More Harding Media

Here's a map of our recent route out and back across the Harding (in red). The green line is what Jim Lokken and I skied in the 1983 Hope to Homer Wilderness Classic; the purple line the solo route in 1984; the yellow route a grad student and I skied in 2005. There've been other trips, too: Jon Underwood, Paul Adkins, Chris Flowers and I took mountain bikes and packrafts across and on to Homer in 1995, but there're already too many lines on the map to include that one, the multi-sport route with Peggy, Vern Tejas, Nora Tobin, Bob Kaufman, and Dave Hooper, or the big circle trip with the kids.

Of course I made a video of last week's trip. You Tube stripped my choice of music: Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean" from the Houses of the Holy album. Todd Tumolo, who's 24, likes Led Zep and the music seemed to capture for me the feel of the place.

Here it is:

100 Miles on the Harding

APU student Todd Tumolo and I are just back from a hundred miles of skiing back and forth across the Harding Icefield, one of the most amazing places in all of Alaska. I guess counting a crossing as once across, and an out-and-back as twice across, these would be like my 10th and 11th crossings since 1983. This trip was collecting iceworms for a genetic study that might shed light on how iceworms disperse from glacier to glacier.

What makes the Harding Icefield so amazing is the play of light and weather on the assortment of nunataks and the expanse of ice and snow. So vast and disorienting can the Icefield be, that in the the pre-GPS days it was a terrifying crossing!

I once skied from Skilak to Chernof solo during a Wilderness Classic and was afraid of getting lost and/or being hit by a storm. I had nothing but a pin-on compass and a bivy sack. Cody Roman (then 14), Jazz (then 12) and I did a big week long loop in 2001 when we were hit by a storm of ferocious winds and rain. There's simply no way to dig into the hardpacked firn and with such a long fetch, the wind speeds are tent-flattening. I had to put on a face of total calmness while inside my head I feared the tent would be ripped apart and we soaked in freezing rain at 50 miles an hour.

But now with GPS, my familiarity with all of its glaciers and peaks, and a good kit I feel comfortable up there.

My favorite way to cross it is north to south, skiing into the warm sun. One May we skied from Exit to Nuka and I never put on gaiters or gloves so warm was the ski. Skiing south one looks at the icy north faces of the nuktuks, nunataks, and mountains and they are so picturesque. Skiing north you see the barren south faces of choss-heaps. Most of the rock is schisty country rock but the nuktuks of the central Nunatak Plateau are granite and the route to the Chernof passes across the granite and schist contact. The precipitation gradient is so steep that standing above the Chernof Glacier and looking at the McCarty Glacier peaks one sees a view of mega-glacier draped mountains like the Antarctic Peninsula while looking toward Truuli Glacier you see peaks bare of snow.

The geography of the Icefield is singular. The Icefield proper stretches between the Chernof and Exit Glaciers. South of the Chernof are a series of range crossing glaciers separated by rocky ridges. These unique "saddle-passes" are broad passes from big glacier to big glacier that have steeper cols above them that cross the ridges. Late in the season, like last week, the ridge crossings have deep and nasty, roof-ripping bergschrunds, whereas the stretch from Exit Glacier to Tustumena has nothing but "guppy" sized cracks. In other words, from Exit to Tustumena is rope-free travel on a flat, flat, flat icefield with distant peaks. Whiteouts and blizzards make for what Todd calls "full-on iPod conditions". From Tustumena south to Nuka Valley is more typical mountainous terrain with steeper hills, rocky passes, and cracks.

One measure of how great a place is for adventuring is whether you'd go back or not. As we returned to Exit Glacier after six days, Redoubt's ash wearing the fishscales off my skis, I thought about what my next trip up there might be: "Ski to Sea", a ski tour across the Icefield followed by a fjord-hopping packraft paddle back to Seward.

Anyone interested?

Senator Stevens and Wilderness Recreation

Ted Stevens served as Alaska’s senator for over 40 years. While in Congress, he always held tightly to positions placing Alaska’s interests highest, which meant that he sometimes had views at odds with National-level conservationists.

In many ways it’s sad that he was the highest ranking Republican in the time of Bush and Cheney, as Stevens was tainted by those imposters. I don’t know enough to review the truly pivotal roles he played in passing the biggest AK legislation in our lives, like Statehood, ANWR, TAPAA, ANSCA, ANILCA, Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Act, each on the short list of the most significant intersections of economic development and conservation in Alaska.

But I really admired him. He was the only Republican I ever voted for (other than Sarah in the Republican primary for Governor), and I voted for him every time I could. He was, and likely remains, a man of principle, rather than of partisanship. He refused to vote in favor of impeaching Clinton during the Lewinsky affair, for instance. He always flew coach, unlike his counterpart Murkowski, who as Governor, went around the Legislature to get himself a private jet.

Stevens is a short man of great stature in my humble, if liberal opinion.

In 1979 I visited his office in DC. I was 19 years old and ANILCA was soon to pass and I wanted to be sure that mountain climbers would have air access to newly formed National Parks and Wilderness Areas. He assured me they would.

In 1984, The US Fish and Wildlife Service threatened to halt the third Wilderness Classic across the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge because the Service claimed the race inconsistent with the goals of the Refuge. Stevens stepped in, wrote a letter and the race went on. It has continued ever since.

And most importantly (to me), Senator Ted Stevens answered my simple question written him on the back of a pre-paid postcard I found on a flight to Seattle: “Are mountain bikes allowed in ANILCA Wilderness Areas?”

There were three postcards there. They were meant for another issue, roadlessness in the Tongass National Forest, but I re-appropriated them on a whim. Stuck in the seat pocket, pre-addressed and pre-stamped, they were ready to help find the answer to a question I'd had for nearly 10 years. I wrote the same question on all three, one of to each of Alaska’s delegation: Young, Murkowski, and Stevens.

Only Stevens responded and here’s what he said (CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO READ THEM):

Hellbiking Lives!

Over at Cpt Swallowtail's Confessions is a link to a recent bike & boat trip. Bike & boat trips are also making their way onto the Alpacka forum.

Recently looking under the house for old tax records, I came across an October 1989 Mountain Bike Magazine with my "Live to Ride, Ride to Die Mountain Bikes from Hell!" story. It's a little embarrassing to read my hyperbole now, but like the Wilderness Classics before it, this was a rich full-bodied trip. It was a trip that really opened our eyes to the possibilities of mountain bikes in wilderness, centered on the packraft. As far as I know, it was likely the first bike & boat trip in Alaska (by bike & boat I mean we carried the boat on the bike and vice-versa).

On our trip we carried only one raft, a Sherpa Packraft. Our bikes had no suspension, as there were not even front forks with suspension!

Anyway, some of you might enjoy the read. I did. But then I guess at my age, reminiscing is becoming an increasingly popular pastime.

(To read any page just click on it.)

Local Creeks

Brad and I met Nathan Shoutis, one of the best pure (i.e., no other boating experience) packrafters out there, at Nathan's "local" creek, Little Susitna (see photo above of my own 2003 harrowing solo run in an early "condom-style" skirt). Nate'd run it twice over the last couple days, and it was running 800 cfs when we did it yesterday, pretty much a non-stop whitewater run. It was cushy but not too pushy. In some ways much more satisfying/exciting than the bony run that Brad and I made last fall. We met some hardcore kayak kids, complete with short boats and attitudes to match. But we had fun, too, in big waves and bigger drops, flushing holes and smooth granite boulders washed in sun-lit, glacier-tinted water.

Anyway, it got me thinking about boaters' local runs: Little Su for Nathan, S. Fork Eagle River for Brad, Ship Cr for me, Willow Creek in Wyoming for Forrest. These are the creeks that ultimately kill boaters, they say. Maybe we get complacent through familiarity and don't pay attention, then fall out of our boats, foot trapped and drowned -- at least that's what I learned in my swiftwater rescue course: "Complacency kills."

So as Cody Roman says, "Stay frosty." Focus in the white stuff, relax in the calm.

....My sabbatical functionally ends this week, meaning I wont have as much time for "creative and scholarly activities" to make these silly music videos and slide shows, like this one, of the ten days I spent in Wyoming last July.

2009 Wilderness Classic: Official Results

Tim Mowry of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner wrote this story about Steve Taylor and Forrest Karr. Worth a read.

If you want to do the Classic, I'd suggest that you put in at least as many miles as the race is long within three weeks of doing it, and preferably within one month. Think: Lance Mackey's dogs, the Quest and the Iditarod.

2009 Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic Results –

Gerstle to McKinley Village (175 miles)

1) Bobby Schnell, Chris Robertson and Andrew Skurka -- 3 days, 17 hours, 54 minutes
2) Roman Dial and Forrest McCarthy, 4 days, 8 hours, 41 minutes
3) Eben Sargent and Brad Marden, 4 days, 14 hours, 11 minutes
4) Luc Mehl, 4 days, 14 hours, 41 minutes.
5) Stephen Taylor, Forrest Karr and Rob Kehrer, 7 days, 5 hours, 42 minutes
6) John Lapkass, 8 days, 22 hours, 22 minutes.

DNF -- Kyle Amstadter and Jesse Bernwald; Craig Bernard and Jordan Manley; Michael Martin and Michael Penuelas; Donna Kleck; Don Moden and Scott Wilk; Christopher Bernshoof and George Feree; Mark Ross; William and Clay Collins.

Grand Canyon

Running the "Ditch" represents one of the great backcountry/wilderness experiences of the world.

While most people run it in the comfort of big rafts, several pairs of shoes, tables, and chairs, there is now another way: packrafts.

While this may not bring us back to the level of adventure that J. W. Powell experienced, it may be the closest other than running it one-armed.

Last year my son C. Roman, Gordy Vernon, and I managed to get a permit from the NPS to run it by hiking down Hermit and running the rapids to Havasu. It took about a week and while we missed some other big rapids both upstream (Granite etc) and down (Lava), we were plenty satiated with adventure by the time we took out.

The permit was not easy to get! We benefited from the help of Glenn "LB" Rink and others of Flagstaff and around the SW in getting the NPS to let us put in somewhere other than Lee's Ferry and take out somewhere other than Diamond Creek and run it in our 5 pound Alpackas.

We did it before I'd figured out how to shoot video on the Optio W60 but here's a slide show: