GATES OF THE ARCTIC. First of all, I prefer to say the name of this remote national park in my best David Attenborough voice... "Gates... of thee Ock-tick." Makes it sound much more exotic and wild, which it was. Next, lest you start to believe that it was all khaki pants, white blouses and tea-time thermoses, please imagine jolly good old David with his trousers pulled down 'round his ankles and about a thousand mosquitoes nibbling on his fleshy white thighs and buttocks as he tries in vane to quickly do his business after a morning cup of Earl Grey. (Yikes. For those of you able to really envision what you read, I apologize.) Bear spray at his hip and Alaskan rain boots planted steady, David's desperate and panicked expression might accurately convey the extreme nature of the Gates of thee Ock-tick experience...
Approaching the Gates.
THE PLAN. But let's back up. First we need to actually get to this skeeter-and-bear-infested territory. So we make our way up to Fairbanks, AK, stopping to get the requisite TWO full sized spare tires needed to make the remainder of the drive on the treacherous Dalton Highway. Ice Cream Newton was packed to the gunnels once again, and about to be stuffed fuller still.
Prepared, but slightly freaked out.
After a few days, we begin to gather our crew: Team Leslie - J, Kim and Indigo (5) a la Kenai, The Joachims - Donny, Andy, Banyan (4) and Sequoia (2) a la Soldotna, Chris Pearson - a la his Subaru, and Chase Orton - a la LA and Kim's dear high school friend who seriously rallied, throwing his moula, his paddling wisdom and his faith toward this crazy Final Frontier scheme. This is where things start getting shaky: Chase's flight was delayed out of Cali by an entire day (!?!) and a big storm system moved through the North Country delaying us regardless. Indeed, Chase arrived at midnight on a night dumping rain, only to immediately pop his tent and join the rest of the bedraggled campers. Water levels on nearby rivers were at flood stage and the weather report was grim. But we were prepared for rain, and high water meant fast but less technical water, soooo... we pressed "GO!"
Ready to "GO!" Gas can, potty and all...
Our plan was to drive 6 hours up the famed Dalton (aka The Haul Road - primarily used by truckers supporting the pipeline) and park at one of the Pump Stations (you probably didn't ever think about it, but oil doesn't just magically flow for thousands of miles in a pipe... you have to pump it) with an air strip. There, we would be picked up by three separate payload bush planes and flown to our destination: The North Fork of the Koyukuk River between the Frigid Crags and Boreal Mt... the literal "Gates... of thee Ock-tick." Just so you can really appreciate how in the middle of friggin' no where we were headed, I'll provide an extremely user-friendly map:
The Bridge over the Yukon Charlie on the Haul Road - did I mention the bad weather in the forecast? Good thing we've got duct tape. And a Hula Dancer.
Got PIPE?
HELIO. Although Team Leslie and Friends did not hire a guide for our venture into the rugged Alaskan interior, we did need to hire an aviation company to fly us in and out. Jay and Judy from Brooks Range Aviation out of Bettles, AK, fit the bill and then some. They not only hooked us up with the needed bush plane flights, they had all our needed paddling gear including rafts. And get this: We didn't have to pay anything in advance (nor leave a credit card number) until AFTER the trip . Classic Alaska.
And you thought YOU had a gear shed...
Enter the Helio.
Banter among the bush pilots indicated that this plane was originally crafted by MIT folks as a challenge to see who could design a craft that could take off and land in the shortest amount of space. Thank goodness those academics were up to the task because we had about 200 feet of riverside gravel bar to work with as we circled above our chunk of river in an attempt to land. Now I am known to thrive on the thrill of adventure and jump at the chance to take a risk, but as we lurched up and down in the wind and careened toward the cobble stones, my heart was in my throat and my understanding of Bernouli's Principle and the phrase "reasonably safe" went right out the door. About 150 feet later I was offering up my first born child (conveniently there with me in the cabin) to the Helio and its magical ways. We had made it. (If you want a taste of the gravel bar landing, see the video below, viewed on the actual blog site.)
IN. The put in at the North Fork of the Koyukuk proved to be spectacular. Wild flowers below and snow fields above, the aesthetic was incredible but the knowledge of our remoteness made it over the top. How many places in the world can you walk with the certainty that no other human has set foot there before?
Gear, Indigo and Mt. Boreal post-landing
Practice run without gear to get a feel for the river...
We got this!
MIDNIGHT SUN. While still on the Haul Road, we had driven across the famed "Arctic Circle" parallel of latitude marking the land of the midnight sun, and so we found the majority of days and nights feeling like, well, days... The sun literally circled in the sky above us, only seeming to set if it happened to dip behind a mountain or two in its travels. This created a funky shift in our timing: We would play and play and play, eat dinner around 10PM, stay up hanging out until well past midnight, and finally force ourselves to go to sleep (despite the sun being up) with tricks like face-masks, only to wake at 10 or 11 AM and do it all again, creeping slowly later and later in our schedule until we weren't getting on the river until mid-afternoon. Indeed, we could have easily flip-flopped our day and night completely... Not wanting to lose track of our overall trip timing/days, and mostly out of stubbornness and routine, we tried our best to keep to a "normal" schedule, but Indigo, Banyan and Sequoia were sometimes found catching butterflies and following wolf tracks at 1 AM.
In case you didn't believe me...
As low as she goes...
"This is how we do it..."
THE TUSSOCKS. Back to David Attenborough. If it doesn't cause you too much anguish, conjure again the image of David squatting in the storm of mosquitoes, cursing the natural world and the British media. I like to think he might utter a barrage of swears, something like, "Queen Mother Frolick. Bullocks and Tussocks!" Turns out that tussocks are actually tall tufts of arctic cotton grass that grows, produces seeds, and dies, year after year on top of itself, producing these tall tufts of vegetation. Trying to hike through tussocks is like playing a human video game hopping from tuft to tuft and trying to avoid falling into the swampy depths below. Amazingly, Indigo seemed to navigate over them the best while some of us adult types (even the coordinated ones) managed to fall on our faces and exhaust ourselves to the point of snorting and sweating. Arctic Visitor Center education videos advise that hikers plan to go only one third their regular distance in a day when hiking on tussocks. We concur. Thankfully, the vast majority of our exploration was via boat.
Notice who is in the lead... (this is after midnight, btw)
Queen Tussock herself!
THE BOATS. Each morning we would pack up camp, load everything into our two rafts, and hit the river. Days consisted of stopping to fish or pump water at clear creeks, navigating sweepers and strainers and holes, pulling up on mellow gravel bars for run-around breaks, singing ridiculous renditions of old songs at the tops of our lungs, and scouting for tracks and wildlife. One day mid-afternoon after a fun rapid, we spotted a gorgeous wolf trotting along the banks of the river. Several beavers bobbed their heads at us mid-stream, moose kicked their heels and ran, and a few owls swooped over to say hello. (Despite their massive tracks at every single gravel bar, we did not see a bear.) Otherwise, we would float and paddle, snack, and even nap on the boats as we made our way South.
High School Buds.
Fishing break,
Dancing with Wolves.
Ice Ice Baby.
OUT. So as we paddled farther and farther down river, about 100 miles total, we found a drastic increase in the mosquitoes. We went from not really needing our skeeter head-nets, to running several laps around the screen tents (used for cookery and hang-out time) before being madly ushered in through the zippered doorway; this was followed by folks hurriedly using one of those electric skeeter rackets to zap the heck out of the few dozen blood suckers that had made their way in. Ugh. The brief video below (again, viewed on the main blogger site) captures the "density" of our insect friends.
Dive in!
Safe and sound.
After 7 days in the backcountry we floated into Bettles, threw our gear and tired bodies into the back of Jay and Judy's pick up truck, and stayed the night in their bunkhouses before catching our flights back to Pump Station #5 on the Haul Road. The Bettles Lodge in town provided excellent eats and company- one group was still waiting to get out on the river after 3 days of being shut-out by weather (made us appreciate how well things had really gone for our party), while another was a Belgian film crew making a survival movie (sent a very nervous and unskilled Belgian movie star into the Gates with a locally procured fire-arm... oh my), not to mention the Bettles pilots, mechanics and waitresses that call this small town (population 12 at the last census) home. Our motley party of nine fit right in!!
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