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Alaskan Wilderness 5.0 mi (8.0 km) |
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Got my head in the clouds, everyone!
This morning, we all rolled out of our tents to discover that a huge mass of clouds had eaten Vista Camp whole! The sky, the valley, even the hill right next to us on the other side of the stream, were gone! And it was cold, it was damp, and the wind from yesterday was still going! After trekking up the hill to the cooking canopy, I devoured as much tropical breakfast couscous and hot chocolate as my stomach could hold. Today, we were going to experience a whole other side of Alaskan weather, and we were going to need all the calories we could eat!
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With backpacks wrapped up and rain gear layered on, we headed uphill out of Vista Camp’s protected basin and right into a nonstop gale that battered us with rain all over the cloud covered mountain! We navigated soggy, slippery boulder fields, where the rock tripe lichen had transformed from a crunchy, crispy black to a gross, gooey brown. It all felt very spooky with streams appearing and disappearing into the fog and round rock circles that looked to me like Celtic burial mounds even though there was no chance of that being real! Thankfully, there were no wolf howls out of the gloom, because I’d have run straight back to Port Alsworth!
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We didn’t have far to go, so Tim decided to lead us on a detour in search of better hiking weather and maybe some animal sightings. After cresting the mountain, we turned downward into the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge, navigating a particularly slippery and treacherous talus field to do so! The fog didn’t exactly let up, but the landscape took a dramatic change!
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Despite the fog being everywhere, the wind settled down below, and tundra was replaced by lush grass! We also ran into a huge river that was pretty much un-crossable, so we waited around a lot while Tim went off in search of a crossing. Philip stayed behind to play a game called Contact! Have you played? It’s a word guessing game! One person thinks up a word, and offers up the first letter only. The first person to guess the word wins! Let’s say the word starts with “B” and one person asks “Is it something made of cardboard?” Two scenarios can play out: either a second player shouts “Contact!” and they both count down 3, 2, 1 and say the same word at the same time (“Box!”), forcing the word keeper to give up another letter, or the word keeper interrupts their Contact with “It’s not a box,” and the guessing starts over. This continues until someone asks “Is it a Beaver?” and the word keeper admits defeat!
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Anyway, Tim returned after a few Contact rounds and led us uphill, across a stream, and through a thicket of alder trees! After spending so much time on the tundra, it was wild seeing trees again, even if they looked more like huge shrubs at this elevation. Alders, like the mountain avens, are nitrogen fixing plants that make the soil richer for other plants to grow. Their seeds are super light, so they can travel great distances on the wind and by water, which is how there came to be groves of them up here on the mountain! They made for tough bushwhacking, but it was all worth it when we stopped on the other side of them for a lunch of cheese spread on hearty whole grain crackers!
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And then, around 3:00 PM, we packed up and resumed our trek, up out of the valley of alders to the rocky, wind-blasted tundra once more. For the next two hours, folks got steadily quieter as rain soaked into every possible crevice where rain had no business soaking, backpack covers flapping in the 40-mile per hour gusts. It was super cold, there were bogs and streams and scree fields and snowfields to cross, and there was no sign of a suitable campsite at all! All around us was rock and ice and wind! Sometimes, being out in the wild really stinks!
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And just when it seemed like we were going to be hiking forever, Tim and Philip did another consultation and scout, while we waited behind, and the best news of all reached us in this icy, soggy, windy place: They’d found a campsite! It was going to be a little cramped and a little cold, but it was close to water and reasonably sheltered from the wind! That was great, because by this point, I was starting to shiver pretty fiercely!
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But you know? We made the most of it! We set up camp in teams, with several folks holding up the rain fly of each tent while others assembled the tent under the shelter. That got our campsite up and ready faster than ever and really brought out the jokes from folks who were otherwise not having a stupendous time. As you can imagine, this spot earned its nickname: Cold Camp! Meanwhile, Tim and Philip set up the cooking canopy and got to work fixing up hot drinks—Have you ever tried a hot Liquid IV? It’s the bee’s knees when you’re cold!—followed up by some super filling enchiladas! Bit by bit, I was starting to thaw!
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At dinner, a question went round the tent of “What would your last meal be?” Answers ranged from steaks to pasta to dim sum. Me? I guess if I got to choose my last meal, it would be something I just don’t eat living in the city, maybe a plate of maple sticks. If I were preparing to return to the earth, I’d want my insides to be as earthy as can be. Gosh, that was melancholy! The cold really must have gotten to me. I think I’ll forego the post-dinner walk for some rest and reheating. If tomorrow is rainy like this one, it’s going to take all my stamina to power through, even though we’re already preparing for our last full day of hiking! Wow, where did that trek go?!
Chillin’ out!
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Total Ground Covered: 26.5 mi (42.6 km) |
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