The Treeline Traverse

Over the last five years or so, I've been studying treeline advance in the Brooks Range, leading me to assemble a route that I call "Walking Treeline" that pieces together a series of interesting segments between Canada and the Chukchi Sea. It's not a "through hike", but rather where my last several years of scientific research using very high resolution satellite imagery and ecological modeling, experiences hiking and packrafting in the Brooks Range spanning portions of six decades (70s, 80s, 90s, 00's, 10s, 20s), and airstrip locations have suggested where my companions, field workers, students, and I best see the advance of treeline in America's northernmost mountains. 

This summer, rather than connect the Arrigetch Peaks with the upper Noatak drainage via the Triple A (http://packrafting.blogspot.com/search/label/Triple%20A) or Arctic Circle (http://packrafting.blogspot.com/search/label/Arctic%20Circle) routes, which cross some sketchy passes (in my opinion), and because I wanted to see how treeline was advancing in an area that seems very climate responsive, I checked out a new route shown here.

Also I'm sensitive now more than ever to giving route advice to people who take it---see "No Place for Novices" in the print quarterly Adventure Journal 21.

Along those lines, the creek/river crossings of Arrigetch Creek (slimey granite boulders), Awlinyak (wide, potentially high volume but not bouldery), the unnamed creek leading to Akabluak Pass (potentially high volume) and the unnamed stream leading up to the pass just south of Gull Pass (a lot of criss-cross, re-cross, cross and an un-hikeable gorge but with a great bear trail along its river left rim), as well as the hillside route-finding at the lower end of Lucky Six Creek are all difficult enough that this is not a route for novices. That is, if you think that hiking from Circle Lake to Arrigetch Valley is one of your more challenging days of hiking you have mustered, then this route may not yet be comfortably/safely within your ability. 

Nevertheless, I liked it a lot and this summer found it to be one of my favorite segments between the Hunt Fork of John River and Kivalina on the Chukchi Sea.

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.

Alaskan Wilderness Travel Dial-style as of 15 years ago...but not too outdated!

 Powerpoint from 2005, when I tried to impress Ned Rozell with my semi-quantitative ideas for Alaskan wilderness travel based on concepts from ecology and mathematical models...didn't really work, but some of you might be interested in what I said about river crossings in Alaska, finindg and holding game trails, vegetation patterns relative to travel, and a mathematical model for how far can you go fastest (previous to Arctic1000) all based on forty years and about 12,000 miles back then.

Raftpacking is purposely carrying fewer rafts than the number of people on the trip.

If “packrafting” can be considered walk-assisted boating, then “raftpacking” can be considered boat-assisted walking.

Let’s say that you and your friends or family are making a wilderness traverse of a remote range without towns, roads, or even human-made trails. You have to carry all your food for a week or more, along with camping gear, warm clothes to deal with cold rivers and rain. Then there’s the boat, paddle, PFD, maybe a helmet, throw bag, etc. These also add to the load. Let’s further assume that you are there, not necessarily as a boater but as a wilderness traveler, using packrafts as tools and not the foci of the adventure.

Raftpacking Roots

That pretty much describes my original interest in packrafting during my twenties; a stint “hellbiking,” a wilderness predecessor of what’s become known as “bikepacking” in my thirties; and now again as a “Brooks Ranger” in my fifties.

I'm now just an old guy who just likes to follow wild-animal trails, cross tundra-clad passes, and paddle splashy Class II clear-water creeks and rivers while joined with a handful of other wilderness enthusiasts.

Early on, my wife and I could only afford a single packraft. On our “honeymoon” traverse of Alaska’s Gates of the Arctic National Park in 1986, that’s all we carried.

Nevertheless, we rafted together—two in an open Sherpa packraft—down five rivers and streams: the North Fork of the Koyukuk, Anaktuvuk, John, Nahtuk, and Alatna Rivers. With sufficient flow we could both float together with all our gear. 

But at the headwaters of each of these, even though Peggy is petite, the creeks were too shallow for us both. So we “raftpacked:” Peggy walking with nothing but our bear protection, her rain-gear, and a few snacks while I carried everything else in the boat. That way she could move fast and light and I could get our gear downstream. We moved parallel, she enjoying what she likes most–wilderness walking unencumbered–and I what I like most–exploring a new landscape-crossing technique.

Later in September 1990,  on a traverse of the Talkeetna Mountains from Eureka Roadhouse to Gold Creek, my friend Mark Stoppel and I moved rapidly carrying a single Sherpa packraft down the upper Talkeetna River in the same way. But the Talkeetna River is bigger than the Brooks Range rivers that Peggy and I raftpacked, so Mark walked gravel bars separated by river braids that I ferried him across when they were too deep for him to ford. 

Most of our early hellbike trips carried only a single raft for three to five of us at a time, ferrying boats and bikes across big rivers and riding, pushing, or carrying the bikes otherwise. By splitting one raft and one paddle among the group we could travel much lighter, making for both more riding and more enjoyable riding.

Modern Raftpacking

In June 2019 I revisited raftpacking on a new scale during a 350-mile traverse following treeline on the south slope of the Brooks Range. 

On the first leg of the month long journey, five of us left the Dalton Highway with a raft and paddle each, covering about 110 miles split between two boating legs totaling 70 miles of paddling and two hiking legs totaling 40 miles of walking. 

Then for the second leg, we dropped three rafts, walked another 35 miles carrying just two boats—the Alpacka Raft Caribou and Scout models, both with cargo flies and cruiser-style spray decks—and two paddles among the five of us to raftpack 30 miles in a day, followed by a 45-mile walk. We then dropped another boat, leaving us with just the Scout for the next eighty miles.

The highlight of that trip following Alaska’s northern tree line was a beautiful, sunny, nearly bug-free day on the Junjik River, where three hikers carried little more than snacks and two raftpackers boated everyone's camping gear and food for five days down the fun, splashy Class II. 

Using Gaia GPS on our phones set to airplane mode, the raftpackers and hikers rendezvoused at pre-planned waypoints every five miles to swap out a boater with a hiker to maintain contact and safety.

Freedom and Care

It’s hard to over-emphasize how enjoyable and novel covering long distances in a single direction in true wilderness with a pack under ten pounds can be. 

On the Junjik we were 70 to 90 air miles (that is, a straight-line distance) from the Dalton Highway (the only road connected to Alaska’s road system north of the Yukon River) and 20-30 air miles from the nearest human settlement, Arctic Village. Outside of Alaska, the farthest you can get from a road is twenty air miles southeast of Yellowstone National Park. At our most remote while we "raftpacked treeline" we were nearly 100 miles from any village.

We used the Caribou and a Scout, both with cargo flies and loaded up with all the soft goods. Sharp-edged and hard objects were put in the bow bag, a pack tied on the bow, or inside my HMG pack with its stays removed (and secured with rubber Voile-type straps on the bow together with trekking poles and our stainless-steel bear protection), then turned inside out with the backpack’s padded back lining the bottom of my stern's tube as protection. 

Inside this inside-out backpack I put the one-gallon cook pots and other small but hard items that, if not carefully packed in a boat’s tubes, will pinch tube fabric between river rocks and the object leaving a hole. This happened to one of the four youngsters I traveled with who had not yet realized the importance of proper boat packing.

The Caribou held four people’s food and camping gear in its tubes; the Scout held one person’s. According to the four who did all the hiking that day, the raftpacking stretch of the trip was by far the most enjoyable, as would be expected hiking Brooks Range wilderness with a daypack.

Raftpacking Strategies

Consider raftpacking for your next long-distance wilderness adventure, when the three strategies to traveling light and comfortably are exercised as:

(1) Abstraction: that is, knowing which of your insecurities you don’t need to pack.

(2) Using light-weight materials: although 40 pounds of lightweight gear still weighs more than 30 pounds of heavy gear!

(3) Sharing: not just first-aid and repair kits, multi-tools, tents, stoves, cookpots, but rafts, and paddles and the time spent in them.

Among these strategies, raftpacking is my favorite for going light. It's smart and efficient packraft sharing.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ― Mary Oliver

Fresh Air with Dave Davies

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/03/811708372/a-father-searches-for-his-son-and-answers-in-the-costa-rican-jungle

Another Podcast: Kirkus Book Reviews

The wild ride through the publishing world has been fascinating.

This podcast with Kirkus Book Reviews was memorable. The host Megan Labrise was easy to talk to, well-informed, asked good questions. She even had me recite the epigraph at the beginning of The Adventurer's Son, then asked who wrote it. Best of all she was totally non-plussed when my computer crashed in the middle of the interview while we were talking on the Skype-like "Zencastr" that recorded the interview.

Later that day my six-week old computer died completely and I had to take it in for a replacement.

The middle of the next week I had to rise at 4:30 AM for an East Coast live radio show at AK Time 5:30 AM, then prepare for teaching; teach until 2:00 PM; go to several hours of APU-presidential search committee events until 5:45; then rush to an Alaska Writer's Guild meeting to present on memoir writing from 6-7 PM. A long, exhausting day.

Fortunately my friends, too, have blogged reviews:  Luc Mehl, Andrew Skurka, and Mike Curiak whose review also showed up on the Adventure Journal. I dearly wanted them to read the book and see what they thought in their perceptive prose.

All of this publicity is ok by me. I'm not trying to spray my accomplishments all over the internet, but rather tell the story of how my son went missing, and to tell it from the beginning, warts, tears, and all. It means a lot to me to get it right and maybe pass on whatever small lessons other unsuspecting adventurers out there—sons, daughters, fathers, mothers—might gain from reading my memoir, The Adventurer's Son.

Oh yes, Christian Science Monitor, Anchorage Daily News (pay walled-in), New York Times, and Men's Journal. There're a bunch of interesting and provocative reader-reviews on Good Reads, too.

This week, maybe, if the world doesn't end by virus, market crash, or some other as yet unsuspected event, listen to Dave Davies on Fresh Air.

FLYING SNAKE!

Busy with science in a tropical tree, 200-feet off the ground, I heard a squirrel. Looking, I saw not a rodent, but a 3-foot serpent, dangling in a long, lazy S. Gently swaying, it leapt free, its body flattened and sinusoidal as it sailed away, wiggling like it would in the water. 

The flying snake crossed 50 yards of empty air, approached a smooth trunk, reared up, straightened out, and stalled. After sticking its vertical landing, the reptile inched up the distant tree and disappeared. 

Quite a feat for the beast famously condemned to crawl.

A Good Place for FREE Downloads of USGS topo maps to look at on Google Earth from the USGS

For old-school, old-dog, old-farts like me, nothing beats the crutch of USGS topo-maps. Perhaps it sounds heretical but I'm not really a fan of Cal-Topo: too gimmicky with bad naming conventions for many features in Alaska as I've found many times when people write me for route beta in some obscure mountain range of AK.

For route planning I download .kmzs of USGS topos FOR FREE (no subscription) from here: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/#4/40.00/-100.00, unzip them, and open them up in Google Earth Pro (GEP). If I'm lucky there's some good Maxar/DigitalGlobe half-meter resolution imagery hosted by GEP. If it's crappy old Landsat underneath, then I much prefer the topo. Call me what you will, but, boy, do I love those old maps, especially the 1:250,000 scale for not just planning but travel.

And by the way: why not leave the phone and Gaia home next time and just go paper?

More on The Adventurer's Son

Steve Rinella hosted me as a guest on a recent "Meateater Podcast." He's a pretty intense guy, and having read his book American Buffalo I really looked forward to meeting him. Here's the link

https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-204-it-should-be-difficult-to-get-lost-forever

My publisher has released two chapters from Part I of The Adventurer's Son as they gear up to release the book in a few weeks. Not much need be said about these chapters; if I wrote them well, then they should speak for themselves, right?

https://aerbook.com/books/The_Adventurers_Son-242817.html

Book Release Event: February 19, 2020 at Bear Tooth Theatrepub, Anchorage

On Wednesday, February 19 at Anchorage's Bear Tooth Theatrepub, Title Wave Books will host the release of The Adventurer's Son. 

Luc Mehl will MC.

Admission is free.

From 5:30-6:30 I'll have a presentation and maybe make a few short reads, followed by a question and answer session, and then a book signing until 7:30.

Please come.

The Adventurer's Son

My book about raising our son, then losing and finding him, is done. William Morrow, an "imprint" of Harper Collins, is releasing it Feb 18, 2020 a few days before Cody Roman would have turned 33.

It is an important (to me) book that I needed to write and took great care in writing.

If you look at this blog, you might consider reading this book. It's a memoir along one thin line leading to my son.

If you can't wait until then, you can take your chances with a free early version, a so-called "Advanced Reader's Edition" given away by lottery at Good Reads.

They already gave 100 away, and they will be giving 100 more. If you win one and read it, then let me know what you think here, in the comments.

The Sun is a Compass

Caroline van Hemert and her husband Pat made an epic journey from Bellingham to Kotzebue in 2012. Pat made their boats that they rowed Jill Fredston-style up the Inside Passage to Haines, where they have a cabin Pat built. From there they skied and packrafted across the boundary ranges then hiked and packrafted some more to the Arctic Ocean where they headed inland and traversed the Brooks Range to Kotzebue.

Now, I don't read much adventure, but through good fortune of mine I got an advanced copy of Caroline's memoir of this trip: The Sun is a Compass. It's an amazing book, great stories and neat scientific tidbits, too—she's a bird biologist.

If you liked Erin McKitrick's A Long Trek Home and the biography of Dick Griffith, Canyons and Ice, then you'll like this book, too.

The book comes out officially on March 19 and there's an event at the Anchorage Museum on March 20 at 7 PM where Caroline will sign books and tell stories, I hope.

Maybe we'll see each other there.

Academic Job at Alaska Pacific University

Hard to believe but after about 25 years, Carl Tobin is retiring from APU, and the school is looking to hire a PhD ecologist to fill his position.

So if you, or anybody you know, would like to live and work in Anchorage, teaching at a very small, private liberal arts school, then check this out.

While the posting says "Completed applications should be received by February 18th, 2019, for full consideration," please submit a CV and a letter of intent to APU if you are interested by Feb. 18, and send in the other materials later....

Ten Years and Thirty

Last week I went to Revelate Designs' Ten year anniversary party. Revelate is to bikepacking what Alpacka is to packrafting: the tool-maker for the sport.

Anyway, thirty years ago this year (2018) Carl Tobin, Jon Underwood, and I did a trip (1988) I wrote up as "Live to Ride, Ride to Die, Mountain Bikes from Hell!"

That route, Nabesna to McCarthy has been repeated three times now, by Revelate's founder Eric Parsons and his protege Dylan Kentch, and by Mike Curiak, Doom Fishfinder, Bret Davis, and John Bailey as well as some Euros.

But how did that ride inspire Underwood, Tobin and me? Well, it sent us off to pedal, paddle and push 250 miles from Mentasta to Healy, Alaska the following summer.

I couldn't sell the story to a national magazine for four years, but eventually it came out in the February 1994 issue of Mountain Bike. You can see it mentioned down in the lower left next to other "Incredible Adventures!" like beginner night riding.

Here is that story in the form it was published. It also came out in the Anchorage Daily News' Sunday insert, We Alaskans, as a chapter in an adventure cycling book nobody ever bought, and as a bunch of Patagonia Catalog photos, ads, and garment hang-tags.

In many ways that trip was a proof of concept trip, one that allowed me to pitch riding the entire length of the Alaska Range from Canada to Lake Clark in 1996 as a story for National Geographic Magazine ("A Wild Ride", May 1997), a trip that in some small way may have helped get bikepacking and packrafting started.

For me, this trip below was the most amazing adventure of my life to that point, maybe ever, even if nobody but Carl and Jon could appreciate it at the time: 1989.

But maybe now, more can and it might even get somebody out to repeat what could be called, tongue-in-cheek, "The Sliprock Trail".

Next Gen

Watching these makes me think I was born 30 years too soon.

He has many many more, too. Go check out his channel on You tube.

Golden Age Nostalgia

After reading Luc Mehl's guest blog at the Alpacka web site I indulged in some nostalgia from 2009-2010.

If you're reading this, then you really should go read Luc's post. I found it flattering and a bit of a vignette of what I, self-centeredly, consider the Golden Age of packrafting.

Golden in that it was a big leap forward. Golden in that Brad Meiklejohn urged us into Embick's  Class IV and V creeks. Golden in that real boaters Tim Johnson, Paul Schauer, and Thai Verzone led us down and plucked us out. Golden in that I started hitting whitewater centers beyond Alaska with the boat born in Alaska and now ready for the world: NZ, Grand Canyon, Australia's Franklin, Appalachians.

But the world was not ready. Haters were everywhere and even Alpacka wanted nothing to do with thigh straps.

"Why would a packrafter being going down a class 3/4 river like this, ever? Not only that, these guys are wearing drysuits because the water is cold - and I can't imagine a lightweight hiker wanting to bring one along on his trip. 

Seriously, I think you've missed the point of this video completely. It's about paddling in big groups that have sufficient resources to perform a rescue and using the skills that are taught in whitewater rescue classes properly. It's not about boat design.

I've kayaked big water for years and backpack/hike and the combination of packrafts and big water is a bozo no-no in my opinion. It seems like the packraft community is rediscovering everything the ww kayak community has known for years about the dangers of ww kayaking. Please stick to class 1 rivers and ponds for your own safety, and don't paddle in cold water without the proper thermal protection."

And a kayaker's response to thigh straps and packrafts in 2009. 

 ‘In a packraft, at least IMO, they seem like more than is necessary even at the upper end of whitewater. IMHO if you feel you need thigh straps you should probably think about improving your technique or further developing your skills. Weather it be reading the water better and seeing the clean lines and hitting them or simply spending more time in the raft, one needs to have skills. Given their design, there are just certain things that will be difficult no matter what you do. eg big holes on big water. These things are already about as idiot proof as it gets. Don't get me wrong, there are probably a hand full of people that could really push what is possible in a packraft with thigh straps, but for most it will simply be a substitute for skill and ultimately not help them in the long run. In fact I'd be willing to bet that most packrafters would not be able to roll a raft even if they were glued into the thing. It is certainly more difficult than a kayak by a long shot. Not to mention much harder on one's shoulders as well.’

But maybe like bad brush and cold water, some of us just felt that these nasty-grams were challenges to overcome and now that they are overcome, I find myself sitting back, older, and trying to just get out of the way.

1. My Packrafting! book is out of print.
2. Falcon Guidebooks sells a new book about packrafting.
3. Thor and Sarah Tingey have transformed Alpacka with a boat for every kind of water and even a mountain bike boat.
4. There are maybe even a dozen other packraft manufacturers.
5. My testosterone has drained away leaving me somewhat flacid when it comes to whitewater.
6. But it doesn't matter because there are plenty of bad-asses out there, 
• including former kayakers and
• hard-core packrafters-first who now use kayaks to improve their packrafting.

It's been great to watch and even greater to be part of it.

My own history with whitewater in packrafts can be covered in six videos. The first couple of videos are sort of accidental. But starting at the end of  2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 I posted on You Tube the greatest hits I'd been involved with each year. 

2008 was the year of whitewater discovery. 
2009 was the year of whitewater exploration.
2010 was the year of thigh straps that made us feel like real boaters.
2011 was the year of extended sterns that felt like cheating.

(January 2000) Taking a Sherpa Packraft down a stream in Pumalin Park, Chile before I'd actually got my butt in an Alpacka.

(January 2008)  Hermit to Havasu with Gordy and Cody Roman in the Grand Canyon. Up to say 2008, Cody Roman and I going down Ship Creek's canyon repeatedly and sniffing out some other runs elsewhere, was about it for whitewater. Then I started paddling with Brad.

(2008)  was the year I finally found someone other than Cody Roman who wanted to do Ship Creek more than once. The music was Radiohead's National Anthem, a song and band Roman introduced to me and the song captured the hectic feel of the early days of whitewater in packrafts. But YouTube stripped the song....so now it's the canned version of what they offer.

(2009) By the Fall of  2009 the packrafting revolution was getting started with Brad, Thai, Luc, Gordy, Tony, Becky, JT and others hitting it hard in Southcentral AK. It was when Tim Johnson and Paul Schauer and Thai Verzone, Class V kayakers all, joined us.

These guys, as Mike Curiak recently wrote, made me feel as though they were "participating in an entirely different sport -- one filled with grace and control and poise, where by comparison I feel like I just bludgeon and hack my way through while trying to survive."

This one doesn't play on phones, I guess because nobody's made enough money yet off the half-century old Beatles classic, Revolution (although it plays on computers in the US). It's worth watching on a 'puter, by the way, with the sound track.

(2010) Ah yes, the struggle with Alpacka over thigh straps. We were the Devil:  dangerous, reckless, a real pain in the butt-boats of Alpacka, but in the end we were right. Maybe, just maybe, our devilish ways got the "Witchcraft" started, a black boat you might catch a glimpse of in this next video somewhere, and that is the ancestral boat of Alpacka's Lips and Gnarwall boats. Or maybe it was really the handful of "Media Feliz" paddlers down in CO that motivated the development. Still, I like to think it was us, the 20 or 30 people in Alaska packraft-paddling Six Mile and Little Su and Ship Creek and Bird that pushed whitewater boat development at Alpacka. But again, probably just my narcissism playing tricks on my ego!

(2011) With the new long stern boats of 2011 it was almost a new sport. It was like in the 1980s when sticky rubber (particularly the Fires) hit rock or when foot fangs and plastic boots hit ice, or when leashless tools hit both rock and ice, whenever that happened. We had the new longer stern boats that erased bandersnatching as a concept and instead launched us out of sticky holes, leaning forward into the modern boats we've known for years. It also ended my year-end video making recaps, as then Luc Mehl and Mike Curiak were there to pick up my stringy end of the tapestry and weave it with finer artistry.

And there we have it. Six footnotes to "Show up and Blow up: Alaska"!

What color should glacier algae be?

This is an article that came out this month in an international journal on microbial ecology. My co-authors include Ganey who did the experiment with chalk dust and McKenzie Skiles of the University of Utah.

I am psyched about it because it was the "Editor's Choice" for their March issue and because it mixes a bunch of science that I like: mathematical modeling, simple experiments, and organisms that live on glaciers.

If I tweeted, I'd tweet this. It's extra neat because it's free to read and the Oxford University Press asked me to post on their blog about glacier algae. That post comes out on Sunday, March 25.

Strangely, perhaps, I have been more absorbed in the statistical analysis of scientific data than outdoor adventures of late, perhaps because.....

Dick Griffith Film Kickstarter

A friend of mine who’s one of the best whitewater boaters I have ever paddled with said that the adventuring community and what we do is like a big, woven tapestry that we all contribute to with our own adventures.

Some contributors add exceptionally colorful, wide and long-lasting patterns. In
Alaska, Dick Griffith has woven a long, thick, and wide band of enriching color.

He’s done this by developing hallmark outdoor sports in Alaska like packrafting, adventure racing, and long-wilderness traverses. And by being a humble, wry-humored, welcoming old guy.

He arguably and singlehandedly started the on-going packrafting revolution.

And adventure racing? Some might claim its roots in New Zealand, but the reality is that America’s first ideas of multi-day multi-sport adventure races arrived the way the packraft and the fatbike did: from Alaska, drifting south like whispers and rumors and dreams of wild freedom.

The Wilderness Classic, Iditaski, and Iditasport -- that’s where American adventure racing--and fatbiking and packrafting--really began, and there at the beginning was Dick, who was, essentially, the only adult in the room at the time.

And while long wilderness treks have become a rite of passage among young people today, Dick’s 400 mile wilderness solo walk from Kaktovik to Anaktuvuk in 1959 marked an early shift from the hunting-fishing-tracked vehicle outdoorsmen of the 40s and 50s and 60s to the self-propelled adventurers of today.

For those of us who know Dick personally, he’s also been an essential component of our social community. Someone who watches out for us. Someone who gives back. Someone who builds trails. Without Dick’s attention and interest the Wilderness Classic would likely have died out decades ago. But over 35 years old it’s the longest running, true adventure race in the world.

By the time Dick came to Alaska he’d already pioneered the use of big inflatables on the Colorado River in the 1940s and mini-inflatables in Mexico’s Copper Canyon in the 1950s. Soon after arriving here he made an epic walk along, across, and through the Brooks Range.

I remember how he described that trip to me when I was in my early 20s, hoping to one day make my own Brooks Range Crossing. He said he started with a partner and three dogs. The partner went lame with bad feet after sixty miles and quit. Later, one of the dogs died. Dick ran low on food and ate the second dog. The third one, he said, got smart and ran off.

Dick did this in 1959, the year APU was founded, the year before I was born.

Before that people had walked across Alaska, but they did it for money, or fame, or glory. Dick did it because, as he once said, “Sometimes a man just has to walk.”

Sixty years later people are finally catching up to Dick. They walk from one end of the Brooks Range to the other, ski long distances, packraft the Grand Canyon.

Today there are a bunch of young Alaskans contributing to the tapestry that is Alaskan adventure. People like Luc Mehl, Bretwood Higman, Thai Verzone, Bjorn Olson. But we all just add on where Dick started, where Dick left his mark, where Dick pointed the way. We’re just dabbing on our own personal touches thinking we’re something new, we’re something special, we’re somehow remarkable.

Maybe we are. But we wouldn’t be here doing it without Dick doing it first.

I met Dick when he was my age now. He was 55. I was just a punk-ass kid, 21 years old. In the intervening years, Dick went on to do a string of adventures: dozens of Wilderness Classics, Iditakis, Iditasports, and back-to-back Crow Pass Crossings. Solo packrafting down the Grand Canyon. Skiing several thousand miles from Unalakleet to Hudson Bay.

At the age in life when most folks settle down to write memoirs, or garden roses, or baby-sit grandkids, or nurse our achy joints, or maybe just pour ourselves a few glasses of red wine and read a book, Dick got up and went, lived a second life beyond his early adventures, adventures that would fill a memoir, after raising a family and in between baby-sitting a granddaughter, mostly living on his retirement from a respectable career as an engineer, sharing books and wine and beer and salads with all of us "orphans".

I showed up at Hope in 1982 for that first Hope to Homer race with just a bivy sack to sleep in. Dick shared his tent with me there at the start.

I’ll never forget the next day. Dick’s adventure partner, Bruce Stafford, dumped Dick’s pack out on Hope’s main street looking for Dick’s “secret weapon”, then hiding a bottle of booze in his pack. Dick just stood back and chuckled and clucked at Bruce. 50 miles later Dick discovered the bottle in his pack and buried it along the Sterling Highway, recovering it on his way home to Anchorage.

Nor can I forget a week after that, limping along the beach of Kachemak Bay when a half-naked George Ripley, the race founder, ran up behind me and Dave Manzer--who’s sitting over there. George grabbed me and shook me by the shoulders saying, “You better get a move on, Dick Griffith’s just 20 minutes behind!”

That got me running, and like Dick, I never run anywhere I can walk.

There are a handful of people—long-time friends and family—who’ve profoundly influenced my life. Dick is one of them. I have been fortunate to have photogenic and willing partners over the years. Fortunate to have the opportunity to somehow justify our adventures with magazine articles and photos, TV shows, even a packrafting book. But I can honestly say that if I’d never met Dick that August evening in Hope over 35 years ago, that I wouldn’t be who I am today.

I’d venture to say that if it were not for Dick, modern Alaskan outdoor adventure would not be what it is today.

I’d venture to say that what young Alaskan adventurers do today, and dream to do tomorrow, well, we owe that to Dick, to what he did in his 50s, 60s, 70s, even his 80s, as well as what he did when he, too, was young.

This documentary will give viewers the opportunity to hear Dick’s wit and wisdom.

It will show him moving and walking in ways a book just cannot.

Dick’s story is an important one, an influential one, one that needs to be told and one that we all want to hear.

Please help support the effort to finish this film.

Firn Line Live at Alaska Rock Gym

This was a fun night. Thanks to Evan and the Rock Gym for making it happen.

What really made it great for me was all the people I knew who were there: Brad Meiklejohn, Luc Mehl, Carl Tobin and his daughter named after Steve Garvy, Peggy of course, Chris Flowers, James and Nancy Brady, Rod Hancock, Clint Helander, Sam Johnson, Charlie Sassara, Tony Perelli and Becky King, and a bunch more.

Being live in front of them was comforting and a warm reminder of how great our community is in Anchorage and Alaska.

http://thefirnline.com/episodes/episode-21-the-firn-line-live-roman-dial/