What Killled McCandless after all?

Theory on Chris McCandless’ Death

By Ronald Hamilton

http://www.christophermccandless.info/Ronald-Hamilton/ronald-hamilton-intothewild1.html

Into The Wild Essay

The Silent Fire:
ODAP and the death of Christopher McCandless

I first became aware of the Chris McCandless story in 2002, when Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild was being offered as an example of contemporary narrative nonfiction in a literature course at the university where I worked at that time. The book had been placed on Reserve in the Library, and I can remember happening upon it and leafing through it pages idly for a moment, before suddenly thinking to myself, with strange certainty, “I know why this guy died.” At the time, I literally knew nothing more than that about the Chris McCandless story.

A more comprehensive reading of the book and further investigation into my initial sense of certainty about the cause of McCandless’ death seemed to demonstrate that neither my initial response, nor my certainty as to the cause of his death were unfounded.

I respectfully submit the results of that investigation to this forum.

Vapniarca

The reason I felt that I knew what had killed McCandless with such certainty had to do with the fact that I was familiar with an otherwise obscure story of a concentration camp that had been located in the then German-Romanian occupied region of Transnistria, in the Ukraine, during the Second World War. The camp, known otherwise as “Vapniarca” (a place name) was notable because it was the only camp during the entire wartime period in which the inmates actually staged a food strike – and beyond this – where such a strike was actually “successful.” The reasons underlying the strike had to do with what was called “horse fodder,” or “pea fodder,” a kind of plant that had been stored to feed to the horses belonging to the Soviet Army’s animals. After the advancing Germans and their Romanian allies had occupied the Ukraine, and when other food sources began to grow scarce, these stores of the abandoned “pea fodder” were in turn given to the Jewish inmates at the concentration camp at Vapniarca by the region’s conquerors. Ostensibly, this fodder then became a food source for the prisoners to grind into flour and bake into bread. Essentially, this was both a cruel experiment and a death sentence, and the Jewish victims in time began to realize this.

Lathyrus Sativus

The Indian physician Charaka of Triputa was the first to recognize it about 400 B.C., a plant that he called “Kalayakhanj.” At about the same time the Greek physician Hippocrates mirrored Charaka’s discovery when he observed, “all men and women of Aions who ate peas continuously became impotent in the legs and that state persisted.” Centuries later, the Bhave Pahesh, written in India in 1550, noted that, “Triputa pulse caused men to become lame and crippled, and irritated the nerves.” By 1671 the Duke of the German State of Wurtemberg had issued an edict that use of the flour of the plant lathyrus sativus was prohibited from use in making bread “because of its paralyzing effect on the legs.” By the early 1800’s, the Spanish painter Franciso de Goya had produced an aquatint entitled “Thanks to the grasspea” which depicts starving poor people eating a porridge made of grasspea fodder, one of whom is lying on the floor before the group and who has been crippled by the plant. In France, the consumption of lathyrus sativus was banned by 1829, and in Algeria in 1881. The precise mechanism involved in the crippling (especially among young males) by the legume was (and is) poorly understood, and yet it had become recognized, as the years passed, as an insidious and dangerous botanical killer. In fact, it was lathyrus sativus that comprised the “horse fodder” which had been given to the inmates at Vapniarca to bake into their bread allotments. What, exactly, is lathyrus sativus? Essentially, it is a member of an ancient food source family known as “pulse” crops which have been consumed as food by human beings for thousands of years. (“Pulse” is a derivative of a Latin word meaning “thick soup.” It is thought that the cultivation of pulse crops dates back for over 10,000 years). Grasspea, or lathyrus sativus, is a high yielding, drought resistant legume that occupies the same general family as soybeans, peas, and similar kinds of plants that produce seeds that are rich in proteins and oils and which have been an important source of food for both humans and animals for many centuries. What is unusual about the grasspea, however, is that, under certain conditions, it can not only be nourishing, but also dangerously toxic.

Lathyrism at Vapniarca
Much of what I learned about the internment camp Vapniarca came to me by way of correspondence with the son of a Colonel Savin Motora, who was an administrative official at the camp during World War Two. Motora’s son, (also named Savin) now in his 80’s, is a resident of what is today Romania, and he graciously sent me a great deal of printed information about his father and the Vapniarca story that has been compiled by an agency of the Romanian government. At Vapniarca, the Camp Commander, Ion Mergescu, along with the encouragement of a German officer known only as Haupsturmfuher Kirdoff, recognized the “pea fodder” as lathurus sativus. In what was little more than a crude experiment to study the effects of the toxic legume upon a captive population on a mass scale, they issued the decree that the fodder be turned into flour for the prisoner’s bread. Very quickly, a Jewish doctor and inmate at the camp, Dr. Arthur Kessler, understood what this implied, particularly when within months, hundreds of the young male inmates of the camp began limping, and had begun to use sticks as crutches to propel themselves about. In some cases inmates had been rapidly reduced to crawling on their backsides to make their ways through the compound. Kessler eventually approached Colonel Motora, whom he knew to be sympathetic to the plight of Vapniarca’s prisoners, and confided his fears about what he had deduced was the cynical and deliberate experiment in poisoning and mass extinction. Kessler explained to Motora that once the inmates had ingested enough of the culprit plant, is was as if a silent fire had been lit within their bodies. There was no turning back from this fire – once kindled, it would burn until the person who had eaten the grasspea would ultimately be crippled, and in the most severe cases, die. The more they’d eaten, the worse the consequences – but in any case, once the effects had begun, there was simply no way to reverse them. Motora was genuinely horrified by this news. As it turns out, Motora was one of those rare individuals who was a truly selfless deus ex machina. Sensing the dangers of direct confrontation over the affair with Mergescu, he set off north for a meeting with the overseer and Governor of Transistria, one Gheorghe Alexianu. In his absence, Dr. Kessler organized a strike among Vapniarca’s inmates, and they refused to eat any further consignments of the dangerous “fodder” that was being given to them. For a brief time, the camp entered into a state of virtual hell. Inmates were punished, some by being suspended headfirst into deep holes, other by being simply shot outright for their food strike. Yet they stood steadfast, and continued to refuse to eat the suspect grasspea.

In his audience with Alexianu, Motora pointed out that the inmates at Vapniarca were being cynically and deliberately fed a highly toxic plant in a ghastly experiment. Probably he reminded Alexianu that the tides of war were beginning to change and that it was only a matter of time before the Russians advanced and overran them all. Already Nazi General Friedrich Von Paulus had been surrounded and decimated at Stalingrad. With the Russians now moving forward, the Axis armies in Transistria were beginning to feel like ants on a hot plate. Soon enough, the Germans and their Romanian allies would be pushed back across the Dniester River and down in to Romania proper. And ultimately the war would end with Germany’s defeat. Then there would be occupying forces and tribunals set up to consider wartime criminal acts. Behaviors would be scrutinized, atrocities examined, and the worst offenders shot or hung. Doubtless Motora reminded Alexianu that it would not be kindly looked upon if the opposing Allies were to discover that the Governor of one of the provinces administered under the Germans had deliberately been feeding poison to camp inmates in some sort of hideous and malevolent research. Clearly Alexianu understood the import of Motora’s point. He ordered that the feeding of the “pea fodder” to the inmates at Vapniarca be stopped, and appointed Motora to replace Mergescu as the commander of the camp. (It turned out to be too little, too late. Alexianu was prosecuted at the end of the war for crimes against humanity. He was condemned to death, and executed by firing squad on the first of June in 1946 at the Fort Jilava Prison on the outskirts of Bucharest.)
As for Motora, although his subsequent service at the camp was relatively short, it was benign and compassionate. In many camps, as the Russians advanced, the remaining Germans and Romanians would execute the inmates wholesale before retreating. For his part, Motora organized those inmates at Vapniarca who could still walk and led them on a march back toward the Dniester River and the relative safety of Romania proper. “Your job is not to guard them,” he told his Romanian escort, “it is to protect them.” Along the way the column was approached by a group of men on horseback called “Vlasovs” who were a renegade group of Russians who had aligned themselves with the Germans. They lowered machineguns on the column, crying out, “Jid Kaput.” Motora stood his ground. Brandishing two pistols he declared that as a high ranking member of the Nazi party, (which he was) he could command the Vlasovs to let the column pass. The Vlasovs capitulated, and ultimately all of those marching under Motora’s protection escaped and were spared. After the war Savin Motora was awarded the highest honor bestowed by the State of Israel upon non-Jews, called the “Righteous Among the Nations” award. It is estimated that Motora thus saved at least half of the surviving ambulatory inmates of Vapniarca, over 500 human lives. His name is inscribed upon the “Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous” at Yad Veshem, which is Israel’s national Holocaust memorial.

How Lathyrus Sativus Kills

Even today, at this moment, lathyrus sativus is maiming, crippling and killing. It is currently estimated that more than 100,000 people worldwide are suffering from irreversible paralysis due to the consumption of the plant. The disease is called, simply, neurolathyrism, or more commonly, “lathryism.”
One may wonder how this can be happening, and why it continues to happen.
Dr. Arthur Kessler, who was the Jewish physician who initially recognized the sinister experiment that had been undertaken at Vapniarca, was one of those who escaped death during those terrible times. He retired to Israel once the war had ended and there established a clinic to care for, study, and attempt to treat the numerous victims of lathyrism from Vapniarca, many of whom had also relocated in Israel. It was through his efforts and those of fellow scientists and physicians in a host of other countries that the exact nature of the toxin in lathyrus satius was finally isolated. The scientific name for the neurotoxin is “beta-N-oxalyl-L-alpha-beta-diaminoproprionic acid.”
More commonly, a simple acronym is used: “ODAP.” As in the cases of rattlesnake and spider venom, and scorpions, wasps and bees, or the agents in peanuts that cause anaphylaxis, the actor involved in the poisonings caused by latnyrus sativus is a protein (not an alkaloid) toxin. This difference between the two is not insignificant.
Typically, if lathyrus sativus comprises about 30 percent of more of a person’s diet for several months, lathyrism is inevitable. But in some cases, much smaller amounts bring about the onset of paralysis in much shorter periods of time. Why this occurs remains unclear.
The core problem with the protein neurotoxin ODAP is that it affects different people, different sexes, and even different age groups in different ways. It even affects people within those age groups differently. As yet, there is no explanation for this. The one constant about ODAP poisoning however, very simply put, is this: those who will be hit the hardest are always young men between the ages of 15 and 25 and who are essentially starving or ingesting very limited calories, who have been engaged in heavy physical activity, who suffer trace-element shortages from meager, unvaried diets, and consequently suffer micro-nutrient deficiencies in zinc, copper, Vitamin C and Vitamin A. Why this is so is not known, yet neither is it, particularly in the case of Christopher McCandless, insignificant.
How ODAP brings about paralysis is understood. Glutamic acid, an amino acid, is one of the most common excitatory neuron-transmitters in the human body. The amino acid acts as a chemical messenger between nerve cells, docking with the cells and inciting the nerve to “fire” its electric impulse. Things called AMPA receptors on individual nerves act a little like lightning rods, in that they are primed to receive the prompt signals from glutamic acid, much as a lightning rod is positioned to draw lightning. The protein in ODAP simply over stimulates the AMPA sites. The nerves are then like lightning rods in the middle of a lightning storm; they simply get overheated to the point of burning out. They literally die. Once the AMPA receptors die, the nerve cell can no longer receive the glutamic prompts to fire. If the process is repeated often enough, and long enough, the entire system begins to fail. It isn’t clear why, but the most vulnerable neurons to this catastrophic breakdown are the ones that regula leg movement. When a neuron dies, it cannot be brought back to life – regenerate. And when sufficient neurons die, paralysis sets in. With lathyrus sativus the ODAP over stimulation never gets better; it always gets worse. The signals get weaker and weaker until they simply cease altogether. The victim experiences “much trouble, just to stand up.” Many become rapidly too weak to walk. The only thing left for them to do at that point is to crawl.
At the time of the publication of Into the Wild Jon Krakauer felt that McCandless had mistaken two species of wild legumes called hedysarum alpinum and hedysarum mackenziei. The former is believed to be harmless; the latter said to be toxic. Krakauer first thought that McCandless had eaten the “toxic” plant erroneously. Later he came to believe that he hadn’t mistaken them, but that the “harmless” alpinum itself had concentrated toxins in its seeds, something which had heretofore been unsuspected. Krakauer had sent samples of two plants, hedysarum alpinum and hedysarum mackenziei to the University of Alaska to have them examined for what he believed may have been the toxic agent that essentially killed Chris McCandless by weakening him to the point that he could no longer hunt, forage and, eventually, even walk. Krakauer felt that the toxin may have been swainsonine, an alkaloid, the same toxic agent found in locoweed.
The person who did the research was Edward Treadwell, who at the time was a graduate student in the Chemistry Department of the University of Alaska. In that study, Treadwell could find no evidence of an alkaloid toxin in either species of the hedysarums. Later, in 2008, Treadwell and a colleague, Dr. Thomas Clausen, again investigated the possibility of alkaloid toxins in both plant species, and in an article which appeared in the Ethnobotany Journal (vol. 6, 2008) after examining the roots, stems, leaves, flowers and seeds of both hedysarum alpinum and hedysarum mackenziei, the pair again concluded that no trace of an alkaloid toxin appeared in either plant species.
It is extremely important, at this point, to note that the plants in question were examined for an alkaloid toxin, but not a protein based one. With my understanding of the protein toxin ODAP that is contained in lathyrus sativus, and the hunch that this – rather than an alkaloid toxin – may have been at the core of what befell Christopher McCandless, I emailed Dr. Treadwell.

Dr. Treadwell,
Are you familiar with the toxic plant poisonings of the forced labor camp prisoners at Vapniarca in 1943?
The reason for this question is this: the toxin in the lathyrus sativus that was fed to the prisoners caused severe crippling of the lower extremities of the victims. The plant, a legume – also commonly called wild sweet pea or grasspea contains beta-oxalyl-diaminoproprionic acid (beta-ODAP) as its toxic agent.
Perhaps Jon Krakauer was mistaken when he speculated that swainsonince was the toxic agent in hedysarum alpinum which was responsible for the death of Christopher McCandless. Of course your research thus focused on the plant looking for alkaloids, but might a toxic protein have in fact been a contributing cause in McCandless’ death?
What gives rise to this question are McCandless’ statements, “much trouble just to stand up”’ and “too weak to walk out,” which rings strangely of paralysis of the lower extremities, or lathyrism, which is what beta-ODAP, via lathyrus sativus causes.
In reading “Into the Wild” this possibility comes to mind in a rather haunting way.
ICARDA (the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas) estimates that over 100,000 people around the world are currently permanently paralyzed to some degree because of lathyrism.
Any further information you may wish to provide would certainly be most welcome.



Dr. Treadwell responded thusly:

Thank you for your recent correspondence, and I am sorry that it has taken so long for me to respond. I must admit that the presence of ODAP in the hedysarum seeds is intriguing. I would have to say that it is a possibility. All of my work was done on extracts of the hedysarum plants (roots, leaves, stems), where the plant material was soaked in some organic solvent to extract the organic compounds from the solid material, which was then discarded. (Much like making tea – the water seeps into the tea bag and brings out the “tea flavor” from it). Although I do not know this for sure, ODAP probably isn’t very soluble in organic solvents and hence might have remained with the rest of the solid material.
Second, the “tests” I used for alkaloids basically consisted of spraying a TLC plate of the extract with reagents that turn colors on a plate when they react with an alkaloid. Once again, ODAP being an amino acid, it might not have behaved like most alkaloids.
Something that is outside of my area but is certainly pertinent is the relationship between the genus lathyrus and the genus hedysarum. Usually the more exotic secondary metabolites occur in only a limited number of genera that are closely related. The closer lathyrus is to hedysarum, the more likely this hypothesis. (The fact that they both belong to the same family isn’t all that helpful, given the immense size of the family Fabaceae.)
All told, I am not sure if this is a very satisfactory response, as I cannot definitively state that hedysarum alpinum and/or mackenziei contain /do not contain ODAP.
It is possible.



It wasn’t until 1962 that the toxic protein in lathyrus sativus was finally isolated and identified. The food value of the plant runs at over 28 percent. That’s twice as much as wheat. It can be three times as productive as soybeans per acre. It will still be standing two months after wheat has grown a mere four inches, shriveled for lack of rain, and died. Lathyrus sativus smothers out all competing weeds. In certain situations it is a cheaper and better source of protein than rice, fish, wheat, soybeans or maize. Napoleon had problems with lathyrus sativus when it was fed to his horses. In 1972 in China and in the late 70’s in Bangladesh, tens of thousands of humans were permanently disabled, most of them left quadriplegic, the silent fires burning in their nerve ganglia.
By the early 1990’s, Canadian scientists in Manitoba had genetically engineered hybrid lathyrus sativus plants that contained less than .2% of the toxic ODAP, yet still retained the qualities of drought resistance, vigor, saturation tolerance and fertility. Efforts to refine a toxin-free strain of lathyrus sativus continued. In the late 1990’s, after 15 years of work and more than a million dollars of research, the Syrian scientist Ali Abd El-Moniem, working in Aleppo, developed a strain that is virtually toxin free. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) receives funding for such continuing efforts from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and from donors to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which is a consortium of international agencies that works collectively to protect the environment, reduce poverty in developing countries, and to support research into agricultural productivity.
And yet hundreds of thousands continue to be crippled and to die in a “silent” epidemic that almost none of the rest of the world knows about. Why? In many places on the planet where the legume thrives, populations are increasing by three percent each year, but agricultural production by only seven tenths of one percent. In these places there are no serviceable feeder roads and virtually no other supportive infrastructures. There is no exchange of information. Marketplaces are rural and isolated, limiting the exchange of goods, services, and supplies. There are few schools, and fewer still that teach about local agricultural products The relief efforts tend to be lost in all the intertwining agencies and complexities. There are not enough services because in some cases there aren’t enough healthy people to provide them. There are not enough teachers, enough agronomists, enough economic specialists, sociologists, anthropologists, or linguists. Unfortunately, lathyrism continues to be a very “low profile” affliction of the human race. This fact does not lessen the tragedy – in fact only heightens it.
ODAP and the Hedysarums

Emboldened by my hunch, as well as the response from Dr. Treadwell, I approached the chair of the Chemistry research laboratories of my university. He and other individuals there were intrigued enough to look into the possibility that one of the major contributing factors in the death of Chris McCandless might actually have been lathyrism, through the agent of the protein toxin ODAP. What follows are, in part, the results of that study:
“The seeds and roots of both hedysarum alpinum and hedysarum mackeniei were obtained from the Arctic Alpine Seed Company in Marsh Lake, Yukon, by the Chemistry Department of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Samples of pure ODAP as well as the plant lathyrus sativus were also obtained from Dr. S.L.N. Rao, in New Delhi, India, whose ongoing research into the horrors of lathyrism poisoning had been underway for many years. Dr. Rao’s lathyrus plants were of the variety that contained extremely high levels of the ODAP toxin. These samples would serve in base line comparisons.
To consolidate the research, consistent footprints for ODAP were first established on silicon test plates. The plants involved were all first frozen in liquid nitrogen. After this, each was ground into a fine powder. The powder was then placed into micro-centrifuge tubes and mixed with a solution of ethanol. Then, after being refrigerated for 20 hours, the assorted powders were spun on a centrifuge to separate a solid pellet from the liquid extract. The liquid yet remaining was spotted across the bottom two centimeters of a silicon test plate, and the plate placed into a glass tank to minimize evaporation or contamination. Capillary action next drew the liquid slowly up the plate until, after a pre-determined time, the assorted substances established their respective protein footprints. (In this case, ‘footprint’ refers to a purplish-colored circle of the extracted substances that appears at a certain height on the plate. Different substances travel up the plate at different rates. Thus, the presence of circles in the same area of the plate indicates that the same substance is also appearing).
After the plate was placed in a dehumidifying hood for drying, it was sprayed with the anhydrous solution ninhydrin to bring out the color of the specific markers. The results were then ready to be viewed.
A number of proteins were tested for the sake of comparison, including (in addition to the purified ODAP and the lathyrus sativus extracts,) substances such as arginine, isoleucine, praline, tryptophan, glycine, valine, and for purposes of balance, legume family members which are known to be non toxic (such as common Wando garden peas).
The tests were repeated many times to ensure the consistency of the results, and when they displayed uniformity in their results, the conclusions are as follows:
Neither the roots of the hedysarum alpinum nor the hedysarum mackenziei indicated the presences of ODAP. However, both the seeds of the alpinum and the mackenziei indeed tested positive for ODAP. In fact, the seeds of both of the hedysarum plants showed even higher concentrations of the deadly protein toxin ODAP than was contained in the tissues and fibers of the lathyrus sativus plant itself. Only purified ODAP showed a higher concentration of the toxin. But the fact remains: not the roots, but the seeds of both hedysarum alpinum and hedysarum mackenziei actually contain higher concentrations of the toxic protein ODAP than were contained in the test samples of the lathyrus sativus. Probably, as is the classic case in nature, as the growing season had progressed from July into August in 1992 in Alaska, both plants had begun to concentrate
more and more of their poisonous products into their seeds to discourage potential predators.”

It seems important to mention here that although the roots of the alpinum plant have been consistently reported as safe to eat, and that it is dangerous to confuse it with the mackenziei and to avoid eating the latter altogether, at no point has any mention been made that the seeds of the alpinum might be toxic. It’s difficult to explain why, other than to speculate that either the Native Americans, foragers, survivalists and botanists have tended not to eat (or test) the seeds at all, or possibly tested the seeds at times of the year before they had grown highly toxic, or else had been able to supplement their diets with enough other sources of nutritious provisions to basically counteract the effect of the seeds in question. (It takes five to six weeks for the toxin to begin to exhibit its effect, and then only when the seeds have been the principle food source in an individual’s diet). A number of factors, in other words, could have come into play. But the bottom line is that until the experiments conducted on the alpinum and mackenzeiei seeds, it had never before been known that the seeds of both hedysarum species contained an accumulative toxin.

The conclusion in this seems apparent: Christopher McCandless had contracted lathyrism. Whether or not he had confused “safe” hedysarum alpinum with its reportedly toxic cousin hedysarum mackenziei is moot. Instead, he managed to find himself at the nexus point of every line for those destined – or doomed – to be most affected by ODAP poisoning, and the results for him of eating the hedysarum alpinum seeds were inevitable. He was a young, thin man in his early 20’s, experiencing an extremely meager diet that was deficient in specific trace elements and vitamins such as vitamin C, A, and magnesium; who was hunting, hiking, climbing, leading life at its physical extremes, and who had begun to eat massive amounts of seeds containing a toxic protein. A toxin that targets persons exhibiting and experiencing precisely those characteristics and conditions, and which is found in even larger quantities in the seeds of hedysarum alpinum than it its notorious and deadly cousin, lathyrus sativus. For Chris, the result seems to have been forgone. And disastrous.





It might be said that Christopher McCandless did indeed starve to death in the Alaskan wild, but this only because he’d been poisoned, and the poison had rendered him too weak to move about, to hunt or forage, and, toward the end, “extremely weak,” “too weak to walk out,” and, having “much trouble just to stand up.” He wasn’t truly starving in the most technical sense of that condition. He’d simply become slowly paralyzed. And it wasn’t arrogance that had killed him, it was ignorance. Also, it was ignorance which must be forgiven, for the facts underlying his death were to remain unrecognized to all, scientists and lay people alike, literally for decades. Under the proper circumstances, in other words, the seeds of hedysarum alpinum cause lathyrism, a crippling and commonly deadly disease.
Chris McCandless seems to have sensed what was happening to him without understanding precisely how or why. What brought about his death was lathyrism, induced by the ingestion of the toxic protein agent called ODAP.
Hopefully, to his thousands of advocates and admirers, there is now provided some measure of final resolution as to this young man’s demise in the wild.

Note: I humbly harbor hopes that this information, coupled with the death of Christopher McCandless, might in some ways be put to positive use both to publicize and address the ongoing problems that the affliction of lathyrism is posing to hundreds of thousands of individuals in the poorer nations of the earth.

Respectfully submitted,
R.C. (Ron) Hamilton
Alamogordo, New Mexico
rcslainte@gmail.com
December 10, 2012

Biographical note:

I am retired staff member of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a published author. I have won numerous awards for fiction, nonfiction and poetry including: The O. Henry Award, the Golden Quill Award and the Westmoreland Award. I am the co-editor of a textbook series for gifted Korean schoolchildren that was funded and published by the Government of South Korea and a published book The Seventy Seven Year Good Deed. I have a second book, Jeff and Jimmy: A Vietnam Epistolary currently in preparation for publication.
I have participated in triathlons and distance foot running races and have performed as a multi-instrumentalist in a Scottish and Irish traditional folk music band for over 30 years.

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.

This comment came in and is worth posting. It broke me out of my workaholic, nose-to-the white-board teaching schedule this Fall:

 "Roman, Imagine you must spend the rest of your life alone, recreating within the rectangular bounds of just one page of the Alaska Gazetteer. You can never leave. You have unlimited money, food, gear, and shelter, but no motorized craft or vehicles. The villages, towns and cities of Alaska are erased. Which page do you choose?
 Mike in Fairbanks"


 Since I only get one page, it better cover a lot of terrain.

It's unfortunate I have to spend my life alone, but I'll pick a place where there'll be memories of my wife and children, where our son was conceived and Peggy and I continue to return.

A region where like-minded people might cross paths with me and there're not so many people that I ignore them (like I do downtown), but few enough that when I see them and they see me they are willing to stop and share time with me.

The Page is the one with the central Brooks Range bounded by the Koyukuk and Colville, page 136. It looks bad in the Alaska Atlas and Gazetteer, but includes my favorite USGS 1:250,000 quad for the last 35 years, Survey Pass.

Great question Mike.

I like questions.

Any others?

Bhutan Point and Shoot

Packraft Festival 2012: Brooks Range Basecamp

Last year, 2011, 15 of us flew out to Pt Heiden and traversed the Alaska Peninsula to Chignik over Aniakchak. It felt like a packrafting festival and several of us hoped to replicate the big group in wilderness and packrafts again, although Aniakchak's frequent flier miles would be hard to beat (all 15 of us went for "free" last year).

This year, a bunch of us -- including Gordy, Thai, Toby, Ole, Joe and me -- convinced others to come. Thai convinced Clif, Toby convinced Stephen, Ole invited his brother Dennis, Joe brought Kim and I convinced Peggy and Mike C that a basecamp  in the Alatna Valley would be fun for all, Class I-V.

Scheduling for late June, so as to miss the bugs and maybe catch some run-off, worked surprisingly well -- although we needed a bit more water. Some of us went 12 days without bug dope or head net, although the five who walked out in early July hit the bad bugs head-on as they walked to Anaktuvuk from the Arrigectch.

We ran six creeks and rivers and made four summit walks and scrambles, doing wonderful overnight and three day trips out of a luxurious, bear-proofed basecamp near the mouth of Arrigetch Creek on the Alatna River in Gates of the Arctic Park. We hiked and boated and bathed and scrambled and fished and ate well and had fun in the sun. It was neat to have a tent set up to come back to and take a minimalist approach to the overnights in real wilderness with superlight packs, adjusting the gear and food as we learned what worked and what we forgot.

There were great animal trails and no tussocks, firewood and a bit of rain to bring the highlight run up to a good packraftable level -- Aiyagomahala Creek (aka "hot Springs" and "South Arrigetch" Creek) below the Hot Springs. Above the Hot Springs are wonderful drops (Class IV-V) and boulder gardens and even granite slides, but low water prevented us from running much of the upper highlights. Below the Hot Springs were a couple hours of Class III and then a 200 foot a mile section of Class IV+ with five Magic Mile/Little Su type drops, all situated in a beautiful valley of steep walls and spruce forest.

Arrigetch Creek's lower canyon was Class IV bedrock pool drop filled with big granite boulders for boat scouting. Unfortunately the bedrock is schist and as we (Toby, Joe, and I) got lower in the canyon the granite was less abundant and sharp rocks became apparent, eventually disemboweling my boat :(

Awlinyak was super fun, mostly Class II (a spot or two of III-) with an approach directly over a scenic Arrigetch peak called Ariel. The climb is an amazing, improbable scramble and Gordy said it had the best view of any summit he's been atop. We did that loop in three days, two nights, sleeping at the Forks of Arrigetch Creek and at the put-in for Awlinyak.

Unakserak also had a neat scramble on our way to its Class II shallow canyon. It has been a good float for parties coming over the tussock fields east of the Alatna, toward John River and Anaktuvuk, but not the only choice: Kutuk and Pingaluk are more sporty.

Kutuk is an odd, orange color due to a permafrost blow-out in its headwaters according to Dirk of Coyote Air. It is  Class II+ and a bit more appealing if travelling over from the tussock fields. We hiked up and ran its lower five or six miles.

Best looking of all (but too low for us, although I scouted it w/Skurka in 2010) is Pingaluk. Coming from Anaktuvuk and floating the John all the way to Wolverine avoids the tussock fields (mostly -- until heading into the upper Pingaluk for an hour) and offers up the most sporting of the three mid-Alatna creeks (Unakserak, Kutuk, Pingaluk) looking like Class III on beautiful polished boulder gardens. As a consolation prize (we ran none of Pingaluk) on the way back from Pingaluk we climbed a bump overlooking our base camp  for a beautiful view of the Arrigetch.

Overall it was a great trip with 12 days of sunshine and two of rain, great people and good food.

We flew in and out with Coyote Air after driving north on the Dalton to Coldfoot -- much cheaper than flying out of Bettles via Fairbanks.

Next year, I am thinking a road-based trip between Honolulu and Healy along the Parks Hwy: there are like 15 fun creeks and rivers from Class I to Class IV including the Bull, the three forks of the Chulitna, Honolulu, Jack, Cantwell, Windy, Sanctuary, Riley, Nenana's multiple sections, Moody, and more. A scheduled two weeks with planned events like "Class IV Fridays" and "Class II weekends" in June before the Classic, and open to all who want to come, sounds like a good plan for the 2013 Packraft Festival.

Anybody interested in that?

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.

Valdez to McCarthy Wilderness Classic

Download the kml here if interested

Ok so this really doesn't start in Valdez, but rather at the elbow on the Richardson Highway at Thompson Pass. And it doesn't finish in McCarthy either, but rather at the Lakina Bridge, 15 miles west of McCarthy.

As a 130-135 mile traverse of the Eastern Chugach in the Wrangell St. Elias National Park Wilderness, it is indeed a classic. It's as burly as the Nabesna to McCarthy route is fast and easy. Nabesna to McCarthy is open and dry, with essentially no brush, lots of open gravel bars and animal trails, and a handful of ATV trails near Nabesna, Chisana, and McCarthy. Valdez to McCarthy can be slow going, mostly when dealing with alders and devils club. It is wet, with few gravel bars, and no ATV trails. It also has spectacular views, valleys, mountains and waterfalls.

I did it solo from July 8-- July 12, 2012. I think a week or ten days would be a good length, as well, although heavy loads in the Bremner and Little Bremner Valleys of Very Bad Brush will be challenging.

In addition, it was the bushwhacker's route for the 2012 Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic and while I found it a really neat route, worth doing again, a number of others either tried it and didn't  find it worth racing again, or didn't finish it. In particular, the brush along the Bremner and Little Bremner is EPIC and so was the Lakina Brush, perhaps surprisingly.

From a packrafting perspective there are 4 pieces: 1) The Tasnuna River (described in Embick's "Fast and Cold") 2) Crossing the Copper 3) Running the Klu (low volume steep creek leading to meandering easy float in picturesque valley, turning into steep bouldery river) and 4) crossing the Chitina. I would suggest crossing the Lakina and hiking to the road as soon as possible as the walking along the Lakina is really horrific in my opinion.

Starting at Thompson Pass most of us contoured on really nice, open benches eastward until the second or so gully heading down. We linked snow-filled gullies and open alder patches (record breaking snows of 2011-2012 led to long-lasting snow) down to the creek that feeds into Heiden Canyon. That creek above Heiden Canyon has many open meadows linked by good animal trails leading to the open flats and gravel bars below Marshall Pass.

Those of us who stayed on the river right side of the Upper Tasnuna had the best going, although the deep snows burying the brush made for really good travel, suggesting that late June might be good in other years, taking advantage of deep snows that cover the brush to make the going fast and easy.

We dropped into a side canyon of glacial fed trib from the south that I was unable to ford so stayed river left until just above the confluence with the main Tasnuna. There I put in -- the others traveling near me put in lower. It was Class II+ maybe III (for those of you who know the PR system, it was PR3-4) with cold water and big waves but very few holes for a mile or two. I put in right around the 900 foot elevation on the side stream.

The 20 miles below the upper section was smooth sailing, although afternoon headwinds pushing up from the Copper were a bit bothersome. With the couple other big glacier tribs coming in the Tasnuna is a real river, fast and cold but easy. There are very few trees in the valley, most likely because of the steep slopes and high snow that crushes them under avalanches as they grow. Some beautiful peaks and waterfalls to the south rise above the carpets of alder on the valley walls.

It took us about six hours to make the 12 miles to the put-in (race pace!) and another six hours to get down to and across the Copper to the Bremner Dunes.

Crossing the Copper is straightforward channel hopping and bar walking. Make sure you do it in the evening when the winds have died (after six PM perhaps?). It would be hard to do in the big winds and a bummer to lose your boat.

I'd been to the Bremner Dunes 15 or so years ago on a Chitina to Cordova hellbike trip with Paul Adkins and Bob Kaufman using mtn bikes and Sherpa Packrafts so I looked forward to hiking them.

I hit the dunes at their most upstream end and walked along the edge with the vegetation until a bear trail took me in and I crossed a channel that comes down from the Peninsula. Fifty yards of brush and I was back to dune walking along the Bremner. The sand is firm and delightful and at night the light and the mountains and the wildness of the place is magic. The Bremner Dunes are certainly among the neatest places I have been in AK, mostly for the scenery , the views the good walking , and the novelty of the sand.

Walking upstream on river right of the Bremner I linked really good moose and bear trails in open sandy blow-outs for a couple of hours. These gave out eventually when the sandy ridge that separates the willow choked wetlands at the base of the mountains from the mixed alder/willow brush along the  Bremner narrowed. The best going was along the beaver trails on the Bremner side, although occasional forays inland to creek gravel bars and meadows led to good walking, too. Still, my best categorization for the stretch to the Little Bremner is as Class III-IV brush (very little V until you reach the steep corner when even on a relativley well-defined bear trail you must climb over and slip under on hands and knees perhaps big alders and some small cliffs).John Lapkass reports that crossing the Bremner to the other side is no better. Josh Mumm waded out into the foot deep waters and quicksand to the islands and made good time, using his boat to get back to the mainland. Mixed in with all the northside brush, especially at the sloughs of the Little Bremner, are nasty, knee-deep bog-slogging stretches.

We found that walking up the western channel of the Little Bremner to get to the Little Bremner proper was expedient: Cris-crossing a small shin deep stream for an hour or two to the Little Bremner. Walking up the river right Little Bremner is best. Bar walking gives way to bar hopping gives way to canyon after a couple of hours and it's here where you might want to head east for the magic 3000' contour line and contour into the East Fork Valley on its south side. The walking there is excellent and spectacular alpine tundra with great views of waterfalls in what seems all directions.

I stayed on river left (climber's right, i.e. south side) of the East Fork all the way to the pass over to Harry's Gulch (this is opposite what the Falcon Guide to Wrtangell St Elias says). The north side never looked appealing and I made very good time (check the graphic at my blog http://packrafting.blogspot.com/2012/07/2012-wilderness-classic.html).

Descending Harry's Gulch in late June would likely be similar to what we encountered: fast snowpack from avalanches. Down near the two tributaries at about 2500 feet the brush returns. The first trib has a 400 foot cascading waterfall that can't be seen well from below or above, but can be seen from across the creek. In any event, right around this 2500 foot contour stay river left as the Harry's Gulch creek starts canyoning-out and getting very steep. I linked meadows and clear passage to the climber's left of the big waterfall, not immediately left, but up a shallow gully just before it. It was one of the highlights of the route for me, as it was brush free to the top of the waterfall, across a snow bridge above the waterfall and then all brush-free travel from there and into the next valley east and up that and over into the Klu. The views were as good as the walking and it highlights what people fly into these Chugach to experience.

The pass into the Klu was full of new snow from near 3000 feet on the wet southern side to about 4000 feet on the drier northern side. This is another neat area.

I was able to put in on the Klu at 3800 feet which was running perhaps a bit low that morning at about 150 cfs. For a couple miles it is a steep  creek, drop pool architecture, with some pretty sharp rocks, maybe Class III (PR 3) in places. More water it would be IV-ish. I ran it in my decked scout with a Sawyer paddle and would have preferred my real whitewater paddle and a bigger boat. There was no wood in this stretch and it's all runnable by an experienced creeking packrafter, even on its 200 foot/mile section.

About where the first major trib comes into the Klu from the soiuth, the Klu cuts into a bunch of willow and the going is weird and sieved out by willow brush. After this section the river opens into a beautiful valley with very picturesque side valleys and isolated spruce. The going was mellow enough that I almost fell asleep. Around 3000 feet the Klu heads north and then northeast and starts dropping faster and is full of granite boulders. The volume is quadruple what it was above the first southern trib and it feels like a small river. There is lots of beetle killed spruce here and it's been washed onto the corners by floods. I never had to get out for any but it does keep your attention.

By the time the Klu heads east again at 2700 feet it is pretty much continuous Class II+, feeling a bit like Class III. I had a dry suit, but no helmet nor PFD nor partner and wanted those for this section. I was nervous and wanted a bigger boat and better paddle (I'd broken my Sawyer bade off the shaft and fixed it with a strap and a trekking pole) as the river was maybe 750 cfs and felt like the filler on Little Su at that level. I had originally planned to run the Klu and the  Chakina with a whitewater-skilled partner, but they had all bailed on me, and as I paddled down in my little Scout all alone I was glad that they hadn't come and we had not committed to the Klu-Chakina in July. The water is beautiful and fun but it drops steeper and more constricted.

I got out at the first major trib on river left, downstream of Coal Creek, at about 2500 feet. I was happy to get out and start walking up this trib.

The walking on the climber's right side was terrible. Luc Mehl and Josh Mumm, who did not float all the way to this unnamed creek, cut the corner and said that the walking on climber's left after cutting the corner was "not bad". It took me 2-3 hours to get up and above the lower canyon.

This creek has some spruce and good willows for a fire before heading high into the Steamboat Hills, and over those and down. There's a benchmark called "Shut" on the USGS topo just north of the extreme headwaters of Steamboat Creek (named on the map). Just east of the Shut benchmark is a shoulder and I followed steep tundra to alders to spruce to a burn to the banks of the Chitina through some pretty slow brush. I left the pass on the south side of "Shut" at about 9:30 and reached the Chitina River itself by 2:00 PM. That's like 5 miles and 4500 feet down in about 5 hours or so.

The Chitina crossing was easy, even with a bit of wind, and I climbed the easternmost, lightly vegetated open bluff on the north side, then headed northeast-ish to get to the Lakina.

My advice would be to cross the Lakina as soon as possible and get to the Road. The going along the Lakina itself was as bad as along the Bremner, in my opinion.