A Thirty Mile Hike
This entry was posted on 7/5/2006 11:01 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
After getting a bear resistant container at the park information center, loading up my frame pack with three day's worth of provisions, I headed out on a thirty mile trek. At first the trail climbs through broadleaf plants, tall grasses, and alder thickets- I was yelling "Hey Bear!" the whole time. After an hour or two, I came to a scree slope and after topping that was laid out into vast open tundra. To my right, the Alaska range was in full specter, its jagged snow-capped peaks reflecting a bluish hue. If you can picture in your head what an ideal Alaskan hike would be, this ridge is it. I continued on for about eight miles and then set up camp. At 9pm on an open plain, I had no shade from the glaring sun. A night of tossing and turning ends with me finally getting up at 3:30am. The sun is just starting to rise.
Thirty miles with a 40 mile pack is...a lot. But what is also difficult about it, is that unless you force yourself to be idle for hours on end, you can do it in two days. So, as Ray would know, I did it in two days. So yesterday I pushed on through early morning showers, watched sections of the ridge ahead and behind me go into white out, and caught a quick glimpse of Denali bathed in a brilliant orange from a sun that I couldn't even see. After a few hours, I encountered a descent back to the tree line. Here I was treated to swarms of mosquitoes (no, literally, a black swarm of mosquitoes that lay and wait on the trail), shin-deep and unavoidable mud, river fordings, and hundreds of repeats of "Hey Bear!" By the time I started gaining altitude out of the valley, I was feeling it. My feet hurt, my knees hurt, and my shoulders hurt. But in all my genius I still had another eight miles to go. Clouds moved in and drew the magnificent view to my right closed and I mushed on. Finally, in a fit of elation at finding the right trail, I encountered a junction that means I'm four miles from the trail head. A hellish descent (over 1500 ft in less than 1.5 miles) down muddy and slippery slopes, followed by a gentler down, across a very, very swingy suspension bridge (with one wire railing gone), and I'm at the trail head.
I meet up with some Boy Scouts from San Diego, who aside from offering me water (I was totally out and very thirsty) also offered to give me a ride back to my car, which was 20 miles away. This was a one-way route, and i wasn't looking forward to hitchhiking with a full muddy pack.
I head north now into Denali National Park proper to spend a few days.
