Adventures on the Green River

For six days in the middle of April, Madelyn and I joined two other couples for a canoe trip down the Green River in Southern Utah.  The route ran from Green River, Utah to Mineral Bottom just outside Canyonlands National Park.  What a great experience.  After the complexity of planning and logistic from long distance -- the others were in Salt Lake City and we were in Seward, Alaska-- we launched from Green River State Park.  During the six days and five nights we saw one other boat on the river and that was on our first day, so we not only had companionship and natural wonders but also desert solitude.  This is not to say that the were floating through a wilderness; the opposite is true for roads and trails connect to the Green in many places and the northern stretches of the trip are through ranch country, but he balance of the was a wonderful adventure in desert southwest.  

Madelyn and I though we would be roughing it, so we packed sparingly, but our friends had us set up with a luxury river kitchen including two burner stove and a dutch oven.  The long distance planning led to some good laughs.  We ended up with four different ways to make coffee and more more beer varieties than some Utah liquor stores.  On a given morning you could dark roast from a french press, expresso, traditional perked or drip coffee and in the in the evening an IPA, lager, Belgium white, or amber.  We worried about keeping things cold so we brought so much block ice and dry ice that beers and lunch meats were freezing.

The Green River from the State Park to Mineral Bottom, where we ended our trip is Class one water and the only real boating challenge was cold water, wind and making the, most of which were in mud that caked our feet, canoes and paddles.  The weather proved sunny and hot the first three days and then on the wind hit us with a vengeance, going from breezy to scary in minutes.  When we rounded one bend in the river we meet twenty mph plus winds coming up river and waves of one foot and building.   Our dash for the nearest shore put us on a steep talus slope where we perched like sealions waiting for the weather to improve.  

Our grotto bivouac-- happy campers

We spent the day napping, chatting, and exploring our options.  Luckily, we were all cheerful, and no one wanted to be foolish and challenge this nasty water.  We ended up spending the night in that spot, bivouacking in any flat spot we could find without room for tents.  As the evening closed, the river waves built to 3-4 feet and raging winds tore through the canyon and tried to swamp the canoes tied along the river, forcing us to drag them up on the shore.  We toughed out the night with cold beer, cheerful camaraderie and Nancy’s dutch oven meatloaf.  Madelyn said this was her favorite night on river, sleeping under the stars.   

The river runs left to right; the wind right to left.

A placid river and red rock

The next day we were ready at first light because we were behind schedule for our pickup at Mineral Bottoms.   Paddling in the cold dawn gave a richness to the experience and though we started the day with coffee, we were rich in imagery for this section of the river was the glorious Labyrinth Canyon.  By mid morning we had not warmed for yesterday’s wind had brought a cold front and sudden the up-canyon gale returned and we were blown of the river again.  This time we stood shivering on a sand bar looking up at a dense, inpenetrable hedge of tamarisk.  The only option was to scrabble up the bank, bushwhack a trail, and hunker down under a oak tree.  Quickly revived by coffee, trail mix, and more layers of clothes, we felt better prepared for the cold and ready to strike out once more when the wind subsided, which it did and we found a spot to camp that was flat and comfortable, so that we could celebrate the end of a fine trip in royal fashion.   

And as for the water, we started with at least fourteen gallons and ended with three left over.  That was just for Madelyn and I.  The river water is a tough go because of the silt.  It has to be settled overnight before the water can be filtered or used for cooking.  Is was therefore nice to have fresh clean water hand, for it was dirty trip with the mud below, the silt in the water and dust blowing into our eyes, ears, and mouth.  By the last day we could squander fresh water for washing--- ah!

A canoe trip on the Green is a great way to experience the southwest, especially when you travel with people like Nancy and Monty Fisher and Lois and Skip Gaynard.  Successful expeditions depend on the right equipment, good weather, tasty food, and fine companions, but most of all fine companions.  

Drying out on the Green RIver

Madelyn and I are visiting Western Colorado and Southern Utah.  Tomorrow we start off on a trip down the Green River, a chance to get into some near wilderness.   People think Alaska  has a corner on remote adventure but there are lots of places Outside where one can still leave the road and cellphone service behind and spent sometime relying on self and companions.   We are canoeing a flat water section of the Green through Labyrinth Canyon.  We will be remote and out of touch for for five days but it's hard to call it wilderness when daily I will see evidence of human occupation for hundreds of years.  This is a jagged, unfriendly land, dry, and coarse as a brick oven.  
For a man raised in southern Alaska where water is nearly always in surplus, the Four Corners is an adventure in the opposites for here water is more precious than gold and fickle as a magpie.   Driving around today we saw a sign in Grand Junctions "WATER in THE DITCH"  not something you'd see in Alaska.  We've always got water in the ditch.  I remember a gal came to our B&B once from New Mexico, and one of the first things she said was, "We were driving down the highway and there water running off the mountain right into the ocean and nobody was doing anything about it!"  Imagine that kind of connection with water.  
On this canoe trip down the green we are taking a gallon of water per day per person.  I never carried that much water before.  Even before loading the canoe with that eighty pounds of water, it occurs to me that we traveling on water, fresh water.  Ain't life strange -- I immediately quit worrying about having enough water.  I may get sunburned, snake-bite or drowned, but I don't think I'll die of thirst. 

 MORE LATER, with photos.

Budget Cuts Hurt, and it's Time to Share the Pain

With the talk of spring in Alaska comes the talk of the state budget, and this year with money as scarce as snow, the state legislature is cutting with a chainsaw.  When this happens we residents of the state have to face our demons and answer the tough questions like, What do I really care about?  What do we really need?  Which is more important?   One would hope that everything we spend money for in Alaska is important, but sadly somethings are not.  Is it necessary for us to have what is virtually a second capitol building in Anchorage?  Nope, not even if we had plenty of money.  Is public safety and education critical?  Yup, no matter how broke the state is.  Does the state need to be making half million dollar loans to build a Wasilla Petco?  Hard for me to swallow.  

End of day at Hooper Bay School

     Regardless of your political leaning or personal philosophy, years like this put us all on the hot seat for what we value in state spending.  Are we ready to pay some income tax in order to keep the troopers on duty, the ferries running,  and the lights on in the schools.  Are we ready to accept longer lines at DMV and longer waits for snow to be removed from highways?  Are we willing to give up on public funding for Public radio and state parks or will we cut the pay of public employees instead? The case is clear  we have to give up something, everyone does.  We'll know we've got it right if we are all smarting a little bit, if we all lost a piece of the pie and had to settle for a slice a bread.  
    With a career in education, it is easy for me to want to protect the school budgets, but I know they too will suffer, it's just a matter of how much.  Over the last ten to fifteen years, the teachers have taken a lot of hits in the pocket book and I'd hate to see them take another.  Teachers that retire today do so with very little retirement cushion to sit on, and Alaskan salaries no longer exceed the other states.  That means we can't keep and recruit the best teachers anymore.  If you haven't read Jake Todd's piece in the Alaska Dispatch, you need to.  He paints a gloomy picture, and this is a problem that won't fix itself.  We've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for long enough and it's time Paul faced the music.  

Takin' a Spring Break in Cordova

Just returned from a trip to Cordova and four days on  a saillboat in the scenic harbor there.  Our friends on the Muktuk wintered in the Cordova hoping to teach their boys to ski on the slopes of  Mount Eyak Ski Area, home of one of America’s oldest operating ski lifts. Unfortunately, the Alaskan winter offered little opportunities for Austrians to practice their nation sport of alpine skiing.

Cordova and Mt Eyak Ski Resort from a past winter with snow. 

      But, as with most adaptable people, they found that Cordova and the Cooper River Delta offered other riches to those who sought them, and we got to sample a few in our short visit including Prince William Sound venison served in a stew with Austrian knodel.  Knodel is a large dumpling made of bread cubes and parsley that is sliced and served with meat and gravy.  We enjoyed fresh winter king salmon paired with a fine home-brewed ginger beer.

      Once we pushed ourselves away from the table we roamed the streets and museums of this fishing village at the base of rugged mountains then drove out the road to the Cooper River Delta to walk the flats along the beach then up short mountains trail to Sheridan Lake a the base of Sheridan Glacier.   Earlier this winter Sheridan Lake was the local skating rink and we could only wonder if it isn’t the most beautiful skating around with mountains in the

background, and the lake rimmed by the subtle blue of glacier and iceberg. We were awash in spring sunshine so the ice was rotten and wasn’t inviting for skating.   

      The people in any town are spice in the stew and Cordova is no exception.  The winter king was a gift from John, the oysterman, who rears infant oysters for the local farms in his mad scientist lab of a shellfish nursery on a barge in the Cordova Boat Harbor.   We talked to a man tending his ducks that he rears in an eight by eight float beside his live-aboard boat.   

   The harbor residents form a little neighborhood of self-sufficiency during the winter when the place is quiet.  People who live aboard their boards whether cruising the big blue or tied up behind a breakwater, are models for simplicity and innovation.   These people have to get all the luggage and furniture of their lives into the small space of a boat, which means they tend to have what they need little in the way of extra, luxuries, and toys.  There is a lesson in such living.  These people travel  and see much of the world, but we find in fact that their though their trails are long, their footprint is small.

Turning Heads Kennels; Getting it Done Old School

      Our friend Travis Beals, a lifelong Seward boy, just finished his third Iditarod Wednesday night, placing eleventh in a field of close to eighty.  This was a big improvement over his last year's finish of thirty-seventh.  In fact, both of his first years he placed thirty-seventh.  At the start in Anchorage last week, he told the world that his goals was top fifteen and most improved musher.  Early in the race, he worked his way up to run with the top third of racers.   Then leaving Shaktoolik he was in seventeenth place, right on pace to reach his goal.  But Travis and his team logged the fasted time to Koyuk, grabbed a bale of straw and a drop bag of food, and pressed on toward Elim, jumping into tenth place.   With that bold move and steady runs the rest of the race, Travis finished eleventh, catching the eye of race watchers around the world.  
Madelyn and I were ecstatic to watch him cross the finish line.  
      We have known Travis for a long time.  Madelyn helped him develop his fundraising and promotion skills when he was a high school musher trying to build a team and raise funds to race in the Junior Iditarod.  Travis grew up recreational mushing with his mom, but his dreams were bigger.  He wanted to build a racing kennel and compete in the Iditarod.  
      Today, Travis is twenty-two years old with a racing kennel, a dogsled tour business, glacier mushing concession, and three years of competitive Iditarod credential.  He and his fiance, Sarah Stokey have built Turning Heads kennel a Seward business that's running on all cylinders.   
       I find great pride in knowing and supporting people like this.  Travis and Sarah exemplify the Alaskan tradition of having a dream and and investing blood, sweat, and tears to make it happen.   They work hard, they take risks, and they own their mistakes.  When you live like that you get to own your successes too.   Take a bow Travis and Sarah!  

Lake Affect, Snow, and Spring

The vernal equinox is before us and like last year we sit in mid march as snow orphans, neglected by winter in a way that has people talking yard work and boat maintenance instead skiing and snowpack.   Winter has been like a weekend spent waiting for house guests to arrive that never show.  We spent December, January, and February waiting, and we we are now at mid-March and all such longings have proved fruitless.  We are faced then with and easy spring and expect breakup will be only a brief pause followed by a flood of green as hillsides, lawns, and lake margins burst with chlorophyl drunk plants getting a jump on the brief subarctic growing season.  

Daylight has become  suddenly plentiful with the twelve hours days, and today for the first time this year I looked out at mid-evening daylight and felt the guilt of wasting daylight.   A summer frustration that comes to anyone to can’t play into the late evening like a twelve year old any more.  I remembered then that Alaskan summers are for kids, and those who think they are.

A week before the equinox we spent at Pear Lake where we have a remote cabin.  Yes, we have a linguistic anomaly with a House on Bear Lake and a cabin on Pear Lake.  Pear Lake is few miles west of the parks Highway south of Petersville Road.  And we go there to get away from the rat race at Bear Lake, Ha-ha.  We really go there to get way from home chores and bad weather or to find snow for skijoring.   We always end up reading a lot, talking to each other, and pacing our days at different rhythm.  

Pear Lake is about a hold mile long and get’s it name from it’s shape.  Our place is one the west side of the lake near the south end.  The cabin is small simple quaint log place with no plumbing, propane lights, and a cook top.  We built it our selves and part of the plan was for it be simple and aesthetically pleasing.  We get there by driving six hours north then fourteen miles after we leave the pavement.   In summer we park at Kroto Creek and hike a mile and half through the woods then canoe across the lake to the cabin.  In the winter, we leave the car at Amber Lake about mile ten and then skijor in.  We have found over the years that we spend more time there in the winter.  If the weather is foul or the snow is no good we spend more time reading and listening to to KTNA, the Talkeetna public radio station, writing or working on little projects to make things more comfortable or easier. 

Sometime we hike up the hill behind the cabin and monitor coyote and moose traffic and then later sit around birch campfires waiting for coals to form for grilling steaks.  -- Birch is great for grilling.   Aurora shows start after dark when the owls are singing and the dog team out on Kroto Creek sings for their supper.    

it is hard to define the effects of three days isolation in a cabin in the woods.  We don’t live a hectic lifestyle that we must escape in order to maintain our sanity.  Madelyn and I are semi-retired, but we’ve been know to bring work with us to add to the chores we do here like hauling firewood, shoveling the outhouse path and toting water from the spring at the end of the lake.  We call it pack-time for the dogs because they get be closer to us and have more freedom to romp in the woods without neighbors and and roads in the way.   But mostly we don’t do much but revel in the pleasure of being.  Perhaps that is enough.

Seward Highway Manhunt Update

The Man in Grey Arrested

I guess there is a little closure to this strange little story.