it's summer and I have alaska on my mind. a year late, here are photos from a trip to the #brooksrange in northern alaska last year.
@nicholashenrycm @crumrinee @oliver.dealb and I spent a week walking across
@gatesofthearcticnps in July 2021. the plan was to get dropped off by floatplane deep in the park, well north of the arctic circle, and get picked up by our pilot 7 days and 70 miles later.
the route we'd sketched out had us going over several passes (including one over the continental divide), traversing a lot of arctic muskeg, tussocks and tundra, and no trails. we'd pieced together trip reports (thank you
@the_nadine and
@andrewskurka for beta!) and thought the route would go.
we soon found ourselves in bettles, a tiny town only accessible by air during the summer and one of the main jumping off points into the park. the rangers didn’t know what to make of our party; 4 city slickers with neither boats nor guns with us, the usual accouterments for a jaunt in the park. we spent the night nervous & excited, curled up behind a hanger, the arctic sun beating down all night.
the next day we were dropped off by our pilots and cast off. it was like stepping into a different world. Eli and I had backpacked in Denali in 2019 and had some inkling what "the Alaska factor" was like — everything is bigger, realer, buggier, farther away, and harder than it seems like it should be.
we quickly settled into our rhythm, soaking in everything about everything around us. words and pictures are wholly inadequate in conveying the scene — amongst giant rivers, massive mountains, hundreds of miles from closest civilization, with 3 of your best friends. it’s really, really good.
on our third night, at camp, calamity struck – ollie badly burned his foot while cooking dinner. we cleaned the wound and pondered our options. several days walk from anywhere a plane could land, rescue would be extremely complicated.
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