonya and I had been earlier that day.  It was so big, that it created this dust cloud that hung over the valley and took a while for it to dissipate.  I had never seen an avalanche like that before in my life!  It was a little unnerving to think that just a few hours earlier Sonya and I were climbing up in that area.

After dinner…I can’t remember if it was this particular night or not….but I headed down to the river to rinse out my bowls from dinner.  As I was quickly skipping over the rocks in my Crocs, I fell.  My pots, lid, spoon, and shoes went flying.  I picked myself up and luckily none of my stuff went floating down the river!  However, there was some left over beef broth in the bottom of my pot and when I fell all that juice poured over me!  Super, I thought.  I’m in bear country and I just covered myself with Au Jus so I’ll be real tasty when the bear eats me!  


Heading to the South valley
Sonya and I hiked up that valley
This was were we later saw the big avalanche



Heading back to base camp - the yellow dot in the middle was someone else's camp
Home for the rest of the day at base camp
July 31st – Hike to the west valley with the lakes.

The next day the plan was to hike up into the west valley where there were said to be 3 glacier lakes.  This was my favorite hiking day because we followed a creek basically the entire way.  There were beautiful waterfalls and lots of running water to hike next to.  Each lake we saw was the most crystal clear and bluest water I have ever seen.  The pictures really say more than words ever could.

Once we reached the final lake, Sonya and I kept exploring around the lake.  Giles and Stephanie stayed back at the foot of the lake and we ventured to hike around it.  Sonya brought her camera gear and set up to take some awesome pictures.  I just wanted to walk around the lake, so I continued on. 


The lake was surrounded by these huge boulders, so in order to get around you literally are just traversing boulders the entire time.  I really like doing that; it’s easy…especially when you don’t have a 50 pound pack to carry.  However, because I am a huge klutz, I really had to watch what I was doing so that I didn’t fall and crack my head open.  As I hiked, I kept saying over and over what Gary said to me before I left, “Take your time and make good decisions!”
Stopping for some water.
Resting at lake 1


Looking back at lake 1 and 2
Me at Lake 3

Heading back to base camp
Dinner at our base camp

Aug 1st – Hike to the NW valley following the river

Our final day at base camp was going to be back tracking to the Alatna river and then continue following the river up the NW valley.  This day was a fairly easy hike for me.  We were mostly hiking over large rocks, which I don’t have a problem with.  I actually preferred walking over rocks as opposed to over the ground!  It was also fairly cool that day during our hike, because we were walking along the south side of the river, but along the north face of the side of the valley, so we were in the shadows of the mountain for most of the day.  Because we were so far North, it’s like the sun doesn’t really reach it peak until 2-5pm.  We hiked for a few hours until we found a perfect little grassy spot to chill out on the mountain side and sit in the sun talking for a while.

After sitting for a while, we decided to head back.  We knew this was our last relaxing day before we headed back down to lake where we started.  We were about halfway back to camp, when Jule decided to stop at a flat spot and wash her hair in the river.  Stephanie and Giles decided they were going to do it too.  I didn’t care how greasy my hair was, I was not about to freeze my butt off because that water was ice cold!

That evening we kind of started gathering up our stuff knowing that we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow.  Jule got out her GPS and maps to show us how we were going to tackle the next day.  It was then that she realized that the batteries in the GPS were really low.  She had back up batteries but you needed a tiny Phillips screw driver to get to the batteries and we did not have anything like that in our gear.  The batteries were so low that the GPS kept shutting off…..eventually, they completely died.  She assured us that she could get us back down with no GPS solely on Carl’s hand written instructions.  It was not until just then that we realized that she had never even hiked the area before.  She had been guiding all of us this whole time based on Carl’s paper maps and a GPS whose batteries were dying.  I was a little shocked, but she was so natural at guiding and I thought she had done this route many times before that I never would have guessed she was winging it!

Last hike from base camp
Our little piece of property we found to rest
These crazies are washing their hair!
Last hike back before we leave base camp for good
Stay tuned for Part II!  Sorry for all the weird spacing....not sure what the deal is.