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When I heard that Erin and Hig of Ground Truth Trekking were taking their kids and hiking and packrafting around Cook Inlet, I dropped them a line and asked if I might be able to join them for part of Turnagain Arm.  They were glad for the company, and so I planned to meet them as they came in to Hope, and proceed from there.  I got the call a couple weeks ago, that they would soon be getting to Turnagain Arm.  So, last Tuesday I gathered my gear and got a ride down to Hope, with the idea that they would arrive there at some point that night based on their progress so far.  As with most plans though, things didn’t go as expected, and Chickaloon Bay’s thick mud was proving to be more challenging than expected.

I spent the first night camped at the mouth of Resurrection Creek and waited for Hig’s call.  That first night, after staking out the tent and cooking dinner, I just sat and watched the geese out on the flats and enjoyed sunshine while I listened to music and triple checked all of my gear.  The night was colder than I expected, and I barely slept.  When the sun came up and the tent warmed up enough, I was more than happy to sleep in. Eventually Hig called and said they were still on their way, and probably would be ending their day in Hope.  We agreed that I would hike towards them and meet at Halfway Island, between Hope and Gull Rock.

Not wanting to carry all of the food I had brought with me, I stopped and talked to Billy, a recreational gold miner camped in the RV park waiting for the season to open on the 15th.  He agreed to watch my box of food until I returned with Hig, Erin, and their kids.

From there I set off toward Halfway Island by walking down the road through the still closed Porcupine Campround to the Gull Rock trail, and then on to just before the board walk section of the trail.  It was there that I cut off the trail and bush-wacked down through last year’s devil’s club to the rocky beach.  The tide was still quite low, and as I looked out toward Halfway Island, there was only one small trickle of a channel that I would have to cross, no more than six inches deep.

My big concern though was the idea of walking out onto the mud flats.  Having lived in Alaska all my life, I’ve never heard anything but bad about the mud flats, from the story of the lady who drowned in the 80s when she got stuck and drowned by the incoming tide, to the urban legend of a man so stuck in the silt that a helicopter ripped him clean in half trying to lift him out.  The stories, both real and imagined, are all based on the mud flats quicksand like silt.  You can take a step, and in seconds be stuck up to your waist.  Then, the suction is so great that you simply can’t get free.  Combine that with the 20+ foot tides in the Anchorage area, and it’s a short time before you’re a goner.

So with all that weighing heavily on my mind, I extended my trekking pole and poked at the mud.  It sunk in a short ways, but then found purchase.  With that I gingerly stuck my foot out beyond the rock and onto the mud and poked it with the toe of my shoe.  It gave a slight wiggle as if I’d just poked a bowl of Jello.  I stood there for a moment and continued to consider my options.  The tide was much lower than I was, and judging by the water line, I could venture out a little ways, and even if I got stuck and the tide came all the way in, I would still have most of my body above water.

With that rationale comforting me to some degree I stepped out onto the mud with all my weight on one foot.  The ground wiggled but I barely sunk in an inch.  I placed my next foot forward with the same result.  Feeling a bit braver I started to slowly walk forward, probing the ground in front of me with my pole and listening to the SCHLORK SCHLORK SCHLORK sound of my feet.  Before I knew it I was to the channel, then through it, and then standing on the gravel shore of Halfway Island.  I’d crossed a few hundred feet of mud flats and I hadn’t sunk in even to my laces.  Maybe I would survive this trip after all.

On the island I took off my pack, set up my solar charger for my phone, and turned my eyes out towards Chickaloon Bay to watch for movement.  I heard a dog bark and voices out somewhere towards Gull Rock.  There was somebody on the trail but not who I was waiting for.  About half an hour later though I saw a tiny black dot on the water.  I strained my eyes to see if it was moving but I couldn’t tell.  Soon it appeared that it may be two dots, but just as quickly it looked like one again.  I’d almost convinced myself that the sun reflecting on the water was playing tricks on me, but then the dots clearly separated and I saw the bright glint of the sun reflecting off wet paddles.  I gathered my pack and moved to the North side of the island to great the incoming travelers.

“Is that Erik?!” a squeaky voice asked, followed by many other high pitched questions.  I raised my hand and called out “Hello!”

Erin paddled a Red Denali Llama packraft with Lituya in her lap, while Hig paddled a Yellow Alpacka with Katmai standing up against the pack strapped to the front looking forward.  They came in to the shore and we hauled their boats up onto the island while exchanging greetings as the kids ran and played among the rocks.  We talked about the last couple days of their trip and discussed our next move.  It was quickly decided that we would take the boats into Hope, so I got mine out and began inflating.  Katmai and Lituya found my boat, with it’s alternating stripes of red and yellow, and my technique of squeezing the air out of the inflation bag into the boat, to both be highly humorous and entertaining.

As we got ready to push off from the island, I thought about all the warnings I had heard about Turnagain Arm, and it’s terrible currents.  I was again, somewhat hesitant.  Once we actually got on the water though, everything went very smoothly, and we were on the beach near Hope very quickly.  In fact it only took about a quarter as long to boat back to Hope as it had taken to hike out to Halfway Island.  We walked into town and met again with Billy and his wife to retrieve our box.  We had a short conversation with them, talking about their feelings on matters pertaining to Alaska and about how the state had changed, and then went back to the grassy beach to camp.  Before long though, Billy came walking up with a few bags, and generously gave us some steak, milk, lettuce, tomatos, and even bacon.  We gave him our sincere thanks before enjoying a dinner of spanish rice with cubed steak.

Day 2 

The second night had been nearly as cold as the first for me, and to make matters worse, I woke up with a pretty bad headache.  I figured it was probably one I could walk off though, and so I packed up my gear and got ready to leave camp.  Katmai and Lituya were fascinated by the colors of para-cord I had with me for repairs and tying my gear up, so I gave them each a piece to play with which kept them entertained for a little while as their parents made final preperations to leave.

We hiked along the beach, crossing the dreaded silt sloughs I imagined would eventually swallow me whole.  Some of them were sloppy, but none of them were terrible.  At one point though, we took a break, and Hig, Lituya and Katmai decided to give me a demonstration of liquefaction.  They danced in circles, as if performing a rain dance, in one spot.  As they did, the ground wobbled and jiggled, and eventually started to flow downhill.  Soon an area five feet across was slopping it’s way ever so slowly down towards the water.  It really was very impressive.

After that, we continued our walk, and Katmai told me about some very interesting dinosaurs.  Some of the dinosaurs he described I knew to be real, but others I wasn’t so sure about, like backpackasaurus and spaceshipasaurus.  Nevertheless he told us all about their various traits and habits in great detail.  My mind actually started to wander, and I caught myself trying to visualize spaceshipasaurus.  It may become the basis of some art project later.

We took lunch at Windy Point, where we also sat and waited for the incoming tide.  When it came there was no mistake about it.  The bore swept up one channel further offshore, and then started back down the arm where it met another channel closer to shore.  Soon the bore coming up that channel met the bore coming down it and they crashed together in a whirl of turbulent water.  The sand bars were quickly disappearing as various whirlpools and rips formed and disappeared.  Hig described what was happening in front of me from a Geologist’s perspective, and I was taken back to the feeling of being in science class, but the kind of class I actually enjoyed and wanted to participate in rather than the kind I’d rather skip.

As the tide continued to come in, the water started to calm down and level out, so we inflated our boats to take advantage of it.  We made incredible progress very quickly.  I was really almost startled by how powerful the currents really could be.  It seemed less like paddling on salt water, and more like paddling down a river with an occasional series of low class 2 rapids.  I few spots were choppy enough to get my adrenaline pumping a little even; especially where the channels came together to squeeze between Bird Point and the point on the other side of the Arm.

Eventually things calmed down though, and we were moving at a comfortable pace.  At one point we even saw a seal bobbing around in the water, as well as many different eagles, hawks, falcons and others birds.  The weather was good and my headache was getting much better.  This stretch of the trip was one of my favorite.  The sun was getting low and we started looking for a place to camp.  We ended up pulling into a place called Sawmill Creek, almost directly across the water from Girdwood.  We started a fire, ate dinner, set up camp, and went to sleep.

Day 3

The night had been much warmer, partially do to our campsite being tucked back into the trees and protected from wind and partially due to the thick layer of organic material I had pitched the tent on.  Also helping me sleep soundly was knowing that I was inside the protection of Hig and Erin’s electric bear fence.  It all added up to me really not wanting to get out of my sleeping bag when I heard everyone else awake.  I did however pry myself out of my tent and get ready for the last day of the trip (for me.)

Hig noticed in the morning, something he had not seen the night before.  Our tents were only a couple dozen feet from the foundation of some old building.  Perhaps the sawmill of Sawmill Creek?

We started the day off beachwalking again, and soon we realized we were following the tracks of a coyote through the mud.  Wherever his tracks went, we seemed to instinctually follow, trusting the coyote to find us the best footing.  We saw many beautiful points of tree covered rock, jutting out into the arm, as well as sea caves and nests of cliff swallows, all untouched and un-treaded by man in who knows how long?

It excited me to think that the place we were traveling may not have seen another human in many years, even perhaps decades.  And why?  People are so afraid of the arm.  I hear the way everyone talks about it.  We get it drilled into our heads that if the currents and raging bore tides don’t kill us, that the sucking quicksand will, and the end result is that we take it all as gospel and no one sees this place.  I’m sure there is very real danger involved with visiting this part of the arm, but I have to imagine that it must be roughly equivalent with glacier travel, or a number of other risky activities Alaskans engage in on a regular basis.  Why is it so universally excepted then, that this is an unhealthy unwise thing to do?

Before long, we came to Seattle Creek.  We could see the evidence of man again, faint tire tracks in the grass, and some smoothly cut logs on a hillside, recent enough to be unweathered.  The thick soupy mud we’d been walking on, gave way to sandy grassland as we walked out into the arm.  We made a decision to walk until we came to the main channel, and then cross it with the boats.  As we walked we came across an old weather balloon, stuck in the silt.

Not much further though, and we were to the channel, a mere couple hundred yards from the highway.  The tide was coming in fast though by this point, and there was no high ground to flee to.  We inflated our boats as quickly as possible, and by the time they were ready, with all our gear strapped on, we had less than a minute or two to spare before we would have been standing in water.

We pushed off into the channel and the current immediately took us.  A steady wind blew in our faces, countering the current and causing waves to pile up.  A few were large enough to break over the front of my boat and pack, and spray into my face.  It was very exciting and a little hair raising.  I couldn’t help but think how embarrassing it would be to have gone all this way and then need rescue within a stone’s throw of the highway.

We survived though, and pulled our boats up onto the banks at the mouth of Peterson Creek.

That was the end of the trip for me, but for Erin, Hig, Katmai and Lituya, they still had the rest of the Arm, and the rest of Cook Inlet to travel.  Be sure to check out their progress and read their stories on their blog. I’m sure it will be worth following.  They are one heck of a family.

If you are looking for something to do Tuesday April 30th 2013 at 7pm, consider heading to the Snowgoose Theater for a presentation by Caroline Van Hemert & Patrick Farrell about their 4000 mile journey by foot, ski, packraft, rowboat and canoe from Bellingham, Washington to Kotzebue, Alaska.  Show up early though, their last presentation sold out quick and much of the audience had to stand; well worth it though.

In watching their last presentation, I was impressed by the variety of the terrain they covered, as well as the wildlife they encountered.  Details like their platypus bladder personal floatation devices, and their hand built row boats made their journey one of a kind, and their presentation interesting throughout.  Their stunning visuals (photographs and video of each section of the journey) are alternated with the couple’s own story-telling.  I found the whole thing to be very inspiring, and my only complaint was how lethargic I felt about my own life by comparison after leaving the theater.

So, get down to the Snowgoose Theater this Tuesday for the presentation.  Doors open at 6, so be sure to get there good and early if you want a good seat.  Hope to see you there!

2012 was a great year. Things really got rolling with the club. Being Jenna and my first full year back in Alaska though, it was really our first year of running the site and the club at full capacity. We made a number of mistakes, learned some things, and now in 2013 we’ll try to apply those lessons for an even greater, more productive, and more adventurous year.

First, let’s talk about 2012 for a minute. We did as much adventuring as I think we’ve ever done in a year, including:

• A winter hike of Archangel Road
• Hiked the Bodenburg Butte countless times
• Hiked the Maud/Plumley trail
• Hiked Thunderbird Falls
• Hiked the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail
• Hiked the Turnagain Arm Trail
• Hiked the Stampede Trail
• Hiked the Williwaw Lakes Trail, both summer and snowshoed in winter
• Hiked the Reed Lakes Trail
• Attempted to hike to Gull Rock in four feet of snow, and then later hiked and camped there in the summer
• Hiked to the Knik Glacier
• Hiked in Denali National Park
• Floated the Knik River several times
• Floated Campbell Creek
• Ran Rapids on Eagle River
• Ran Whitewater (or is that Graywater) on Hunter Creek
• Ran Whitewater on the Little Susitna River
• Ran Rapids, swam and nearly died in Glacier Creek
• Climbed Lazy Mountain
• Climbed Matanuska Peak
• Climbed Flattop Mountain several times, and camped there for Solstice
• Climbed Peaks Two, Three, and nearly to Flaketop behind Flattop
• Mountain Biked in Kincaid Park, and on trails in the Matanuska Valley

This being our first year of producing the online trail guides, gear reviews, and youtube videos, we didn’t expect to be an overnight success. By the end of 2012, we were averaging about 10 unique visitors a day on this site, and about 40 views per day on our YouTube channel. This is a long way from where our goals are at, but being our first year, it seems like a good start.

One of the great things about youtube though, is that it allows you to see who is viewing your videos by breaking them down into demographics. I wish we had the same thing available to us for the visitors this site, but we don’t.

Right away, you notice that most of our viewers (on YouTube) are between 35 and 54. This came as a little bit of a shock to me. I would have expected to see more viewers from 18 to 34. No offense to our middle aged viewers, but I had hoped to attract more young adults. The other thing you notice is that our viewership is almost entirely male. I expected there to be more male viewership, but I was surprised at just how much more.

The next thing we looked at, was which videos were getting the most views.

The thing to notice about this top ten list, is that they are mostly all either gear reviews, interviews, or instructional videos. None of them are trail videos except for the Stampede Trail. This, I expected to happen though. The gear reviews have a national and international audience, while the primary viewership for any of the trail videos is likely to be Alaskan. This isn’t something I think that we need to try and fix, it’s just a reality of who our content is appealing to.

With that in mind, I’d like to talk about advertising for a moment. We made about 20 dollars last year from our affiliate programs with REI and Amazon. I’m not shocked by that, based on our number of users/viewers. What we really need to focus on is increasing the number of people who use/view our content.

We have made a decision to monetize SOME of our YouTube videos though. We will reassess this decision in a few months and decide if it was worth it, but for now all of our gear review videos will have a preroll advertisement. All of our interviews and trail videos will remain ad-free. Our logic on that is this: If you are here to research potential trips, we want to keep that ad free for you. If however you are shopping for gear, then ads will be a part of your shopping experience. This also helps to target our much larger national/international audience with the ads, and target less our in-state audience.

We’ve made some other changes as well, in the interest of trying to appeal more to the 18-34 year old demographic. The above video clip is our new introduction video you may have already seen on the site’s homepage. Below is the old introduction:

We’ve also changed the intro bumper clip at the beginning of all of our new videos. We’ve replaced the aged map with a video collage. When we start rolling out some hiking videos for 2013, you will notice that they are going to be a little shorter, include music, and be somewhat more ‘direct.’ We have the feeling that these changes will increase our viewership overall, but especially in the demographics we are experiencing shortages in now.

If you have any comments or suggestions feel free to comment here, or drop us a line. We always appreciate the input. We’re looking forward to another exciting year of outdoor adventures and hope you’ll join us.

Also, as always, we are constantly looking for people willing to submit their own adventures, gear reviews, and blog posts for the site. If you are interested in contributing, drop us a line.

In June of 2009, Tristan and Britany Denoncour, Jeremy and Marcy Egger, Scott Ashmore, Jose Cardoso, my wife Jenna, and myself, all hiked to Bus 142 at the end of the Stampede Trail.  We wanted to check out the International Harvester that Christopher McCandless of Into the Wild, had lived his final months in.  It wasn’t ever about worshipping or defending Chris’ choices; It was about being interested in the story and wanting to see the place for ourselves so we could better understand it.

Somewhat crunched for time, we did the trip in exactly 48 hours. The first day we got on the trail at 7PM and hiked to the Teklanika River. The second day we pushed hard for 20 miles, leaving most of our gear at the Teklanika, visiting bus 142, and then returning to camp at the Teklanika River. The third day we set a slower pace, and made it back to our car at 7PM. I hadn’t had a chance to get back out there since.

Later this year, Jedidiah White and myself will be trekking and rafting from Kantishna to Healy. For that trip, we need some additional supplies along the route. Since the bus is a place we had planned to take a rest day anyway, it seemed like a logical location to set one of our caches. So this trip, was specifically for the purpose of placing that cache; a bag of food, stove fuel, and perhaps most importantly, toilet paper.

Day 1 – May 27th 2012

My pack was loaded down much more than usual, with the additional weight of the cache and packraft. I stepped onto the trail from Eight Mile Lake at about 3PM on May 27th, and was officially on my way. My goal, right out of the gate, was to make it to the bus in one day, and make it back in one day. Since I was starting so late, I knew that was going to be a real push.

Immediately, I felt uneasy about the idea that I was going to be twenty miles out along the trail, alone, with no course of action if anything was to happen to me. The list of things I was concerned about included: bear attack, accident while crossing the river, falling and breaking a bone, sudden extreme illness, alien abduction, and confrontations with moose. Whenever I am with someone, I never seem to fear any of these things. Furthermore, when I’m in the wilderness around my parents’ house, where I grew up playing in the woods, I can spend the whole day alone and not fear any of those things. Why did it bother me so much there?

Soon though, I was at the Jeep Camp. I saw the tents, and everything looked like it was set up waiting for the arrival of customers, but no one was in sight. “HEY! ANYBODY HOME?” I yelled… no answer. “MIKE! YOU IN THERE!?”

“Yeah, man. Give me a second, I was sleeping,” came the reply as Mike Kramer moved about in his canvas tent. Mike is the camp cook at the Jeep Camp, but he’s also been to the bus more than once. I met him first on a trip to Virginia in 2011. It was good to catch up with him and see how he’d been since I picked him up at the airport upon his arrival in Alaska back in March.

As we talked, a couple of four-wheelers pulled into the camp, two men that worked for one of the other off-road tour groups on the trail. They asked where I was hiking to, and when I told them I got the expected response, “Oooooh. Be careful. The river is awfully dangerous.

While I appreciate the concern, sometimes it irritates me that it’s the first assumption of many locals, that if you’re heading to the bus you don’t know what you’re doing. You must be one of those damn pilgrims that doesn’t know the first thing about backcountry travel in Alaska, and just got done watching Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild.’ The guys were actually very friendly though, and we chatted for a few minutes before I took off down the trail.

Progress to the Savage River was fast. I stopped for breaks very few times, but most notably, to stop and photograph a smashed up MacBook along the side of the trail. Who brings a laptop out there?

Crossing the Savage was easy, and before I knew it, I was at the Teklanika River. I was prepared to do this crossing alone. I had brought my wife’s Alpacka Raft, Yukon Yak. I brought the smaller boat to reduce weight, even leaving the spray deck behind. I hadn’t thought about finding places to put the raft in, and safely land it on the other side though. It occurred to me I would need to find some eddies, and I would need to walk upstream to look for them.

I decided to cross where the river breaks into two braids. The first braid was fast and deep. The second I got the boat into the water I was rocketing downstream. I caught a branch on the far bank, but the force of grabbing it tipped the boat and I took on a bunch of water before the whole bush ripped off in my hand and I was still going downstream. About a hundred yards ahead though, there was a spot where four-wheelers had been crossing at low water, and the tracks formed just the eddy I needed to stop. As I came sliding sideways into the eddy, the force of the deceleration rocked the boat again and even more water poured in.

I stood up and emptied my bathtub/boat, carried it to the next braid, and did the whole thing over again. I was across the Teklanika River. I was also exhausted, but I felt like I should keep hiking. Ten more miles to the bus. I wondered if I could make it if I just took it slow and easy. Walking with my boat paddle as a walking stick, I hiked up through Moose Alley.

As I came around a corner, I spotted something shiny in the mud, right in the center of a bear track. It was a Canon point and shoot camera, caked in mud and soaked all the way through. I opened the door to the battery/card compartment and water drained from the camera. It was obvious it wouldn’t be taking any more pictures, but maybe I could save the ones already on the card. I took the SD card from the camera, wiped it on my shirt and stuck it in my pocket. I placed the camera in my bag and hiked on.

As I reached the top of the hill after Moose Alley, the sun was just disappearing below the horizon. I got some great shots of my own before continuing on. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was starting to show. I felt weak and each step was becoming an effort. The trail seemed to go on forever, and in my head I kept thinking “Oh yeah, this looks familiar. I think the bus is around the next corner.” But it wasn’t.

A snowshoe hare hopped across the trail and stopped just a few feet from me. It was difficult to get a good photo in the dim light, but I tried for a few minutes before going on. Finally, I rounded the last corner and the bus was in site. I had never been so happy to see such a rusty old vehicle.

I climbed into the bus and laid my pack down. I spread out my sleeping bag and got ready to sleep. I didn’t even want to bother cooking anything to eat. Curiosity did get the best of me though, and I plugged the SD card from the waterlogged camera into my own camera. The card worked, and there were pictures! As I flipped through someone’s photos of taking off-road vehicles to the bus, I recognized one of the rigs as a truck I’d seen in photos on a forum before. I might be able to find the owner. With that thought I went to sleep.

Day 2 – May 28th 2012 (Memorial Day)

The night was rough. It got a lot colder at the bus than I had expected. That combined with my decision to not start a fire in the stove, and not eat anything before going to sleep, meant that I spent a fair amount of time huddled as far down as I could into my bag trying not to be cold. I figure I went to sleep about 2AM.

I woke suddenly to the sound of tarps being moved about furiously.  Figuring it was probably alien abductors bears, I sprang out of my bag and grabbed for the gun.  It turned out to just be the wind, which had picked up significantly over the night.  It was now 7AM, and it was obvious I wouldn’t be getting any more sleep.

I knew I was running a sleep and calorie deficit. I also knew I wasn’t going to fall back to sleep, so I’d probably just better try and take care of the other issue. I walked down to the Sushana River and filtered some water. There was still a fair amount of ice along the banks of the river, something I didn’t expect to see.

Back at the bus I cooked up two pots of top ramen noodles and ate them. My throat was starting to hurt and I chose ramen, thinking that the broth would help. What I didn’t think about, probably because I was a little exhausted, was that each packet of ramen noodles only has 380 calories (for a total of 760 calories,) and at a rate of twenty miles per day, a guy my size with a pack is burning about 3500 calories per day (above and beyond just the amount needed to keep my heart beating and brain working.) Factor in that I didn’t eat lunch or dinner the day before, and you can see where this is all going.

In the bus, I took note of all the names carved into the walls and ceiling. Unlike last time, I recognized a lot of them. These were the names of people who had emailed me to ask questions, share trail conditions, and announce their success. It was neat to know so much of the story behind so many of the carvings. When I went to the bus in 2009, I did not carve my name. My friend Scott Ashmore had though. I found his name, and this time I carved mine in just below it.

I packed up my stuff and got ready to hit the trail. The last thing I did before leaving camp was to walk around and take some photos and some video of the site, just so others could see the extent of the damage and vandalism.

After that I was on the trail. My pace was much slower than the day before, and my legs were ridiculously stiff. Each slight uphill felt like I was climbing a mountain, and soon I realized I wasn’t going to be able to make it back to the highway in a day if I didn’t do something. I was about two miles from the bus. I thought maybe I should take the day off, go back to the bus, rest, and try again the next day. Then I thought, maybe I should try and make it to the Teklanika, and just spend one night outside. Eventually I decided to just pull out my bivy bag and take a short nap.

The way the wind and the sounds of bugs mixes together, sometimes it occasionally sounds like distant voices. I strained in my bag to try and hear if it was really people or just my imagination. It should be people, I thought. It’s Memorial Day weekend. I can’t be the only person with the idea to hike to the bus. I listened more intently. Nothing.

I wasn’t getting much sleep, so I decided I should just try to continue and make progress, no matter how slow. I went to take a drink of water from my bottle, and realized I hadn’t filled it up again after breakfast. It would be a few more miles before I would reach Moose Alley, and the next water source.

By the time I got to Moose Alley I was utterly drained. As I dropped alongside the creek where it crosses the trail for the first time, I considered just laying out my bivy and going to sleep until the next day. Progress had been terribly slow. It was already well into the afternoon, and I felt incapable of going any further. I decided it was lunch time. I cooked up a packet of Mountain House and ate and drank as much water as I thought I could hold. Almost instantly I felt much better and full of energy.

I made it the rest of the way to the Teklanika very quickly. Once there though, I decided not to inflate my raft. The only eddy I saw on the Healy side of the river, didn’t look very promising. I put everything away into the dry sacks in my pack and selected a large sturdy stick. I crossed the first braid without incident. Then came the narrower, faster, deeper braid. I walked along until I found a place where four-wheelers had been crossing at low water. The braid was a little wider there, and must be shallower, I reasoned. The river was deep and pushing hard, well over my knees. About two thirds of the way across though, I took a step into the main channel. The water was up over my waist and shoving with all it’s might. I braced myself with the stick, but the river rolled me over the rocks on the bottom like they were ball bearings. I quickly took a couple more steps to the left, and all of a sudden I was out!

The joy I felt from being done with the Teklanika River (for this trip) and the adrenaline rush I got from being completely alone and doing something so stupid, gave me the energy I needed to knock out the next six miles or so very quickly. I had my second wind and I was going to ride it all the way to Eight Mile Lake.

My pace was quick and soon I was to the ‘mud fields’ between Savage River and Fish Creek. The weather was great that day, but that was the first time during the trip that I actually got a view of Denali. I stopped and took some photos and video before plunging into the knee deep muck of the mud fields.

Soon I was passing the Jeep Camp again. Kramer was off, so no one was there. I walked a little further up the trail before I stopped and had my dinner. I wasn’t really even that hungry, but I needed to stop and filter more water, so I decided to eat as well.

The last couple of miles I started to think about how I was going to get from Eight Mile Lake out to the highway. It would really suck to have to walk eight more miles after all that, just to start hitch hiking. Luckily for me though, when I got to Eight Mile Lake, I was greeted by some white water guides with a big passenger van, who were just wrapping up a late night campfire. The time was 2AM. I had completed the trek in under 36 hours, 25% faster than the last time I hiked the trail. I got a ride with the rafters out to the highway and hitched my way back south. It was the fastest I think I would ever care to take that hike. Ideally, if I do it again, It will be with friends and spread out over more days.

After the Hike

While flipping through the photos on the camera I found, one in particular had stood out to me:

I knew I recognized the rig in front, as belonging to a guy who comments on a forum I participate in about Christopher McCandless.  I contacted a friend, Mike Putman, that I was aware knew how to get in contact with the guy.  Turns out, his name is Dusty, and his friend Deric lost his camera on their last trip out to the bus with their rigs.  Deric lives in Anchorage, so it was easy for him to come and retrieve his camera once I got back to town.

Alask is a crazy place.  So big, yet everyone is connected in one way or another.

The Gull Rock Trip didn’t go quite as expected, but it was still a good time. We had hoped that the trail might be mostly snow free (or at least fairly shallow.) We were basing our hope on a trip Jenna and I took to Gull Rock in late April of 2009. No such luck though. Though some parts of the trail were completely bare, there were long stretches of trail buried under feet of snow.

We left the parking lot at 10:00am. Our group was made up of Travis Steward, Jose Cardoso, Kerry Osborne, Andy Halfacre, Jenna Halfacre, and myself (Erik Halfacre.) The Porcupine campground was closed, so that added a little extra distance onto our hike, but nothing note worthy. We did immediately notice though, that we were walking on snow, even where there was paved road beneath us. By a couple of miles down the trail, and across the one scree slope you have to hike across, it was obvious we weren’t going to make it to Gull Rock without doing a whole lot more post-holing than anyone in our group felt like.

We turned around and hiked back to a hill overlooking halfway island. There we set camp and started a fire. Travis continued on back to his vehicle. Soon Jeremy Egger and Melanie Le Brun-Boivin showed up. Everyone hung out for a bit and Kerry and I tried our best to see if we could start a fire with a bow and drill. We got smoke but no ember. Then as night drew near, Jeremy, Melanie, and then Jose all headed out to the trailhead also. Kerry, Jenna, Andy and I stayed the night.

As it got dark, the wind picked up, but as we went to bed at about 8:40pm, the temperature was still at about 40 degrees. Jenna and I both ended up unzipping our sleeping bags and draping them over us like blankets. It rained a little, but not hard.

In the morning, we cooked breakfast, packed up, and headed out to the car, making it back to the trailhead at 12:40pm. The trip was fun, but it would have been better if we had made it to the rock, and the trail had been in better shape. We’ve got the weather though, so the snow should melt off very soon.