Alaska 2011 Part 2: Kenai Peninsula

After Fairbanks I drove south for a long, long time to reach the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage. I spent the rest of my trip exploring the peninsula and all the cool harbor towns it offers. I didn't do a lot of hiking during this part of the trip, I mostly just drove around and got out to sit by the ocean at various points in between towns. My first stop was Homer, the halibut capital of the world. I had halibut that was literally walked off the boat and into the restaraunt. I cannot eat halibut in Pennsylvania anymore. Here's some pictures of my time in Homer.

My next stop was Seward where I was planning on a hike to Exit Glacier and the Harding Ice Field. The road was closed due to flooding, so I visited the Sea Life Center and the harbor instead.

After Seward I headed to Portage Glacier on the way to Whittier Alaska.

Okay! I get it! Don't go up to the glacier because it's too dangerous...

...

...I couldn't resist.

Now my last stop before Anchorage was Whittier Alaska. Let me tell you about this town. It's like something out of a Silent Hill video game. Whittier started as a military base in WWII. It was selected for it's extremely remote location to hold naval vessels, as the Japanese would not be able to find the base. The only way into the town is by boat or by driving through the old railroad  supply tunnel they built for the military. When I say drive through a railroad tunnel, I mean drive on railroad tracks through a tunnel barely big enough for a car.

This might just look like a bad, blurry picture, but that's actually how frightening it looks inside.

Let me take you on a tour of this town.

The first thing you'll notice when you enter Whittier, are two giant buildings abandoned by the army. The first one is this high rise which is where all 300 of Whittier's residents live.

Now I know what you are thinking: "Tim, how is this anything like Silent hill, that building looks kind of nice." Well first of all, when you go inside and see the conditions of this 1940's building and how crammed in the people are, you realize there's no privacy for anyone in this town. Still, it's not the creepy part of this town. Here is the second building:

The Buckner building. You are seeing approximately 1/5th of the building, it's a monstrosity.

It sits empty and abandoned as it has for decades. Nobody goes near it or in it for some reason they don't explain.  I like to think it was used for weird experiments on asylum patients to develop the perfect super soldier. The experiments failed and created something very similar to the T virus, making super intelligent zombies. The town locked up the building to keep the zombies trapped, but every once in a while kids come up missing.  No matter where you go in Whittier, this building is in complete view, looking down upon the town.  Then there's the way people get around town. Instead of walking above ground like normal people, the town is all connected by a series of underground tunnels.

These tunnels are very creepy and you can hear any sound in them magnified to horrifying levels. Every step someone takes rings through the tunnel. Every time a creepy kid laughs, you hear it echoing through. I felt like I was always being followed in these tunnels. It didn't help when every person I said Hello to as I passed just glared at me and didn't say anything. Then another thing creeped me out. An echoing voice filled the whole town to tell us abouta severe weather warning, like what you hear on tv when it interrupts your show, but loudly broadcast through the whole town on this 1940's speaker system.

Did I mention that directly in front of the highrise that everyone lives in is a ship graveyard?

 Which also makes this rusting away basketball course tricky to play in.

I  wonder when was the last time someone sat on this bench.

If you think this is scary, you should see the "Dismembered Body Parts Only" bucket across the street.

It's not all bad though, there's this really sports bar,

a beautiful grocery store,

a rusty swingset and monkey bars for the kids,

a soccer field,

and of course, who could forget the party rock.

All joking aside, this was a very nice town that I would actually see myself retiring in. The true story behind the Buckner building is that it was build with building materials like types of asbestos which is harmful to people, so it's too expensive to tear down or fix, that is why it sits empty. As for the tunnels, they were built to minimize snow shoveling, and also to make it easier to get across the railroad tracks. Lastly, after staying in the town for 3 days, I developed an understanding of the cold shoulder the townspeople gave me. It seems cruise ships come in to the town occasionally and the people are very rude ot the residents, walking into their apartment building and taking pictures of their personal space. Plus they complain all the time about there not being a lot of restaraunts/services. This would get very annoying to me as well. Eventually the people of Whittier warmed up to me and they were very nice people. The town itself, although being a bit rundown, sits in the most beautiful sound (ocean sound, not sound like a noise) I have ever seen.

One of my days in Whitter, I jumped on a glacier tourboat into Prince William Sound. Along the way we saw some beautiful scenery and some wildlife.

Sea Otters are an awesome animal. They just lounge around on their backs all day. I love them.

When we got to Surprise Glacier, it was awesome. The glacier rose 300 feet out of the ocean and was calving off chunks occasionally. One of the chunks was so big that the wave rocked the huge boat we were one. Here are some samples of the 200 pictures I took of the glacier.

Beluga point was my last stop to take in the ocean and fail at spotting beluga whales before heading to Anchorage for some Hotel, bar, disc golf action. To sum it all up, Alaska is an amazing place where you will find delicate beauty, raw wilderness, and unique culture. It's a place where you will meet interesting people living in a unique culture. A place where the modern conveniences are not always available. A place where the wilderness is very unforgiving to those who are not prepared. I would love to take every one of you there someday. I have never been more moved by a state than I have this one.

Alaska 2011 Part 1: Denali and North

I arrived in Anchorage on Friday, September 1st ready to experience total solitude in the untamed wilderness that is Alaska. Every great adventure should start with a great meal, and for that there's only one place in Anchorage that has been on my mind for 2 years, The Bear Tooth Grill.

Thanks for the food Andy!

The Bear Tooth is hands down my favorite restaurant and brewery I have ever been to. Their make your own tacos are sublime, and their home brewed beer unique. My favorite two were the Belgian IPA and the Anniversary Ale which was a beer brewed with tequila and salt on the rim of the glass. Now I was ready to backpack. As I drove further north, the fall colors were in full swing, making the landscape a mosaic of vibrant colors.

Upon reaching Denali, I picked up a camping permit for Units 14 and 20. My plan: to reach McGonagall pass, the first route taken to summit Mount Mckinley. On my bus ride I took in the scenery...

...and reviewed the Topo's to memorize my route.

Hmm, this doesn't look too hard to navigate.

My bus driver was Paul and he was a funny funny guy who loves his "garden". I wonder if anyone else noticed all the "bathroom" breaks he took with his bag and "cigarette" papers. Two years ago Andy and I  were in Denali, and our one bus driver, Alan, told us a super awesome way to get to where we are going. It ended up being the worst possible path we could have taken. Well it just so happened that Alan was at one of the last stops and he informed Paul and I that the best place to head into unit 14 was at Table Top rock, not at the Mckinley Bar trail, because this would shave a whole mile off my trip. Being that it was 9 pm and I had to hike at least 3 miles before setting up camp, I welcomed a chance to shave off some distance. Well I took his advice, and got off the bus at table top rock to find the worst brush I  have ever hiked in my life. To put this into perspective, I normally hike at a pace of 2-2.5 mph. This mostly level section of trail that was only a quarter of a mile long took me over an hour to get through, and the whole time I was in a lot of danger of surprising a bear considering I  had no visibility. Fuck you Alan. Hiking through Denali is a strange beast. Most times you will only hike at a pace of 1 mph which is very slow, but there is no helping it. There's 4 types of terrain you can be on.

Bogs, which are cold and wet, so you spend a lot of time trying to zig zag around the pools of water, which means you also have to make an effort to pay attention to your bearings to you head in the right direction.

Tundra, which is like walking through a minefield. You will either step into a spongey area which you sink in, like walking on a mattress, or you step on a hard rounded tuft of ground, which will make you instantly roll your ankle. It's very hard to tell the difference between the two. It's also terrible to sleep on.  

Dwarf Birch, which are bushes that are so close together and thick, it's like hiking straight through the middle of a Rhodadendron. Almost guaranteed to fall, get lacerations, and to be off course when you come out. These are usually unavoidable.

River Beds, the highways of Denali. If you can follow one of these, you are set.

I make this sound miserable, and indeed there are times it is, especially when it rains all day which is very common in Denali. You will be cold. You will be wet. You will be exhauted. Denali tests your will to go on, but once you accept this, it's an amazing, eye-opening experience, as you will be witness to the absolute beauty this raw, untamed wilderness offers.

After tearing down camp 1, I had the biggest challenge ahead of me: crossing the McKinley River bar, a mile wide glacial river. I have crossed rivers before, but this was extremely difficult. Rivers in Denali are braided, so it was really like crossing 12 rivers instead of one. The water is a murky, gray color from the glacial silt, so you have no way of knowing how deep the water is, and it fluctuates from ankle deep, to well over your head depending on where you cross. Basically you pick a route that looks safe, face upstream, and go very slow knowing that you might have to retreat to try a different spot. To top this all off, the water is just above freezing, so all of your instincts are telling you to rush, which will more than likely cause you to fall and drown. I had to retreat multiple times and finally found a route which only got to waist deep, which still took some effort and a nice wading staff to stay on my feet. After the first night and this tricky water crossing, the rest should be a cake walk, as I could follow the mountaineering trail. (which is like a small game trail here, not the super highways whe normally hike on). Mount Mckinley showed her face and I could not get enough of her beauty

As I got close to pass, I  was actually suprised how far I had made it in that short amount of time thanks to the mountaineering trail. Everything was looking great and I was ready to summit the pass the next day. Mother nature, however, had different plans, as a storm rolled in that was supposed to stay further south.

This thunderstorm rained heavily, and I knew there was no way I  could make it up the pass this day without a major risk to my life. I decided to wait the storm out, but as it continued on with no sign of letting up, I had to swallow my pride and head back towards the river for fear that it would become too hard to cross, stranding me miles away from civilization with no way out. It took a lot to swallow my pride and do this, and my ego still hurts a little, but considering that the waist-high crossing I did before was almost up to my chest, and that I almost lost my footing twice, I made the right decision.

During this hike I also saw a lot of wildlife. One morning I woke up to find some Dall Sheep sharing my campsite.

They let me get pretty close so I guess they didn't see me as a threat. That was the last mistake they made. On a side note, dinner was delicious that night!

He's hard to see, but there's a bull moose out there. I kept my distance from him because it was rutting season and I didn't want to have sweet moose love.

Caribou, or reindeer. Booooooooring.

Now that's more like it!

 The momma bear is on the left and she was huge, there's two cubs, the dark one on the right, and one behind the hill. These guys were pretty close. I saw approximately 9 grizzlies while in Denali, and I  would be lying if I told you I never felt uneasy while camping in their territory.

After escaping the wild, I headed to Healy, which is the town where Christopher McCandless started his hike down the stampede trail into the wilderness where he stayed in this bus...

This is the replica used in the movie Into the Wild.

...before a lack of preparation and survival knowledge took his life. It wasn't all bad, though, as the bus was very cozy inside.

The bus is located at the 49th State Brewing company, which is the coolest brewery I have ever been to. They are just starting up so they only have one beer at a time, and it was nothing special, but the place itself was cool. The owners were really inviting, and the outside drinking area had the Magic Bus, a horseshoe pit, a fire ring, and a bocce ball area.

After my beer/food, I stopped at the Earthsong Lodge in Healy to get a much needed shower and bed. This was a random stop but it was one of my favorites. The owner, Jon, was a ranger in Death Valley National Park and Denali National park, is a dog sledding guide in Alaska, has been in and survived an avalanche with his dogs, has been in every backcountry unit in Denali, and wrote the first backcountry guidebook to the Denali wilderness. We talked a lot about different adventures we've had and I learned a lot about the history of Alaska from him. We did this all while I got to meet his dog sledding teams

Jon with his lead dog, Frodo.

Nocturne in front of the names of all the dogs before him.

Romulus, my favorite dog who apparantly loves my belly rubs.

I also learned that Jack London was full of shit, as he depicted dog sled teams as vicious dogs who fight all the time and their owners who beat them into submission. Although there are some dog owners that may abuse their animals, this is not the case, as dogs who are beaten will not follow the commands of their musher. Also the dogs were the friendliest dogs I have ever met, no sign of wolf-like tendancies to be vicious. I also learned a lot about selecting the best leader of the team, and it's not the alpha male as I had previously thought. I am so happy to have had this experience with Jon and his team. I would love to save up some money for a guided trip in winter someday.

After the Earthsong, I headed to Fairbanks in hopes of seeing the Northern Lights. I drove through the city and headed 15 miles north to the Silver Gulch brewing company, the most northern brewery in North America, and also home of the perfect beer. None of it was real original, but all of their beers were just right.

After this I continued north into the wilderness to find somewhere to set up camp for free. I found a perfect spot.

This isn't a joke, I did stay here and it was a very nice spot.  The northern lights, by the way, were spectacular. I have no pictures of them that came out so you'll have to go see them yourself. I highly suggest it. The next morning I hiked up to these rocks to do some climbing.

The Faibanks area reminds me a lot of the Adirondacks.

I don't have to tell you how much I hate boardwalks.

This ends the first part of my journey. Part two will be up soon.