bad altitude

I am back...
Back in Australia
Back at work
Back to writing about this journey...


Now where was I?

Dinner the night before we left Arequipa was served atop the tallest building overlooking the brightly night-lit white stone cathedral in the main square. The climb up to the rooftop restaurant was via a narrow stairwell that changed so markedly between levels that it wasn’t beyond the realm of imagination to think the building had grown floor by floor, over a period of years to attain a better view of the square. As I laboured up the steep steps I imagined the workers, who no doubt, carried supplies up the five floors to the restaurant on a daily basis. 

Once we were seated on the open terrace, a lass in a traditional outfit draped us all in turn with heavy woolen ponchos, those usually only worn by Peruvian men and shepherds, to keep us comfortable in the cooling night air. The food was forgettable but the view was splendid. I ordered a cheese salad never thinking that cheese would be the main ingredient with salad vegetables as a garnish. Tedy negotiated free pisco sours for all, and they arrived in such tiny glasses we had to order another round before we were satisfied. 

  

Hayley left the dinner early feeling unwell. On the way back to the hotel the youngest 4 of the party – Kai and Manya, Tedy and Jaime tried unsuccessfully to con me into going out on the town as they headed off to see what the Arequipan night life consisted of.  I was tired from sightseeing and once back in the room Hayley quizzed me about exactly where they had gone.

The next morning we joined one another in the breakfast room. I ran back to get my reading glasses and mistakenly burst into Tedy and Jaime’s room. Jaime had a look of panic on his face that made me laugh – I’m not sure what he imagined I was there for – and Tedy good naturedly ribbed me for being a blonde and forgetting my room number. I returned to breakfast and found it had a delicious selection of fruits together with great smelling coffee in a tall white china pot. I ordered my customary huevo (egg) and poured myself a full cup, surprised at the thick sticky consistency of the coffee. I knew when I added the milk that I’d made an unfortunate error. What I had greedily poured into my cup was a coffee base mix that was to be added sparingly to hot water. Afraid of appearing rude to the attentive waiter I gulped the bitter sludge down while picturing the sleepless night that awaited me after such a massive hit of caffeine.

Later as we headed out of the city we stopped briefly to allow Hayley to get money from an ATM, and I jumped out of the bus to buy a sun hat at the ubiquitous roadside stall. The women sat behind their wide range of wears all spread on blankets on the dusty footpath. I chose a fawn bucket hat with an Adiddas logo from the vast range of ‘branded’ hats. I refused to bargain and paid the price first asked – the woman generously threw in a colourful brooch made from wool wrapped around wire in the shape of a man and woman in a fond embrace. I turned the hat inside out and pinned the brooch on the front. Perfect. I’d landed a winner. Tedy was already wearing his new orange baby alpaca knitted beanie he’d bought the day before, and it looked very striking. Back on the bus and we slowly wound our way out of Arequipa and over the top of the Andes.

Gradually the jumble of grey concrete buildings lining the road thinned then disappeared completely giving way to breathtaking views in every direction of a most mountainous desert. The geology was astonishing. I wildly snapped shots through the window of the bus as we climbed higher and higher, til we reached a plateau covered with hummocks of tall golden grass where there was a tourist bus stop complete with a café and roadside stall with an extraordinary eroding mesa towering above. We all ordered coca tea on Maritza’s recommendation to deal with the effects of the altitude. Patrick was looking poorly and began to succumb to a combination of flu and altitude sickness. I felt a dull ache in the middle of my skull, not unlike the throb of a hangover without the fun to concoct it. I mentally congratulated myself on the decision not to go out partying the night before.

We all photographed the mesa, checked out the stall run by women with small children in tow, selling a rainbow of scarves and blankets and hats and jumpers, then Tedy and Kai and I fed and patted the llamas and sheep round the back of the café. We all drank tea before heading off and upward to highest point of the trip.

The bus pulled off the road after about an hour at a rock wall that blistered off the main road. From the vantage we were surrounded by a suite of volcanoes – all young looking and covered in what I thought looked to be scoria; small light pumice stones. At this point, at the top of Andes, for us anyway, there were thousands of short rock cairns in every direction, holding secret forever the prayers, hopes and wishes of their constructors. Before we got out of the bus Maritza advised us not run because of the altitude. Run? Wow, I was having trouble just standing. My body felt heavy and weighted down by an intense gravity I had never experienced. Moving felt like swimming through viscous gravy.

The stop at the top had the added highlight of public conveniences

and I walked with intent across the road to make use of the opportunity. The toilets were short domed huts of dry stone, with a low opening that caused you to stoop to get in. The wooden door didn’t close and the toilet was a hole cut into some timber boards spanning a deep long drop. I put aside any modesty and after using the toilet, struggled to regain my feet when I stood up. I imagined for a moment the catastrophe that would unfold if one were to fall in the hole.

Back at the viewpoint we took photos of each other and I built a mini cairn from tiny pebbles wishing health and happiness for friends and family and for myself. Later in the bus on the way down to Chivay, Kai took charcoal tablets to try to stem what ailed him, I’m not sure if he was treating the altitude sickness but he dutifully chewed the charcoal tablets and looked hilarious with black teeth and gums smiling like a lunatic. Everyone laughed.

We had all bought coca leaves in Arequipa on the recommendation of Maritza and I started chewing a few into a wad to stow in my cheek. The taste was bitter and slightly grassy but the effect was brilliant. The remedy eased my headache and from then on I was a convert. Patrick and Anne and Hayley all bought coca candy – small green boiled coca lollies individually wrapped that I found out later actually worked as well.

We wound down into the Colca Valley and to Chivay where we ate a tourist smorgasboard lunch in a hall with half a dozen other tour groups – most much larger than ours. The food was delicious and plentiful. Then went back to hotel for the afternoon. The room Hayley I shared was hardly larger than our two single beds on an inside facing courtyard with a tiny bathroom to match. Hayley flopped on her bed declaring that she needed to rest. Still very much buzzing from my morning coffee I opted for a walk out of the musty room and headed for the local market.

      

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!