Denali

Here is the link for our latest picture album, week 4 in Alaska.

After our Gates of the Arctic trip we spent two nights in the Fairbanks area enjoying the comforts of a bed and showers. We treated ourselves to a night at Chena Hot Springs to soak our aching bones. Our next adventure was Denali National Park and we arrived to blue skies and sun. The fall colors were beginning to peak and reminded us of New England with the reds, oranges and yellows. 

Over all the mosquitoes were not nearly as fierce as we expected, mainly because of cold temps at night. August is a great time to visit - just pack some layers! We did get a backcountry camping permit for the second night and were packed and ready to go backpacking. We got on the green shuttle bus to go to our backcountry site and immediately realized we had a crystal-clear bluebird day with awesome views of the peak!  Our driver suggested that we stay on the bus and check out the views all the way out at Wonder Lake, so we ended up bagging the backpacking trip.  When Alaska gives you sunny days, take advantage!

We traveled the entire day with endless views of The Mountain. An exhibit at the visitors center told us that we had a 10% chance of seeing a full view of The Mountain in August. We were so lucky - it was truly the biggest thing we had ever seen!

We spent two great days hiking. One afternoon we crossed the Teklanika river behind our campground and hiked up a ridge for a great view of the valley and Big Creek. Ryan totally digs the find your own route idea. On the third day we started from the Toklat rest area to circumnavigate Mount Divide. It was a great seven-ish mile hike with on a cool day. Ryan did well with routefinding and we avoided too much bushcrashing. 

Lisa was exhibiting a term we learned in Gates, "bear-a-noia," saying “hey bear” and singing songs almost constantly. We did see one grizzly that day from about a half mile away. He was busy eating along the creek bed on the other side of the ridge line. We kept our distance and he had no idea we were there. Sadly, we were hiking on the same day a backpacker was killed by a grizzly in Denali, only three miles away from where it happened!  Hiking in grizzly country is something we take very seriously.  We make lots of noise and we are extremely vigilant while hiking, and we always carry bear spray in bear country.

Our Teklanika ampground treated us well. We enjoyed the nightly ranger presentations: stories from the summit, a year in the life of a moose, and how the animals of the park adapt to winter conditions (winter was quickly approaching).

Wildlife was plentiful in the park. On the first day we saw a mama grizzly and her two cubs alongside the park road. We saw Dall sheep, caribou, moose and several bears.  Denali covers a huge area, 6 million acres, and it feels like we just started to scrape the surface. We are excited to plan our next adventure!

 After Denali we flew back to Anchorage for two days. We explored the indoor things to do on a rainy day. The Anchorage Museum had an impressive collection, the Aurora Show (Ryan got up two nights in a row in Denali but just missed them), and a few more beers at Humpy’s. On our last day in Alaska we drove to Palmer for our State Fair fix, Alaska style. It was quite the show!

Our month in Alaska was all that we had hoped for and more….we’ll be back!

We are headed back to the lower 48 to spend a week in Denver catching up with friends and visiting old haunts. Then we are off to take advantage of the beautiful fall that Colorado offers up each year. 

Gates of the Arctic

We made it back from north of the Arctic Circle! 

First, click here for a link to our Picasa album, and thanks to Heather (we stole a couple of your pics!)

We arrived in Fairbanks on a drizzly day. We toured the Museum of the North, ducked in and out of the shops downtown, and walked along the Chena River. We were graciously greeted by fellow Great Falls folks, Mark and Donna Miles - they were wonderful hosts! We stopped at the Alaska pipeline on the way to the Silver Gulch Brewery (the northernmost brewery) and Ivory Jack’s for a real Alaskan experience (you have to see it to believe it). The next day we stepped out their backyard to the Chena river and kayaked under sunny skies. 

That night we met our Alaska Alpine Adventure group at a local hotel to gather our gear. 
We immediately knew our group would be amazing!  Five words to describe them would be: determined, hilarious, cohesive, resilient, and outgoing. Our guides Nick and Gus were a perfect fit. Very quickly it felt like we were a group of friends coming together on a great Alaskan adventure, not individual people from Sweden, Virginia, California, Anchorage, New York and Minnesota. 
On day one we took a small plane flight from Fairbanks to Bettles, waited patiently for our pilot, and then flew the ten of us and all our gear in two float planes, the Beaver and the Otter.  

We landed in Circle Lake in Gates of the Arctic National Park. There we stashed some food and our inflatable kayaks for the second part of our trip. Our trusted guide Nick told us we needed to gain elevation quickly as it would be easier hiking in the long run. So up we went bushwhacking or bushcrashing (this is extreme bushwhacking, we swear) up the side of the mountain. 

Remember there are no trails in Gates of the Arctic! It took us a few days to figure out how to hike in brush that was anywhere from knee high to over our heads.  The tundra was also a little tricky but overall the best surface to hike on. Trekking poles were a must. We got a late start on day one so we hiked to the first water source we could find and set up camp. Even on the first day we were sneaking glimpses of the Arrigetch Peaks with spectacular views over every ridge. 

We can’t get too far into this Alaskan adventure with our stopping and telling you about the food. To all you backpackers out there - we didn’t have one breakfast of oatmeal in eleven days! The food was unbelievable, they know what they are doing (keep your eyes open for Adventure Appetites). Ryan’s jaw dropped when Nick whipped up egg, cheese and reindeer sausage burritos one morning. 

On day two, we hiked up and over two ridge lines and arrived in yet another beautiful valley where we would stay for two nights. The next day we were still enjoying sunny skies as we hiked up the valley to an alpine lake at the base of two amazing peaks. Ryan and some other brave souls took a dip in the chilly arctic waters. 

The next day we packed up camp and headed up and over yet another ridge where we got our first full views of the Arrigetch peaks. We crashed through at least seven foot high alder brush to get to camp three along the Arrigetch creek. We could not wait to get up to that cirque beneath those mountains the next day. We decided to hike just ahead of our group the next morning. As we hiked Lisa pointed out bear tracks along the river and was getting a little nervous when Ryan told her “we’re probably not going to see any bears here Lisa - don’t worry so much!” Not 30 seconds after he said that and as we rounded a corner we looked up the hillside and found a grizzly bear looking down at us from ~30-40 feet away.  We did what we were told to do, Ryan got out his bear spray, we talked to the bear fairly calmly and then backed away slowly. When the bear was out of sight we high-tailed it back along the trail and thankfully found our group not far behind us. We climbed high around the area that we spotted the bear, and by that time the bear had crossed the river and was busy eating on the other side. We stopped to watch him eating and digging, totally unconcerned with the ten people gawking at him. 

After watching the bear for an hour or so, we headed back up the valley. The spires of granite were phenomenal! They were like the monoliths of Yosemite but north of the Arctic circle. We could see present glaciers and the work they did on the rock in the past carving out the valley. It was a spectacular day! 

As we headed back down the valley to camp, riding high on the views of the peaks, we came across the bear again. The bear was initially spotted about 60 feet away as he was rooting around in the bushes up the small hill in front of us. We all stopped (standing our ground) and as the bear slowly started walking toward us, probably getting within 15 feet of us, we all got a little more nervous.  Guns came out of holsters and bear sprays were ready, but thankfully the bear decided that he did not want to investigate ten smelly hikers so he laid down and rolled over in the creek. What a day in Alaska!

The next day we got our first taste of nasty Arctic weather, but for the record we had six days of sun and blue skies north of the arctic circle and we all felt extremely lucky. The winds that howled through that high alpine cirque were fierce, shaking the tent walls and keeping most of us up much of the night staring at the tent ceiling. 
We finished our last day of backpacking, hiking along the ridge line where we could savor the views. Hiking back down to Circle Lake felt pretty easy with lighter packs and a few days of experience bushcrashing and tundra hiking. 

At Circle Lake we loaded up our inflatable kayaks and headed around the lake to the beaver ponds that we knew we were going to have to navigate to make it to the Alatna River. After a few wrong turns we found the beaver dam we needed to cross and the swampy ditch we were supposed to float the kayaks through. As the second boat went over the dam we almost blew out a kayak, and the water in the ditch turned to thick cement-like mud before we found the portage trail. We finally made it through the unforgiving mud and across the Alatna River around midnight. It was a crazy fun day!

We awake to rain and were thankful as the river had come up and the current would take us along. We had never experienced paddling for 6-7 hours per day but it was super fun. It was easy paddling, with great views of the southern Brooks Range.  For the most part the rain was not too miserable, except when the wind came up. Our three and a half days on the river were perfect, and overall the whole trip was quite a total body workout. 

When the float planes landed we were sad to leave such an unique and remote place, but happy to finally shower and use a flush toilet. 
It was one of the most memorable trips we have ever been a part of and we feel very lucky to have had the experience. We would do it again in a heartbeat!

We can’t say enough good things about our guide Nick and Alaska Alpine Adventures.  If anybody is considering an exciting expedition to Alaska, check them out at www.alaskaalpineadventures.com .. They were totally professional, all the logistics went off without a hitch, and the food was amazing!

Alaska

Here are links to our photo albums:  the Tetons and Alaska - week 1 

We made it to the last frontier, Alaska! For those of you who have been to Glacier National Park, Mom Julie put it best… "it’s like Glacier on steroids." 

Before we landed in Anchorage we spent a few days visiting Ryan’s family friends the Matskos and meeting their newest addition to their family, baby Luke. We had a good time relaxing on the lake, wakeboarding, and especially the daily cocktail hour cruise on the pontoon boat!

We used our newly acquired long driving tolerance and drove a record 14 hours from Seeley Lake to Denver in a day. Necessary but not so fun. We were greeted in Denver by our Colorado parents Meg and Mel Pitts and their family for yet another awesome dinner/sendoff party. 

We arrived in Anchorage to gray clouds and rain, but thankfully we awoke to sunshine. We hiked Flattop Mountain just outside of Anchorage for sweeping views of Cook Inlet. 

We have enjoyed many wonderful meals of seafood and Alaska brews this trip, including the “bucket of butt” (butt=Halibut) in Seward. 

From Anchorage we drove to the Kenai Peninsula and the southern end of Resurrection Pass Trail, then hiked 13 miles to the Swan Lake cabin. This first day felt a lot like some of our east coast hiking: gray, rain, mud and trees.  We added the sounds of our bear bell and Lisa singing way out of tune. We arrived to our rustic Swan Lake forest service cabin and were thankful for four walls, a roof over our heads and a wood burning stove. We spent the next day resting our tired feet (13 miles + heavy packs is probably our new limit).  The clouds parted and gave way to a pleasant afternoon, so we took the row boat out in the lake to admire the salmon (they were not interested in Ryan’s spinner).  We were also visited by a mama black bear with her cub up on the hillside – they did keep their distance.  Our hike out felt easier as our spirits were lifted with the sunshine. 

From Resurrection Pass, we drove to our next campground a few miles north of Seward, which would be our home base for the next two days. We walked along the cost and around the small town of Seward taking in the majestic mountains that seem to rise up out of the sea. We went on an Alaska marine tour to get a closer look at Kenai Fjords National Park, with an added bonus of an all-you-can eat salmon and prime rib dinner.  We saw lots of marine life including two pods of orcas, humpback whales, Steller sea lions, otters, and puffins. The ship took us to Holgate and Aialik tide water glaciers; both were spectacular, like nothing we have seen before. The sound of the Holgate glacier calving sounded like a thunder clap. We hiked around the Exit glacier, which is the only part of the national park accessible by road.  It was incredible to see how much the glacier has receded in just 14 years. 

Ryan took his internal medicine board exam yesterday (done.. yahoo!) while Lisa took advantage of some sunshine and biked the Coastal trail.  She was fortunate to get a clear glimpse of Mt McKinley. 

We are headed to Fairbanks today and will start our Gates of the Artic adventure midweek!