Arctic Trek III

My third full day of hiking was a long one. I woke up on my gravel bar after a night of rain to find a beautiful morning. It took a long time to get out of camp. All alone, I went at a slow pace, eating and collecting my gear contemplatively. After all, the sun wasn't going to set.

As I was getting ready to go, looking reluctantly at my big pack and getting ready to swing it up onto my back I noticed a little piece of paper sticking out of the padding. It was a note from my friend Steph. She had written it and tucked it into my pack nearly seven weeks before when we went camping in the Olympic Mountains back home. I can't remember exactly what it said, and I've since lost it, but I know it told me to scream in a beautiful place. It was such an unexpected connection to my world, to home, I might have screamed just for the happiness of having received it, but as I looked around I saw beautiful clouds drifting over the mountain tops in the awesome blue stillness of cool morning sky. And as I yelled my morning pleasure into the emptiness around me, there was an even more startling invocation of arctic splendor. In the distance a wolf began to howl, and then another, and another. It was an eerie sound. I can see why it caused such fear in times past. Each howl is so rich in overtones that it seems to be harmonizing with itself.

I was so tired of tussock hiking that I decided to take Jack's advice and head straight up the river, cutting the oxbows and fording it when I came to it, mainly sticking to the easy walking of gravel bars. I had to give up on the idea of dry feet. I did however have the foresight to use my new gaiters that I'd bought in Anchorage, and as I moved ahead I discovered that I could make a nearly knee-high crossing without getting very wet at all. I also discovered--to a somewhat less enthusiastic response-- that my left boot had developed a sizable leak where the tongue meets the toe. After a long series of fords this left me with one foot damp and the other swimming.

A little wetness was not enough to set me afoul though. I continued with vigor, happy for many reasons, but especially that I was not hiking through tussocks anymore. Waist high brush and swampy meadows and all the numerous river fords were like eating pie in comparison. It was much more difficult than trail hiking still, but I was fine with that.

Navigation was simple here. Just follow the river up the valley until the big Y, then take a left up to the pass. Of course I took the time to consult my maps periodically, and a couple times I made rough fixes with bearings to distinctive peaks. But as I continued, I concentrated less on the practice of route-finding, and more on the sensation of my surroundings. It would have been difficult to accidentally wander out of the valley, so why worry about that? What became more important was finding the bear and moose trails that would make travel easier. The best were the wolf trails. They always seemed to follow the best walking terrain, but they were also the hardest to follow. I'd walk one for a while and then it would be gone without a trace.

About five miles from my camp I came to a big bend in the river. It took me a long time to get there because I had to cross a huge meadow that was mostly inundated with 6 inches of water. Out of impatience I made the poor decision to beeline it across to see what lay around the corner. It was slow going, and I worried for a couple steps about the sucking mud, but my boots were laced tight, and my feet were already soaked. Not much to lose. I looked around cautiously for the moose I was almost certain I would find but didn't see it. It took a long time, and I got even wetter than I'd been before, but I made it across.

The valley bottom at the bend was very flat, and I stopped for a snack near a large overhanging rock that jutted out at the bottom of a long spine of a west-running ridge. It was the turning point, the axis of the valley. In the distance I could see a new set of mountains including Chimney Mountain, which was near my destination. These peaks were more jagged, and steeper than the ones I'd been hiking through. Directly above me was a high mountain with rugged rocky top. I wanted so much for it to be covered with Dahl's Sheep that each little patch of snow became a phantom animal. They seemed to move as I looked away. Ragged bits of hide and bones, weathered and bleached after being carried down the valley in floodwaters hung from the shrubs around me.

With my destination in sight I decided to for it in one go without an in-between camp. It was an ambitious goal. I'd already gone a good distance. But how could I stop with the high country ahead of me like that, and no night to stop me? The sky had gone from a bright cloudy patchwork, to a thick impenetrable gray, and though my hope for good weather held strong, my realistic appraisal forecast rain. I had no interest in being in the high country in nasty weather, and that meant if I was going to see anything I'd better hoof it now.

As the vastness began to reveal its further reaches, my solitude became more prevalent in my mind. I had known all along that I was alone, but it wasn't until I'd been out a couple days that I started to feel it. I realized as I moved on up the valley into closer looming hills, that this was new. I had never been so separated from people. Until this trip, I had never spent a full day, a full twenty four hours completely alone without another human face or sound.

I started to talk out loud to myself, to sing. I'd point out my frustrations, yell at the mosquitoes, and as I walked I'd listen to the sound of my feet step step stepping through the brush. I began to think about home and all the people that are important to me, that have helped form who I am. I wasn't pining for them, just sort of acknowledging their place in my mind, in my heart. I saw my picture of them, my picture of home becoming a reflection of myself, a window into my own mind.

The valley closed in as I passed the confluence of the Chimney Fork and Roy Creek. I was no longer fording the river. It lapped at my boot-sides as I walked right through the middle of it. Occasionally I would find the boot prints of a pair of relatively recent human predecessors. We were definitely on the same path now. There was no other easy way up the valley from here on out. I wondered if I would pass them or see them on their way back. My excitement was growing. The pass was close now and I was approaching the base of Chimney Mountain, a tall spire surround by a broad talus flank. I was also getting very tired. I'd been hiking for almost 12 hours and my legs were not so vigorous anymore. My eyes began inadvertently searching out campsites.

Just before another crossing of the creek I felt a sharp stinging burn on the ball of my foot. I knew immediately that one of my thick, calloused sections had completely separated from the lower strata of flesh. Each step brought a stabbing pain. I'd hiked too much on the tussocks and then wetted down the abused feet. They could take it no longer. My skin gave up before my determination to get to the pass. I knew that I needed to take off my shoes and bandage my feet before I could continue, but it was starting to rain. My goal shriveled. Necessity took over and I looked up the hillside for a promising patch of lichen. It didn't take long to find a decent spot, a little lumpy, but soft enough to make up for it, and I set up camp. Little did I know I'd be there for twentyfour hours.