Month: July 2018

DATELINE: July 1-8, 2018

Somewhere in the southern Talkeetna Mountains, Alaska. (Get out your topo map, and use the mountains and rivers you see to establish your position. But remember, rivers change course, and your map is from 1948, revised 1974… Trust the mountains.)

AKT-2, National Outdoor Leadership School, Women’s Backpacking – (Past Your)Prime

Thirty to forty miles hiked with a fifty-ish pound pack, in the company of nine super cool women, two of them 56 years old, three of them named Jackie. Miles as the crow flies: perhaps nineteen, but that doesn’t matter, because we aren’t crows. We may be flying bears…

I signed up for  NOLS’s Alaska Prime Women’s Backpacking course back in November. My daughter, Laura, had done a NOLS course in Utah, and both my brothers had done NOLS and raved about it.  Of course, they were all in their early twenties when they did it, but I figured, hey, I am in better shape at fifty-six than I was in my twenties, so why not? I further figured that if NOLS can’t teach me to backpack and guide me safely through grizzly country, no one can.

Since I had never backpacked, I took preparation seriously. I borrowed my husband’s pack and loaded it down with forty pounds of free weights, which sagged at the bottom of the pack and banged against my butt, but no matter. I AM A BACKPACKER. I hiked a seven mile loop at Morristown National Historical Park a few times a week. I rode my bicycle for 20 to 65 mile routes on alternate days. I did hill repeats with the pack on. Physically, I felt as ready as I could possibly be. Mentally and emotionally, I had my doubts. Why was NOLS slow in signing off on my medical form? Was I too old in their eyes? And if accepted, would I be able to remain positive in the face of uncertainty and adversity? Would my foot problems cripple me? Would I fall? Would I FAIL?

I flew in to Anchorage on June 29, and Krista, the owner of a most amazing bed and breakfast, Alaska House of Jade, was there to meet me. She and her husband, Zach, are star innkeepers, and provide both breakfast and dinner, rides to NOLS courses, rides to and from the airport, bus directions, tons of laughs, and a real home to travelers in Anchorage. I couldn’t imagine a better place to stay.

After walking to the Alaska Botanical Garden and witnessing the release into the wild of a boreal owl, I returned before dinner and met the first of my three Jackies: Jackie. (Since there was only one so far, no need for nicknames.) We got on like old friends from the start, and in no time flat, we were laughing hysterically over nothing and finishing off a bottle of wine. We made plans to watch the World Cup the following morning as a kind of last TV request, and then spent some time talking with Devon, who had just finished a two week Prime NOLS coed trip. She told us we were in for some kind of challenge. Sleeping in snow at the top of a mountain, long hard days of hiking, bushwhacking, all kinds of weather. Her group did not make it to their objective… She summed it all up by saying, “It’s Alaska!” No arguing with that.

Somewhat unnerved by Devon’s assessment of the course, Jackie and I compared notes on our physical training. I told her that I had hiked and biked my ass off for months, done maybe a thousand crunches. Jackie said she had worn her hiking boots to work. Twice. Ok, so pretty much the same, when you factor in the 20-year age difference. We decided we were going to start a new company offering travel for people over 35 called Past Your Prime Adventures. Preparation would involve mandatory wine tastings and massages.

At breakfast the following morning, we met a couple who were about to explore Alaska in a more conventional way: on a cruise ship. When Jackie and I told them what we were about to do, i.e., go out into the wilderness carrying all our food and water for a week, sleep on the ground, cook over a tiny stove, poop in groups of four, and utilize bear spray to save our own lives should the need arise, they just could not stop laughing. Neither could we. I mean, it’s either laugh or cry, right?

We still had twenty four hours or so to live, so we got on bus 25 with Caroline, who was on our NOLS course but not in our group, and we hit the mean streets of Anchorage. We ate reindeer sausage, visited the Farmer’s Market, drank local beers, saw an airshow, toured the excellent Native Heritage Center, learned to sing and dance the Hokey Pokey in the Yupik language, and got sunburned before the trip had even started. Oh, by the way, don’t even get me started on the weather. If I based my opinion of Alaska summers solely on the weather we experienced, I would say every day in Alaska is sunny, starts out cool but ends up warm, threatens rain every afternoon around 5 pm but heavy rain never materializes, and the nights are sunlit and cool, with refreshing breezes. Oh, and NO BUGS. No mosquitoes. No black flies. No. no. never. no more.

There are two possible explanations for the complete lack of biting insects. The way I see it, Alaska has a predominately male population of humans. If the same hold true for mosquitoes, and I can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t (most females prefer a more southern latitude), then the lack of bites makes perfect sense, since male mosquitoes do not bite. Only females bite.

Or, maybe we just got very lucky.

At 7 a.m. on Sunday, July 1, Zach dropped the three of us off at the train station so we could board the bus to NOLS Alaska headquarters in Palmer. So far, this trip seems like a sequel to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, but after just one more ride in a bush plane, we will leave all forms of transportation beyond our own two feet in the proverbial rear-view mirror.

Boarding the bus, I was psyched to note two other women of a certain age- oh, say, approximately 56. I was hoping to be in their group. Our bus driver pulled over so we could take pictures at a scenic overlook. We ooh’d and ahh’d over this view, because we didn’t know then that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

NOLS Alaska is headquartered at a beautiful organic farm. This is base camp for outfitting, rations, departing and returning courses, and satellite communications with course leadership (if necessary). I felt right at home immediately when I saw this:

But I had no time for soccer (yet). The moment had come for us to meet our leaders and teammates…

Leaders: Mara and Patty

Mara is from Wyoming, grew up teething on mountains, and graduated from Middlebury with a degree in Environmental Science. She climbs mountains in sneakers, sometimes in sandals. She had never worked a women -only course before, but relished the opportunity. Also enjoys working with Annapolis plebs and elite forces.

Patty is Chilean. She has summited the Seven Summits and was the first South American woman to summit Everest. When people look at her, they don’t think it is possible that anyone who looks like her could climb mountains. She can, and does, with the best in the world. She loves to hike, and to work with teenagers. God bless her for that!

Cook/Tent Group One:

 

1)Tall Jackie, 56, recently retired from a thirty year career in Education Administration. Has vast experience in the formation of temporary close-knit groups. Lives in Bend, Oregon with her now famous dog, Oliver, and her wife and total soulmate,

2)Monica,56,  who has served on the NOLS Board of Directors, summitted Aconcaugua, probably others I am not aware of, and has had a knee replacement and several other surgeries. She was Chief Operating Officer of the SUNY college system in New York State, responsible for billions of dollars and thousands of students.

3)Jordan, 23, from West Virginia. She is about to enter Dental School so she can serve the people of her home state. She also hopes to join the Army. She and her dad play practical jokes on each other that are very impractical and truly remarkable. Like one time she had to go to the bathroom when they were stuck in traffic so he bet her she could get out and go and get back to the car. But when she took a couple minutes and the traffic started moving again, he just kept driving, and she had to run to the baseball stadium herself.

4)Kate, 37, active duty, United States Marine Corps. She looks like a Marine, strength personified.  Born to lead, but also shares Mother Hen duties with Tall Jackie. An absolute failure at the game in which you try not to laugh or smile.  Impossible for her.

Cook/Tent Group 2:

Kerry, 56. Working on an endurance challenge in retirement. Mother of two daughters. Absentminded, keeps wandering off alone to the kitchen, ignoring bear protocols. Kate keeps half an eye on her at all times. Has more fear of the camp stove than any physical challenge. Serves as tent alarm clock.

Jackie Vail, AKA Medium Jackie, turned 37 on July 3, (Mara and Patty baked her a cake.) Works for the Department of  Defense, after service in the US Navy as a linguist.  Played college soccer at Holy Cross, hasn’t lost her touch. Has total grasp of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan and can make Cinnabon-quality cinnamon buns on a camp stove. Sharpshooter, not a fan of heights. Mother of a ten- year-old son.

Laura, in her twenties. Dartmouth graduate, works for Facebook. Lives in San Francisco. Needs lots of clothes and blankets in the tent, ear plugs, eye covers. Great smile, strong leadership qualities, can put in the extra miles as long as she gets coffee. Excellent at locating rocks under the tent. Not a fan of grizzly bears.

Small Jackie, 24. Northwestern grad, lives in Chicago, but travels extensively in her position as a stage manager for youth theater competitions and camps. Leader, able to juggle a million balls at once and deal with uncertainty in terms of her next assignment.  Likes to wake up gradually (Fat Chance). Her excellence with the map is genetic: her grandfather is a cartographer.

 

Funny how I am writing about the people, not the hiking. At this rate, I will never get to the hiking. But so much of a NOLS course ends up being about the people you share it with.  There are not many people in adult life with whom we will ever spend as much quality and quantity time. Sure, we go to work, but in the workplace there are walls up around each of us limiting the amount we share personally. In the wilderness, there are no physical or figurative walls. Facing our fears, drawing on each other’s strengths, building each other up in spite of our weaknesses, we draw closer than one would think possible in just one week. And so ten different I’s become one WE. This is OUR trip.

Day One: We learned our cooking and camping groups and were issued rations and rental gear. We spread everything out in our assigned bay and tried to fathom how we were going to fit it into our packs. Mara demonstrated the stuffing of a four-person tent into the tiny air pockets left once she had loaded a sleeping bag, a pad, a week’s worth of clothes, and a week’s worth of food into the pack.  Lucky me, I was in charge of the tent, and the “stuff your tent into the spare air pockets method” awakened my arthritis. My hands and wrists got cranky. I took advil(s). Mara and I wrestled the pack onto the scale. Oh, good, still under fifty pounds. Let’s top it off with a cannister of cooking gas.

Next, eighteen women, four leaders, and twenty-two heavy packs jostled for space on the bus ride to Mike Meekin’s Air Service. Mike is the top notch bush pilot who was responsible for ferrying us all to our start points. My group was to hike the southern Talkeetna Mountains, and the other group the Chugatch Mountains, across the river. I noted that the Chugatch looked higher and snowier. This was ok by me.

After a quick dinner on what would have been the tarmac if there was any tarmac, we had class. Bear spray class. One of the leaders from the other group played the part of the bear. If it weren’t for her floral long underwear, she could easily have been mistaken for a full grown sow bear and shot.

We all practiced unholstering, removing the safety, and firing the bear spray. Things were starting to get real. We would wear bear spray at our waist every second that we were outside the tents. We would talk, loudly, we would sing, some tuneful, some woeful, we would call out rhythmically.

Bear calls are personal. I favored “Marco…Polo.’ Tall Jackie screamed OLIVER! so regularly that on day six a boy asked her if we had managed to lose someone from our group… Patty would call “Yogi!” and I would say “Berra.” Mara seemed to actively flirt with the bears, yelling, :Hey, Bear!” in a come-hither way. Someone noted that once you took the lead of the group, you tended to call out more often.

Because we did such an amazing job with bear calls, we saw neither hide nor hair of bear.

Ok, so back to Day 1. Jordan, Jackie Vail, and I were the third pair to climb into the plane behind Mike and fly off, tottering and low, into the Talkeetnas. the two J’s were terrified, I was projecting calm. I’m not afraid of little planes, and I have had a good enough and long enough life that the idea of death in the abstract doesn’t frighten me. As I hinted before, I was more worried about cooking in the backcountry than anything else. I’d rather die than appear inept. One is abstract, the other, inevitable. Well, both are inevitable, but one is , well, extremely likely on a minute to minute basis.

After we ten had all landed on Mike’s makeshift airstrip twenty mountainous and awe-inspiring flight minutes from any other human, we shouldered our packs and picked our way down a field of tundra and mosses to a steeper slope of rocks, a ravine, and a riverbed, which would serve as Camp One. It was about 7:30 or 8 pm, full daylight, as we set up our tents in a wrist- straining procedure that left me breathless with the pain. Lesson One, Day One. Do not take the cup end when inserting the tent poles. I scrambled in my pack for the advil stash, then we lugged our packs to the kitchen to unload the food and leave it in the there for the night, along with our sunscreen, toothpaste, bug spray, and anything else that had an odor other than BO. Alas, we had to take that to the tents with us. I found I had a real talent for Leave No Trace toothbrushing. I was able to create a full-on aerosol of foam, particles undetectable without a microscope.

It took me about 15 minutes to forget the bear protocol I had just learned and head back to the kitchen for something I had forgotten. Mara reminded me that we needed to be in pairs to the kitchen, and fours to go poop. That was because the poop station was up on top of a ridge, invisible from the tents and the kitchen, and open to any bears who might be sauntering down the runway. Luckily, I was not planning to poop very often. My body clams up when I travel. But I made many a poop run, making up a foursome for my tent- and course- mates. Foursomes are for bridge, golf, and poop runs.

I stretched out in the tent with my new friends, punchy and giggling like summer campers. Looking up at the tent roof, I noted that the patterns from the wind outside and the continuing sunshine looked like the Northern Lights. Lulled by the river rushing  by just steps away, I slept well, thanks to my newly purchased air mattress. Lesson Two- pay up for the air mattress.

Days two through eight flew by, and while each hike was memorable and special, I am going to give my readers a flavor of the rhythm of each day, and combine some of the highlights of the trip into a single totally amazing red letter day.

Wake up times varied from 5:15 am to 8 am, but no matter what they were, I was up before the alarm, as is my custom. We learned after day 2 that it makes sense to clean out your tent and take it down and pack, then wander over with everything to breakfast. It seems stupid until you forget to do it and have to go fifty yards back to the tents to get your sunglasses. There is so much to accomplish every day in NOLS that you cannot waste time heading back, plus, you have to bring one to three other people with you every time you go anywhere.  I fought this idea, but soon came to see it as the best way to enjoy the day.

• We three cooking groups then gathered in the kitchen for the first course, Hot Drinks. Whichever lucky lady has charge of the stove lights it 4 to 6 times for each meal, trying hard not to ignite the sedge, the moss, the tundra, herself, or her teammates. Most NOLS accidents happen in the kitchen, not on the mountain, and for good reason. The stoves are menacing.

NOLS food is HEAVY in the packs, but it is good in the belly. We had macaroni and cheese, eggs and cheese n sausage, cheesy grits, cheesy beans and rice, cheesy quinoa, and tons of heavy peanut butter on tortillas, oatmeal, fruit, and granola.  The spice bag alone seemed to weigh close to five pounds.

We lucked out on this trip.  As an experiment, given our gender, NOLS decided to have us carry just 1.5 pounds of food per person per day; the usual load is 2 pounds.  It proved more than adequate and reduced each of our pack weights by three precious pounds. This is a blessing, because no matter how much we tried to eat the heavy stuff first and get rid of it, the packs never seemed to get lighter or less stuffed. Thanks to us guinea pigs, I bet NOLS uses 1.5 pounds as the ration for all women’s trips going forward. If you are female, and do NOLS Alaska, you can thank me later.

I made chocolate chip pancakes. I was pretty proud of myself. But I needed help lighting the stove each time. Most days, I was chief cheese and veggie chopper and clean up crew. I’m glad to have learned to cook outdoors, but if I were soloing, I would probably use freeze-dried meals and power bars.

Once we were fed and had purified drinking water and packed snacks in our rather grubby bowls to have for lunch on the trail, we hauled everything out of our backpacks so we could fit the food in,  and then we put the clothes we would need during the day on top and our sunscreen and lunch in the very top, or brain, of our packs. Then we shouldered our heavy burdens and struck out into the wilderness, four of us hiking with Mara and four with Patty.

First off, time to get our feet wet for the day.  We camped next to streams so we had water for cooking and drinking, but we always had to cross them to get where we were going. We learned several methods for crossing rivers and streams, the most thrilling of which is the Train method. We crossed a raging torrent in groups of three or four, following a strong and loud leader, who faced up into the current and yelled out instructions.  By the end of the course, we were all confidently crossing small to medium streams on our own, and had gained much in technique.

We climbed impossibly steep slopes at times, including a saddle between two peaks, at 6,000 feet. The hike to the base of this behemoth was a lovely, snowy stroll through a mountain pass. One month ago, there had been too much snow to negotiate the pass, so we were the first hikers through this season. Hiking through virgin snow and up scree piles left me feeling like, hey I got this. I CAN DO IT.

After a couple miles, Mara said, ” I think this looks like a good place for snow school. Oh goody! We were going to go sledding. Mara showed us how to climb the slope, including a technique for kicking your toe into the snow to form a step, and another way to traverse a mountain, digging in the uphill side of both feet, rolling your ankle toward the slope. Then we sledded down on our butts. Just for fun, Mara put two ski poles out and said, ok, sled down, and see if you can roll over on your belly, dig in your elbows and feet, and try to stop between these poles. We had a blast trying it, and all were able to meet the challenge. I was like, oh, that was fun. Now I am sure we are going to hike around to the left and look for a way for this mountain pass to gently continue to the river valley. WRONG.

I looked to the right, and I saw Patty’s group, who were hiking ahead and should have been out of sight, hunkered down between steep scree and steeper snow, while Patty broke trail above and tried to find a route up and over a nearly vertical slice of mountain between two peaks. I suddenly realized snow school was not about sledding at all. Mara was preparing us to save our own lives on that slope.

Our group was alarmed, seeing our friends frozen in apparent terror in a precarious situation while Patty worked a slope she obviously did not like. We looked for alternatives. What about that more direct route further right? Mara considered our ideas, gave them real weight, but then said, “No, this is going to be one of those times when I’m going to have to make the decision. We will go where Patty’s group is, but we will traverse out beyond them to not be in their rockfall. Wow.

I was right behind Mara. I kept my eyes on her footprints, and I used each and every one of them. At times, the snow was over our knees. I mirrored her every move. I used the traverse step, I dug my toes in even deeper to make a better step for my friends behind. Mara taught me the Rest Step, which is a technique for putting the weight on your bones, not your muscles, on extremely steep slopes. It worked a charm, and I had absolutely no trouble with muscle strength or breathlessness. It was a game changer for me. And the five of us summited the saddle and joined our friends, who were in various stages of euphoria, exhaustion, and acrophobia. I looked to Jackie Vail, who was in the other group that day and I knew was really scared, and offered her some encouragement. At the time, I was focused on helping her and others who were very nervous about the descent that we faced, but in retrospect, that was the moment I knew I could handle whatever Alaska was going to ask of me that trip. Bring it.

I led our group down the back side of the saddle. Mara said I did well, and I thought I did well. I laughed as I realized that I am happiest to lead on a downhill stretch. Between my pack’s pushing my head down and my ever-present Game on Dude baseball cap, I can’t see anything on the uphills…

Mara, Small Jackie, Kate, Jordan, and I had a wonderful but challenging time on the other side of that mountain, and even got to sled some more in ravines. Sometimes the best technique is also the most fun. As Monica opined, there is never a bad time to glissade! Meanwhile, Patty’s group had taken the high road and completed long and painful traverses. By the time we all converged along the river, we encountered our first trees of the trip and had to cross thick, trackless forest and wide swaths of willow shrub.

 

Bear potential was high and folks were tiring and tripping on roots and their own two feet. Breaking trail along the stream was working well for those at the front of the group, but the trail was collapsing into the river for those at the back. Mara and Patty called a halt. None of us wanted to leave the river. We had little climb left in our legs and our spirits.  Still, we wanted to continue, because if we made our goal for the day, we were going to earn a day off on the morrow.

A volunteer scouting party featuring leaders of the day Jordan and Laura, assisted by Tall Jackie and Patty, found a route. We shared it with a caribou, which led us along the riverbed at a trot, after rolling in snow to cool off. We may have been the first humans it had ever seen. It was certainly the first wild caribou we had ever seen.

While Patty took the lead and was able to sniff out even the faintest game trail, a bald eagle sat at the top of a spruce and watched us clambor around in the mud. Hey, buddy, how ’bout a little help from your bird’s eye view?

Next up, we tackled a meadow that appeared to be lush pasture but turned out to be tundra and sedge grasses and areas of dead and dying trees rising out of mud and swamp which overtopped our boots.

• • Despite the fact that birds do not exhibit expedition behavior, we made it to camp, a lovely flat spot next to the river, and after a glorious but tense and trying day in our boots, set up camp and set our socks out to dry. Stiff socks, stiff necks, stiff legs. We will need yoga tomorrow. And a day off. Woohoo!

Someone called a poop run. I was on said poop run, even though there was little to report in terms of action. While I was busy declaiming that “Did you poop?” is not in fact a yes or no question, we four heard shouts from the kitchen. Moose! We looked across the river at the steep hillside above. A full grown cow moose of impossible hugeness stood staring downhill at an angle to the left. She took off at a run, easily 25 or 30 mph, down that steep slope. We could hear her crashing through the trees and brush, heading straight for our tents. When she saw them. she stopped dead in her tracks and stared. then she looked over at us. We were about 100 yards from her. Mara said, ” Stay together, get big. Unholster your bear spray. “

I said, “Don’t make eye contact.”

Jackie Vail said, “What? I am locked on with her! Too Late!”  Panic rising in her voice. Really, none of us knew what to do. NOLS has no moose protocol. Well, maybe they do, as of this writing… Turns out you Can run from a moose. Not from a bear.

• The moose looked at us. We looked at her. She thought about it, and decided to brave the tents, not us. She passed close to the tents and then ran into the woods, right near the poop spot. We think perhaps the moose was being pursued by a wolf. We had seen large tracks that day, and our suspicions were half confirmed at the end of our course when we met a woman who said that moose have been running through her garden for the first time this year, rather than their usual saunter. She and her friend have seen wolf tracks…

After dinner, we de-briefed the day. Emotions were running high; people were sensitive and exhausted. One of the Jackies was having a particularly tough time, but I noted that Kate and Laura spent some quiet time with her, and she was soon able to rejoin the group. This is the kind of leadership that NOLS seeks to instill in students. Most of my group already had all the skills they need in that regard. I knew I needed more work, so while I prefer to follow rather than lead, I volunteered to lead on two days. Mara worked with me on reading topo maps, another area in which I needed experience, and I worked on my  tendency to rush ahead before everyone was ready to participate. NOLS is not a vacation. It really is a school.

But it is also serious fun. After debrief, we played games, giggling like teenagers.   We had a bonfire, using only dead wood and erasing all trace that a fire had ever been set.

As the days dawned and closed under the ever-present sun, we settled into a routine that got easier and easier as we each became more organized and attuned to expedition life.

On the sixth day, when we encountered other humans for the first time, and on the seventh, when we saw our first ATV trail and beer guzzling ATV driver, we experienced the shock of re-entering our own culture.  Each has their own way of enjoying the wild lands we share, but it would be nice if backpackers didn’t have to lug empty oil containers out to the roadside for disposal. Luckily, after five or six miles on trail the last full day, we found a perfect campsite under aspen trees, breezes blowing through, shade for our parched skin, and a fitting place for us to share our final circle time, each contributing memories of our time together so we wouldn’t forget the highs and lows of our communal life and adventure.

We were one short hike and a bus ride away from The Farm, with its showers and fresh vegetables, its banquet dinner in our honor with wine and tablecloths and napkins and cutlery. Jackie Vail and I played soccer against two men, losing, but scoring many goals in the process. Too bad she doesn’t live in New Jersey; I have a team for her.

We had a graduation ceremony, we all passed, and we all won awards. Mine was Most Likely to Appear in a Musical Comedy. Receiving it was one of the proudest moments of my life.  That’s intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but really, completing NOLS is a moving experience and a great accomplishment… at any age.

Circling back to the questions I asked of myself before starting… was I too old? No. Would I be able to remain positive in the face of uncertainty? Yes. Would my foot problems cripple me? No (Thanks, Vasque Boots.). Would I fall? Most assuredly, Yes. Would I fail? No.

We grew. We learned. We laughed. We cried. We hiked. And hiked. And hiked.

In the end, these are the lessons I learned. In hiking and in life:

1. Travel lightly on the land. Leave each place as good or better than you found it.
2. Take good care of each other; especially, watch out for your friend’s feet (ok, but yuck…)

   

3. Don’t go commando in your wind pants.
4. Keep your raingear handy. Even when the forecast is at its sunniest, showers and deluge can occur without warning.
5. Don’t overpack your life with possessions you don’t really need.
6. Remember to enjoy the hike. How lucky we are to share this planet with plants, animals, people. Alaska is vast, wild, and stunning. Don’t forget amidst the work to take in the scene. We may never pass this way again.
7. Eat the cheese, potatoes, and onions first. Always share the chocolate.
8. Sing. A lot.
9. Prepare for bear but don’t let the possibility of bear stop you from doing what you want to do.
10. When you say goodbye, hug.

A big hug to Mara, Patty, Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, Jordan, Laura, Kate, and Monica. Best of luck in all the amazing things you do and will do. Until we meet again on our well-earned Alumni Trips.

Kerry-oke