Trip Update - September 1, 2001

Glacier Bay

Kayaking 57 miles in 6 days to the very tip of the East Arm of Glacier Bay was incredible. We took nearly 100 photos, the most film we've burned in a signle week yet, but there is no way they could capture the Glacier Bay that we saw. I am not going to try to describe the trip in words. It would take pages of writing and it still would do it no justice. The pictures should be posted in a couple weeks, and you'll hear more about the trip through the captions. One thing to note, this trip is not for the sun and sand crowd. Glaciers are not made of sun and sand. They're made of snow, rain, and cold. On the second day of being pelted with cold rain, our guides read us a quote which I will now close with, from geologist Harry F. Reid who studied the glaciers in 1892: We saw lots of good, glacier producing, rains.

Finishing the Gold Rush

After spending over 3 weeks in Skagway and the surrounding area, and especially after hiking the Chilkoot, we would be doing a crime against history if we did not complete the path taken by tens of thousands of gold rushers by continuing to the gold fields. After crossing the Chilkoot in 1898, they floated down the Yukon River and ended their journey in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. We took a much faster route, along Highway 2, which follows roughly the same path taken 100 years earlier, and ends up in the same place. We spent 2 days in Dawson City. I even spent a couple hours "prospecting" myself, but didn't find so much as a gold flake (although I did at least get a flake from the Chicken Creek in Alaska a couple days later). Our Dawson City visit was not a particularly exciting time, but it was necessary to complete our history lesson on the gold rush. The most excitement came at 3:30 AM on the morning we were leaving...

Things that go Bump in the Night

We were camping a few minutes outside of Dawson City. At about 3 AM, Julie and I both got up to go to the bathroom. Julie immediately returned to the tent, while I stood outside admiring the clear sky, hoping for a Northern Lights show. After about 10 minutes, I returned to the tent. 15 minutes later, we were still awake. There is something about getting out of your warm sleeping bag and stepping into a freezing night that just wakes you up such that a return to sleep is rather difficult. Julie turned on a small radio in the tent, while I tried to sleep. About 5 minutes later, the whole tent shook like a gust of wind blew on it. I found that puzzling as I was just outside and felt no wind, but stranger things have happened than a rogue gust, so I ignored it, never opening my eyes (Julie later reported that that was the second "gust" - I had slept through the first). A few minutes later, I heard what was the third gust as the whole tent shook again. Then, I heard something scrape the tent 5 inches above my head. I sleepily asked Julie... "Was that you", thinking maybe she had brushed the tent with the radio as she tuned it. Unfortunately, she responded "No, I thought it was you the whole time!". Suddenly it became obvious that the tent shakes were not wind, but something outside, perhaps wanting inside. In an instant I went from horizontal, eyes closed, to sitting upright in our small, windowless, tent - glasses on, flashlight in one hand, pepper spray in the other. Our eyes darted around the tent as we listened quietly to whatever it was as it tapped on various sides, circling the entire tent once, then exploring our woodpile, then back to the tent. In 20 years of camping, I had never had anything "play" with a tent I was in. We flashed the nearby Rover lights with the remote alarm key a few times to scare whatever it was away. When we heard nothing for a few minutes, I popped out fo the tent, pepper spray drawn. Of course there was nothing there by then. We are really unsure of what it was. Black bear are known to be curious, so we speculate that the initial tent shudderings may have been paws on the side of the tent and the following lesser scrapes may have been sniffs as it searched for a way in, but we didn't hear any heavy breathing or grunting/growling that we thought we might hear with a bear. Most other Yukon animals are not so curious as to explore a tent site. I suppose it could have been a porcupine, but if so, it must have been trying to jump on the tent initially, considering the movement of the tent. We'll never know what it was but needless to say, that experience didn't help us get to sleep any faster!

Where from Here? The Arctic

If we thought we were in the middle of nowhere before, we haven't seen anything yet. We are spending today gearing up in Fairbanks. Tomorrow we head further north and should cross the Arctic Circle in the afternoon. We will remain above the Circle for over a week, first travelling all the way to the end of the road... Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay. There isn't much to do there, but it a rare opportunity to touch the Arctic Ocean, and to see the largest source of American drilled crude oil. On our way back from Prudhoe, we will be stopping well short of re-crossing the Arctic Circle, and staying a few days in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve - the northernmost of all U.S. National Parks. The size and remoteness of this area is amazing. It is 8.4 million acres - the size of connecticut and Massachusetts combined, and contains the northernmost mountain range in the world. In all of that space, there is not a single road, trail or even a sign. We will leave our car as near as we can get to the park, and hike in across the tundra. Depending on the route we choose, we plan to be walking for 3 or 4 days in total before returning to our car. We're hoping our pepper spray will not get used, as the park has a variety of nasty creatures which may have never seen a human before, but for sure hiking around this unmarked, trailless wilderness should give our compass, GPS, and topo map a workout.