Mokihinui Mission

Forrest had lined me up with Allen O’Bannon, the New Zealand Branch Director of NOLS. He’s led the notorious Drysdale River NOLS course in Western Australia's Kimberly, where it’s so hot it cooks your brains and the crocodiles wait to eat the students on the last day. He’s taught NOLS courses in Alaska, Chile, Wyoming, and Africa. He’s worked on “The Ice” and traveled the world.

He is familiar with water as a canoeist, kayaker, and big rafter. Allen’s hearty, easy laugh recounted many a story of friends we had in common, but it took packrafting to bring us together.

We emailed back and forth about possibilities, settling on a few days around Murchison for Allen to get oriented with the new-fangled, thigh-strapped rafts and for me to get oriented to the New Zealand waters. We’d follow this with a hike in to the West Coast’s Mokihinui by way of a run down its south fork. We tossed around ideas, the most interesting one being a hike over the “Thousand Acre Plateau” by way of a trail out of the Matiri River Valley to Poor Pete’s Hut, then dropping down the Larikin Creek.

Allen made some phone calls to all kinds of characters, including a guy who’s collecting all 1000 huts on the South Island. The man-of-a-thousand-huts suggested a trail from the west over the Glasgow Range followed by a bushwack along Mountain Creek. The loop aspect had a certain appeal.

Allen also visited with Murchison kayaking legend Mick Hopkinson.

“Mick says they’re working on an old trail up to Lyell Saddle. They’ve cut all the logs to there and made it darn near wheelchair accessible most of the way. He also says that nobody’s run the South Fork. It’d be a first descent.”

Good news there.

After running the sweet little Glenroy canyon, Allen and I met Rob in Murchison, a bearded, muscle-bound, twenty-something, hunter-fisher, climber-boater, NOLS instructor, then ran the shuttle and made camp in Lyell. In the morning we packed up and fairly ran to Lyell Saddle on a trail suitable for mountain biking.

Gold miners had left their mark in the Lyell Valley with the track, a cemetery, old cart and wagon wheels , shovels, bottles, and even a moss covered shoe. The trail led to the ridge where we cruised along the tops among stunted trees covered in bryophyte mats. In places gym-sized mattresses of sphagnum moss, twenty feet and more across, billowed across the trail. Weird Dacrophyllum trees, looking like something out of a Dr. Seuse book, poked out of the bush adding to the overall weirdness.

The Mokihinui is a river with a price on its head. The power company Meridian may soon have the govt’s go-ahead dam the Mokihinui Gorge, drowning what is an exceptional big-water, pool-drop run. It’s a northwest coastal river, the next big one south of the Karamea and has both limestone and granite in its headwaters. Its central valley, above the forks, is broad and flat, the bottom of a drained earthquake lake from 1929. It’s also a so-called “Ecological Area” designation, so putting in the dam is creating a stink.

That’s why the trail has been re-cut with plans for an extension: to mollify the out-cry for drowning what’s arguably one of the better Class III/IV paddles on the West Coast.

Rob, a keen naturalist and observer pointed out New Zealand Falcons and parakeets, noisy Tuis, Bellbirds, White-eyes, Rifleman, and the startlingly tame New Zealand Robin on the trail and as we rested on our last break before descending into the South Fork.

“Doesn’t matta what why we go,” drawled Rob, a South African by birth with a Canadian dad and British mom who’s grown up in New Zealand, “’cause we got gravity workin’ for us.”

Unfortunately he was drawn by gravity to the slimiest, stick-infested, slot of a creek he could find and he darned well wanted to stick with it.

“Dear me,” muttered Allen in a few spots on slippery logs over shallow pools.

While we’d made the saddle in 5 hours, a good 18 km, the next “gravity assisted” 7 hours gave us only 3 km, this including the last 2 hours in the South Fork where it was deep enough to float the raft with our packs.

My feet were beat from the slimy rocks and water of the NZ bush-boy’s route, so the literal “pack rafting” (as distinct from “packrafting”, which is an actual form of boating, aka “butt-boating”) was welcome. Where the water was deep enough to packraft, we pulled over, set up the tents, and cooked over a small fire. The sand-flies were manageable, the forest beautiful, and a rare Blue Duck, an endangered New Zealand whitewater duck (like the Harlequin in Alaska and the Torrent Duck in Paragonia), sat just downstream. It was my first and I was excited.

They are slate gray colored, with a mallard-like body, a purplish breast, white bill, and red eye. Not as handsome as a Harlequin or as svelte as a Patagonian Torrent Duck, but still a neat bird. Rob said that he’d seen fifty on one trip!

In the morning we paddled off downstream, from about a mile or two below Slate Creek. Rob pointed out a pair of Blue Ducks .

Above Mountain Creek we paddled very shallow water through narrow slots and chutes, the kind of stuff only a packraft can manage and good fun in spots, like a 20 foot water slide.

Still, and as usual, the kayakers, Allen and Rob, looked mostly like a house pet getting a bath. They wore that forlorn look of a dog standing in the bathtub, soaked and wondering, “When is this going to be over so I can get back to what I really like to do?”

But I loved it. Lots of wiggling down narrow slots and careening off boulders. Classic PR 3 stuff. Still it was exhausting, spinning and digging and humping the boats over the shallows, pushing with the arms while still in the boat.

If I’d managed to pack lighter, it would have been better.

By the time we got below Mountain Creek the soft limestone of the “Thousand Acre Plateau” dropped down and crossed the creek bed. The water disappeared. For every tributary that entered, a similar flow seemed to drop into a limestone pit. Soft and slippery on foot, the rock abraded to the boat bottom. Still we managed a couple long slides into pools.

“These are like California slides with the water turned off,” quipped Rob.

Below the limestone beds, boulders again made up most of the creek but the water did not return until Larikin Creek. We paddled deep, still pools, each with a single enormous brown trout as long as my arm. One pool had an enormous eel, too. Below each pool we’d walk along sieved out “gravel bars” made of basketball-sized boulders. The creek had disappeared.

At Goat Creek Hut the water seeped back above the bed. Downstream we beat against the afternoon headwinds across lazy loops of the South Fork as it flowed through ghost forests, drowned in the last earthquake and now piercing the river like a devil’s maze of fence posts.

We pulled out at the Mokihinui Forks hut by 7 PM, 9 hours of paddling and wiggling and portaging past sieves, big and small, having made the first descent of the Upper South Fork of the Mokihinui (and the Upper Upper). But honestly it’s not worth repeating.

Better to just hike in the trail from the end of the Seddonville Road, the normal take-out for the Mokihinui, maybe 5-7 hours to the Mokihinui Forks Hut and then raft down the half dozen big-water Class III-IV rapids back to your car. The Mokinihui Gorge is a classic packrafting river of pool drop architecture, and beautiful glass-green waters. It’s clean and safe, and fun. I never felt apprehensive or even nervous really, except on the third big rapid.

We scouted three from shore and the rest were boat-scoutable. It’s on this river that I finally learned how to paddle the big boulder studded NZ flows by eddy hopping to boat scout your way down, a watershed moment for me, really.

It was fun to watch Rob and Allen start off sneaking every big rapid in the morning then plunging down the meaty bits by the afternoon as they discovered for themselves what the little boats were capable of.

When we got back to Murchison Mick asked us about the Upper S. Fork run.

“Not worth repeating,” we said, wrinkling our noses and shaking our heads.

“Yea,” he smiled knowingly, “you gotta kiss a lotta toads before you find a prince.”

Murchison, NZ

If you have a packraft and you are coming to NZ, Murchison should be your first stop. The campground is full of Class II and III boaters and it’s simple to jump on a shuttle for one of the dozen or so runs within a thirty minute drive from the riverside campground.

It’s a four hour drive from Christchurch to Murchison and if you get an early start then there’s time to do an easy run on the Buller, like the Doctor’s Creek run. There’s stuff to play on and a pretty canyon and it’s good to loosen up after the long flight on something really easy. It’s a big river, especially after rain, but perfectly suited for a packraft. I got my first moving current roll on the Doc Creek run and Allen O’Bannon, my substitute for Forrest got his packraft roll on it, too.

We’d forgotten to put thigh straps in one of our boats and when we switched I felt awful without them, like I was going to fall out of the boat at any minute. The seat in Allen’s boat without the straps (it had the D-rings, just no straps) had been cut free and moved forward and big ole’ Allen felt cramped – until he had the thigh straps in.

Anyway, “Once you go strapped, you’ll never go back” seems to be the sentiment of those who’ve used packrafts with straps. The control and the feeling of wearing your boat is really a qualitative change in boating.

One of the NOLS instructors that Allen knew, Dale, was at the campsite and told us it had been raining for the last week. The Buller was up around 140 cumecs (cubic feet per second – multiply by 35 to get cfs) and the Matiri was running at a really fun level he said.

“It’s a good next step after Doctor’s Run,” he said after I’d said that run had been pretty boring. Dale introduced us to Alex, a kid from Montana who’d come to Murchison to learn how to Kayak and was up to come along.

The Matiri was super fun, about 1,000 cfs or so, I reckon, in its short little gorgy section. The last bit was also good, a classic NZ giant boulder garden, I guess Class III-. It took us two hours and the day was beautiful. I did some more rolls, but it always took me one try to get it. It was satisfying to be rolling in a river.

Unfortunately Allen lost track of his jacket, and while he drove back to look for it, Alex invited me to join him and a couple young women and a Mexican engineer, Luis. Later I’d learn that Louis now works in Oz where he misses his homeland's food. Go figure. Anyway, this bunch were piling in to their mini-vans to run the Granity Creek section of the Buller.

Granity has a big powerful solid Class III, maybe Class III+ at the 115 cumecs we ran it at. The drop runs between a rocky cliff and a low alluvial bench. One of the girls was a kayak instructor and she was a bit worried about me in my packraft, especially after I flipped while surfing and didn’t roll it up. When we climbed out to scout it she said I could walk around it to the left, but it looked perfectly doable, sort of like Campground Rapids multiplied by five in volume, length and wave height, but pretty straight forward and fun.

Well I missed her line immediately, right at the top, hit a small hole there, flipped and pushed out of my boat, holding on to it and my paddle while I got flushed all the way down the 100 m run.

Jumping back in my boat when the water settled down, with Lois nearby giving me back-up, I paddled to shore where we regrouped and asked if they minded that I was going back up to try it again. They said I was a good swimmer and that they’d set safety at the narrow spot.

I ran it clean and down the middle and over the tops of the six foot waves in the beautiful blue water. It was great. Unfortunately all my roll attempts failed on the Buller today.

We went back to camp and picked up Allen, who’d found his jacket with cell phone and wallet hanging on a fence post just down from our take-out on the Matiri where some passing motorist on the country road had hung it for its owner to find. New Zealand really is like the US was in the 60s.

Dale had said the lower “Matak”, short for earthquake run on the lower Matakitaki, was his favorite run here. It’s short but technical and has a big drop and high volume, several thousand cfs it looked like to me.

At the put in it looked like the Karamea had, with big boulders from the 1929 landslide. Ferrying over to a rock I caught my left pinky nail on a tie down that I’d stupidly placed along the side of my boat and ripped the whole nail right off to the base. Eddied in the middle, I thought about just ripping it off but felt that would hurt, so I asked Dee, the kayak instructor, if she had any tape. She said no, but I remembered Allen had my black paddle with duct tape and he gave that to me and I wrapped my finger.

The rest of the run was good fun and the final crux big rapid was full-on wavy and powerful. Louis got knocked over by a wave near the end of the run and couldn’t fight his way back up, so he swam. Alex pulled him to shore, Allen grabbed his paddle and I grabbed his boat. Alex then paddled over to me and we emptied Lois’ swamped kayak and Alex towed it to shore.

It’s a great scene here, with kayakers from all around the world and all pretty much intermediates or beginners, so there’s no posturing or pretention. Everyone is here to learn and have fun and the concentration of short runs is amazing and when the sun shines it’s really beautiful.

Murchison offers a wonderful introduction to New Zealand paddling for kayakers and packrafters alike. Of course these are all roadside runs, none needing more than a ten minute walk, but to get a feeling for the water and your skills is super. A wet suit and paddle jacket is all most people wear, unless it’s raining, it seems enough.

But the real boating for we packrafters lies out there on the tracks and in the bush. Allan and Rob and I are heading out for a first descent mission in the S. Fork Mokenui for three days.

Should be interesting.

"Arctic Circle" -- An Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic

It's that silly season, the one for planning next summer's adventures.

Already, people are asking for info about a packraft trip that Jason Geck, Jay Jay Brooks, and I did back in 2003 we named "Arctic Circle". It's a cool trip, maybe one of the all-time coolest ones that I have done with a packraft. It's also part of an on-again/off-again guidebook idea, so I thought that I'd just post it here.

I'd welcome comments and ideas on the format and presentation. Ultimately the guidebook might just find its home here on the "Roaming Dials", as I don't fancy publishing it myself and doubt anyone out there does either.

Enjoy your own planning and dreaming for next summer.

Epic Eric Rules!

Prepping for an international adventure demands much.

First there’s the big wad of cash you drop on air travel. Not to mention the guilt that comes with unloading a year’s worth of car travel in fossil carbon into the atmosphere on one self-indulgent trip.

Second there’s the planning with limited resources. If you’ve been there before, then you’re at least partially calibrated and know what to expect, what you can do and more importantly what you can get away with -- but still you need to read guidebooks standing around at Barnes and Nobles as well as other people’s blogs. You have to search on-line images and Google Earth. Then you have to pore over your old maps covered in notes and numbers from last time, skim your journals for insights forgotten. Most importantly you must balance ambition with real-time and real-life, prepare yourself for not actually doing even half of what you plan/hope/dream – unless you’re Andrew Skurka, who somehow plans exactly what he’s going to do a year in advance and then actually does what’s never been done before!

Next, you have to prep your gear and pick the best of many piles sifted and tested and weighed piece-by-piece, since there’s a weight limit on baggage set by the airlines and by practicality. I like the adage, “Bring half the clothes and twice the money that you think you’ll need.” But there’s nothing in that adage about gear. Maybe a new one: leave all your climbing gear but take all the butt-boats?

I want to bring three packrafts equipped with thigh straps (one for me, two to share) and maybe three paddles (one to share, one for steep creeking, one for a traverse); a helmet and a PFD (maybe two?); lots of straps and dry bags (one 65 L, 4 15 L, one 5 L); a dry suit and rain gear; a pack; a sleeping bag (down or synthetic?); and which shelter? There are those pesky West Coast sand flies, but there I’ll be running short creeks with huts, so maybe a shelter for an east side, Alaska-style packrafting traverse would be better suited? And all these decisions in our little East side house crowded by the holidays and me being so very self-indulgent, packing and prepping in a little corner so as not to remind everyone that I’ll be leaving on my own in two weeks.

But I am very excited to be heading out with my new pimped out ride. Very excited.

For me, new outdoor sports are exciting both for the sense of discovery in traversing new landscapes in novel ways and for realizng the imagination of equipment to make those trips happen.

In the 80s in Fairbanks it was Dick Flaharty of Apocalypse Design and Clem Rawert of Clem’’s backpacking who made me the superlight clothes and "glacier sandals" I used in the early Wilderness Classics with lots of good ideas from notorious Doug Buchanan of the Sandvik House.

In the 90s it was Dana Designs making gear for adventure races and a couple year period when I worked with Patagonia as a fabric tester for the R1, R2, R3 fabrics, new Capilene, and waterproof/breathable fabrics.

Most exciting, though, was working with Tom Ness of New Tribe and Steve Sillett in the early ought’s when we were designing and testing “magic missiles” for “canopy trekking” across redwood, giant sequoia, Eucalyptus regnans, and lowland tropical rainforests. Crossing from tree to tree with no help from the ground in the most magnificent forests in the world, -- using gear and techniques that we invented -- was so very satisfying that it still breaks my adventurer's heart that Sillett and I had a falling out, one you will not find in Richard Preston’s The Wild Trees, a biography of canopy scientist Steve Sillett.

So now at the brink of the teens there’s a handful of us developing packrafts for whitewater, dreaming up mods and enlisting skilled gear folk to realize them. It truly is the Golden Age of packrafting.

Yesterday Epic Eric Parsons added some really awesome design modifications to my boat. We spent hours in the beating heart of the Conaway Industrial Center where Eric turned my imagination into reality with rapid and repeated buzzes through his sewing machine. It was so impressive to see him cut and sew and smile in the chilliness that prevents his workspace from becoming just another sweat-shop.

Dylan Kentch dropped by to pick up a bomber triangle-fame pack for his upcoming hemis-tour from Seattle to Argentina. Dylan and Eric have been doing some really grand mountain bike rides in the wilds of Alaska on totally contrasting bikes: one a simple, stripped down fixy and the other a fat tired low geared tractor.

Eric’s dog Lucy makes every visitor to the cold-sweat shop welcome and Eric has all the goods and the knowhow to pimp anybody’s ride, be it rubber-knobbed, urethane-coated, or bindingly-boarded.

He added 4 more inches of Velcro to my Llama's center closure, the one with the seat freed, together with a big handle to rip that 5 inches of velcro free should need arise while upside down with an Eskimo roll gone missing. He sewed two inches of Velcro on the freed seat so it’s now adjustable. He sewed in spray deck “waist pockets” that hold two-liter Platypus bags as air dams at the top of the spray deck. He attached the red Yak’s seat six inches forward, in a better spot for thigh-strapping control. He also replaced some worn out Velcro on the Yak and another Llama -- basically repairing a sizeable portion of the Dial Armada in dry-dock.

So I got him a foot long Subway sandwich and made it a meal with chips and a drink and bribed him to let me wedge in front of all those others out there who are desperate for a guy who sews for a living and can negotiate a Juki or a Brother through crusts of Velcro, down couloirs of Cordura the way Jeff Conaway skis and Brad Meiklejohn paddles.

In short, Eric helped make my dreams come true, and anytime someone does that you must repay them handsomely.

This thanks’s to you Epic Eric.

Thigh straps and rolling continued.

First off, they are rolling their packrafts in Europe!

Secondly, Alpacka's Sheri Tingey says in the Alpacka Forum to make sure you use Urethane-based D-ring patches.

Third, Luc Mehl has now got his roll at about 90-95%. His friend Dmitry was near 100% last week. I lag at a solid 50%, but managed several easily with 10 pounds in my boat: 5 pounds between my knees and lashed to the floor and 5 pounds behind my back in place of a backrest, again using the 15 L WXTex dry bags and accessory lash straps.

Also over at Backpackinglight.com in the packrafting forum is a good post by Richard Nisley on lightweight dry bottoms and top for cold weather packrafting instead of a full-on dry suit.

Pimping my ride.

This packrafting thing is eating me alive.

I'm paddling when I should be skiing -- and in a pool, no less, -- buying expensive, new stuff, like a 3 oz Tenkara fly-fishing rod to fit inside a 2 lb Sawyer packrafting paddle, and an airplane ticket to New Zealand. But most importantly I am modifying my boat, working on a Llama to make it the best wilderness whitewater boat in the world.

Now that I have rolled a packraft multiple times (more than a dozen!), and at about 50% success (albeit in a pool,) I wanna do it again and again. It's a fantastic feeling to be upside down and then roll on up, and "plop"! Super satisfying. It's like I have fallen in love with my boat all over again.

Last night four of us rolled over and over again in the APU pool.

Dmitry even rolled on his off-side, Luc rolled six times in a row, I rolled with a 5 pound load strapped between my knees, which, of course, Dmitry was able to do with strapped on his bow. Awesome!

By the way, Luc used Alpacka tie-downs for his thigh straps to save weight (1/4 oz vs. 1 0z) and money ($5 vs $15), but one ripped in half and off the boat last week! Word is they are only good to 300 lbs of force. He's back to the heavy D-ring wide diameter patches the rest of us have.

The Llama I am setting up for a month in New Zealand is a center opening, mid-oughts model (2006? My red boat is a 2005), pre-zipper, pre-backrest, pre-codpiece. Of course, it has thigh straps in the locations proven to work with a roll. The foot end of the thigh strap is near the floor, nine inches from the center bow seam, and the rear attachment is just above the valve, 33 inches away, remarkably similar to the inseam length of the Levi's I wear as I write this, which, as I am 49 years old, do not sag.

These thigh straps weigh a pound stock, so I took a tool to them and clipped off the big plastic buckles and trimmed off the 2-inch webbing, but left the loops that once held the plastic buckles and sliders. To attach the thigh straps I used shortish (like 12 inch) friction buckle accessory straps, 3/4 inch wide. Much lighter, and much more versatile than sewn on 2-inch. The thigh straps now weigh 11 oz. But they lack the quick release mechanism.

Next I set the seat free by cutting the stitches, then sewed the rear tab on the seat to the forward tab on the boat, conveniently moving the seat forward to just below the rear thigh strap attachment.

So what benefits does this give me? First it centers me in the boat making the bandersnatch less likely and allowing me to use a shorter paddle (197 cm, Werner Powerhouse, 37.8 oz, 4 piece), as I now sit forward and paddle over the narrowest part of the boat. The old placement of my seat put me paddling over the WIDEST part of the boat. This way I lighten the rear end of the boat, balancing the boat better, allowing use of a shorter paddle, and opening up gear storage space in back. It should reduce bandersnatching -- I checked this on Six Mile's 2nd and 3rd Canyons a month or so ago with my red boat and it's certainly true -- a centered seat equals a more balanced boat.

Ask anyone about Alpacka design issues and most mention that the Alpacka is too "back-heavy".

There are three typical responses to this design flaw:

(1) "Put weight on/in the bow." I think this is a a sub-optimal solution in whitewater. I need a light boat that responds quickly to my paddle strokes, so I eschew weight in general.

(2) "Make a bigger butt, or better yet, just make an inflatable kayak." I, for one, like the design of rounded bow and stern as the boat spins and turns more quickly and makes for a more novel craft. Besides, I can't afford a new boat.

(3) "Sit forward." Now, that's a solution I can agree with. Check out most other single-person boats and vehicles and see where the driver is located -- in the center.

The problem with the current Alpacka design is that the seat is so far back and glued in, that scooting forward sets up the bum for a bang on the bottom -- OUCH!

But in a standard, stock boat, sliding the seat forward means nothing to push against for the back, so there is no means of wedging yourself into the boat. Wedging into the boat is why Alpacka insists that you get the smallest boat that'll fit. But I find smaller boats are less stable than bigger boats. Still, "swimming" around inside a big boat gives poor control. That's where thigh straps come in.

So now that I am anchored in a big boat and don't need to shove my feet against the bow and my butt against the stern I can center the seat. To extend my legs, I slide off the thigh straps by extending my legs and let my feet go to the bow. Sweet!

So "What about a backrest?" you ask, loving that second toilet seat of your late-oughts model boat. You could either buy a "Fjord Explorer" seat, glue some 2 inch velcro on the boat and seat to keep it behind you as a new, removable backrest, and/or purchase one or two 15 liter P.O.E. WxTex dry bags and fill them with something soft, like your sleeping bag and sleep clothes, then glue in a single "strap plate" to secure the vertically oriented dry bag (glue the plate on the inside center of the rear-most seam).

Two strap plates on the floor of the boat, between the now bent knees held in position by thigh straps also allows a second 15 L POE WXTex dry bag that holding a tent and other camping gear/food to be secured near the center of gravity. The idea is that I am moving my gear off the bow and into the boat. There's still the opportunity for a bow load, but it is a bit smaller and by getting all the gear situated closer to the center of gravity, I can roll a loaded packraft. In the pool I tested this with five pounds and rolled it easily.

I doubt many are still reading such technical esoterica, but very soon I'll sew an additional two inches of velcro on the center opening of the deck making it more water tight. I will also have fixed the chronic Alpacka design flaw of sewing a draw string end to the outside edge of the waist velcro by using a second stitch. More importantly, abstracting the important design feature of the Meiklejohn commerbund, there'll soon be a bigger velcro closure on the top of the deck waist/belly-opening.

Finally, I will install a pair of pockets, one to either side of the waist/belly-opening at the top of the spray skirt. These will hold an air-filled 2 Liter Platypus. These Platypusses act as a water dam, obviating the need for a codpiece and keeping the easier wet (and dry for that matter) entry of a center opening boat.

Alpacka Rafts are now in a new stage of aftermarket design: aftermarket modifications now taking place with groups of individuals experimenting and learning from each other, as Thai Verzone, Hig Higman, Tracey Harmon, and I did last Saturday at Alaska Raft and Kayak (pic above).

Jon Krakauer is one of us, and by “us” I mean a generation of outdoor adventurers.

As Vern Tejas once said, “Into Thin Air is a book about a mountain I climbed. Into the Wild is about me.” This isn’t to say that we are all McCandless-types, but that the motives of McCandless resonate with many people, from late Baby Boomers through Gen-X.

My old friend Mark Stoppel called me recently and said, “When I was a kid, I read a lot. Back then, Steinbeck and Mark Twain were my favorites. But now, it’s Krakauer. I bought his latest book and can’t put it down.”

Indeed, Jon Krakauer tells not only “our” stories in Eiger Dreams, Into The Wild, and Into Thin Air, but more recently he informs “us” – the somewhat self-indulgent outdoor adventurer community -- with his less commercially popular but deeper works, Under the Banner of Heaven and Where Men Win Glory. These books explore fundamental topics of humanity, religion and war.

As probably the most successful outdoor writer of our generation, Jon lives modestly in Boulder, CO with his wife and drives a Subaru. He shuns the spotlight and seeks no credit or recognition for the good he does in the mountain, Nepalese, and fundamentalist Mormon communities. He’s virtuous and talented, physically and intellectually, much like the main character of his latest book, Pat Tillman in Where Men Win Glory.

I got the book soon after it was published in September, and knowing my own greed for Krakauer lit, I tried to ration the book and stretched the first third out until Thanksgiving weekend, when I laid into it for real.

Its messages about government manipulation and the cruelest chaos of war, “friendly fire”, inform and sadden. I learned about pro-football and a really good kid who grew into a great man, cut down by too much fire power in inexperienced hands. The background and history of conflict in Afghanistan is something I would not have picked up elsewhere.

No, this isn’t Into the Wild, as the critics will point out. It’s more important than that.