Alta Backcountry

Pulled forward into white. August 29. 13 km. Camped early in severe wind. The day began badly and never recovered. A strong east wind hammered the icecap the moment we stepped outside the tents. Snow streamed sideways and visibility collapsed. Early on, my sled returned to its old habit of tipping. On a calm day that’s manageable. In these conditions, it was a real problem. I did the only…

Sometimes the work is staying in the line. Sometimes it’s finding room to drift just outside it. Long-distance arctic travel reduces the world to a line. You move forward at a prescribed pace, in a prescribed order, toward a horizon that rarely changes. The terrain may vary, the weather may shift, but the structure remains. In that simplicity, something subtle happens: where you place a person…

August 16. The day began on hard, bare ice. We weren’t skiing yet. Down here on the margins of the ice sheet there isn’t any snow, just a surface of frozen dimples and sun-hardened texture. Everyone walked, the rhythm more like glacier travel than a ski expedition. One quiet victory for Elaine and me was bringing light hiking boots, La Sportiva Ultra Raptor 2s paired with Kahtoolas. The…

August 15. We left the Red House at 9 a.m. under clear skies and a light that felt almost too warm for East Greenland. The harbor was quiet except for the clatter of bags being handed from dock to boat. We loaded everything quickly and then stepped in beside it, settling onto aluminum benches while our Greenlandic captain checked the motor. The ride to Isortoq was fast. The boat skimmed across…

August 14, 2022 — Tasillaq, East Greenland We came back to Greenland to try again. The first time, in 2018, the ice pushed us back with storms strong enough to tear a tent built for Antarctica. We were evacuated by helicopter and spent months mourning a trip we we hadn’t realized we could grieve. (That story lives here if you want its full…

Today we entered the desert-southwest portion of the Brooks Range, with dry canyons, arroyos and the sweetest sage I’ve smelled north of the Wind Rivers. People often compare the Arctic to the desert. Both are dry and give similar sensations of freedom and wildness. But the Arctic has a harsher bite thanks to its extreme latitude north. But this place we’re hiking in today feels like New Mexico…

The good weather continues. We’re still heading up the big river deeper into the mountains, alternating between gravel bar walking and walking above the river bank on the tundra when the brush is too thick. Gravel bar walking is easier than mushy tundra walking, but sometimes the willows are thick on the river bed which makes it easier to surprise a bear or moose. When the brush is thick, we like…

June 11 on the North Slope is not like June 11 in most places. We both woke up around 3 am cold in our sleeping bags. They are rated to 20° and we were bundled up in wool from head-to-toe, so it must have dropped well below that. The world was covered in a light film of ice this morning. My long johns, hiking pants, sweater, rain gear, heavy mitts and ski cap felt under-gunned even while moving.…

Good news, my sore throat was gone this morning. Glad to have dodged that bullet. Our walk from the Beaufort Sea to the Brooks Range continues, and today, surprise, the sun came out for a brief spell and the cold north wind decided to take a hiatus until the very end of our hiking day. It dawned on me that this upstream walk from the ocean to the mountains is the way the native Inuits who lived…

While day one was a true thriller, day two was pleasantly benign. Good. Thrillers make stories and we’re bound to have a few of those, but it’s no way to sustain a long expedition. Speaking of expeditions, Elaine shared a fun story with me today. I was inside the Fairbanks post office sending some stuff home and she was outside unloading boxes of food and such, when a lady in her 70s in a beat-up…

“How does it feel to give up control?” These were some of the final words our pilot imparted on us before leaving Elaine and I alone in the big, big wild. The Alaskan coast on the Beaufort Sea is an intimidating place to get dropped off. Hours earlier we’d been in Fairbanks, a delightful little city but a city nonetheless. We said goodbye to Kirk and watched as he bounced down the tiny tundra…

There was a big sigh of relief this morning when I woke up and the feet didn’t hurt at all. We had some drier walking yesterday, and we gave each other foot massages last night to loosen up the tendons. That certainly helped. Our good weather window continues. We headed up and over a small pass to the big north-flowing river. We anticipated this being a difficult crossing but it was well braided…

Last night was a rough one. My left foot stung this morning, very reminiscent of the pain I had before I got trench foot on the traverse in 2021. And yet, there is no visible mark of skin damage. It’s certainly been wet and cold, but the systems I use now worked in 2022 and 2023 and are completely different from what I used in 2021. The only thing I can think that was different this year was that…

I woke up around 2 am this morning, the shelter bright as day, to the sound of something pitter-pattering on the walls. It wasn’t the sound of rain, but a more glancing, lighter blow. I crawled out of my sleeping bag, put on my shoes to go pee and was greeted by a world of white. A few inches of snow had fallen and more was coming down. We’re certainly not easing into this trip. On June 10 at…

Today is drop in day for this year’s Brooks Range excursion. After driving 3,000 miles from Colorado to Alaska and sifting through gear in a dillapidated AirBNB in Fairbanks, spending hours in line getting Alaska plates so our car is legal and what seemed like endless packing, here we are. The journey up here could be a story unto itself, but as I write in this journal in our shelter, I want to…

The Quiet Snow of Spring

It’s the night of May 3rd, less than 50 days till the summer solstice, and it’s 27° F and lightly snowing lightly. It’s a bit ridiculous, but at the same time not unusual. May is the third snowiest month of the year here and that snow tends to come in bunches in the beginning. For newcomers, it’s a rude awakening to life in the high mountains, and the old-timers tend to laugh and tell stories…