Prologue

Well, at long last I’m creating the blog I promised at the beginning of the summer. I thought this would be a way to keep people posted on my voyage to grad school throughout the summer…and it will be! It’s just that it took me awhile to get started.

Not to worry though; I haven’t been bored! My summer started May 18^th, when I finished working at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. The Center is a wonderful place to work: the people are sharp, motivated and fun; the work addresses real problems in Alaska and the organization is rapidly becoming the leader in Northern energy research. Nonetheless, I spent enough time reading about fuel additives in my office over the winter, and I was excited to spend the summer outside.

In some sense, I started my bicycle trip to grad school right then: I pedaled south to Haines. It was hot and sunny when I left Fairbanks (miraculously, seeing as it was snowing two days earlier). I waved goodbye, stopped by the grocery store and kept riding south. I had dreams of making it to Haines in three days, meaning 220 miles of riding a day… I’d never rode farther than 100 miles in a day before, but I wasn’t very tired then, so I figured I could probably keep going.

I quickly found that the challenge wasn’t fatigue, but rather dehydration, constipation, improper diet, sore butt, too little salt, numb hands, leg cramps and sun burn. I made adjustments as I went: drank more water, tried harder ; ), stopped relying on oily foods (peanuts, etc) while I was riding in favor of more carbohydrates (tortillas, mango) and started eating more protein during longer breaks, lowered the seat 1.5 cm to help out my butt and leg cramps, bought some super salty nuts, changed my hand position and started wearing a cotton T-shirt instead of riding shirtless. I also started riding at night when it was cool and there was less traffic, and that made everything easier. It was too late in the trip to make me comfortable, but at least I made adjustments before I had to stop. As it turned out, it took me just under three days to get to Haines Junction (instead of Haines) for an average of a little over 170 miles per day instead of 220.

But it was a blast! The highlight was riding around Kluane Lake as I came into Haines Junction. It had been another uncomfortable day on the saddle with lots of stopping, napping, and stretching to get across the sixty miles of rough pavement South of Beaver Creek. But in the evening the temperature finally started to drop, the pavement smoothed out and before long I felt like I was flying. I cruised through the last thirty miles into Burwash Landing, stopped for a quick leak and powered straight through Destruction Bay, stopping just once to fill up my water until I got nearly to the base of Sheep Mountain. The moon was full that night, and seemed to weave its way in and out of the mountains on my right, while the still frozen Kluane glistened to my left. The sun set, but the colors on the horizon in my mirror never disappeared and I watched as they slid from West of North to East of North before finally rising above the mountains as I pedaled across the bridge at the back of Kluane Lake. The final 30 miles into Haines Junction were brutal: I was famished, and I underestimated how far it was. But I made it, and treated myself to a delicious restaurant breakfast once I got there.

On Monday (May 27) I started working with my dad. What a blast! For a week, we split, hauled and stacked wood. It felt so good to get up and move and work every day rather than go to an office and sit, stare and read. Once the wood job was done, we jumped into painting a house. It was a big project—A full two weeks—but the weather cooperated and we knocked it out quickly. I love working outside, with my dad, solving the small problems that always come up with his handyman projects. It would be easy to stay in Haines, rent or build a small cabin, work with my dad, make a living, hike, appreciate the land. And the people.

After painting the bike race came and I got distracted from work by more adventures. My bike team consisted of three friends I made at UAF. What a wonderful crew! We all managed to find each other in Haines Junction the night before the race and got off to a jolly start in the morning. Unfortunately, we ended up taking two cars: Heidi drove a car from Whitehorse, and I drove a car up from Haines with my teammate Quinn and my friend/former coworker Amanda (ACEP’s brilliant biomass studying, dog mushing, life-loving Australian). The race did not go smoothly: there was confusion between the two cars, and we lost track of each other. One of my teammates (Signe) ended up racing in jeans and riding Quinn’s bike; the truck got a flat tire and we missed Heidi’s finish. But overall, everyone rode well, we had fun, and ended up second in the mixed teams division.

Signe stayed in Haines for a week and we filled it with fun day trips. With Quinn, we climbed Tugkaho and With’s Tit, and motored a boat 15 miles out to Eldred Rock. We visited the library, the hammer museum, and friends. I could write five pages about that week, but here is the best part:

We went up Witch’s Tit on a calm day. We sailed across the canal in the morning in Quinn’s boat with his dad and sister, and started up the mountain by 8 AM. I consider Witch’s Tit one of the three defining peaks of the Haines skyline: There’s Ripinski to the North(ish), Santa Claus to the East, and Witch’s Tit to the West as you drive out Mud Bay Road. It’s a 5000 foot peak, located about a mile inland from the ocean—it’s steep. But it’s also absolutely amazing. Indescribable, really, but maybe you’ll get the idea: the first ~3000 feet of the route follows a goat trail (it’s so worn, it’s more like a goat highway than a trail) that cuts through a wonderful old growth spruce forest, skirts past a thousand foot drop through a steep dusty birch grove, almost disappears in a dense patch of alders that strangle the trail, and then suddenly splays out into a dozen different paths as the view explodes in the alpine.

A few hundred feet farther at the top of a knoll, the world opens into an enormous canyon. Rainbow Glacier is 500 feet below: ice blue, crevassed, rugged and hanging over a thousand foot waterfall. Rainbow Ridge is on the far side of the glacier, soaring 3000 feet above. And farther up the valley, past the icy blue of Rainbow Galcier’s hanging tongue, there is an enormous mass too large to really comprehend gleaming white in the sunlight. And, if you can take your eyes off the glacier and turn around, Chilkat Inlet is silty grey 3000 feet below. It’s silty for a few miles to the South, but then the water turns to Lynn Canal green along a sharp line. On the other side of Chilkat Inlet, just three miles from where you stand, parts of Haines are visible, on an isthmus between Mounts Ripinski and Riley. Taiya Inlet drowns the land for three more miles on the other side of Haines, the sea green contrasting with the dark forest green of the spruce trees on the far side. The old growth trees across the inlet mark the base of Santa Claus Mountain, which soars 5000 feet up from the water, hiding the glaciers, the peaks, and the rest of the world behind it.

This is God’s Camp.

From there, the route crosses a glacier and climbs up to a prominent ridge, and a rocky peak that is generally considered too technical to free climb. We enjoyed the beautiful day as we climbed, slid back down, and sailed back to Haines in Quinn’s boat. These are the days that make me want to stay in Haines.

At the end of the week, my friend, small time employer, and adventure buddy Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and I drove to Palmer with Signe. We dropped her off at home, and undertook some of our own adventures. We went pack rafting on the Matanuska and Chulitna Rivers for three days, we hiked up most of Pioneer Peak, and ran a bit of Eagle Pass and the Cottonwood Trail. It was good to spend time adventuring with Jonathan again; this is what our friendship was built on.

Afterward, I was home for a week to do a bit more work with my Dad and visit with my sister when she arrived. At first, I had planned to leave for Stanford around now, but I was having too much fun. Especially because Quinn had invited me to sail to Glacier Bay with him…that was an opportunity worth postponing my bike trip for.

In the end, despite being wonderfully excited about sailing, I decided my lack of experience, Quinn’s 19 foot open boat and Lynn Canal waters were a bad combination, and backed out just before we left on the trip. Instead, we flew/ferried to and from the entrance to the bay, then kayaked. Like my week in Haines with Signe and Quinn, the week in Glacier Bay was extraordinary and could fill pages. All three of my companions were fun, and good to be with in the Bay. But the highlight of the trip came for me after Doug and Tom left, and Quinn and I began paddling back to the ranger station:

We paddle slowly, stopping often to appreciate the birds, the whales, the Fairweather Range….the beauty. It’s a perfect evening. Eventually Quinn says, “Maybe we should paddle all night.”

“I’m up for that.”

So we paddle and paddle on into the dark.

As the sun sets, the place only becomes more magical. I can hear birds calling in the distance, and sea lions barking and whales blowing. I see the silhouettes of cliffs and shoreline, smell the fragrance of the sea, and feel the strength of my core, hands and shoulders flexing against the water. I feel strong. Remember this, I think.

“Look at the phosphorescence,” Quinn says, softly.

I’m amazed. Each stroke of my paddle glows. It’s faint then, but soon even the wake from my kayak is glowing bright green. I feel as though my boat is carried by spirits. I could go forever. Is this real? This is more magical than fiction.

Eventually, Quinn and I returned to Haines. I enjoyed a few more days with my family, crammed in biomass research for Jonathan, then boarded the ferry bound for Juneau, and eventually on to San Francisco.