Ski Touring in the New Millenium

Someday, when you're too old to huck, or maybe 'cause you were never bold enough, this is what will look good:

 

International travel by ski, looking for wolverine in Mongolia. Check out all the pack animals. They are amazing. Forrest says the packrafting potential here is extra awesome, too.

Brooks Range Meta-blogging

The Brooks Range remains my favorite wilderness in the world, that after looking for what I want: big wilderness, politically stable, wild animal trails, mountains, rivers, forests, clean water, good light, long days, glaciers, hot springs, tundra, few people, no roads, good walking if you know where to look, enough wood for fires but not so much that brush is bad, etc. Recently three Brooks Range events have come onto my radar in between moving between our old house and new.

 1) Pat and Caroline, who started in Bellingham, Washington in sleek row-craft that Pat made (!), reached Kaktovik after walking the coast from the McKenzie and were headed south and into the Brooks Range. Their goal is Kotzebue. Check out their blog.

The idea of traveling as a couple for six months to a year across wilderness and under your own power (Ok with gravity assist) is super appealing to me. Unfortunately, I can't talk Peggy into a six+ month walk/boat trip so I must live vicariously through Pat and Caroline and others.

Go forth, young couples, and explore while you can!

 2) Recently got an email from a young, 27 year old Australian, John Cantor, who crossed the Brooks Range from Canada to Kotzebue Sound in -- wait for it -- 31 days! I think that includes about a week's worth of rest days.

He left Joe Creek in early June and developed some achilles problems that, remarkably, led to an acceleartion of his pace. He passed through Anaktukuk and hit the Noatak below Gull Pass and paddled that in less than a week. It's 500 miles long, just that stretch! Wow.

He wrote me recently. "Hi Roman, I have followed many of your trips with great enthusiasm and reading some of your stuff helped with my planning for my trip. I just returned to Australia after successfully traversing the Brooks Range solo. It was my fourth attempt and it took me thirty-one-and-a-half days. I started about 7 miles west of the Yukon border on Joe Creek. I had food caches on the Sheenjek, Marsh Fork of the Canning River, Wind River, Chandalar Landing Strip, Anaktuvuk Pass and 12 Mile Creek on the Noatak. I had a rest day at the Wind River cache, was stuck at the Chandalar Landing Strip waiting for food for two-and-a-half days and had three rest days in Anaktuvuk Pass cause I had torn my left quadricep. Floating the Noatak took just under seven days finishing at the Kotzebue sound. If you were interested I have a facebook page - "John Cantor's Brooks Range Traverse 2012" and there are some photos up and I'll be posting a lot more in the coming days." Wow.

So if I were 20 years younger, after doing a nine month long traverse around the Brooks Range with Peggy, I'd want to try a speed traverse of the Brooks Range.

 3) Speaking of adventures with our wives and solo traverses of the Brooks Range, Kaylene Johnson's biography of Dick Griffith is out and it is GREAT.

Spend $25 and read about a lifetime of un-sung adventures, many after age 55. It covers his early years in the Grand and Copper Canyons; his solo, living-off-the-land walk from Kaktovik to Anaktuvuk in 1959; his middle age in the Chugach; and his post 55 year old days doing the Wilderness Classic and skiing from Unalakleet to Hudson Bay in his 60s and 70s. It is well illustrated with Dick's photos too. I feared it would lack his witty, aw shucks voice, as any who have read his journals have enjoyed. But it's there in his quotes.

Again, a great book and well worth the price. Only complaint is it wasn't in hard back.

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.

Great Videos in no particular order

This is my favorite -- Devin Littlefield, an Alaska Pacific University (APU) student made it about the APU class "Swiftwater boating" taught by Paul Twardock with help from Timmy J, Jason Geck and me one day on Granite Creek.

I love the music and the editing.



Next up is Paul Schauer's run down the Tsaina, near Valdez. Paul's been cranking out the videos, but this one's my favorite of the last few he's done. Plus, it features Matt Peters and Jeff Shelton (among others), two super Alaska homegrown boaters who are also super people.



And then there is Luc's latest, and it's so good I am going to have to work extra hard and steal some of his musical ideas for my next one. It's a great trip report that would have been a contender in Dave Chenault's contest over at Bedrock and Paradox.

Honolulu Creek's "Beach Party"

Over at Toby's Blog is a bit about his and Brad's recent overnight trip to the whole of Honolulu.

The video is great and the run looks super:



If I wasn't headed to China's Yunnan Province near Kawagebo and the Yarlung Tsangpo region of SE Tibet next week for a month, that would be my next destination!

Two videos

Both of these are great Alaskan adventure videos and in some ways tell the same kind of story but in different ways.

Each highlights the wild adventures that Alaskans are doing, adventures that Alaska itself encourages: multisport, challenging, abstract, innovative, and as Peggy often notes, uncomfortable at times.

Josh Spice's advice:



And Luc Mehl's 2011 Wilderness Classic:




Oh and this needs some wider play too:

Iceland

Most of us have seen the fantastic video by Alastair Humphreys about crossing Iceland.

Several friends of mine have been to Iceland, Alaskan friends who have packrafts and know their potential, but they always came back without anything fantastic to say about it.

Alastair's 215 mile traverse of the island over ice field and down rivers puts Iceland firmly on my hit-list. The video by Alastair's trip partner, photographer Chris Herwig, is informative and beautiful.

Iceland Crossing (10 mins) from Christopher Herwig on Vimeo.

My hunch is the trip could be done a bit quicker (read lighter) if you weren't packing for what look like award winning videos. Maybe a Black Diamond Firstlight for the breezly ash-storms, and fewer 'lectrons for recording your epic.

If I read right, there're two days or so worth of boating, leaving about about 165 miles of walking. Late season, you could skip the crampons and walk on the ashy ice.

It looks like it could be done as a 10 day trip, probably it (or a variation) being the best packrafting journey in Europe, so far, (there's still some development needed in Scandinavia and elsewhere, of course). Another river or two on an trans-Iceland traverse to push the pack:raft ratio closer to 1:1 rather than 3:1 would make things easier on the ole' feet and back, but certainly don't want to miss out on that water-fall landscape on their first river, the "Pjorsa".

Anyway, it'd be neat if those two submitted one of their packrafting videos to Banff Mtn Film Festival. The Hig and Erin story will be there, no doubt, as well as other packrafting videos like a CarpeyBiggs Grand Canyon one. Luc Mehl as soon as he unclips his ski bindings and climbs back in his packraft will make something quirky and fun with his new Canon.

Maybe this could be the year of the packraft at Banff.

How I wasted my Spring Break

In the mid 1980s XC ski legend Audun Endestadt claimed that it would be possible to ski the 30 miles and 14,000 vertical feet to the summit of 16,000 foot Mt Sanford in under 24 hours.

This was about the same time that Chuck Comstock schemed to win the Wilderness Classic using his kite to fly off the Stairway Icefall, Jon Underwood suggested we mtn bike a wilderness route in the White Mountains, and Carl Tobin said the Iditabike ought to be extended to McGrath.

Those were heady days and we dreamed up many possibilities that only now are realized by a new generation of adventurers.

For example, Luc Mehl and John Sykes have shown that summiting Mt Sanford in a day is possible, although I think they were simply training for the upcoming Winter Wilderness Classic. Their round trip to 15,000 feet was three days, and they weren't really racing as they had time to make a video and sleep on the way up.

While Luc and John were setting out to ski Mt. Sanford rt from the road in under 72 hours, I was reliving my past (about all I can do, anymore it seems) and contributing to the cloud's collective knowledge base by posting photos for Google Earth where there are none.

Class II in Cheap, Vinyl Packrafts

There's a discussion over on the Backpackinglight.com website about what's available as a cheap boat for Class II packrafting.

The old, apparently discontinued Sevylor Trailboat was always too small and fragile. The other vinyl boats that could be bought for under $50 worked better, but were very fragile and needed tender care. But the fist hiking traverse of the Alaska Range (Tok to Lake Clark) in 1996 by Kevin Armstrong, Doug Woody and others was made with vinyl rafts. They floated the Nenana and the Stony Rivers among others with expedition-ish loads, too.

Many people completed Wilderness Classics in vinyl rafts including Dick Grifith in 1982, and others throughout the 80's and 90's.

Back in the 90's when only vinyl rafts and the wee Curtis Design boats and used Sherpa Rafts were all that was available, Barney Griffith (he made the first kayak descent of Devils Canyon of the Susitna, Talkeetna Canyon, and Canyon Creek in the 70's) often packrafted with his dad Dick in the Wilderness Classic. Barney told me that a good paddle was more important than the boat. When pressed for what he meant by "good", he said stiff so that you had control and could keep the vinyl boat or fragile little Curtis Design off sticks and rocks and out of holes.

Below is a video from Australia of people running Class II and III in inexpensive vinyl rafts. By the way, "lilo" is Aussie for air mattress.

Yarlung Tsangpo Link

My spare time, between lectures, paper-grading, and admin has been researching the region at the corner of Tibet, China, India, and Burma. This place looks quite amazing on Google Earth, particularly as the Tibet/China side has really good resolution and there are 1:200,000 scale maps available from the Russians. Plus, the Chinese tourists who travel through the Tibetan side seem much more savvy and willing and eager to post their photos on Google Earth, so you can get an idea of what it looks like. Spruce, hemlock, juniper, and birch in the lowlands and of course, my interest, are the supposed ice worms of the glaciers. Unfortunately the tourists have not yet posted a photo of a Tibetan ice worm.

Recently I stumbled on a video of an Outside Magazine movie here that's an incredible modern kayak expedition, even if 10 years old now. An international crew on 10,000 cfs Grand Canyon flows with a NZ West Coast gradient -- there's even a 70-100 foot waterfall that splits the river into an upper and lower gorge. These gnar gnar runners voices document their real respect for the Himlayan scale big water.

Worth watching all 45 minutes or so on-line. It's the movie of the trip that Peter Heller wrote about in Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River.

Watch more free documentaries

Kenai Canyon Cold

If we weren't headed for Borneo and Tasmania soon, maybe something like this would make it to our agenda:

Kimberly Australia: King Edward River, Bungle Bungles

This is a bit of a tease:

It's a fellow named Kevin Casey, a world-traveling, self-described "remote riverman" who recently replaced his inflatable kayak with a an Alpacka Raft. His first packraft trip was to Australia's far NW Kimberly for a solo jaunt that made my own solo trip look a tad tame. He recently posted on the Alpacka Rafters site that Gabon would make a good packrafting destination for the savvy wilderness traveller.

His Kimberly journey was in May, the early, cool start to the dry season, which contrasts mightily to March when Peggy and I were there and it was deadly humid and hot. Think East Coast August humidity and Phoenix, AZ August temperatures. By May, it's dry and cool, and super nice. Main problem is getting back to civilization once you reach the mangrove and crock-infested coastline. NOLS runs canoe trips down the Drysdale River in the Wet, but I think when I go back, I'm going in May. March almost killed me.

Peggy and I drove out from Darwin (3+ days drive) to see the Bungle Bungles but the park was closed so she camped at the road while I rafted down the Ord River to walk into the park. It was a strange and wonderful experience. The water was as warm as a hot springs and the air like an oven. I paddled past a pack of wild dingos resting on the bank then splashing off through the shallows; flocks of a thousand gallahs, pink colored cockatoos sqawking; and what looked like ten thousand fruit bats fussing and fighting in the tea trees with a dozen freshwater crocodiles waiting below to feed on the hapless weak ones that fell into the water. I paddled though this melee of bats and crocs then camped downstream, spooked.

As night fell, a half hour of bats (see the video below) passed overhead in the beautiful sunset. I slept restlessly for fear of crocks climbing up on the bank to get me, bivied on an air mattress under a cotton sheet. Alive in the morning, I watched the thousands of bats return.

Downstream I paddled through some fun class II rapids with crocs waiting in the pools below. Then I rolled up the boat and headed for the Bungle Bungles, an incredible landscape of domes and canyons.

On my hike there I walked on a jeep road, rutted and eroded, when I came to a nine foot snake, clearly an elapid, and judging by its size and aggression, a king brown snake. I stopped and it headed toward me. I threw a rock at it to get it to retreat but instead it checked out the rock then headed for me more directly, more quickly. This alarmed me so I retreated up the road and watched as it disappeared down a gully.

The next day I hiked into the Bungles, walking up the Piccaninny Gorge. It was hot, oh so hot, and I found another snake, and water monitor lizards, and a few birds and fish. I was all alone here as the park was closed for the wet season.

It was just too hot. The balls of my feet feet on the hard surfaces in the heat in La Sportiva Fireblades were blistering so I decided to walk at night in my crocks which, were really functioning as camp shoes.

To save batteries I walked in the dark, fearful of snakes. To save fluids I rigged my sheet for shade during the day and tried to sleep. It took two pushes to walk the 30 miles out in my crocks. The second night was trippy, as in a bad psychedelic experience. First there was the late afternoon heat. My watch thermometer read 113 degrees under the umbrella carried as a parasol. Then there were the bush fires burning, burned out, or smoldering everywhere as I entered the wooded hills.

I crossed a creek and heard two feral bulls, the ones that are wild and never get rounded up, bellowing -- no roaring at each other, just as the tropical sun dropped, and one bull came toward me and I hurried off into the scrub to get trees between me and the beast, like you would with a pushy moose. That freaked me out, with all the poky bushes and grasses and the snakes lurking, I knew, and me barefoot in my crocks, 'cause the bulls came for me as I was trying to put my socks but no time, had to run. And that was just the beginning.

Then it got black and the hills were burning in bush fires, creepy, and silent and no wind, no night sounds, under a billion stars, all weird, except Orion in a funny place and that weird Southern Cross. Later the sideways moon rose and I could hear digeridoo music: Honest! Way out, like 20 miles from the nearest road and that road an empty thing in the Aussie Outback. I couldn't make it out to Peggy in the dark that night and I was tired from no sleep (too hot in the day fro walking or sleeping for that matter), so I camped in the dirt and woke in the morning with a centipede and a scorpion under my sheet with me.

And the next morning I walked out to the road, happy to be alive.

Another Great Modern Packrafting Adventure

Alastair Humphreys' video's professional production puts my silly little vids to shame:

An Expedition Across Iceland from Alastair Humphreys on Vimeo.

Thanks for making me look bad Alastair!

Modern Packrafting Adventures

This trip shows Tazzie as a packrafting destination. More of a classic, Alaska-style landscape adventure than a New Zealand trail hike and sport boat trip spot.





And this is more modern still: "Urbaneering" in Baltimore

Hig and Erin Highlights Reel

Videos that have caught my eye

Butt-boating, mtn hiking, and 29er biking are probably my favorite outdoor activities and here are some other folks adventures to enjoy:

Ed Plumb of Fairbanks has posted a neat Alaska Range video:

and Forrest posted several from the WInd Rivers, this being my favorite, I think:



and then there's Mike Curiak's gonzo "ne school" trail riding:

Teton Pass from lacemine29 on Vimeo.

Skurka Video Compilation

On my way to Fairbanks to meet Skurka and his NGS crew I bumped into Katmai and Erin McKittrick passing through security with me. They were waiting on Hig who was out running last minute errands before their family trip from Point Lisburne to Kotzebue. She was five months pregnant and passed on a video message to Skurka. It's possible though improbable that the two sets of mega-trekkers will meet in Kotz, as the Ground Truth Twitter says the fam is still up by Kivalina and Skurka's chomping at the bit to finish, maybe, tomorrow?

Anyway, here's pretty much the best video I have from the trips I did with Skurka and the National Geographic crew.

Hope it offers an honest flavor of that grand trip of his.



Vimeo version for Euros:

Andrew Skurka's Alaska Yukon Expedition: two legs from Roman Dial on Vimeo.

Skurka, Hig and Erin

Hig and I had lunch specials at the Thai Orchid on Dimond yesterday. He was doing some consulting work with Nuka Environmental that brought him to town. We talked about his next couple trips doing Ground Truth Trekking w/his wife and Katmai and then a later trip doing geomorphology with Alpacka's Andrew Mattox.

We also talked about Skurka.

We both follow him on Twitter and the NGS Adventure Blog. We are both heartily impressed by his ability to stay on such an ambitious schedule. Hig and Erin were on schedule to the Lost Coast coming up from Seattle but then consciously decided to travel at a more natural pace thereafter, stretching their trip to 12 months rather than 9. But Andy has to beat freeze up, and he will, not because he's "kicking Alaska's ass", which can't be done, but because he is efficient and driven and it's his 8 to 9 job to do so. Plus he's skilled, smart, and lucky enough to do it.

His style and personality we admire -- but don't care to try and emulate -- mostly 'cause we simply can't, seemed to be the essence of our conversation, I think.

Anyway, I am feeling a wee bit old and out-dated to learn that not only Ryan Jordan, but Skurka, Hig and Erin all sleep in their daily "work clothes" each night. I like my 'jammies, warm and dry and unsalted to sleep in, but guess I'll give the 'ole one-set-of-clothes-for-all strategy a go again, although I abandoned that back in the late 80's, I guess, for all but adventure races. Too stinky and clammy -- but what the heh? If it's good enough for the life-stylers, might be good enough for a summer-time hack like me.

Skurka Week

I'd intended to post something other than video on the time with Skurka and Mike Brown, but Skurka's beat me to it with his post at National Geographic Adventure.

Andrew offers up a day-by-day highlight list of our run through "Copper and Gold". He hit pretty much all the highlights, although I'd add some others like having him bust trail over Chitistone pass, post-holing above our inseams. The lack of bugs and the abundance of sunshine. The pleasure of doing a trip adventure race style (light, fast, diverse) but with plenty of sleep and no competition and with a one man media crew, as not as an interference, but as a congenial part of the team. I'd toss in the personal satisfaction of steering a double inflatable kayak (IK) backwards, forwards and sideways over rapids, through canyons, past icebergs and seals and a wolverine so that Mike Brown, who at 32 years old has already shot a half dozen assignments for NGS (if you have not seen his work and are into photography look here NOW).

In fact, that was the main highlight for me: sharing a wild time in wild country with two of the most accomplished young men out there exploring the world in an adventurous way: Andy Skurka and Mike Brown.

And yep, the drunken softball game in McCarthy was the highlight among highlights.

McCarthy to Cordova

Part II