Pisco Sours all round!

We left Nasca on a night bus. Night bus. For me these two words, when put together in a sentence can only mean one thing… Extreme discomfort. Or… Lengthy pain.

Before we boarded the bus though, Maritza took us to a restaurant in the main street for dinner and for a lesson in making Pisco Sours (a plan that was no doubt was formulated to help lessen the pain of the night bus).

How to make a Pisco Sour... Combine, in a cocktail shaker… at least 2 shots of Pisco, the white of an egg, some lemon syrup, the juice of a lime, a dash of bitters and a few cubes of ice. Shake vigorously until the egg white foams, strain into a glass and sip (or gulp)! Mmmmmmmm.

Peru naturally celebrates their national drink on Pisco Sour Day, which falls on the first Saturday of February. The tradition holds that when the Peruvian National Anthem is played all Pisco Sours must be finished as a mark of respect. Stories abound about the origin of the Pisco Sour, I personally like the one that contends the drink was thought up by Peruvians when all wine was banned by the king in the 16^th century.

The night bus wasn’t really as bad as I expected with lay-back seats and calf rests. We even had a flight attendant (drive attendant?) who passed out mini blankets and pillows, and then in the morning a cup of anise tea and a small box of unusual and unidentifiable snacks before we arrived at Arequipa.

All night the bus wound up through the Andes, climbing higher and higher, along narrow cuttings with a surprising amount of traffic, given the hour. All the curtains in the bus were mercifully closed, with most passengers oblivious as the bus teetered close to the edge of cliffs on tight bends and as it continually overtook slow moving vehicles on blind corners as a matter of course. I stopped peeking out the window after a while as it caused me too much stress to see what was really going on.

We arrived into Arequipa in the mid morning and a minibus picked up our weary group to take us to the hotel. Just we arrived into the old city, the streets became awash with protesters and our bus was enmeshed in a mêlée of gridlocked vehicles that were interspersed with people holding placards and yelling slogans. The protest was against a crooked politician who had ripped off people in a land development deal, Maritza explained. Apparently though, Arequipans are a bolshie lot and protests are a common way to register annoyance with the powers that be.  We jumped out of the bus just short of our destination and walked to the hotel where our rooms awaited. After a delicious shower we met to eat breakfast in the courtyard of a small café in the jumbled back streets of Arequipa.

Once the self proclaimed capital of Peru, Arequipa is a beautiful city, with many of the buildings constructed from a pearly white volcanic rock called silla. It is guarded by three classic looking, cone shaped volcanoes on the horizon in the middle distance, and has a river running through the centre cloaked by a lush agricultural valley. As the second largest city, almost a million Peruvians call Arequipa home.

After breakfast we visited an alpaca woollen mill where we learnt the differences between all the South American camelids; alpacas, llamas, vicuna, and guanaco, and saw how the wool is graded, sorted, spun, dyed and woven. Vicuna wool is the finest, but vicunas are not domesticated and only a few are allowed to be caught and shorn each year, leaving baby alpaca as the next finest wool that is expensive to buy, but so very soft and cuddly! The woven woollen fabrics are just spectacular, all gaily multi-coloured and eye catching!

After the woollen mill we all jumped in a suite of tiny taxis that cost about $3 for the trip up to a vantage point above the city for a closer look at the volcanos. El Misti, the biggest, was framed between the two smaller ones Chachani, and Picchu Picchu and together all overlook the fertile terraced river market gardens, shaded with generous smattering of eucalypts.

El Misti

Eucalyptus trees and Peru are now synonymous. The Peruvians couldn’t easily live without this versatile tree, introduced over a century ago, that grows quickly and provides fuel, timber for construction, and erosion control. It is so very lucky that it hasn’t become an invasive weed, running wild and making a nuisance of itself, like so many other transplanted species across the globe. The main downside of the eucalypt is that it has increased the fire danger in Peru, by introducing a fast growing fuel that was never there before.

It was lunch time after our trip to the top of Arequipa and after briefly visiting a sparkling white church, we walked to a restaurant in the rich end of town to try the local delicacy of cuy – or as it is more widely known, guinea pig.

Kai and Manja ordered one each, so did Jaime and me. Tedy and Hayley chickened out, and I’m not sure why Maritza didn’t order one as she said she really liked it. The four of us laughed nervously and looked at other people’s meals in the busy restaurant while we awaited our pigs to arrive. Eventually they came out on a plate, flattened with their sweet little faces still intact, even the eyes and teeth were there, if not a little misshapen in their tiny broken jaws, all deep fried and crispy. We took photos much to the amusement of the other restaurant patrons and then we tried them. There was not much meat to speak of on the back, and it was brown and stringy so I moved onto the shoulders where the meat was more like a tiny chicken wing and the back legs like tiny chicken drumsticks. The meat tasted like chicken too. I couldn’t come at eating the crispy skin, I was too worried I’d find a tuft of guinea pig hair that would turn my stomach. Come to think of it, my stomach was already turning as Maritza told me to eat the head. I just couldn’t do it, although the other three made a meal of their cuy – eating the whole things. I passed a piece of meat to Tedy and I think he just touched it to his lips! He reckons he ate some but I have my doubts! Maritza couldn’t help herself, she said the best part was the head, as she finished off my little creature for me.

Kai & Manja

After the cultural dining experience, we all went our separate ways with Tedy and I opting to go souvenir shopping. I think we went in every shop along the tourist strip, him searching for the perfect warm Peruvian hat and me looking for a baby alpaca scarf for my daughter in London. Finally we wandered into a posh shop and both found what we looking for, a price that we were happy with after Tedy's skilled bargaining. After an ice cream we found a supermecardo and bought all the ingredients for pisco sours, including a cocktail shaker and little blue plastic cups for all of us. Something to look forward to!                    

Tedy

birdwatching

After the trip to the Ballestas Islands we jumped aboard a small white tourist mini bus and were joined by three, 60 something, slightly overweight American couples who oddly ignored all of us from their seats at the back of the bus. Mostly I had found fellow travellers were interested to exchange pleasantries, stories and travel tips. Not this self-contained lot. Oh well.

I was bemused as Hayley chose to sit next to me, and true to form, spread her gear across the seat, so no one could fit next to us. Thinking back now, the pattern for transport seating was set there, on that journey, as it seemed the group intuitively filed to allotted places on whatever mode of transportation we travelled on for the whole trip. I tried repeatedly to subvert the order but never fully succeeded.

We sped south through the grey desert moonscape, overtaking every vehicle we encountered without exception, ‘til we turned off to a set of huge golden sand dunes, surrounding a verdant oasis, punctuated by a generous pond.

 The tree lined pond served as a focal point for a gaggle of restaurants, with the paths around and between lined with tiny shop stalls, each with complete a woman fanning herself and selling Peruvian souvenirs…the ubiquitous llamas, sun hats embroidered with ‘Peru’, miniature pan pipe brooches and the most colourful fabric on the planet with rainbows woven into each bolt. The main attraction here though was the sand, and one could opt to go careening up and down the tall, steep dunes in a sand buggy, as well as surf the sand hills. My companions all took up this unique opportunity, but it was not for me. Speeding crazily up and down sand dunes sounded like torture and I chose instead to explore the oasis, and to drink a cool beer in the shade while escaping the oppressive heat. Two beers and an hour or so later I was rejoined by my exhilarated and sandy friends, who at that moment no doubt thought me a boring killjoy as we ate lunch together over their stories of the amazing fun I had just missed. Yeah right, I thought!

Back on the bus – yes in our unofficially allotted seats, leaving the non-communicative Americans to the dunes, our next stop was at a Pisco distillery for a taste of the main ingredient of the famed Pisco Sour. Made from grapes, we were told that the fruit in Pisco is squashed by foot, in large concrete receptacles by salsa dancing, dusky maidens wearing micro mini skirts! It’s true! I saw the pictures! After quite a lengthy process the distilled Pisco goes into huge person sized earthenware jars with pointy ends to be bottled elsewhere. We tried 4 types of Pisco and they all tasted like rocket fuel. One was just a bit sweeter and we were told it helped to cause pregnancy (presumably with all the concurrent factors being optimal). Nonetheless Tedy, Hayley and I went thirds in a bottle to make some Pisco Sours at a later moment. For this section of the journey we had a new young couple come aboard the bus; Andreas and Andrea from the Canary Islands, him Spanish and her German. We all became friends instantly and met them variously all around Peru, becoming increasingly excited every time we saw them over the ensuing 3 weeks.

From the Pisco distillery it was on to the town of Nasca, deep in the desert. Enroute we stopped at a tall metal tower that cost 2 sol to climb where we tried to make out the outline of two the ancient desert drawings, or geoglyphs, known as the Nasca Lines. It was hard to see a hand and a tree at such a low level, so it wasn’t surprising to read that the Nasca Lines were only discovered by modern society in the 1930’s when they were overflown by a light aircraft.

 Not unlike the candelabra at the Ballestas Islands, these 100’s of giant drawings across 500 square kilometres are still a mystery. They were created by the Nasca people a couple of thousand years ago by removing the top layer of red gravel, exposing the white gravel underneath, and no one has the answers to why they were produced in the first place. Modern scholars have worked out how the ancients drew these huge markers – the largest being over 270m long, but no one has figured out what was to be achieved by constructing these enduring and monumental sized depictions. The desert has protected the secret all this time as surely as it as protected the drawings themselves.

It was at Nasca Hayley realised she had lost her passport, although she insisted it had been stolen. If her bag had been emptied before in our room, it was comprehensively emptied this time, and although I felt sorry for her predicament I was not at all surprised by this revelation. Anyone who spread their gear out so broadly is sure to leave behind bits and pieces here and there. I guess they just hope it isn’t going to be their passport. Both Tedy and I offered support and advice but in the end using his computer and my iphone was all she was interested in. I was happy to help on the basis I would want this type of assistance should such a problem ever befall me. Unfortunately she was so distressed she forgot to thank either of us, for our technology or interest. Hmmm.

At Nasca we drove out into the desert to visit the pre Incan cemetery at Chauchilla that was uncovered and virtually destroyed by ancient grave robbers searching for treasure among the grave goods given to the dead to speed them comfortably on to the next world. So now just the desecrated, desiccated mummies bear witness to the past and scare the life out of the living. The desert has provided the protection for these 900 year old plus corpses, most still complete with hair and in some cases skin. A guide interpreted the site for us and by the 18^th grave we were all corpse weary and happy to get out of the windy, sandy, dry desert and onto the bus.

On the way back to Nasca our eagle eyed bus driver spotted a pair of burrowing owls and a pair of Peruvian Thick-knees in the desert by the road. I was in raptures. Tedy was bemused and we all teased him that he hated birds. The next day while contemplating a swim in the pool at our hotel I noticed a small bright red bird flitting from branch to branch above the water. I manically chased it trying to get a better view when a voice from the pool calmly intoned – ‘vermillion flycatcher’. I turned to see a rather hairy fat man watching me trying to watch the bird. “Sorry?” I asked, not sure if I heard correctly.  He repeated slowly ‘vermillion flycatcher’ as if I was impaired. I thanked him and as we struck up a conversation about birds, a tiny jade green and tan hummingbird hovered at eye level behind his head. Noticing my distraction he turned and identified it as a Peruvian hummingbird. It seemed I had hit on the mother lode. The hairy almost naked gentleman was a bird watching guide and friend to the foremost Peruvian ornithologist who had co-authored the field guide on Peruvian birds. I gasped as he told me Peru had 1,817 species of birds. He asked me what I had seen so far and reeled off a dozen birds that we were likely to see whilst in Nasca. With that he informed me that it was his day off, and invited me to join him in the pool. I blushed vermillion and ran off into the heat of the day after stammering a flimsy excuse to find myself a notebook to begin a bird list.

Lima to Pisco

Surreal! I am sitting in the British Library with my daughter, Natt, updating my blog that is embarrassingly months out of date. And I’m terribly conflicted where to start; still having more to write about Alaska; my trip to Canada; the fuels conference in Spokane, Washington; and the Ranger Rendezvous in Bend, Oregon.  My heart tells me to start with Peru and so I will – thus this part is out of chronology with my actual journey – but I feel have to get it down before I forget.

And before I begin - if you are reading this – thanks for being so patient…I was always going to get back to writing about this odyssey – I was simply immersed in the moment there for a time. Was it wrong of me to be ‘where I was’? I think not!

 

Peru!! Why visit Peru? Well why not? I chose an organised ‘Intrepid’ trip to fill a 3 week gap before I was due to attend the International Wildland Fire Association, Fuels conference in Spokane. I nearly went to Cuba, and I’d still love to visit there at some stage in the future, but South America beguiled me. And so to exuberant, colourful, diverse and welcoming Peru…

Lima airport was bustling at midnight with a mêlée of newly arrived, bleary-eyed airline passengers and an equal hoard of over-enthusiastic taxi drivers touting for business in the humidity. I’d heard from friends that it is common to be robbed in taxis stopped at traffic lights so one is best to put all bags – including day packs - into the boot. I found the desk of the green cabs, recommended by Intrepid and I immediately started practising my rudimentary Spanish on the locals…

I can’t say why I was surprised to read that that Lima is home to over 9 million people, but I can say a good many of them were on the brightly lit streets as we crawled through the almost gridlocked city in the middle of the night. My taxi driver and I then sped past a fat swell breaking on a broad beach, illuminated by city lights to a posh suburb called Miraflores, which for me was the start of a magical trip with 8 new companions across 3 exciting weeks.

My roommate, Hayley seemed friendly enough when I finally made the hotel room and a welcome shower after a long 12 hour journey from Alaska. She confided early that she had just finished a trip in Mexico that was ‘awesome’, and she was worried that this one would be boring with older people (me?) and couples as opposed to the young group she had just broken from. Right…

The next morning I met the group; Maritza our organised and kind leader (she was really our mother for the 3 week trip)- a Peruvian from Cusco; Tedy, an Indonesian-Chinese bloke with an Australian accent and a generous and endearing nature; Jaime – or ‘Hi-May’ pronounced with a particular throat sound that I just can’t spell – from Madrid in Spain, who would become my personal pronunciation policeman; Manja (who spoke great Spanish, having lived in the ‘real’ Spain for over a year) and her workaholic partner Kai from Germany who were fun and entertainingly irreverent; British Anne and her partner Patrick from Belgium who were a little older than me; and Hayley from Brisbane with the thick Australian accent and intellect to match. As far as I was concerned the trip started well with a tortoise emerging from the garden bed outside our room as I got up. Hayley was characteristically nonplussed.

We headed into the centre of the city together as a group after a quick meeting in the hotel only to find the whole of Lima constipated by elections, and basically closed for 3 days while local leaders in all corners of the country were chosen by the masses. Only pharmacies were open, no drinking was allowed and every public building, including churches were closed for the duration. Maritza described what the place would have looked like had the elections not been on, and I squinted to see imaginary throngs of people crowding the empty streets, save for the armoured vehicles and battalions of soldiers and riot police stationed on every street corner. Elections – tricky business in this neck of the woods I guess. Street stalls started appearing in the afternoon as we wandered about and I paid a mere $2 to have my boots cleaned for the first time of many to follow.

We left Lima in the late afternoon and began south on a bus through an impressive desert that was startlingly completely depauperate of any vegetation, to Pisco - a town that had been levelled by an earthquake in 2007 and was not yet rebuilt to any acceptable level. Sadly, we learnt much of the international funds donated for rebuilding may not found their way to those most needing the aid. The brand new council chambers were embarrassingly ostentatious and although the high school had been rebuilt only a few houses here and there were under repair with most in a ruinous state, covered with old bent tin and blue tarpaulins. After a wander through the busy main square where most of the towns’ inhabitants had gathered awaiting the results of the voting, we ate dinner at the hotel, in a private room and I tasted my first Pisco Sour, despite the ban on alcohol, which was the first of many we were to sample.

Arriving in our room Hayley unselfconsciously disgorged the contents of her pack, covering every available surface with her “stuff” and I was abruptly transported back to the world of self-obsessed teenagers… wondering if this was how it was to be for the rest of the trip. It was…oh well… I must be in need of a life lesson from this experience, I told myself.

Our next morning we arose early and lined up like school kids with hundreds of other tourists and school kids to get on a speed boats for a ride over to check out the Ballestas Islands or Galapagos of Peru as they were described. The islands were home to hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions of a few species of seabirds including Humbolt penguins, cormorants, Peruvian boobies and brown pelicans, all in rookeries covering the white guano splashed islands.  Sea lions lazed in harems on the low boulders close to the sea, presumably copping some of the guano that rained down, even on us. Collecting the guano is a local industry that has gone on for centuries and small rock walls have been constructed around the islands to improve the catch of the spoils of the birds. Our guide told us a war had been fought over the right to harvest the guano just as the wind changed and the stench from the islands became overpowering in the boat. I could only imagine the Peruvians doing the harvesting had stronger constitutions than I.  

Enroute to the islands we passed by a fascinating feature named the candelabra – a three pronged, 200 odd metre high drawing etched almost half a metre deep in the parched mountainside, maybe 2200 years ago, thought to have been created by a pre-Columbian society that no one knows anything definitive about. The reason it has survived is that the place is so dry – receiving virtually no rainfall since its construction. Theories abound on what the candelabra is, from an ancient pulley system, to messages to the Gods or even landing instructions to aliens or a representation of a long extinct plant that produced a hallucinatory effect when chewed. For my money it was art, on a grand scale!     

 

             

Peru!

So sorry for being incommunicado for so long...but I came to Peru...not a moment to spare here...there is so much to see and I have been travelling so much. Plus I didn´t bring my computer. Peru is like nowhere else!
I will be back in the states around 22 Oct so will try to catch up on my adventures then.

walks and talks...

Back in Denali National Park, I had a second day to play tourist before spending time with the park staff so I took the opportunity to do some hiking. Armed with my trusty bear spray I walked north from the headquarters along the Rock Creek Trail to climb the steep track up Mt Healy. The Rock Creek trail wound through pretty stands of birch and spruce with a bountiful understory of ripening berries, although disappointingly there were no bears lazing around enjoying a meal of them. The sunshine dappled on the path through the trees and squirrels angrily chirped as I passed, interrupting their late summer schedule of food caching. Amazingly, I didn’t meet another person on this part of the hike, the only company were little brown birds that sang melodiously, unperturbed by my presence.

Rock Creek Trail

In stark comparison, the Mt Healy Trail was hectic with hikers as I slogged up through the same pretty Taiga forest as on the Rock Creek Trail. I was greeted good-naturedly by numerous groups of people, young and old, mostly returning from the walk. I passed a young woman on her way up, carrying a grinning baby in a backpack with a whining toddler at heel. Impressive! The track was slowly eroding from the volume of foot traffic, and the higher it climbed, the narrower and rougher it became. I paused regularly on the relentless slope to regain my breath and to enjoy the sweeping views south along the valley and into the canyon below; hotels sprawling along the highway flanked by the milky white Nenana River, carrying its load of finely ground glacial flour.

Along the track, fireweed, a pinky-purplely, native wildflower found throughout Alaska, had finished flowering and the foliage was beginning to turn bright red, signaling the end of the summer along with small pockets of birch, leaves turning yellow, glowing golden in the bright sunlight. On the final stages of the hike, the trail narrowed even further, traversing the ubiquitous talus slope, decorated with lime and black spidery lichens, marking the transition to the treeless spongy herbs of the high alpine tundra.

Finally, after what seemed like many hours of pushing myself uphill, I reached the lookout spot and sat down to sip the last of my water, enjoy my cherry Lara bar and take a badly over exposed self portrait. The view was dramatic and expansive, stretching off in every direction with a stiff arctic breeze reminding me that I was at altitude. Over the left shoulder of Mt Healy, way off in the distance, Denali was partly visible, shrouded with a neck ruff of white puffy clouds. I thought of the 75 buses that would be making the daily pilgrimage out to the mountain, Denali partly obscured from view.

The walk down was tough! My feet cramped trying to grip the surface of the trail through soles of my thick boots with my knee and ankle muscles strained against the cruel slope. I passed many more groups of hikers on their way uphill, puffing and red faced, no doubt exactly what I looked like myself, not long before.

Back down the mountain I called into the visitor centre and read about the hike I’d just done. Rated strenuous – yeah that was about right. It was meant to take 4 hours return and I did it in just under 3 with the Rock Creek Trail thrown in as a bonus. I was happy with that, despite knowing that hiking times are always wildly overestimated to take account of the slowest walkers - whining toddlers perhaps?

It wasn’t a surprise that Denali’s main visitor centre display was excellent and engaging, after seeing the visitor centre at Eielson. The arts, culture, nature, and history of the expansive 2.5 million hectare (6 million acre) Denali National Park and Preserve were all creatively interpreted along with the recurring theme of bear chewed food containers. I sank down in the comfort of the huge theatre with a hundred or so mostly aged cruise line passengers to watch a film on the park. As the lights went down, the old man sitting next to me loudly kissed the back of his hand like a teenage boy at the movies, his wife chastising him for such a crude display. I smiled to myself in the darkness.

Over the next couple of days I spent time meeting and talking to the myriad of staff at the headquarters about a diverse range of topics including bear research, fire management, forest fuel measurement, aviation, and climate monitoring. I gave a brown bag talk on parks from home that lasted for over 2 hours because there were so many questions to answer at the end. At the brown bag talk I met Lucy, Denali’s research administrator, a woman who mushes sled dogs in her spare time. It’s Lucy’s job it is to regulate research carried on in the park, as well as collecting the data and published reports for the archive once it’s completed. Lucy invited me to a talk by one of the four artists in residence for 2010 in the park, the author and Alaska’s current writer laureate, Nancy Lord.

Denali’s artist in residence program invites the selected artists stay for ten days each at the historic East Fork cabin at mile 48 on the Park Road. Expansive views from the cabin of the braided East Fork River, the mulitcolour Polychrome Mountain and the snow capped peaks of the Alaska Range all provide inspiration for their unique interpretation of the park. This year the artists include a sculptor, a metal smith, an artist and an author. After their period of residence they donate an artwork to the park’s collection and give a public address about the experience. Nancy’s talk was fascinating. She told us how she explored the park with researchers and rangers. Nancy said she had kept notes in a catalogue of journals and she would write up her stay on a self-enforced writing sabbatical in an artists camp for a month when she expected to produce her next work. Inspiring!

patchwork quilt created by an artist in residence
(view from the East Fork Cabin: the braided East Fork River, the mulitcolour Polychrome Mountain and the snow capped peaks of the Alaska Range)

       

  

sled dog afternoon

The trip back in from Eielson was considerably faster with less stops to look at wildlife than the outbound journey. I guess everyone was tired and was happy with the wildlife we’d seen on the way out. I sat on the side of the bus that gave me majestic views up the wide pretty valley as well as a bird’s eye view over the sheer cutting at Polychrome Pass. Through the pass, the margin for error on the road was less than I’d imagined and I froze in fear as the front tyres of the bus turned perilously close to the edge as we rounded the tight bends. No wonder they don’t let punters drive out into the park by themselves.

A dust storm was brewing in the bed of the Toklat River when we pulled up for a comfort stop, and the large domed tent that housed the summer’s temporary visitor centre and souvenir store was flapping loudly in the stiff breeze. Inside, along with the pelts of a bear, a wolf and a mountain goat, draped over a rustic wooden frame, there were food tins and other assorted items bears had chewed, to demonstrate how savvy and the bears are at finding even sealed metal food containers. You could also buy a t-shirt, a postcard, or a coffee table book, so the hoards were happy. Outside on a bench there were a range of antlers and horns from moose, caribou and sheep that the people were holding on top of their heads and taking photos like tourists do.

A family joined us on the bus at this stop and sat across the aisle from me with their two daughters; one in her early teens, the other about 5. As soon as we left the Toklat River stop, the little one started asking her Mum how long the bus trip was going to take. About an hour out, her mum finally told her “It’s only five minutes”. Subsequently I experienced the longest five-minute hour of my life. This five year old's persistence and tenacity were a feat to regard and will no doubt hold her in good stead through her adult life enabling her to achieve whatever she chooses to take up. Her parents and sister had an equally remarkable capacity to ignore the incessant and repetitive questioning. I must be getting old!

I was overjoyed to finally get off the bus into the sweet silence at the park headquarters and decided to stretch my legs by walking down to visit the Denali Sled Dog Kennels. The final presentation for the day was just about to begin, and Sarah, an intern, who I’d met the night before at C camp, where the seasonal workers were accommodated, said “Hi!” over the cacophony of the dogs barking excitedly in anticipation.

The 25 or so resident dogs lived chained to little wooden dog houses that they sat on top of, proudly displaying their names on a routed wooden sign. They live outdoors all year round, and over summer have an important role educating and delighting the 50,000 visitors that come to see them. The dogs are habituated to people and it is fantastic that visitors are allowed to pat them and get to know them up close.  The show was great, Sarah was engaging and informative and for only having worked there a few months, she came across as a veteran with all the answers to the questions the visitors threw at her.

She told us how Harry Karstens, Denali’s first superintendent had brought the sled dogs to the park to assist with his most urgent task of controlling the poaching of wildlife. As a veteran dog musher he knew the best way to travel through the frozen country was on a dog sled behind a team of eager huskies. He established the kennels to breed the parks’ own healthy, well trained working dogs.

In the early days each ranger was assigned a team of seven dogs and an area to patrol in the park over winter. Patrols lasted for months at a time with the rangers living in cabins they constructed on the boundaries of the park to protect them and their dogs from the harsh winter. In 1926, Karstens told Grant Pearson, a ranger he had just hired, that he was lacking in experience but was considered capable of learning. Of his first assignment, Karstens told him “I’ll send you on a patrol trip alone. You will be gone a week. If you don’t come back by then I’ll come looking for you, and you had better have made plans for a new job”. Pearson must have proved himself as he remained on staff!

Even with the advent of snow machines (mobiles) the dogs have been kept on as a uniquely Denalian cultural tradition, and because of the wilderness designation of the place. The wilderness areas are protected from the intrusion of mechanical transport, and dogs are the perfect solution to allow the rangers to carry out the park mission of protection over winter. Sarah told us during the show that the official definition of wilderness was “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where a man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Untrammeled she further explained means ‘free or unrestrained’. Mmmm, untrammeled! It certainly struck a chord with me!

Rangers still patrol the frozen back-country during the winter, and the sled dogs faithfully help to ferry provisions and people in the still inhospitable climes. It’s cute that each set of pups born in the park are named along a theme. Just before I arrived a competition was announced among staff that sought suggestions to name the latest litter. It eventuated that Mumma Keta’s (from the salmon litter) brood of 3 males Mixtus, Sitken and Lucor were all named for the scientific names of bumblebees that occur in Alaska.

Once the dogs pass away their routed name signs are added to the wall of fame in the kennel office. Other litter themes have included the northern lights, aspects of Wonder Lake, rivers, landforms and volcanos. My favourite dog was Pyro from the volcano litter, he was so vocal and affectionate and his handler Ranger Matt who let me get a photo taken with him…like tourists do!

 

Denali at last!

The scenery passed as if in slow motion on the train ride to Denali. The relaxed pace was no doubt designed to take advantage of the view and it was punctuated with an entertaining commentary provided by the train’s young host, Tara. Along the journey Tara pointed out fascinating and unusual landmarks including a 13 storey house near Talkeetna, built by a man who added a floor each year to maintain his view over trees as they grew up; a peak in the Chugach mountains that her brother had climbed, but she had not; and Sarah Pallin’s nondescript gravel driveway alongside the railway tracks in Wasilla. It was like a Hollywood tour of the stars houses, only on rail, and no stars really. After the first couple of hours, my fellow travelers and I conspiratorially smirked and rolled our eyes skyward at some of the more entertaining descriptions Tara shared with us. All the while, the scenery waxed and waned between wild rivers, deep gorges, forest cloaked mountains, tiny settlements and lush wetlands interspersed with fleeting glimpses of the base of Denali, it’s head in the clouds, well off in the distance.

Upon arrival at Denali National Park I was met by Susanna from the park headquarters who was holding a sign with my name neatly typed on it – the first time I’d ever had one of those held up for me! She kindly helped with my luggage, took me to the visitor centre to book a bus trip into the park, then to the outrageously overpriced grocery shop for some supplies and dropped me off at my park accommodation. I was booked into the guest accommodation next to the ranger’s office in the park headquarters compound. The headquarters consisted of a gaggle of historic log construction buildings, newer offices of a more modern construction, staff houses and an apartment building all painted alike in mission brown with bottle green roofs. Many of the older buildings had been converted from their original use as sheds or workshops to office space as the park staff increased over time.

In the office, I caught up with some of the fire crew I’d met at Lake Clark and their friends. Heather, Wes, Emma, Sarah and Kelvina welcomed me warmly and later introduced me to the Salmon Bake, a restaurant in the Canyon just outside the park. Locals and seasonal workers all refer to the Canyon as ‘Glitter Gulch’ – a short strip development between the Nenana River and the George Parks Highway, where the cruise lines have built huge glitzy hotels to accommodate their guests on the landward leg of their Alaskan journeys. A jumble of shops has followed including the ubiquitous souvenir shops, the mountain equipment store, a few restaurants, fuel stations, a gravel RV park and tiny over priced grocery shops.

Denali National Park, I learnt on this visit, owes its protection to some old world sheep with curly horns – Dall sheep (to be specific) and to a bloke called Charles Sheldon who studied them and thought they were worth protecting. The area was a well known haunt of these tasty creatures to game hunters, who pushed them to the brink of extinction when Sheldon, a hunter naturalist from Vermont, visited and realised the coming of the railway and it’s hungry workers would certainly wipe out the remaining individuals. With help from a number of supporters, he was able to convince congress to protect the area and its wildlife in 1917 as a national park. The first superintendent of the park, Harry Karstens, a veteran of the Klondike stampede, had accompanied Sheldon on his first trip to the area in 1906 and was a staunch advocate of Sheldon’s. Sheldon liked Karstens too, describing him as ‘brimful of good nature’.  

The ‘Park Road’ is a dusty 143km (84 mi) artery that runs into the heart of Denali National Park wilderness area with only the first 24km (15 mi) open to the public. To travel the remaining 119km one must catch a park bus or a go on a cruise tour bus, ride a bike, or simply walk. The return trip takes over 12 hours if you go all the way to Kantishna at the end, although you can choose a shorter journey.

I selected the 8 hour return trip to the Eielson Visitor Centre and after a night of socialising with my fire friends at the Salmon Bake I was wondering why I’d signed up for the 7:30 am pick up. Woolly-headed I dragged myself out of bed and jumped on the classic American school bus that stopped for me outside the park headquarters. I have to say I was pretty skeptical that we would see any wildlife driving along a dirt road on a school bus but I was open to the experience nonetheless. I knew at worst the scenery would be great, but really, I was hoping to see Denali (aka Mt KcKinley) in all its 20,300 feet glory. I was ready for disappointment though as I had been primed not to expect the mountain to reveal itself.

Matt, our bus driver and amateur comedian introduced himself a short distance up the road and warned us not to address him as ‘driver’. ‘Ah! the delights of the public’ I thought! He told us if anyone saw any wildlife to shout ‘STOP’ and he would pull up so that we could all get a look at whatever it was had been spotted. At the 24 km gate, a park ranger boarded the bus and gave a mini talk about the history of park and his love for the place. It was passionate in content if not a little wooden in delivery. I wondered for a moment about his job; sitting in a tiny ranger station, stopping people from driving further along the road, giving his spiel to each of the 75 or so buses that pulled up at the gate every day. I was quickly distracted though as we rattled off up the hill and down the other side to a spot where the illusive Denali was revealed in all its glory off in the distance. Matt pulled over the bus and we all shot a dozen or more pictures, as he told us how amazingly clear the view on this day was and how lucky we were to see the mountain, as it had often been obscured over this summer in low cloud.

Back on our way and it wasn’t long before someone shouted ‘STOP’ and we all jumped up from our seats to get a view of a half a dozen caribou grazing on the grassy slopes below the road. Soon after someone else spotted some Dall sheep that looked like white dots on the cliffs high above us as we motored through a narrow gorge. Then moments later we stopped by a flock of Dall sheep that I could have almost reached out and touched through the bus window. Unbelievable! The beauteous scenery stretched off in every direction and my only annoyance were the windows of the bus cut the view in half with a frame exactly at eye level. Irritatingly one had to crane one’s neck or compress down to see the whole view past this redundant vehicular architecture.

Matt kept us entertained with park facts and stories of naïve passengers who thought that he was serious when he said there was a Starbucks at the next toilet stop. Continuing on, the road took us through Polychrome Pass, formed about 65 million years ago when the pacific tectonic plate slid under the continental shelf and forced magma to the surface. Volcanism! The whole landscape is geologically young and beautiful. Funny that. The place lived up to its name with a rainbow of colours on the volcanic bluffs and as though on cue, a troop of 3 brown bears lumbered along the water course right below us. I start to wonder if I had become overly cynical (remembering I was skeptical about seeing any wildlife).

The road then snaked precariously along a narrow cutting that seemed to be composed of purely unconsolidated gravel and for once I was thankful to be sitting on the ‘wrong’ side of the bus. The vegetation changed from taiga with it’s low trees and scrubby under-storey to tundra where the trees disappeared altogether among the braided glacial streams. Denali towered impressively above us as we reached the Eielson visitor centre, a building that was cleverly hunkered into the slope below the road, leaving the view to the snow coated mountain unfettered and wild.

In the visitor centre, large picture windows were designed to capture fantastic views of Denali with information provided in a variety of entertaining and engaging ways. The mountain, the park and its inhabitants were interpreted through a range of mediums including art, film, stories, signs and audio. I was impressed. I watched a film about climbing Denali and was astounded to learn that over 1,500 people attempt to summit every year. Climbing Denali is a quite a process, without sherpas to carry the equipment, mountaineers must climb up to deliver supplies and equipment to each camp, then retrace their steps down to the previous camp to overnight, and carry up a second load, hopefully becoming acclimatized to the altitude in the process (or not as the case may be). Climbers often become ill and mountaineering rangers who stay on Denali for the climbing season are often called to rescue or render first aid to foundering mountaineers. Sure sounds like a tough ranger gig to me!

Before I left the visitor centre, a ten year old boy was sworn in as a junior ranger, by the on site interpretive ranger, having completed a workbook on the park. Among other serious commitments, he solemnly swore to protect the park for his lifetime – neat!   

      

planes...trains

My last day at Lake Clark I spent dreaming about going to Twin Lakes to see Dick Proenneke’s cabin. Richard Proenneke was an interesting character who ran away to Twin Lakes in 1968 when he was 51 and built himself a cabin on the shore of the upper lake. His friend Babe Alsworth from Lake Clark used a float plane to transport him in and out and deliver supplies from time to time. His claim to fame, other than being a masterful carpenter and a hermit was that he filmed himself building the cabin and while hunting and trekking through the area, and he kept a daily journal.

He planned to make the film of his adventures and take it on a travelling road show to make money out of it, but the area got into his blood and he did not leave the solitude for nearly 30 years. Instead a friend of his, Sam Keith published a paraphrased version of his journals (that Dick was never totally satisfied with) and he became famous before it was fashionable to have 15 minutes of fame in this country. Keith paraphrasing Proenneke…

What was I capable of that I didn't know yet?

Could I truly enjoy my own company for an entire year?

and was I equal to everything this wild land could throw at me?

His cabin stands as something of a museum in the park, where you can visit (if you can get there) with all his personal effects still in place, as it was the day he left and moved to the lower 48 to finish up his days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss

Apparently Dick Proenneke’s story is not unique in itself, just that it was so well documented he became the pin up boy for people escaping city life and living on their wits in this wilderness.

Back at Lake Clark NP the head of the National Parks Service, John Jarvis, was scheduled to visit the park at the end of the week and much industry was devoted to making the place ready for him to inspect. The weather was not in favour of me getting to Proenneke’s cabin so I returned to Anchorage on a milk run flight that took me sightseeing south from Port Alsworth via Lake Iliamna on the northern end of the Alaska Peninsula, right above the Aleutian Chain. At 124 km long, Iliamna is Alaska’s largest lake and is as impressive as it is beautiful. The flight north to Anchorage was terrifying for me as we dodged thunderclouds all the way home with absolutely no visibility until we arrived in the city. I sat white knuckled for the whole journey praying I wouldn’t become a statistic.

Back in Anchorage I continued my volunteer work at the NPS. On the weekend I headed out to the Chugach State Park with Doug and Jan, my friends from the Fish and Wildlife Service to go for a hike up to Rabbit Lake, just behind Anchorage. It was steady climb up above the clouds and we searched in vain for blueberries along the way and found only sour crowberries as we laughed and chatted along the track. The panoramic view to the west across Turnagain Arm and to the north of Anchorage gave a great perspective on the height of the mountains behind the Cook Inlet, and on the position of the city.

The hike was challenging and rewarded us with a view of the pretty and tiny Rabbit Lake, with the Suicide Peaks towering above. I discovered ‘Lara bars’ that Doug shared as a snack near the lake – yummy health food bars of dark sticky munched fruit and nuts. The cherry ones are the best! On the way back down we met heaps of people hiking up, many with dogs in tow (some with cute panniers) and the weather deteriorating to a steady drizzle. At one point we could hear bear bells approaching from up the side slope at an alarming rate. We all looked at each other with wide eyes, expecting to see whoever or whatever was wearing the bear bells to have a bear in hot pursuit. We three were relieved it was just a dog enjoying the freedom of a run on a Sunday afternoon. Some people say the bear bells are really dinner bells as they alert the bears to where to get an easy feed! A pizza at the Moose’s Tooth – easily Anchorage’s best and most popular pizza restaurant - rounded out a satisfying and enjoyable day. We all resolved to hike again while the summer still lingered.
 

The next week arrangements were made for me to visit to Denali National Park. As the train pulled slowly out of the depot (not the station?) and passed through Elmendorf Air Force Base on the outskirts of Anchorage, the conductor advised everyone that we would be traversing the site of a cargo plane (C17) crash from only a week before where 4 servicemen were killed while practicing for an air-show. Ploughed earth, trees snapped like matchsticks and wreckage was strewn either side of the train tracks for a couple of hundred metres and was in the process of being collected and boxed up in containers by the military for the air crash investigation. The awful carnage prompted me to consider the fragility of life, and the necessity of being present and aware, especially on this amazing adventure.

There have been numerous air crashes in Alaska while I have been here over the summer, which is not surprising given the number of aircraft and the number of pilots in this state. Pilots per capita are the most numerous here of any state in the US with 1.3 per 100 people compared with .03 per 100 in most other areas. To date I think 21 people have lost their lives since I arrived – including the Ted Stevens who was a very well known ex-senator of Alaska. Most recently a contract float plane disappeared with 3 national parks employees aboard in poor weather in Katmai National Park and hasn’t been found yet. Very sad.          

wishing for bears

After my lake edge walk I decided that I needed to gain altitude to better appreciate my surroundings! Mt Tanalian, one of the few officially named peaks in the Lake Clark Basin, sits as a prominent 1219 metre (4000 ft) backdrop to Port Alsworth, presented itself as the most likely candidate. The trail up the mountain was described as unmaintained even though it is one of only a couple of developed trails in the whole of the park. It is a true wilderness! After my last effort I decided I would need company on this hike. There were few candidates, though I’d met a gaggle of people who were working in the park, mostly a fire crew from Denali staying at the bunkhouse who had been removing brush around the parks’ scattered cabins to protect them from fire.  My first night was their last and we’d shared stories about parks and fires as well as a flask of vodka I’d brought for the trip.  They’d run out of beer and there was no buying anything in Port Alsworth - much less alcohol. That night a mix was concocted of an electrolyte drink, the juice of an orange and vodka and shared with Heather, Wes, Brian, Royce, Jon, and Charlie from the fire crew together with Kelsey and Evan, both student volunteers in the park for the summer and me.

Evan was studying science from Oklahoma and he’d snagged a volunteer job through his ex-ranger parent’s connections and Kelsey was a Russian history student from Wisconsin working out her summer as a Student Conservation Association (SCA) Intern. The SCA is such a brilliant program for students in this country. Jen, who I’d met at the NPS in Anchorage, had explained all about this program, that was dear to her heart as she had moved to Anchorage, married and had a great career all because of it! The idea of the SCA was the brainchild of Elizabeth Cushman Titus Putnam in 1955 when she decided that the National Park Service could use some help keeping their tracks and facilities up to scratch, and university and senior school students needed something productive to do with their lengthy summer holidays. As an SCA intern, students get paid a stipend (or living allowance) and are provided with accommodation - usually on park, and as an additional bonus, if they work a set amount of hours get a slug paid off their student tuition loans. Everyone benefits! Elizabeth CTP said recently, when she received the prestigious President’s Citizen Medal: “Serving nature is among the most important and rewarding callings humankind can ever know.” I know this to be true.

With the fire crew gone I spent a couple of evenings socialising at the bunkhouse with Kelsey and Evan who were both lovely, friendly, enthusiastic and welcoming young people. Evan was shadowing Dan, the fish researcher as he measured flow rates in various rivers and parts of the lake, and helped him manage fish counting operations. Kelsey was working in the visitor centre including helping with dispatch - which meant flight following NPS utilised aircraft and keeping tabs on any NPS staff on the lake in boats. I’d spent a bit of time in the visitor centre and it was hard to believe this 19 year old hadn’t been helping visitors and talking on the radio for years. After making them a feed of rice paper wraps with salad and pan fried chicken I conned Evan into going on the hike with me the next day (Kelsey was working). I woke up on Sunday morning I wondered why I organised to get to get up so early and walk up a mountain? I bet Evan thought the same. Even so, we met at the scheduled time and I skittered along the path behind him madly snapping off pics of a kaleidoscope of fungi and lichens.  Some fungi had red caps with white dots just like out of fairytales and the lichens were growing together in miniature gardens like arboretums with a plethora of species. I wondered if they could be considered lichenetum? I guess if they were planted artificially together as specimens that may be the case. 

After my last hiking effort I’d packed sensibly for this foray with bug dope, bear spray that I threaded on the waist band of my borrowed fanny pack (yes I know! - that’s what they call them here), with my raincoat, water and snacks. The trail meandered slowly up at first then down through a creek at the base of the mountain until it started upward with avengence. Evan and I chatted about how Charlie had told us he’d seen a hunter with a rifle stalking a bear on the walking track the day before and as I confided my earnest desire to see a bear on this hike, we both jumped as we heard twigs snap in the distance. Evan loudly declared that ‘WE AREN’T BEARS!’ as we hurried along the path.  The Alaskan National Interest Lands Conservation Act 1980 or ANILCA as it is known, maintained hunting and fishing rights for Alaskans when millions of acres were declared national parks in the 80’s. Henceforth hunting is legal in the park and preserve (with certain conditions) including on the walking track we were on! ANILCA sets Alaskan national parks at odd with the national parks elsewhere in the US where hunting is prohibited. 

We continued on through the forest and the grade increased, the width of the path narrowed and my heart rate peaked as I valiantly tried to keep up with the athletic 21 year old who told me he had already climbed the mountain 3 times this summer. A scramble up and across a slope littered with loose greywacke talus, that matched the rocks along the waters edge rewarded us with a breathtaking vista across the lake. As we approached the top of the tree line, looking up, the peak of Tanalian was catching a fog that looked like a misty veil slipping over and covering the face of a shy bride. The freezing damp swirled down from the upper atmosphere and deterred us from making the final scramble to the summit. Walking back though, we were rewarded with a rare sighting of a lynx springing out of the long grass and bunny-hopping for a moment along the track in front of us. I was glad to see Evan was as exhausted as me and we both retired to our respective accommodations to recover for the afternoon. 

The next day Evan, Kelsey and I headed out with Dan the fish researcher across the lake for the river that joins Lake Clark to the expansive Lake Iliamna in the south, to check on the fish counting crew. The journey was slow as we towed a runabout behind the work skiff, and we paused at the opening of the lake while Dan and Evan tied the skiff up to the bank and used the runabout to check the flow rate of the river. The instrument that measures the flow works like the radar that clocks your speed used by police. Kelsey and I unloaded ashore and we were delighted to find we were surrounded by an amazingly diverse low tundra vegetation community dominated by blueberries. We lounged around for almost an hour on the spongy, fragrant plants and ate our fill of the sun-warmed, plump, purple berries. I prayed a bear would materialise and chase us back to the boat, but there were no bears to be seen. We re-boarded the skiff and headed downstream past fish camps on the shore where locals gather to catch and process salmon - hanging the fillets to dry on rickety timber racks.

Dan showed us around fish counting camp, where there was a new small log cabin for meals and socialising, and a group of one man tents surrounded by an electric fence (to keep the bears out) as well as an outdoor heated camp shower in a tiny tent that would have made this miserably wet summer more bearable. The fish counters were organised into a roster of 8 hours each, covering 24 hours per day, and their job was to climb the temporary towers erected for the purpose and count salmon swimming upstream for 10 minutes of each hour. The numbers were extrapolated to arrive at a spawning population number. 

Dan pointed west over a ridge towards the site of the controversial Pebble Mine proposal that I’d heard about since I first arrived in Alaska. The Pebble Mine wasn’t a mine for pebbles - it was the proposal of a company called 'Pebble' to mine a large mineral deposit of porphyry copper, gold and molybdenum right near Lake Clark and Lake Iliamna. Of course it has generated a polarised and passionate debate among Alaska’s residents - the “for’s” arguing that the mine will bring much needed employment, as well as funneling tax revenue to the state and reducing the need for imported minerals. The “againsts” countered that the mine will have an adverse effect on the watershed of Bristol Bay and as a consequence the millions of salmon that return to rivers and creeks that drain into Bristol Bay to spawn. They argue the food chain that rely on salmon, right down to humans would not escape the effects of this proposal. Predictably I bought a sticker against the Pebble Mine while I was in Homer.

Back at the fish camp, Kelsey and I climbed the fish tower, and watched as bunches of salmons swam upstream in the lee of the bank with the aid of our polaroid sunglasses. The dark grey shadows swam silently by in clusters of six or more, with minutes between the pulses of fish. I silently hoped for a bear to turn up, swiping fish out of the river right in front of us, but there no bears were to be seen. Dan and Evan did another stream flow measurement and we all piled in the skiff for the trip back to Port Alsworth.