I survey the crowd. There is a healthy mix that appears to be divided into two distinct groups, cruisers and campers. The cruisers are the folks with their R.V.'s who will remain indoors during most of the voyage except for a few spectacularly scenic parts. They are generally 50 or older and are taking the ferry as a mini-cruise up the inside passage before continuing on a front country loop in Alaska. They have placed their vehicles in the large parking bay below decks to where they are allowed to return three times a day in order to retrieve any belongings and walk their dog, pet iguana or whatever other creature they may have accompanying them for the summer. The cruisers have purchased private cabins in addition to the fare of passage.
The campers, on the other hand, generally step indoors only to eat, drink, sing karioke (yes there is a karioke bar on board) and bathe. Campers are further divided into the following sub-groups: first timers, old timers, people looking for work and people looking for adventure. If you find a real old timer, one who has worked the oil rigs or fishing fleet for many, many seasons, one with a beard longer than your forearm, make an effort to know him... you will be well rewarded.
Most of my time on board will be spent on the top deck, near what is called the solarium, gazing at the myriad islands, waterfalls, and mountians that pass our wake. As Julian and I climb on board, a crew member cheerfully directs us up a series of many ladders. The solarium, it seems, is a somewhat distant relative to the bleacher seats of days of old in Yankee Stadium. For considerably less money than more luxury oriented passengers shell out, you receive essentially the same service and are seated in an area of the ship in which far less expectations are placed on your behavior.
Soon, I am setting up my tent on deck and securing it with duct tape like 30 or so other like minded individuals who it turns out also have never taken the ferry before. There are big signs announcing that it is prohibited to place any tents foreward of the large day-glo yellow line that is painted across the deck. Occasionally, someone decides not to heed this advisory and their tent becomes a nylon candle under the heatlamps, causing an instant adrenaline rush and the really bad smell of burnt camping gear. I am told there was a fire on one of the other boats last week but our voyage is fortuitously spared any incidental pyrotechnic displays.
We soon discover that it is best to dispense entirely with the tent anyway (as the old timers have done) and to roll out your thermarest and sleeping bag on one of the lounge chairs on the other side of the bright yellow line... under the heated solarium roof. By the morning, all but one tent has been packed away again by bleary eyed occupants who endured a night of little sleep caused by the constant flapping of tent flies on the deck in the cross wind. The sole remaining tent has become the source of great amusement for many solarium spectators as it twists and turns itself around its contents and looks for all the world like it is about to take the 50 pounds of gear stowed inside it over board like a spinnaker pulling a sail boat. Apparently the owner had abandoned his habitations in favor of other pursuits and had not yet returned.
I quickly got to know many of my fellow passengers. The ferry in general is a very friendly place and the solarium is even more so - a place where people come to mingle with the masses if you will. Of everyone I talked to, I was the only one headed to the Yukon. Most were headed to Ketchikan, Haines or Denali. Many wanted to join the fishing fleet. One quite inebriated young man claimed to be going to Dutch Harbor, Unalaska; the last stop on the last line of the Alaska Ferry, the furthest you can go, the end of the Aleutian Island chain.
As we settled in for the two night journey to Ketchikan (the first stop), it seemed that playing guitar and kickng a hackey sack on deck would occupy whatever time wasn't spent reading or gazing at the coastline. In Ketchikan, I learned the first of many lessons to come about the northland. Watching the sunset at such a northern lattitude is not the same endeavor as in the tropics, it requires stamina. For example, when I sat down on the peir that night at 9:30 PM, the sun was less than three fingers above the horizon (a mere 30-40 minutes in Hawaii). At 10:45 PM, it hadn't closed even half the distance to the horizon. I called it a night.
In total, I spent a full week on and off the ferry. I visited Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg and Sitka on my way to Skagway, the end of the inside passage. It is definitely worthwhile to get on and off the ferry. Spend a night here and there, meet some people and head on your way. Within 20 minutes of picking up a cue at a pool table in a bar in Petersburg, I was offered a job on a fishing boat for the summer.
By the time I finally arrived in Whitehorse, it never really got dark at all. There is a period of 15 minutes that resembles dusk that occurs around 1:30 AM. If you are sleeping outdoors and newly arrived to the area, this is the precise time to lay your head down on your polar fleece and attempt to fall asleep. If, for some reason, you linger slightly too long at brushing your teeth, you will find that it has suddenly become dawn, that the amount of light is now increasing rather than decreasing, and it is time to get up and start the day. The best solution is to be very active during the day so that you are tired enough to sleep well before this critical juncture. Unlike year round residents, you do not have all winter to catch up on your rest.
I took it as an exceedingly good omen that within my first few moments in the Yukon I saw two black bears playing in a stream by the roadside. Henry, the bus driver from Alaska Direct (phone: (867) 668-4833) had just driven two hours from Whitehorse to Skagway to collect me in his van at the ferry terminal. It was exceedingly nice of him to go all that way for just one passenger because he had an obligation to pick up another group in Haines later that day (three hours from Whitehorse in the other direction). But Henry runs the only bus service in the area and since I had inquired previously from Hawaii, he remembered me when I called from Juneau earlier in the day and was there at the Skagway ferry terminal waiting for me.
As we cruised into Whitehorse, Henry advised me that most young people coming to Whitehorse for the summer stay at the Robert Service Campground and that it would be my best option for accomodation. Indeed so, the place is lovely, perched along the banks of the Yukon River, a comfortable 20 minute walk from town. Thanks Henry.
As all too often occurs when I am three hours early for an appointment, I managed to arrive 15 minutes late for the first meeting of the group with whom I was about to embark on a 24 day canoe and hiking expedition through the Yukon backcountry. I was greeted with a cheerful "You must be Scott..." by the 13 smiling faces that sat in a circle in front of the S.S. Klondike, a retired river steam ship. Process of elimination I deduced (and a sure indicator of things to come I thought to myself) as I came ambling up carrying a plastic bag which contained a rack of barbecued spare ribs that I had ordered 45 minutes earlier and was the cause of my tardiness.
In all honesty, I had been a bit apprehensive about meeting my fellow adventurers. I had visions of finding myself surrounded by a group of elite athletes with physiques resembling the Greek pantheon. As I surveyed my companions from my place in the circle, I was measurably relieved to find that they were all normal looking individuals like myself in front of whom I could comfortably express my fatigue after a day spent climbing over mountain passes with 70 pounds of dehydrated hashed brown potatoes and week old cream cheese on my back.
My group was a part of the outdoor educator program offered by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), based in Lander, Wyoming. NOLS is generally acknowledged as the leader in outdoor education. They run programs for various skill levels all over the world and you can even earn college credit for your time camping with them. Check out their catalogue at www.nols.edu or telephone (800) 710-NOLS to request one.
Our itinerary was laid out for us. We would load up canoes and paddle down the Big Salmon River from Quiet Lake to its confluence with the Yukon River. The following day we would pull out at the abandoned fishing villiage of Little Salmon where we would be picked up by a van and taken to our hiking trail head in the Pelly Mountains. Once hiking, we would spend most of our time above tree line and make a long loop using the drop off road as a baseline to which we would return for pick up nearly two weeks later.
Never in my life have I experienced a place as truly remote and pristine as the Yukon. On the river we saw moose, mink, eagles and many, many mosquitos. We had only one encounter with humans during our entire trip. Our last night on the river, two Swiss gentlemen appeared in a canoe piled so high with supplies that it had only about three inches of freeboard. Paddling frantically, switching sides at random intervals, they landed at the beach. "We are going all the way to the Bearing Sea" they proudly informed us... I hope they made it.
The Yukon is a special place. It is a place where medium length wilderness river expeditions are hard to plan not because of a lack of natural places but because of the lack of road access. There are some incredibly beautiful stretches of river to be run, however it may be 30 or 40 days travel from the point where you put in until you are able to find a take out spot that will link with a road.
Officially, the Yukon Territory covers an area of 483,450 square kilometers and has 31,040 full time residents. Over 20,000 of those people live in Whitehorse. To put that in perspective, you have a territory that is essentially equal in area to Spain and only 10,000 people outside of Whitehorse live there. By comparison, 30 million people live in Spain.
You lose your sense of scale amongst such vastness. You realize your smallness in the world. At the same time, however, you become an integral part of it, no longer seperate in spirit from the land which surrounds you, totally immersed and harmonious. A few days earlier, I had remarked to one of my friends that any one of the hundreds of mountains we glimpsed would be a major focal point of any town or city that lay near it, but out here, in the Pelly Mountains, most of the mountains didn't even have names.
If I wasn't mindful, the grandeur of each individual peak became lost in the sheer immensity of the ranges lying next to each other as far as the eye can see. Uninterrupted by human disturbance of any kind, the land slowly seeps into your bones. We climbed one of those nameless peaks on a sunny afternoon. A fairly grueling ascent up the ridge line that started within 20 minutes of leaving our camp. At the top was a breath-taking view spanning 150 miles in each direction. Nothing but snow covered peaks and valleys. No roads, no smog, no towns, no houses, no clear cuts, no mines, no electircal lines... just the Earth in her natural and undisturbed state.
We paddled and sang songs, we hiked and camped in the rain, we were cold and wet and tired, but we learned how to live together, to function together, to tread lightly on the land, and to teach others to do the same. We came to love each other in a uniquely functional way, a way in which each individual takes full accountability for his actions and resposibility for fulfilling his own needs but at the same time has full confidence that if a situation arises where he needs help, every single member of the group will be there to support him to the best of their capabilities in an instant. It is the way society is supposed to function and more than any of the back country skills I learned, this teaching about what it means to live together and share the planet with each other is what I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
The hiking trail petered out within several hours walking from our drop off on the road side. We didn't see another trace of humanity until 12 days later, when topping a hill we caught a glimpse of a dirt track that was to be our pick up point for return to "civilization" the following morning. We all had a slight (or more than slight) panic attack at that moment. It came on in a creeping manner, encroaching on my awareness gradually and then hitting hard; we would soon be leaving the wilds.
All too soon, we found ourselves back in Whitehorse, wandering through the streets with a vague sense of what it means to be back in a city. "Oh yes, that is a moving car right there, I remember those things, I should really go to the sidewalk now and move out of the middle of the street. I forgot about that." Whitehorse is a lovely place. People I had chatted with briefly a month before remembered me on sight and asked me about my trip. The joy of a hot shower and the novelty of food in a restaurant wore off quickly however and I soon found myself agreeing to partake in another adventure, a short journey to Kluane National Park.
... to be continued |
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