The Book we've all been waiting for....The Packraft Handbook by Luc Mehl and Sarah Glaser

It’s difficult to imagine a better pair of people to put together a packrafting handbook than author Luc Mehl and illustrator Sarah Glaser. Both were raised in Alaska—prime packraft habitat—with wilderness literally out their backdoors. Each epitomizes the multisport, super-safe, modern adventurer who is self-propelled and self-reliant, good-natured, with broad smiles and welcoming, all-inclusive dispositions that come across clearly in this delightful and informative book.

While I have only a passing personal acquaintance with Sarah, I truly admire her work. My serious packrafting bias aside, this handbook looks like it presents her best, most extensive, and most important work so far, because much of it concerns safety and technique on moving water. MIT-educated Mehl writes brilliantly and thoroughly about the science of modern wilderness adventure. Of course, he’s also a terrific photographer, and so in the vein of a classic William Nealy cartoon text like Kayak, the book you wil certainly soon be reading brings life to packrafting “how-to” through its collaboration of word and image.

A mutual friend introduced Luc and me during the summer of 2009 when the three of us rode our mountain bikes loaded with skis, ropes, and ice-axes on an overnight science trip to a local glacier. Of course, Luc’s strength, speed, and endurance impressed me as did his revelation that he’d just that year won the obscure ski race I’d founded 20 years before. Charmed by his enthusiasm, and knowing that winning an Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic put him in a certain class of adventurer, I liked him instantly.

That summer, Luc and I collided again, this time as competitors in the summer Wilderness Classic across a 180-mile route through the Alaska Range. For those unfamiliar with the event, it’s a carry-all-your-gear-and-food-needed-to-cross-a-wild-landscape full of mountains, rivers, bogs, brush, boulders, and bears, with no roads, no motors, no pack animals, nor outside assistance allowed, while going as fast as you want or can. The only required gear is a satellite phone. But, truth is, without a packraft it’s pretty tough to finish.

While Luc and I only traveled a short distance together, he again demonstrated his positive attitude and persistence. It was clear that Luc’s endurance and skills would make him a valuable partner worth inviting along sometime. But skiing glaciers and racing the Classic, while important interests in my 20s, were no longer the priority that testing the limits of whitewater packrafting had become to me in my 40s.

Fall 2009 we bumped into one another as members of a big group on splashy Bird Creek, a local whitewater creek with lots of fun little falls. Ever since 2003 when Alpacka Raft first began putting effort into making boats whitewater-worthy, my paddling partners Thai Verzone, Brad Meiklejohn, Tim Johnson (author of our local whitewater guidebook), Paul Schauer (all of whom appear in the book's pages) and I had pushed packrafting into regular runs of low-water Class IV creeks in small stubby boats that most kayakers derided as “sh**ty little Iks that only pussies paddle.”

While Luc has become the familiar face of Alaskan packrafting, Brad Meiklejohn has been the true silent force behind the modern packrafting movement. He'd suggested that we run the epic Talkeetna River, a real river (not a low water creek) and a wilderness fly-in one at that. All of us on Bird Creek who’d be going to the Talkeetna the following weekend were impressed by Luc’s gung-ho attitude and perma-grin, especially after overheating in his brand-new red drysuit, when he cliff-jumped into a deep pool and swam to the other side to cool off. I asked Brad what he thought about Luc coming along. Given the go-ahead, I invited Luc to join us. In some ways, that trip brought Luc into the Alaskan whitewater packrafting fold.

It was a superlative weekend, with great weather (if frosty), great rapids, and great friends, like JT Lindholm Tony Perelli, and Becky King. At one point in the Talkeetna's Canyon, Brad commented, “We really need to roll these things like a kayak. That’ll take us to another level.”

Not a week later, I sold Tim Johnson my son’s old Alpacka. Tim promptly glued thigh-straps into the blue boat and as soon as the glue had dried, he took it out into an ice-encrusted stream and rolled it!

And that was it. We all glued thigh straps into our boats and went to the pool to learn our rolls. Thus began the Bronze Age of packrafting with Luc there from the beginning, taking what we’d been doing and following Tim Johnson to the next level of packrafting, just as Brad had predicted.

Over the following three years Tim and Paul Schauer, natural-born boaters, led Luc and the rest of us down southcentral Alaska’s classic runs pioneered by Andrew Embick as “Class V”, as well as the modern test-pieces of their generationand the one right before Tim and Paul (e.g., Montana Creek, Tin Can, Upper Willow, Upper Bird, Disappointment, East Fork Iron Creek, Ingram).

While the excitement of whitewater seemed necessary for Luc, it was certainly not sufficient. In a string of unprecedented adventures over three consecutive years (2011, 2012, and 2013), he assembled teams of eager participants to combine skis, boats, and even bikes for grand traverses across North America’s three tallest mountains using modified Wilderness Classic rules. Leaving the road, Luc lead his groups into, up, over, and down Alaska's Denali, Canada's Logan, and Mexico's Orizaba, in each case exiting back to near sea level via packraft.

This book, with its emphasis on a culture of safety and vigilance informed by a decade of experience during the steepest growth of whitewater packrafting development, marks the sport's entry into its true Golden Age. We are lucky that Luc pushed pause on hsi data science career to guide the packrafters of the world to yet another level.

So, read this great book, stare at the fantastic illustrations, and enjoy the writing, the art, the stories, the advice, and feel secure in the knowledge that Luc and Sarah have engaged over a dozen of the best packrafters and kayakers in Alaska to contribute and vette content that captures a wealth of knowledge and experience in simple prose, awesome call-outs, beautiful photography, and clear illustrations.

It’s the book we’ve all been waiting for.

Terrain Skating: Selawik to Kotzebue

It began with a text invite from Brad, who’d been going every day for weeks.

“Still good ice at Nancy Lakes. I have a 21 lake loop for you, 35 miles”.

I hadn’t ice-skated in over 20 years, and never on the clapper-style Nordic skates.

I texted back, “Thanks. 35 miles seems far. Will it be pretty easy?”

Brad texted a topo map with a big red loop sprawled across the Susitna Valley’s lake-scape.

“Yup. No sweat. Tons of fun. You skate at 15 mph.”

Ever since seeing Jim Renkert’s first pair back in the 90s, I had always wanted to try the free-heel style clapper skates wearing warm, comfy ski shoes while traversing icy wetlands. But Fall has always been my busy season at Alaska Pacific University. I just couldn’t make the time, even as my packrafting partners gushed about the ice season coming up, then disappeared when the ice finally came.

The following day, a Saturday on the big loop out at the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area, Brad and I sailed across black ice lakes, accelerated along twisting sloughs lined in tall grass, and hurried skate-less over frozen trails between the water bodies, eager to get the skates back on.

Shoulder Season: So Long, and Thanks For All the Ice from Luc Mehl on Vimeo.

It felt a bit like high-tempo packrafting, where we portage our water-craft between paddles, but now shuffling along on slippery ski boots, delighting in the landscape, excited to get back on the ice. And once there, it was as if Nordic ice skating realized the promise of ski skating -- mammoth, exhilarating glides for minimal effort and no poles.

“Some years we never get out,” said Brad, “and other years, like this one, are just great. Last weekend we skated in the moonlight and lit methane bubbles on the ice for fun.”

Walking between lakes carrying our skates in our hands it seemed amazing that something so small and light could propel us faster than a fat-bike over places we never get to see in summer on foot.

Gliding effortlessly across Butterfly Lake Brad opined, “We wondered how you would react to this, Roman. Some thought it would be too boring for you.”

“Brad, my character is more complicated than most people realize. I love this. I wonder if we could skate to the Alaska Range?”

“Uh-oh. Look what I’ve created.”

The next day Brad called me. “You hear from Luc?”

That would be Luc Mehl, the mastermind behind some of the most audacious, creative wilderness trips in Alaska.

“He’s looking for people to skate from Noatak to Kotzebue this weekend.”

Now that was exactly what I was looking for.  A hundred-mile-Luc-Mehl-ice-skating tripacross the Arctic in late November.

Three days later Peggy and I had bought ourselves skates at AMH and on Wednesday we skated around Goose Lake in the dark.

“These are great! They are sooo stable. I’ve wanted to ice skate like this for years!” Peggy said.

We circled the lake over and over, dancing across lily pads that pock-marked the ice surface.  I wondered if a seven hour loop on Saturday, an hour of nighttime hijinks on Wednesday, and a half semester of commuting to work on my bike would be enough for a wilderness skate chasing a wild jock 20 years my junior.

I called Luc.

“Yo Roman. I talked to Seth Kantner in Kotzebue. He said the Noatak is open. And I have a friend, Timm Nelson, a teacher up there who's flying around. It might not be a go. But they’re giving me updates.”

Still, it seemed like a once in a lifetime chance but we were tortured with the idea that we might get way out and find out we couldn’t go onward.

Thursday and Friday we went back and forth by phone, email, text until we had settled on a plan.

On Friday, Seth snow-machined around and sent us iPhone photos and emails.

“The ice is good -- but not glass smooth. All different kinds of ice, real pretty, shallow overflow water should freeze tonight. Selawik Lake and Kobuk Lake I think would be all good ice -- but that white corrugated stuff. Noatak didn't have white corrugations -- just orange peel roughness and chunks.”

Our plan was now to fly to Kotzebue on frequent flyer miles at 6:30 AM on Saturday (November 22) morning, catch the Ravn Air flight to Selawik at 8:45 AM, and ice skate back to Kotzebue, 100 miles across Selawik River, Selawik Lake, Kobuk River delta sloughs, Kobuk Lake and whatever else we could. Finish by Monday (November 24),  or earlier.

We each carried three days of food, more than three quarts of water, headlamps, a minus twenty down bag, and multiple layers of clothing proven during the Winter Wilderness Classic in the Brooks Range. He carried the stove and fuel. I carried the cook pot and Cuben-fibre shelter. We each had ski poles and Luc even had a kite he thought he might deploy to sail across the ice.

We had no paper maps. Instead we had iPhones loaded with USGS topo maps and imagery accessed with the Gaia ap.

My wife Peggy had lived in Selawik for 10^th and 11^th grade where her parents were school teachers. Neither Luc nor I had ever been there to see its boardwalks and bridges crisscrossing the tundra and channels of the Selawik River. It was delightful at dawn, an Arctic Venice.

After landing in dawn's twilight we hopped on the local agent’s four-wheelers for a ride to the fuel depot where Luc bought a quart of unleaded for the stove.

He joked with Doreen and Eli at the register, “I bet I was your biggest customer all year!” They laughed and in Doreen I saw body language that Peggy may have picked up along with an Inupiaq vocabulary during her years in Selawik.

“You guys ice skating all the way to Kotzebue?” she asked.

I nodded.

“It’s a hundred miles and that’s by the short cut.”

Luc’s route mapped out on Gaia didn’t take the short cut. It went around the northern end of the Baldwin Peninsula and zigzagged through the Kobuk delta sloughs.

The northern and western horizons were purple as we clambered down and clicked on our skates. It was about 10:20 AM. My pack weighed 35 pounds.

On the ice, roughened by snow-machines flying across overflow refrozen, I steadied myself with poles. This wasn’t anything like dancing across Goose Lake or speeding around the canoe trails with a day pack. This was serious and committing and I felt weak, old, frail, and out of place.

Luc sped ahead and shot stills and video of me. I hoped he wouldn’t post any of that as I was tippy and awkward, unstable and nervous.

He moved easily across the orange ice, pitted and pocked, looking for the smoothest glide. He found it off to the side where water oozed out of the banks and over-flowed back onto the river, forming a smooth, quiet surface.

We stopped to shed a layer after less 50 minutes of skating downstream. I pulled out my phone. “We are 7.39 miles from Selawik in a straight-line!”

“Wow! I love the learning curve on these skates. We got out on the ice all awkward and unsure and now we are just flying!” replied Luc.

The sun had finally crested the southern horizon, rolling along above low white hills, casting our shadows to the opposite horizon.

We cruised along freshly frozen overflow (we only saw open water at the leads, open cracks in the lake ice),  an easterly tailwind at our back picking up as the sun rose. We stopped and looked at the skin of a caribou somebody had taken the day before.

“It really feels like the winter Arctic with that purple colored sky. You just don’t get that purple in April during the Ski Classic,” said Luc.

“Have you spent the winter in the Arctic?”

“Yea, I took a course at University Center in Svalbard during the winter and the purple light there was magic.”

Unfortunately the overflow wasn’t continuous and we had to work our way across the ice with half-inch to two-inch rugosities. In places it looked like wind had blown overflow as it froze, tumbling along globules of ice that built larger as they rolled and froze. Other places overflow had crept into surface patches of snow and only partially melted it, leaving rough patches or even snow patches. These snow patches were show-stoppers and we had to step over them as we flew along.

“When Derek and I went from Aniak to Dillingham, we skated along with 80 pound packs and would just crash when our skates caught cracks hidden in the snow.”

Cracks were another hazard. Small cracks that would snag a blade and threaten to stop you cold or snap a leg or ankle.  We learned quickly to keep full focus on the next fifty feet, carefully skating to avoid cracks, patches of snow, and roughness that might trip or slow our progress.

An hour and a half after leaving town we were at Selawik Lake, 10 miles away. Here we found a ragged crack in the ice one-two feet wide with an appealing yet terrifying color and texture. We saw no reason to cross it just yet – nor any way to do so, either – and skated on the shore fast ice for a while. The crack likely formed as the polar easterly winds blew at the lake and pulled the ice from its edge, leaving a kind of skate park for us to cruise. There was often nice, smooth, freshly frozen overflow that had apparently spilled from the crack, as I saw when the ice settled and boomed at one point, then the crack spilled liquid. Its old refrozen jumbled edge also gave us ridges and ramps to step over and skate making the skating not only fast but a new and variable terrain to travel.

Ultimately snow drifts crested off the shoreline and onto the ice as far as the shore lead. Beyond the lead was beautiful black ice, clear and solid over deep water.

Luc found a slab of ice a foot thick and angled upward 15 degrees. He herringboned up and gingerly stepped off and over the lead. It felt crazy to balance on the top of the slab with skates on and then plop down a foot and a half below. The best thing about skates is their lack of friction – it’s also the worst thing about them when you have to make any sort of static moves that involve vertical stepping.

Beyond the crack we took off at smooth speed.

“Man, this is so good. I wish we had some hot chocolate. We could just cruise along and sip coco.” The low angle sun illuminated the ice spray like golden sparks coming off our skates. This is what we’d come for, flying across a large bay of Selawik Lake, headed for the Kobuk River delta.

Slowly but surely the black ice gave way to patchy overflowed-snow. And we were forced to work our way through. I took my first fall pitching forward with a top heavy pack that held my water wrapped in my parka and slamming me onto the ice. Luc was far ahead, as usual, due to his longer skates, better style, superior fitness and technique, so thankfully didn’t see my embarrassing full body slam.

Not a true hazard, but an imagined one, was the sound of cracking and booming of settling ice. At least once each of us sensed a drop as ice boomed and buckled, and anytime I stopped I was confronted with not silence but a seemingly ever-present distant cracking and booming.

  

An hour or later the black ice gave way to  snow and we were chased to the edge of the lake. We walked on our skates across a small peninsula onto a small slough of good ice and followed that to a bigger channel. Left led back to the lake, right upstream.

“Let’s try upstream.”

The sloughs were surrounded by willows that seemed to slow the winds leaving waterways free of snow. The overflow had something crunchy on top that skates sliced through easily yet anchored ski pole tips, too. I found with the ski poles on this stuff I could keep up with Luc, but somehow took another fall, this one on my back.

Consulting Gaia, Luc found a way through the delta to a west-trending slough that led back to the lake. We had to follow channels and walk across a bit of marsh grass linking ponds and even bushwhacked through some old growth willow in our skates to the final slough and its incredible overflow edges. The overflow was quiet and smooth. Willows alongside gave a great sense of speed.

With momentum like this, it felt like we could skate forever, maybe make Kotzebue in 24 hours.

Around five it was time for headlamps and food and water. We’d been stopping every couple hours – well, I had. Luc stopped, it seemed, every hour to wait for me, but by the time I caught up with him he seemed chilled by the wind so I’d usually continue onward.

The skating cost little in energy and the temperatures felt well above zero so by keeping moving with the wind at our backs we felt no windchill at all, unless it came from the side.

Following the belly slide tracks of a river otter, Luc led the way and I took another face-first spill, slamming my forearm to the ice. Groaning in discomfort, I got up in the dark but could find Luc nowhere. I skated on, crisscrossing  the wide channel and looking upstream and down. Fifteen minutes later I spotted a yellow light upstream and figured somehow I’d passed Luc. So I skated back toward it, chasing a light which at first seemed to be getting closer, then getting farther and finally disappearing. 

In the clear, dark, moonless Arctic night, fifty miles and eight hours from Selawik, I was nervous to be separated from Luc. I had the cookpot and shelter and with willow everywhere I could make a fire. But what about Luc? I decided to skate back downstream toward the lake and look for him there. Then I spotted his light coming upstream to look for me.

We cruised on and I took another couple falls within minutes of each other while Luc was ahead. Each time I got up quickly to be sure where he was. While skating on some overflow (generally the only place I could keep up) Luc ran afoul of some hollow, white ice where water had drained away leaving a crust that shattered like broken glass. Luc ploughed into it and fell face first.

"Are you OK?"

"Yea," he got up and pushed on.  While I fell what felt like fifteen or maybe fifty times, he fell only twice.

A while later we hit the lake and almost immediately ran into miles of what Luc called “white death." It was the same hollow crust of drained overflow that had upended him earlier but now it was everywhere, unavoidable. Still wearing skates we crashed through it but walking, not gliding, in search of anything that might offer us more of the momentum we craved.

Looking out at the lake we were lured by the promise of blackess, but it was just the reach of our lights and we had bad ice mixed with snow. I fell again but worked hard to keep Luc in sight.

Eventually I cried uncle and said let’s camp. After more than 35 years and 14,000 miles of wilderness travel in Alaska I have found too often that pushing on in the darkness wastes time and energy. Morning brings a perspective that stubborn night travel obscures.

At about 8:30 or so we walked across styrofoam snow, found a patch of willows to get out of the breeze, took off our skates for the first time since leaving Selawik, threw down our pads and bags, brewed up, chowed down and crashed.

"That overflow was sick."

Midway through the night Luc woke me. “Roman, the aurora is awesome. I have never seen it whip around so much. Look over to the right -- it’s red.”

I unzipped the bag and sat up, looking heavenward at the snapping bands of green, yellow and red. It was amazing, but I was exhausted and fell back asleep while Luc captured the event on his camera.

“Luc, let’s get up. It’s getting light.”

A glow to the south promised another day. Frost covered us and our gear. Luc melted some water for breakfast and then heated our water bottles.

“You know Eben works for MSR and says that a tight fitting lid is the most efficient way to heat water in the cold. This cook-pot is taking for ever.”

Luc was referring to my 15 year old aluminum gallon pot, crushed in my backward landing fall the previous evening. The lid fit like a round peg in a square hole letting hot air escape and slowing the heating process.

We were out on the ice by 10 AM or so, 24 hours and sixty miles beyond Selawik, well rested after a 14 hour camp, and soon back to 7 mph on good ice. We had skated out a ways onto the lake when we heard what sounded like an airplane. Instead it was a roaring snow-machine carrying a local.

He pulled up alongside me, turned off his machine. My head and ego were bruised

after pitching forward onto the ice while trying to look back at him as he approached. He had a rifle slung around his neck and across his chest. He said he was down from Norvik, “Looking for caribou or maybe a wolf.”

“People, too?” Luc joked.

A young guy in his twenties he laughed and pulled off his face mask. Sitting warmly on a thick caribou skin he took out a half-burned cigarette to smoke and said he’d come down from Kotzebue the night before. We talked about the flashing beacons so obvious in the night that guided people’s way.

We said all we’d seen was a fox, but honestly when skating on the rough stuff I could not really look farther than fifty feet or so away or I’d trip and fall. In the silence between our words I could here the distant ice booming.

“The ice is pretty rough like this the whole way, although over there it’s glare ice.” He gestured toward the Kobuk delta.

He roared off and we drifted shoreward on patches of black ice mixed with gray and white. I took another fall, so painful I nearly cried in physical pain, writhing on the ice with an elbow I swore was bleeding.  Then we found the most beautiful overflow I’d ever seen that offered us up the perpetual motion that so exhilarates the long-distance skater.

It was smooth and expansive and aquamarine in the morning light. It was lined with willows on one side and the expanse of Kobuk Lake on the other. It was what I’d come for really, and I wished it would go on for 20 miles.

It nearly did. We made 17 miles in two hours on it,  with stops and photography, too.

Unfortunately the ice went northeastward and we wanted northwestward. I asked Luc about the route and he said we should head west as the continuing good ice would take us too far out of our way. My recollection on the flight over was that the west side of the lake was all white and the east side had shined smooth in the dawn light. I wanted to suggest to Luc that it might be farther but just as fast and more fun with good ice. But this was Luc’s trip and I kept that thought to myself.

Within an hour we’d stepped across another lead mid-lake and picked up a snow-machine trail. I took one last fall when the snow caught my skates as I glided across ice landing on my very sore elbow and said, “I’m  walking.”

Crossing short, rough ice patches along the snow machine trail in my Salomon X-C skate boots I was amazed at just how rough of ice we had often been skating the last two days. Stuff so coarse you'd never have though it skate-able. Yet we made 7 mph on it.

Luc tried to skate but was going no faster than I. Even if skating is five times as fast as walking, you need patches of ice long enough to get up to speed, and it was clear that the patches -- now reduced to a few feet long -- were not enough. Soon he switched out his Dynafit boots for tennis shoes and was cruising the snow-machine trail with me.

It was warm and easy going even in my ski shoes.  There was a hut on the shore of Kobuk Lake where the twelve mile trail to town took off. I fantasized that maybe if we got to town that night, then the next day we could fly to Norvik and do Norvik to Kotzebue in a day, taking advantage of all the overflow on the Kobuk delta’s sloughs.

But really, I wanted to make it to town that night, catch the plane in the morning and get back to my family and job. Luc wanted to camp out another night, but at 54 I also wanted to make this the fastest 100 miles on foot of my life, and spending another night on the tundra wouldn’t make that a reality, especially just to save asking Seth for a place to stay or a $100 for a bed and breakfast.

I told Luc just say when he wanted to camp. His toe gives him pain when he walks and we still had a dozen miles of walking past the hut to town. I knew all to well how it feels to have my partners want to push on when I was hurting.

We punched out the twenty miles to town in seven hours, even skating a hundred yards over small lakes on the snow-machine trail across the Baldwin Peninsula. It always felt so good to move effortlessly on skates after walking.

But the best part was reaching the paved road that leads from Kotz' water source into town. The road was covered in black ice and after trying it in his tennis shoes and ski poles, Luc switched to skates and shot off into the night. He skated up to the top of the first bridge, then turned back to me, whooping in joy about the speedy downhill off the bridge. I put on my skates and followed him in the dark, enjoying the downhill off two bridges as we skated our last mile to Fifth Avenue in downtown Kotzebue. 

There we hailed a cab to the fanciest hotel in town.

One hundred miles in less than 22 hours of travel --  a total of 36 hours including a 14 hour camp. Even at 25 years old, skate skiing across the Alaska Range with Audun Endestadt, I hadn’t gone that fast.

Selawik to Kotzebue was all that I had come for, and I was grateful to Luc for the vision, persistence, and bravery to make it happen.

Box Canyon Creek, October 2013

Down near Seward on the Kenai Peninsula are a number of excellent USFS trails that are good for hiking, biking, and running. One famous trail is the Lost Lake Trail that heads north from near the Seward Fire Station. It's well known as a great mountain bike ride and trail-run race, too.

One day, maybe, the Lost Lake Trail will be well known as scenic access to one of the best high-end (i.e. steep, low volume, Class IV) packrafting creeks in SC AK: Box Canyon Creek.

This past Fall, Fairbanks-born multisport athlete Paul Schauer and kayak legend Trip Kinney dragged their kayaks into the top of Box Creek Canyon off the Lost Lake Trail and recorded this:


 

Paul Schauer's inspirational edit.

Paul and Trip likely made the first D on many of these amazing drops in mid-September, but Doug Demarest, who was a hard-shell boater on the sharp edge 10 years ago and a packrafter on the sharp edge now, hiked-in and ran most of it solo back then -- pretty impressive.

Anyway many thanks to Paul and Trip for their pioneering effort and documentation as it inspired Luc Mehl, Todd Tumolo, G. Ganey and me to head in a few weeks later and run it ourselves.

Not sure where I first saw the vid, but Tim Johnson and I watched it together and he said, "It looks perfect for packrafts." That's all I needed to hear and with Tim's words and Paul/Trip's vid I had Luc, Ganey, and Todd sold on an early October trip.

We made quick work of the hike in. Leaving the parking lot around noon, we followed the trail as it wandered through rain forest to the edge of Box Canyon, where a brief glimpse of a rocky creek looked un-promising --  rocky and shallow.

Later there was a  bit of anxiety about where best to drop in, how best to miss the 500 vertical feet of alder shlapping.

We climbed down to the mouth of the visible canyon.

Our choice, where the Lost Lake Trail ends its parallel run to the creek and heads away uphill through meadows, seemed the least brushy alternative but had a steep drop down to the creek bed. I am sure there are better approaches. We walked and waded for about a quarter to half a mile, before shear walls forced us in at about 2:30 PM.

The water was so shallow and any rock out of the water so sharp that I think we were all wondering why we were there. If it wasn't such a gnarly climb out, we probably would have bailed.

Luc at the put-in

Instead we scratched and paddled onward on a bunch of little drops that seemed bad for the boat but were nonetheless fun .... and then about an hour and a half later we came to this six foot slide followed by a ten foot boof:

Luc approaching the Veracruz-style double drop

I gave it ago first and made the entrance drop nicely but didn't even try to boof and landed on my head off the 10-footer. Subsequent group members made some comic efforts, too, but both Luc and Todd styled the boof, thanks to their Jan 2013 trip to Mexico.

fuzzy -- but you get the idea

I referred to this as the "Veracruz Boof" in honor of their Mexican boofing school.

"That was awesome!" I called out to Luc as he made a successful boof, "Class V for sure, right?"

"No. That's not class V. It's not burly or pushy or big enough water."

Stylish eddy out below his stylish boof

From here it picked up, but we felt like some more water would have been nice.

In Paul's video there's a wild little pencil lead-wide slot that we were sure would cut our boats. Instead it was fun. In fact, everything was fun, except the fear of a cut boat on the sharp, raw Kenai schist, and got fun fast as we neared what Luc called the "Four Horsemen".

As we climbed down and scouted we were excited. It looked like a mini-version of North Carolina's Horsepasture Creek that Luc and I had paddled with Timmy J. in Jan. 2012. There was a slide drop to its lip:

Then four more slides. Luc went first and I tried to snap some photos with my point and shoot. I had the only camera but it was a dark, October day, getting late, and I was cold and excited so the shots are blurry. I doctored them up a bit to help capture the mood and magic of the moment.

Luc ran the sequence first -- four slides in a row, each about ten feet tall and with sort of sticky holes at the bottom.

"I can't believe this run!" gushed Luc, "I have never been on a run that I can point to specific winter  boating I did before that prepped me. These slides are so like the Dixie runs we did and the boofs -- the Mexico trip so prepared me for those. January paddling is awesome!!"

We were just getting started on a quarter mile that drops maybe 200 feet or so in about 15 stacked back to back drops from 5-15 feet high. In this quarter mile there were the Four Horsemen with the entrance above -- then a chossy drop into a Class V we walked -- to a Class V that Paul and Trip walked and Luc tried but swam backwards and head-first, asking for my help as he went over and that I couldn't deliver -- to another drop we walked -- to one that shot Todd out of his boat (ask him the name of that one) and me into a roll -- to some more portage drops -- to fun drops -- to a swirly corner -- to the final Class V "California Nightmare" pothole that trapped Ganey upright for a minute or five before Todd pulled him out, wide-eyed but still upright, with a throw bag.

Looking down an un-run drop that Luc swam upside down and backward

At the end, as we walked down the creek to the Resurrection River valley and the roads back to the Seward Highway with darkness dropping hard, we were bubbly.

"This is exactly what I want to be doing in a packraft," claimed Ganey. "Exploratory boating on a new run with big drops."

I couldn't agree more. It was a solid crew on a run that as far as we knew had been run once a few weeks earlier by expert kayakers.

Things to Luc For

I seem unable to link to any wordpress blogs on the side bar over left there, so go here to see Luc's awesome adventure across the St Elias from Yakutat to McCarthy.

The packrafts as sleds are so cool in that big mtn landscape -- and Luc in an avy is a bit sobering. Be sure to check it out.

The only bummer about it is that it seems to have somehow tuckered that young wimpersnapper out to the point he can't go run steep creeks in the Brooks Range with us next week.....shucks!

I think it's the expedition of the year so far, although Caroline and Pat are still at it, only halfway through their trip to Kotz from Bellingham.

Other People's Great Adventures

No doubt most have you have seen this:
 

 Makes Tasmania look like the great packrafting destination that it is. There have been a handful of adventurers reporting on their Tassie trips over the years, from whitewater creeking, to mult-day river trips, to traditional hike and raft, to modern coastal trips, to this wild canyoneering trip.


 And what about Europe? Besides Forest and Moe's fantastic looking exploration of Bosnia

 

there is the couple who seem to be prepping for a grand Eurasion or round the world trip with their packraft, too (this looks like a marvelous destination for traditional style packrafting):
 

 Really looks good, Europe does, for packrafting and there seems to be more and more of it happening.


But the trip I have been keeping tabs on is that by an athletic and skilled Alaskan couple, Pat Farrell and Caroline Van Hemert, who left Bellingham, Hig-and-Erin style but with Skurka speed, in March.

They are headed for Kotzebue by way of the Yukon. A PhD scientist, Caroline is from Anchorage and studied English in college. Pat is a carpenter and studied art. Together they have done some amazing trips, like building a birch bark canoe and paddling out from some wild river in the Yukon Territory, or sailing into and climbing Mt Waddington, and climbing Mt. Fairweather then walking and packrafting the Lost Coast to Gustavus. Anyway their blog is worth following as they unveil their adventure.

Oh yes, and rumor has it Luc and crew made it to the summit of Logan on their self-contained journey from Yakutat to McCarthy by packraft and ski. Looking forward to his return and the fruits of their adventure in story, pic, and vid.

2012 Winter Wilderness Classic (Photos by Forrest McCarthy and Derek Collins)

Recent texting between me and an accomplished backcountry ski pioneer regarding the 2012 Wilderness Ski Classic--

Me: "That Luc Mehl is effin' studly."

Chris: "You didn't wup him?"

Me: "Nah. Didn't want to hurt his feelings. He's the sensitive type, you know"

Chris: "Yep. That's why I let him break trail. We are becoming more empathetic with age. BTW do lunges 4 yer hip problems."

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My frozen thumb-tip is not yet healed enough to hit the space bar as I write this (my index finger is working that purpose well), but my lips are healed enough to smile, and my feet enough to keep down to bang out this brief report of the Brooks Range Ski Classic.

So the first and obvious question is "What was I thinking?"

Off the couch and into new boots (Salomon X-ADV 6) back in early March, I figured I had plenty of time to get ready for a 200 mile ski trip across the Brooks Range. After all I'd done that before: skied hundreds of miles across untracked arctic winter wilderness from Kaktovik to near Galbraith Lake (start of this year's Classic), in fact.

I'd even done Winter Wilderness Classics before, too. Hell, they'd originally been my idea: "Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic" (AMWSC) way back in the late eighties, but had become an event organized exceptionally well by Dave Cramer for the last couple of decades.

And training? Figured I could ski to work, and the days I rode the fat bike, I could ski at lunch. Commuting plus an hour a day for a few weeks would do it. Right?

Wrong.

What about winter travel and camping in the Brooks Range? How hard could that be?

Sure it was -22 F in Anaktuvuk the week before the event (can't quite call it a race for me). But wasn't I the guy who's skied across ANWR for three weeks when it never got above zero during a record breaking cold snap? I had the experience, even if was from another century (millennium?).

I even had the gear: a Go Lite 4 season Adrenalin down bag, a sled, some new mittens (toasty warm), a brand new set of Stephensen vapor barriers (top and bottom), and two puffy jackets and puffy pants. I even had modified my Jet Boil and would -- in emulation of the new style of Classic ski racing -- forego a tent.

Problem was, the last time I'd winter camped was 2002, when Isaac Wilson and I, both on the adventure racing Team Earthlink, had entered the AMWSC in the Wrangells and dropped out on day two when we couldn't get out of our NNN bindings after skiing through a bit of overflow.

So at the ripe old age of 51 I headed north with the big bad boys to prove to myself I could finish.

Except I didn't. Instead I made all the mistakes a noob would make.

Carl's advice: "Better get out and ski some miles in those boots -- make sure you don't get any blisters." Hmmm. Guess my commute and half dozen lunch-hour skate skis weren't enough.

Cody Roman's observation: "Dad, you could barely keep up with me on the University ski trails at lunch." He's being generous, actually.

Peggy: "Why are you doing this? You're going to hurt yourself."

Forrest on Day 2

It was -24 F at the noon start on the edge of Galbraith Lake, North Slope of the Brooks Range. Andrew Cyr and Aaron Wells of Fairbanks had bolted, breaking trail across the undulating hills.

Luc and John Pekar, his partner in most of the Winter Classics (this would be their fifth Classic and their fourth win together -- Luc also won last year when John couldn't make it), cut west early, their plan to stay on the Slope until Anaktuvuk River.

The first night, when finally arriving at the camp of Wyoming's Forrest McCarthy and Derek Collins (they'd caught the Fairbanks duo of Andrew and Aaron near dark), I climbed into their two person tent in desperation.

"Thhhh thhhhh tthhhh thanks, Fff fff fforrest. Yyy yyy your ss ss saaaavvv vvin mm mm my ass."

"Yea, well you saved mine last time, buddy."

Here Forrest was referring to the 2009 Summer Classic when his knee went bum on day two. Forrest, from Wyoming, is the only one from Outside Alaska to finish both the summer and winter events. Not only that he took second in each on his first time entering. He's tough and talented.

That night it was at least -25 F (felt like -30) with a breeze, nipping my thumb on a metal gaiter snap as I struggled to get boots and gaiters off and into the tent.

Soon after that nip, my modified Jet Boil nearly caught fire when the copper heat transfer modification melted the plastic while calm, cool, and always happy Derek heated water for me with the melting Jet Boil to soothe my violent shivering.

All of this with us three crammed into one of those tiny Black Diamond Bibler-style tents.

The next morning, in return for the favor of keeping me alive, I broke Derek's carbide ski pole tip. That way he'd be handicapped like me.

"If that's the worst that happens to me," he quipped, "I'll be happy."

One of my tips had broken, too, the day before and on the second day I broke the other as the baskets on the quarter-century old poles crumbled. Not a good sign so early in an event that's mostly on river ice.

An hour later Derek left to catch Forrest, who'd left us to warm up (it was -25 F that morning). I wouldn't see either one's face again until Wiseman, three days later, when Forrest would ski into the Dance Hall in Wiseman with both skis frozen to his boots.

Later that first morning I caught up with Thomas Bailly, a Girdwood/Anchorage backcountry skier who had entered the race last year and had a most miserable time.

"Yea, that first night it was thirty below and Doug was wet from falling face first into overflow. We crammed three of us into a two man tent. It was frosty and tight and we just shivered violently in our plus twenty bags long enough to doze a moment or two, before shivering uncontrollably again." Sounded horrific to me.

"If we'd had a sat phone I would have called for a rescue. Instead I learned that I could survive a hell of a lot of suffering."

I asked him why he was back this year.

"To wash away the demons, really. I was messed up in the head for months after that. We suffered every night from cold and every day our feet were just destroyed. I really like winter and wanted to get that good feeling about it back. This time I have a neg-twenty bag, not plus-twenty."

Same with Luc and John. They've gone from plus 20 to "neg 20" sleeping bags, and, like Thomas and I, carried canister stoves and no tent.

Five toes mean wolverine.

The two of us ended up travelling about the same pace, following the trail of a pack of wolves and cutting wolverine tracks every few hours. I'd given up on keeping up with the Wyoming Team.

Thomas and I travelled the same pace, but not because I could keep up with him, me pulling my dumb-school sled with piss-poor conditioning.

But because I cut the corners on the Itkillik River's bends.

Because I milked the downhills with shallow descents.

Because I never stopped to sit down.

Because, other than drinking and eating, I didn't bother to take care of myself, to spread any sunscreen on my lips (it was frozen too stiff to rub on), to retape my feet rubbed by new boots.

By day two we were holed up together at Summit Lake on the Arctic Divide, and I was suffering physically and emotionally.

"Yea, I think I'm gonna head down the North Fork to Wiseman," I whined, "skip Anaktuvuk, or maybe go back and follow those snowmachine tracks over Oolah Pass. I'm not ready for this. I was falling asleep on the trail today and feel like I am just crawling along. But I'm going to take a 12 hour nap here anyway, see how I feel tomorrow."

"Really? Twelve hours?"

Thomas pulled off his socks and showed me a nasty blister under his foot. "Think I should pop this?"

"No, don't pop it tonight. Maybe tomorrow. You should think about a twelve hour break, too. Might give that blister a chance to heal. You'll definitely feel better after 12 hours."

He admitted to crawling along too, but the fact that in my near-dream state I had caught and passed him spoke to that.

We'd make great Classic partners: the kind who meet on the race because their pace is well matched.

And while we'd begun unbound and selfish, we'd likely finish together and sharing, like partners.

Looking back from Peregrine Pass

Twelve hours later I felt great. "Yea, I think I'll go over Peregrine Pass, head to Anaktuvuk," I announced.

The night before I'd tried to talk him into going down the North Fork with me but Thomas said he wanted to go to Anaktuvuk. He'd never been there before.

In the morning he said, "Funny, I was just thinking I'd go down the North Fork, but that'd be great to have you along and go over Peregrine"

So that was that. We skied past small bands of 'bou and followed the Fairbanks-Wyoming teams' trail up and over Peregrine Pass together.

On the way down to Grizzly Creek I fell, rolled over a pole and broke it in half. This was no problem for a couple miles of wonderful trail to the start of Grizzly Creek overflow, but then fearing I'd break a rib after slip-sliding on the steep ice without metal edges or any ski-pole tip, I climbed out of the canyon and we cut the corner to Ernie Pass.

The cold snap had broken and while maybe 10, 15 below zero it felt far warmer than -25 as we clambered over sastrugi and bare tundra.

Around midnight we stomped out a bivy pad at Ernie Pass and put in another 12 hour camp.

It was nice to lay there as Thomas melted snow and heated water, passing me food and hot drink beneath clouds too thin to snow more than the flurries that fell, but thick enough to make the sub-zero night feel warm.

By Ernie Pass my boots, out for blood, had bitten and chewed my tender foot flesh and the beautiful tour into Anaktuvuk turned into a painful shuffle.

Wyoming and Fairbanks teams in Anaktuvuk Valley

At first we made a good ten miles in two hours with a tail-wind and a downhill on wind-blown snow followed by blue ice. It was exhilarating, but also clear from counting skate ski tracks that the Luc-John and Fairbanks-Wyoming teams were already heading toward Wiseman after tagging Anaktuvuk. It felt like they were a good two days ahead of us, at our pace, and we were only on day four day into our race.

At this point in the event I felt like an amateur who takes art and music classes not to make art or music, but rather to appreciate the artists and musicians who can: wilderness artists like John and Luc, Andrew and Aaron, Forrest and Derek. They awed me.

If we had found the others pushing on from Anaktuvuk over the pass to Tinayguk, then I would have followed, but I had neither the time nor pain threshold to break trail on our own to Wiseman.

And I had no interest to ski back this way, uphill into a head wind, with just a single pole -- a pole that lacked a tip.

On the blue ice I called out, "Heh Thomas!! can I borrow a pole!"

"NO!" he called back over his shoulder and poled quickly away.

Well it was my own hubris that led me to bring my old Excel poles from the 80s, poles with sun-rotted baskets and snapped carbide tips.

A few moments later, he must have remembered that what I had was more like a stick then a ski pole, as he dropped one of his carbide-tipped skating poles for me to pick up.

Thomas and I had not been racing after Day 1, really, and enjoyed the tilted, layered mountains all around, crusted in frost that soared above us in brilliant blue. The warm sun in our faces and wind to our backs, made for an enjoyable 25 mile day following hard snow, blue ice, ski tracks and snowmachine trails.

At one point three monster snowmachines, each pulling sleds and one pulling two sleds full of action packers and fuel stopped alongside me.

"Hi there," I said.

"How's it going," asked one as he stopped his motor.

"Great. Nice day. Park Service?"

"Naw. Not quite."

"Where you going?"

"Kotzebue and on to Nome."

"Wow. See any other skiers?"

"Yea, four of em on the other side of Ernie Creek. Another two passed us when we were camped up at Bombardment Creek."

"Yea they're racing. And those guys are animals. They're skiing like 50 miles a day with sub-thirty pound packs and no tents."

As I shuffled into Anaktuvuk in the fading 10 PM light, a young Nunamiut girl in her PJs walked up pulling a sled with her younger sister.

"Going sledding?"

"Yep," she smiled and added, "your friend is waiting for you."

"Thanks," and I shuffled on.

"You're very old," she called after me as I gimped onward with short strides and sore feet to catch up with Thomas and see what we had next in store for us on this adventure.

Which was where to camp in Anaktuvuk.

I struggled to remember names and finally a truck pulled over. Its driver told me where the Nome-bound snowmachiners who'd come to town earlier that day were.

"That brown house over there. At Juste the Norwegian's place."

I knocked at the door.

It opened.

"Hi! Are you Juste the Norwegian? Is this the hotel?" I half joked.

The man at the door squinted his eyes at me, "Do I know you?"

"Maybe. You look familiar. My name's Roman."

"Roman......Dial?"

"Yea. We just skied over from Galbraith and need a place to sleep. Feel bad to impose this way, but could we give you some money to sleep on your floor? We don't have a tent."

And of course Alaskan Bush hospitality held the day.

Thomas and I swapped stories and gear lists with the snowmachiners and our hosts, school-teachers for 17 years in Anaktuvuk. It was warm and lively and an excellent interlude on our arctic adventure.

Luc's video:

The next day we caught a Wright's Air flight to Coldfoot ($200/each), where Luc and John picked us up from the truck stop where Lance and Dick Mackey held court with stories of their recent dog-mushing caribou hunt on the Slope.

Telling Lance that I was an admirer of his style, I mentioned that Luc and John had just skied over 200 miles in less than four days, the same four days that the Mackey men were recounting as gnarly-cold days to be in the Brooks Range.

"Yea, well those distance skiers, they are hard-core, especially up here. I need dogs to pull my sorry ass around. Ha ha ha!" said Lance.

John and Luc had finished the 200 mile course in less time than it had taken us to ski less than half the distance and fly the rest. And while John looked a bit like a sleepy, disheveled wolf, Luc looked like the Wolverine character from then X-men movie, as if the wilderness had changed him into a beast.

Yes, they were wild animals indeed, those two, champions of a new era of wilderness ski racing in the Winter Wilderness Classic, perhaps the most challenging adventure race in the world.