Iniakuk Lake

I recently lucked into a temporary job as a caretaker of sorts of a lodge.



It's a high-end luxury wilderness lodge on the south side of the Brooks Range, the northern-most mountain range in Alaska. It's run by a mother/son team: Pat and John. John is going to be gone for a few weeks, and there are no clients here at the moment. After years of fending off bears all by herself when John is gone, Pat decided she didn't want to be alone up here so much anymore. So I'm here to offer backup and work on a few projects.

(I saw fresh bear tracks on the beach last night, huge ones, and she just said "it figures, as soon as John leaves...")

Considering the significant perks of the job, the pay is not bad. I'll be here about three weeks.

The weather leaving Fairbanks was kinda gross. I flew in a Grand Caravan on Wright Air to Bettles.

The DeHavilland Beaver coming in to the float pond in Bettles to discharge its last load and pick us up.

Flying from Bettles to Iniakuk Lake in the Beaver.

There was kind of a goofy guy that was fueling the plane on the ground (water) in Bettles. "That can't be the pilot" I mused, without previously realizing that I had this bias, "because he's so uncool." Sure enough, the pilot was this guy, who looked much more like a bush pilot.

Iniakuk Lake. (this evening the satellite internet will give me unlimited bandwidth, so I'll post a video of the landing then.)

John, the lodge owner, stands on the float, while Flo, a German doing some work with John, stands by. They took off for two nights up to a cabin a little further into the mountains.

Taxiing away.

Full power.

Thus far I've just been getting acclimated and working on small projects around the lodge. My main project starting out is to repaint the trim on the front windows.

Pat cooks for me. It's a hard knock life.

Since my buddy Josh Horst is the one who recommended me for this, I thought I'd return the favor and do a little advertising for his company. He's got Arctic Ovens for rent, folks - if you need one, he's your man.

The lodge.

Tool shed.

Storms blow in and then blow back out with amazing speed. Note the double rainbow.

It's not all hard work.

Iniakuk Lake.

It stopped raining, so I should head back outside and work on projects. I'm going to post a few more times from here, I'm sure, as well as get caught up on long-overdue posts from past trips, so check back frequently.

AlaskAcross - Chena to Circle Hot Springs

Demand for a summer wilderness race with a course that could be called "fun" has been building.

The current Summer Classic course is too fucked, and nobody was raving about the old AlaskAcross course, in the Alphabet hills off the Denali Highway.

This course is the revival of the Hot Springs 100, a race from Chena to Circle Hot Springs. I heard it was fun. So I entered.

There are two main ways to do the trip: all overland, about 70 miles, where you wade or swim across Birch Creek, or by pack raft, where you hike almost 30 miles, then float down Birch Creek (for quite a ways) then take out and hike about 20 miles to Circle. Floating is more distance, and can be slower or faster depending on the amount of water. For no particular reason, I decided to go all overland.

Planning is not my greatest strength. I came up with a half-ass plan to follow a route suggested by my friend Frank. I didn't get a paper map, partly out of an unwillingness to drive two minutes to the map store. I had a GPS and some coordinates, though. In retrospect, driving two minutes is much easier than walking 8 hours, but at the time it didn't seem important.

On the drive to the trailhead, Bad Bobby G told me that he planned to go an alternate route that he thought was shorter than my route. I asked him if I could join him and we could go solo together. And so we launched.

Bob walks up the Far Mountain Loop outside of Chena Hot Springs. 

Caribou shed antlers in the tundra. I saw quite a few throughout the trip.

Still on the Far Mountain Loop.

Determining where we're at and where we wanna go.

Leaving the Far Mountain Loop and beginning a long descent to the ridgeline that would take us north to Birch Creek. Though we got some good walking after this, it was the beginning of a serious deterioration in terrain quality.

The alpine flowers were kickass, but I found myself reluctant to take the time to photograph them (1/600th of a second is too long to stop for Bob, who NEVER stops).

Can someone identify the flowers?

Traveling on the ridges.

He just keeps trucking along.

I mostly took photos of pretty places and good walking, although there were a LOT of hours of walking through shit like this. Depending on the age of the burn, the trees can fall in a criss-cross that is nearly impossible to navigate. Also the ground here is tussock grass, which is some of the worst walking you can imagine - uneven ground, and swampy.

This looks nice, but it's not. From a distance, Bob correctly identified the white fields as Cotton Grass. That's a bad sign - not only was it tussocks, but it meant that the ground was very wet. This is also my last photo of Bob - I lost him when we entered the Spruce forest visible in the distance.

This is what walking in tussocks is like - in between the heads of grass is a hole. This hole happens to be dry, but more often than not the hole is full of water. This further increases the tragedy of tussocks - not only are they terrible to walk on, but they also serve as mosquito incubators. The grass heads are unsteady and difficult to walk on top of. Walking through tussocks, needless to say, is very slow. I estimate that I walked through at least 15 miles of them during the trip, though.

As I finally neared Birch Creek, my glass was beginning to be half-empty. I had walked for about 3 hours through tussocks descending the ridge, and had gone only a few miles. And yes, those are mosquitoes.

I also had another major problem. Once I arrived at the Creek, I didn't know where to go. I knew that I was supposed to climb the opposite ridge, but I knew that there were multiple ridges and it was not as simple as 'walk uphill then follow the ridge'. Without a proper map, I couldn't figure it out (though I hadn't yet tried using the map in the GPS to figure it out, I know that those maps aren't typically very useful). I didn't really have much of a plan about how to solve this problem. I only had a GPS coordinate for the start of the mining road that leads to the finish, so I knew I wouldn't die in the wilderness, but that was it.

Arriving at the Creek at about 11pm, I was presented with a new problem. Bob and I's plan had been to either wade or swim the creek. Bob has the experience and the chops, and I had no doubt he would do it. However, I dislike swimming, I fear and mistrust water, and I absolutely HATE cold water. I decided that I would not swim the creek.

This presented me with a new set of variables. Shortly after arriving at the Creek, Scott Jerome, the UAF xc ski coach, floated past me on the river along with his twin outboards. He asked how I was doing and I didn't really know how to answer. I just said I was pretty sure I was fine. He didn't seem to believe me, but when you're floating past it is a bit inconvenient to stop for a real conversation. His concern would turn out to be rather prescient.

I decided that the thing to do was to walk downstream, since that was the right direction to be heading, looking for a place to cross. It didn't take me long to realize that there wasn't likely to be a spot that I could get across the river without swimming. I waited for the next packrafter to float by.

Though these wilderness races are races, people tend to focus on the 'wilderness' component of it more. The ethic is universally biased towards helping your fellow competitors out - after all, people tend to leave themselves with fairly small margins and travel extremely far from help and safety. Offering help and support without being asked is a widespread practice.

Race Director Mark Ross has a well-earned reputation for not adhering to these unspoken rules. He floated past next.
"How's it going?" he wanted know.
"I need a ride across the river, Mark." I said, without a trace of pride.
"You're my competitor, man!" he said, by way of telling me that he really didn't want to take the time to help. "How far ahead is Scott? Why didn't you ask him to give you a ride?"
"I didn't know I needed a ride, but now I do."
In Mark's defense, he was alone and putting two of us in his tiny boat would have been really awkward and unstable. He ferried his boat back and forth across the river.
"Down here it's only two feet deep!" he shouted from a ways downstream. "You can wade it!"
"Alright," I responded. I didn't believe him, but I wasn't sure how I was going to fit in his boat, either. "I'll give it a shot." Mark drifted away.

I turned back towards shore when the water reached chest deep. I continued bushwhacking down stream, waiting for the next group of boats and cursing Mark Ross.

It was a long time - over 3 hours - until the next group of boats caught me. I had been walking downstream, vigilantly keeping my eyes on the river for either an improbable wide spot where I could cross, or the next group of boats. I kept my eyes peeled up river, and saw a lot of scenes like the above photo. Occasionally the river would push up against a bank, like it does in the left edge of this photo, and it would force me off the river up onto the hillside. These areas were stressful as I feared boaters would go by without seeing me as I traversed the hillside above the river. 

Wading the Clums Fork, a tributary to Birch Creek. This is at 1:45am.

After hours had passed since seeing Mark, it became obvious that the first wave of people - the people that cared who won - had gone by. I had a suspicion that the next boaters that would pass would be the fastest of people who didn't care about winning, and that those people would be my friends Jay Cable and Ned Rozell. I also knew that they would be cheerful about chauffeuring me across the river. For once, I was right about something.

When I saw Jay and Ned, at about 2:30 am, I ran down from the hillside and back out to the river to wave them down. I didn't take any photos of the event, but Jay described my appearance as 'a bit crazed'. I wasn't really out of my mind, but I really didn't want to miss them (indeed, I believe it was many hours until the next boaters passed and I never saw them). I jumped in Ned's boat and paddled across the creek, then Jay paddled over and towed Ned's empty boat back to him on the other side. I thanked them and promised beers. Oh, and Jay gave me a map. This sure helped.

For those who didn't already suspect, Jay and Ned are the opposites of Mark.

Though I was now on the correct side of the Creek and my survival was looking much more likely, my luck turned bad again. Due to the terrain on the north side, I needed to continue along the river for about another seven miles before it made sense to hike up onto the ridge that I mentioned before (otherwise I would have had to drop again into a creek, or go the wrong direction for a ways).
For whatever reason, the walking on the north side of the creek was much worse - I pretty consistently battled tussocks, old burns full of blowdowns, steep embankments, or brushy creeksides. At some point during the night I figured that I was 19 hours in, I had at least another 25 miles to go, and I was going in the neighborhood of 1 mile per hour. This was a low moment.

Sometime around 4am the sun rose again. I had a rare moment of efficient walking through this burned spruce forest with pretty red moss on the ground and not too many down trees. It helped to brighten my mood.

Pretty scenes like this one could also feel pretty dismal. Obviously, the bank on my side of the creek is not walkable, forcing me into the forest.

The forest often looked like this. Or tussocks. Or both.

Gravel bars, when they happened, were short. And even then, they are difficult to walk fast on. The packrafting looked enjoyable.

Sometimes the bank was rocky. This was slow, but at least it was sortof fun to walk on.

This photo is from many hours later. At 7 am I reached the spot where it made sense to leave the creekside and hike up onto the ridge. This 2,000 foot climb took me two hours, after factoring in battling some brush on the way up (even nearly on the ridgetop).  I didn't take a single picture of the ridge, but it looked similar to what Bob and I enjoyed the previous morning. My survival was looking fairly assured, and though I was tired and frustrated with how things had gone, I was not entirely miserable.
(Though I never planned on winning, I did want to post a respectable time by finishing by the 24-hour or so mark. I knew that that was long past, and that I was going to be in the 30 hour range. As it turned out, no one finished in under-24 hours this year.)
I walked up and down the ridge crest, attempting to keep my speed up. 

I dropped steeply down the end of the ridge, but didn't take any photos. As I caught sight of the mining road in the distance, I saw Jay and Ned beginning their walk up the road. They had come in up Harrison Creek instead of via my ridge, but this road is where all the normal routes connect up. Up the road there was some active mining going on, and I saw some people (who actually didn't seem to think that our appearance was all that weird).  I pondered the style points of firing up a dozer and driving it back to town.

The road is 11 miles long. Along the way I caught up to Jay and Ned. I was happy to have some company and I walked with them most of the way. The road travels up and over a pass. The uphill wasn't too bad.

My feet had been wet for over 24 hours straight. This was due to creek crossings and the frequent occurrence of marshy ground. The little bit of immersion foot - soaked and wrinkly skin - that I had was not too bad. However, once I crested the uphill, I began to walk down. My foot pain rapidly jumped from about 4, on a scale of 1 to 10, to about 8 or 9. I stopped to remove the dry socks from my pack that I had judiciously packed with such a circumstance in mind.

They weren't in there. I must have dropped them somewhere along the way.

I continued down the gravel road. I began to limp.

I felt my wet skin on the balls of my feet begin to squish under my foot. I was developing blisters.

I walked with Ned and Jay. They were walking a bit slowly, and I wanted to hurry up to get off of my feet. I bid them adieu and increased my pace.

10 minutes after deciding that they were walking too slow and I wanted to walk faster, I was about 13 feet ahead of them. I was vaguely reminded of a scene in a movie, maybe No Country For Old Men, when two men, who have both been shot, are quietly and slowly chasing one another. I felt no desperation, however, about getting away from Jay and Ned, just about finishing. After 20 minutes my lead had opened to about 25 or 30 feet. I was getting there.

With about 3 miles to go a truck went by me. I very nearly flagged it down to get a ride.

I obsessively checked my gps, attempting to figure how far I had left to go. "2.5 miles until the end of the downhill. That will take about an hour. Then at least it will be flat." I continually checked my watch.

I scoured the ground in front of my feet. Tiny pebbles would dig into the soles of my trashed feet and hurt badly. I carefully chose my footsteps to find the smoothest bits of road.

"1 mile left. About half an hour."  

The end in sight

At the finish line, my weight off my feet, finally. I felt essentially fine at the finish except for my feet. However, after sitting for a few minutes, I had stiffened up something ferocious. Typing this now, two days later, I still hurt all over.

I finished in 31 hours and 12 minutes. I didn't take any breaks and only stopped to rummage in my pack. Bob finished about 5 or 6 hours before me (I'll edit this post with results once I have access to them). I'm disappointed in my time, and am sure I could have been at least *close* to Bob's time had I been more organized in my planning (although how I would have dealt with the creek crossing better is a standing question - apart from simply growing a pair and swimming it, which I clearly didn't want to do).

Next time I will bring a paper map and more pairs of dry socks, and try not to lose them. I'm not sure if the route that was originally suggested to me had better walking or not. If you could avoid most of the tussocks and deadfall, 10 extra miles would probably be worth it. I need to talk to someone who has done it.

Bob, a true gentleman, had been waiting at the finish, having passed on a possible ride home. Amy Marsh had generously come to get Jay and Ned. Bob and I squeezed in as well, and I only had to ask to stop once on the drive back so that I could straighten my legs.

Thanks Jay, Bob, Ned for the experience, and even thanks to Mark for putting the whole thing together!

Once the immersion foot dried out, the blisters remained.

The blister on my little toe doesn't show very well, but it nearly doubles the size of my toe.

The same blister seen from the other side.

Next year? It could happen. I think I'll packraft, though.

Long-Distance Skiing: the Susitna 100, Wilderness Classic and White Mountains 100 on FasterSkier

I wrote an article for FasterSkier about some of the long distance races I did this spring - it's like a blog post, but on someone else's site:

Read it here (or click the photo).

Chal-ywood

(please note: you can now read this on The Climbing Zine.)

It was 2004 and Kelly Cordes and Josh Wharton had just climbed the Azeem Ridge on Great Trango Tower in Pakistan, which was the longest rock route yet climbed in the world, and a very impressive accomplishment. 

We were sitting around at my friend Jeff’s house talking about it. It must have been a Wednesday, because that is when we would sit around and talk shit.

I was aware that this was a very big accomplishment in the world of climbing, but I was confused.

“Wait,” I said, seeking clarification. “Is Josh Wharton Famous?”

“Um,” Started Jeff.  “I mean, yeah, I’ve heard of him. He’s done a lot of really hard… I guess he’s…. you know, Seth, this Famous/Not-Famous dichotomy is a weird thing you do.”

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Nine years later I’m in El Chaltén, Argentina, the take-off point for climbing in the Fitzroy Group.  High climbing season is coming, and the place is overrun with climbers.  I’ve just arrived and found my good friends Sarah and Colin (That Colin), and they’ve invited me to join them and their friends for dinner.  Their friends are Josh Wharton, Mikey Schaefer, and Bryan Gilmore. 

Colin is a very matter-of-fact guy, and direct questions always meet with direct answers. So as we walk to the restaurant, I ask for clarification:

“So is Josh Wharton a dick?”

“What? No,” says Colin. “Why would you say that?”

“Isn’t he just tall and serious?”

“Well he is tall, but he’s a perfectly…”

“Oh my god, Seth” Sarah cuts in.  “Please don’t be really awkward and embarrass us.”

“Yeah, don’t.” Says Colin.

Bryan boulders while Ben (l) and Colin (r) spot.

A few minutes later we’re sitting at dinner.  I’m mostly on my best behavior.  Josh, it turns out, is not a dick at all.  The five of them are talking about bouldering, while I have nothing to offer the conversation.  Josh was working on a problem that day, and he says it’s really hard and really fun.

“What was more important,” Colin asks, smiling, “the hard, or the fun?”

Josh pauses, looking trapped. Colin, amused with himself, interrupts Josh’s thoughts:

“Be true to yourself,” he admonishes.

Josh sits back, looking relieved. “The hard.” He says, happily.

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At some point, many years ago, Carl Tobin was the Realest climber I’d ever met (and actually, being fair, he should still probably rank high on the list). I was still a pretty new climber, trying to come to grips with how I would ever Be Like Him, a Real Hardperson climbing Big Routes in Big Mountains. I asked him something I was struggling to understand:

“But,” I started, almost as a complaint, “when you’re standing down there on the glacier - and everything is fine - and you look up at your route, and you know that up there resides fear and danger, how do you leave the glacier?”

“Well, that’s always the crux,” he said.

It was the most unsatisfying answer I could possibly have gotten.

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The truth is: I don’t really like hard climbing. I gradually get better at climbing, and slightly harder climbs are beginning to get easier for me, but my Bowl Full of Adventure still finds itself filled to overflowing pretty easily – I find that some adventures fit in a little better than they used to, but the capacity of the bowl has not changed. Sometimes, I just get worn out from being up there, and I grasp desperately to understand the people, like Josh Wharton, that love hard climbing just for its own integral hardness. Oddly, something that makes me reluctant to do hard multi-day climbs is that I get tired of being careful not to drop things. I don’t think that Josh or Carl would understand.

(l-r) Peter, Hazel, Josh and Bryan return from a day of bouldering.

In Chaltén, I’m surrounded by the world’s best climbers. Some are amazing and Not Famous, like Bryan Gilmore, but many, like Josh, Colin and many, many others, are Famous: I bouldered badly while Fred Nicole sat with his wife, watching passively and smoking cigarettes, power emanating from his forearms in waves.  I saw Ueli Steck at the ice cream shop, walking a pretty normal speed. Me and Rolando Garibotti have developed a fun rapport, spending most of our time verbally assaulting the other’s virility. I called Dave MacLeod a pussy to his face for no reason other than just to say that I did. It turns out that the almost-awkwardly kind Welsh guy in my hostel has done quite a number of climbs that someone thought fit to rate 5.14d. And the list goes on and on.

Perhaps unsurprising to everyone but me, I still haven’t gotten any amazing insight into what it requires to be a Hard Climber. But I heard Tommy Caldwell is getting here in a few weeks. Maybe I’ll ask him.

This is a popular Argentine cartoon that I found taped to the counter at a deli in El Chaltén. The main bubble says "we're not interested in what you're going to say because you're not famous."

Alas, I often feel like the dejected speaker when I see how many hits this blog gets compared to Colin's blog.