Twelve days in the Brooks Range, part three

too much reality

First! I recently opened applications for my February Arizona Beginners Backpacking Trips- go from zero outdoors experience to knowing enough to plan your own backpacking trips! Plus eat KK’s incredible cooking. I imagine that these will sell out. Deets and the application are here, plus read reviews from past participants.

Also! Do you want to become confident with using caltopo for cross country navigation? And wander about in canyons in the beautiful southern Utah desert? There are still a few spots in my fall Utah trips, which are honestly a peak experience. Deets and the applicaiton are here.

Part one of this series is here, part two is here.

Day 6

June 19

The cheese in the snowbank trick worked, and the mold growth on SJ’s cheese has been arrested… for now. It rained all night but now the bright sun is back. I drink my little cup of black tea, wishing I had more caffeine- I was consuming kind of a lot of caffeine before this trip? And packed myself less in an attempt to come off it? Why did I do that to myself. I eat my granola in protein powder “milk” with its two glugs of olive oil, which continues to be delicious. I could eat two breakfasts this morning. We didn’t plan a rest day for this trip, and I didn’t realize how hungry I would get without a rest day. When you have a rest day, you don’t walk for 24 hours and you eat a bunch of town food. Without a rest day the hunger just grows and grows, like a snowball headed downhill. I packed 3,500 calories a day but I wish I had 4,000. A second bottle of olive oil would have done the trick.

SH finds a vole hanging upside-down in a bush, still alive and struggling, and she frees it. SJ says Northern Shrikes do this. We see one, balancing on a tall willow next to the creek. Shrike! Shrike! Shrike! It seems to say. SH finds another birds nest, this one in some roots twisted up in a dirt clod on a gravel bar.

What makes the urge to procreate? Raising young is so much harder than not raising young. You have to make a nest in a dirt clod on a gravel bar and try and guard it from predators. Why not just enjoy your one wild precious bird life, your long yearly migration, the feel of wind under your wings. I saw a tiktok that talked about a study that found that humans can only handle a small amount of reality. We use myths, for example religion, to shield us from the bulk of it. Nonsensical stories that tie things neatly into bows. The study found that humans who decide not to use these myths, who attempt to live fully in reality, more often fall into existential despair and are less likely to reproduce. As a result, the gene for living fully in reality is not passed on nearly as much. A lifetime of trying to figure out why things are the way they are, and one little tiktok finally made things click for me. Oh.

One week ago nothing was living, and now the ground is flowers. The bravest little tundra flowers, miniscule and low to the ground, trembling in the wind- forget-me-nots, which are my favorite shade of blue, the white bells of blueberries, the pink bells of cranberries, yellow arctic poppies, pink pasqueflower.

We huff and puff to a lovely pass and find diamonds on the ground there. Well, not diamonds really, probably just really clear small pieces of quartz, but I tell myself that they are diamonds. “Bears!” shouts SH, our resident bear-spotter, while we are rooting around for more diamonds. Far away on the opposite slope are three bear-specks- another blonde mama with two cubs. That’s nine bears we’ve seen so far! SJ produces her national geographic lens that acts as a sort of binoculars and we take turns looking through the camera at them. The mom and one of the cubs are napping together, positively melted into the tundra like a big bear puddle, and the mom has her feet splooted out behind her. The other cub is wandering around. They haven’t smelled us yet, and we have a nice few minutes of creeping on them before they catch our scent, the mom and cub spring to their feet and all three of them race off, up the hillside. That’s what happens with these grizzlies- they don’t know you’re human until they can smell you, and then they get super scared. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for them to smell you- they might walk in a circle around you, trying to catch your wind, and this might be terrifying because they’re not scared yet, they’re actually kinda curious, like “is this a caribou can I eat it?” but the change that happens once they smell you is truly wild. It’s like their parents told them stories, and their grandparents told their parents stories, all the way back thousands of years, about the super scary psycho murder monkeys that will appear one day when you least expect them- and maybe their parents used the stories to get them to obey, like “don’t wander too far from me when we’re foraging or the super scary psycho murder monkeys will get you” and they never quite believed the stories were real and then one day, oh my god, you show up on your two legs, oh god oh god oh god! The stuff of nightmares!

“We’re not in a murderous mood today,” I call out, after the fleeing bears. “Sorry to disturb you!” But also, thanks for running away. Thanks for not realizing how easily you could kill me.

There’s a group of seven people out here somewhere, a few of whom are friends with the Sarahs, doing a trip of their own. We’re about to cross a stream when a cute black dog jumps out of the willows and paddles excitedly across to us.

“A dog!” I say. The dog is so happy to see us, random strangers out here in the wilderness. I immediately love the dog so much it hurts. The seven humans appear after, and we all exclaim at the fact that we ran into each other somehow- if either group had arrived at this spot just a few minutes earlier or later, we would’ve missed each other. It would be fun to camp together but they’ve got a few miles to go still. We tell them about the bears and the pass covered in diamonds and send them on their way. We find our own camp a short time later, another tundra bluff above a creek, where we all strip naked and splash around in the water, cooling from the day. I am determined to find the hole in my neo-air- I already patched one hole in this pad, a feat I am extremely proud of. I used the at-home repair kit, not the silly glue dots the pad comes with, and I now carry that repair kit with me. I dunk the pad in the water and am shocked to see that the leak is at the valve! This neo-air has a big twisty valve, not the small delicate valve of previous versions, and apparently the force of twisting the big valve has put a microscopic hole in the fabric at the corner of where the valve attaches. This seems like a design flaw? Why use fabric too delicate to withstand the force of twisting the valve? Or maybe reinforce that area? Also, I would never, ever want to be an air mattress manufacturer. An endless experience of your product failing. If anything would give a person existential despair, it would be that.

The hole is in a spot that turns into a corner when the mattress inflates so my patch kit won’t work for it, but SH is carrying a heartier patch kit, for packrafts, and has some aquaseal, and we give that a shot. We dab the glue on and let it cure in the sun. As soon as it dries, it starts to peel off, because of the corner. Maybe it will still work? It’s hot in my shelter but I’m so sleepy I drift off no problem.

Day 7

June 20

We have a huge pass to go over today, our steepest one of the whole trip- as we approach this side we can see that it’s a snowfield, and as long as we stay in the middle the pixels on slope-angle shading are white (never sketchy) but the other side of the pass is red pixels which, depending on what it is, may not go at all. Soft snow or soft, deep scree would be fine, but icy snow or talus would not be fine. I’m nervous but excited- I usually try not to go over things with red pixels without having enough beta to know that they go- the Chugach Crowberry Traverse, for example, has several red-pixel passes but they’re all grassy ramps or soft, deep scree, with the exception of paradise pass, which is talus-y but the sheep have cut good switchbacks into the descent, so as long as you stay on those it’s chill. I’m no mountaineer, I don’t like to actually be scared. This feels low stakes though because our mileage goal each day is modest enough that if the pass doesn’t go we can just turn around and go another way, we’ve got plenty of time. That’s been a really fun thing about this trip- there’s enough wiggle room built in that we can explore and experiment without stressing about not being able to meet our goal.

The reason we’re going over this pass is because on the other side lies a magical land that SH calls Gnarnia- she went there another year and loved it, and has wanted to go back ever since. The anticipation builds as we huff and puff our way up the snowfield, which is luckily soft and not icy at all. At last we reach the top of the pass, where there’s a good breeze to help us cool down. And the descent- what luck! A short stretch of soft scree and then a long, soft snowfield. And the most beautiful jagged peaks beyond! The valley below them like a jewel!

gnarnia!

SH drops into glissade position and is a tiny speck at the bottom of the snowfield a few minutes later. I try to glissade but I pick up speed too quick and freak myself out- there are too many horror stories in the back of my head about glissading accidents and plus, it makes my butt numb- so I join SJ in slowly stomping our way down the slope.

At the bottom we exclaim in joy- what wee, ice covered little tarns! What charming, flower-covered meadows! And this warm, endless sunshine!

We spy a giant hill of flat tundra in the distance and make our way over to it- the camping at the top is amazing, and it overlooks the whole valley. It’s early still, we have lots of time for activities- I splash a bit in the icy creek while the Sarahs straight-up swim in it and then it’s time for the real reason SJ brought all that camera gear- nudes. We take turns being photographer, director and model and get some excellent shots up on the bluff with the mountains behind us.

gnarnia!

nudes in gnarnia

Day 8

June 21

It’s solstice! At three a.m. I hear SJ call from her tent

“Is it morning? I dreamt I had a baby!”

Shortly after the shadow of the mountain falls over us and we have a few blessed hours of shade before the sun pops out again. Solstice anywhere in Alaska feels manic but up here it feels especially bonkers- the sun literally just circling. I try to remember the last time I saw night. It was in Utah in April… ah, I love a peaceful desert night. Well, I only have to miss darkness for a little while longer, because now the days are getting shorter again!

blessed shadow

We walk on river cobbles for a while today, chunky ones the size of bread loaves that exhaust me. Then we find a bear trail- apparently, generations of bears will step not only on the same trail but in the same spots on that trail, until there are deep footprints in the moss. I try to walk in the footprints, and my gait becomes a bear gait. Amazing!

bear trail!

do you see him?

“Bear!” shouts SH, as a blonde guy pops out of the willows and sways on his hind legs, trying to smell us. The wind is going the wrong way so he starts his big circle, hoping to catch it. This is never not scary! He does almost a full circle before it hits and he starts as if electrocuted and turns, running in that funny way bears do where it looks like they’re falling apart. We won’t see him again but we will see his footprints, in the snow alongside the creek, as well as a big hole where he fell through the snow and had to pull himself out. I would’ve loved to see that. Bears, they’re just like us. They posthole!

Tonight’s camp is on a windy pass that overlooks the whole world. A plover runs ahead of us, pretending its wing is broken so we poke around in the rocks and find its nest, four perfect eggs in a bed of reindeer lichen. After we find its eggs but don’t eat them it decides we’re harmless and settles back on the nest, watching us as we set up our shelters. SJ reads about plovers on the Merlin app.

“They go all the way to South America!” she says. I try to imagine this. How is this little bird not exhausted?

It’s too hot in my shelter to sleep. SH teaches us about “sleeping bag shade”, which is where you hang your sleeping bag on the outside of your shelter. It actually insulates and creates a cool little corner in my tent to lay. I joke that I brought my warmest sleeping bag not to insulate me from the cold, but to insulate my shelter from the heat. The trick works great until it gets kinda breezy, but by then the day is finally cooling, so it’s fine.

In the middle of the night the wind really picks up and batters my tent with such force that I sit up and hold the trekking pole in place, lest the whole thing blow over. After about thirty minutes the wind drops and a little rain begins to fall, and scary storm vibes turn to peaceful rain-pattering-on-silnylon vibes. I imagine the plover on her nest during the storm, poofed out over the eggs, eyes closed, bracing against the wind. How does life continue? How? Shouldn’t we all just have given up a long time ago? I’m definitely one of the ones who will not pass on my DNA…