2nd annual BRAK, part 3

Could it be.... Blue sky? Really?

YES!!! Then, no. The sun came out for fewer than 15 minutes, then the rain started again.

The good news so far is that my rain gear (other than my boots) has held up rather nicely so far. I have heard mixed things on rain gear-- some insisting that you have to pay a lot for true, breatheable waterproofing, some saying it can be done on a bargain. I chose to believe the latter, and bought an entire Driducks set for around $20. And even though the bottoms split at the seams before I even got here, I put my faith in the top. Fortunately, through several days of rain, it has faithfully kept me far dryer than last year's jacket did which soaked through after only a few hours.

Day 2 brought more rainy creek crossings, and not much else. Signs of wildlife, to be sure, but no actual wildlife (other than birds, snowshoe hares and arctic ground squirrels.) Here are some moose tracks next to some wolf tracks:



And here are some bear tracks! I was thinking grizzly at the time, but now that I think about the size of the prints, it was probably a black bear.


Would I rather encounter a black bear or a grizzly? Grizzlies are obviously much larger, and arguably more aggressive. However, they are not known to hunt humans for food, whereas black bears are. They also (at least according to conventional wisdom available on the Internet) are likely to call off the attack if the human plays dead, since the attack is probably a territorial show of force rather than one necessarily lethal.

(One more reason I preferred hiking above the treeline, as i did last year, is that I only had to worry about one kind of bear. Black bears don't tend to occur without trees to hide behind.)

Toward the end of day 2, I ran into this.






Suddenly, that thing I said a while back about always being able to walk on one side of the river was disproved by counterexample. Basically, at this point the stream curved to the right, and narrowed so the current was very strong. On the left of the stream is a cliff face, and to the right is a very steep hill. The hill is composed of head-sized boulders at the beginning, and abruptly switches over to muddy scree (going right to left... or in the above picture, going from below the pic to the middle. I'm standing in the boulder field.)

I had three options:

1. Laterally scale the cliff face on the left, hoping to find shallow water or a jumping off point to the right.

2. Climb the boulder field, hoping to get around the obstacle by going over it.

3. Jedi-walk across to the scree, slide down, and hope for good footing or a passable crossing at the bottom.

I decided to try option 3 first. Then I chickened out, climbed down, and went for option 1. I was able to hop across to the cliff face, at which point I lost my footing on the slippery rocks and fell in. Waist deep. I scrambled out like a cat in a bathtub and found myself on the left side, standing on a slippery boulder in a strong current, hugging the cliff face. To progress, I would have to leap from my current position to a an even slipperier looking boulder, beyond which, i could not even be sure i could continue. Bad idea.

So I climbed back up, steeled myself, and went for option 3 again. Then I chickened out again and talked myself into option 2. However, after a brief climb, I only succeeded in creating a rock slide, getting banged up by rocks and ending up right where I started, only now a little more shaken and bruised.

Nothing left to try but option 3. I Jedi-walked across the slope and was able to grab some plants to prevent sliding all the way down. Then I eased myself down slowly, using the plants as handholds (knowing that I would need to use them on the return trip as well). Unfortunately, I eventually realized that this path was taking me down to the slipperier looking boulder encountered above in option 1. So I gave up.

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Location:Brooks range, Alaska

2nd annual BRAK, part 2

Following Trembley Creek wasn't terribly difficult at first. Other than the constant rain, and the fact that both of my boots were leaking, the main obstacle is the creek crossings. I don't know, geologically, why this happens, but streams like this generally have a side you can walk on (usually a rocky or gravelly "coast") and a side you can't. For example:


You can stumble along fairly easy on the right, but sooner or later (normally sooner... usually around each bend) the situation will reverse, and you must cross the stream. Less than a mile in, I stopped counting stream crossings after the 10th one. Luckily, many had enough rocks I could hop to and from, and the ones that didn't were no more than shin deep as a rule, but my boots were taking on 32 degree water at each cross.

Again, because of the rain, I didn't take many pictures, but here are a few:








Covered a little more than six miles in this stretch, which probably doesn't sound like much, but isn't far below par for the Brooks Range. Maybe could have done better were it not for breaks for dumping water out of my boots and wringing out my socks :)

UP NEXT... could it be... sunshine?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Brooks Range, Alaska

Second annual Brooks Range ass-kicking

The story once again begins on the Dalton Highway, the road recently made famous by History Channel's Ice Road Truckers. They cleaned up the sign since last year.


As you can see, the road was rather slick thanks to rain. The forecast called for chance of showers, but rain all day it did. So I didn't stop much for pictures on the drive up, but fortunately I saw most of this stuff last year (see last year's Alaska blog entries).

I had two routes in mind, a difficult one and a more difficult one. The latter route was still in the forested area of the Brooks Range and began with a river crossing, and since I prefer not having bears lurking behind every tree and also being dry, I decided to keep trucking north, beyond the famously dangerous Atigun Pass, to the top of the range and then hike in from the north. The forecast in this area called for cold temperatures and possibly some flurries.

Well, when I got there, it looked like this:


It was flurrying something fierce.

Undeterred, I geared up, hiked a few miles toward the mountains, camped, slept, froze, and woke up to this:


Maybe it was the snow talking, but at this point, I was welcoming the thought of river crossings and bears lurking behind every tree, as long as the rivers weren't too high and the bears were nice and warm. So I backtracked to the car and drove south back toward the more difficult route. I can now say that I have driven up Atigun Pass in a snowstorm.


Shortly south of Atigun, the snow changed over to rain. It was still raining when I arrived at the launch point for the second route, so I waited in the car for a while hoping it would pass. Eventually I had to accept the fact that the rain was here to stay, so I geared up and set out.


Had to bushwhack a bit to get to the river crossing. Disclaimer time: due to the rain, I did not take nearly as many pictures as I should have, and those I did take suffered from the poor light. I wanted to put a picture of the river here, but this is the best pic I have. It was only about 30 feet wide and knee-deep, so definitely passable.


Side note: those of you familiar with the story of Chris McCandless know that one of the reasons he died was that he did not take into account the seasonal impact on the arctic rivers. This definitely weighed on my mind, knowing that this (and other) crossings may be more dangerous on the return trip.

Having passed the first obstacle, it was time to enter the spruce bog. This is kind of like tundra bog with the major difference being if there is a bear or moose around, you won't know until you're really close to it.


Does a bear shit in the woods? Well, this one did.

After sloughing through about two miles of spruce bog in the rain, I made it to what would be my trail over the next few days: Trembley Creek.



TO BE CONTINUED... with more foggy, rainy pictures!

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Location:Brooks Range, Alaska