ALASKA - PART 1

POLES APART

My first trip to Alaska was in May 1984.  It was for my first project in an architectural firm after graduating from UW-Milwaukee and getting licensed the previous year. I'd be with Callison the next twenty-seven years.  The project was to remodel the Baranof Hotel in the capital Juneau, after a fire destroyed the hotel lobby/restaurant/bar a month before.  It was "fast tracked" to open in June; essentially designing at the same time the contractor was demolishing the charred rubble and rebuilding the interiors.  The Fax machine had recently insinuated itself into the design/construction industry; so we faxed sketches to the contractor before the full design was resolved.  Construction documents were completed after the project was finished - welcome to oversight in Alaska.  During one of my visits I managed a side trip to visit a college girlfriend working as a park biologist in Glacier Bay National Park.  I had my first crab direct from the frigid sea into a pot of boiling water on the beach. I gushed that the difference between what we ate vs cooked crab from the Pike Market is like the difference between crab from Pike Market and canned crab.  Being from Chicago, the experience was transformative.  

Jill, my college girlfriend, securing a kayak in Glacier Bay N.P.

My second trip was a vacation in September 1988 when I took the Alaska Marine Highway (AMH) up the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau.  I camped on the fan-tail deck with a bunch of young'ins.   Hanging out with a guitar playing cool dude and young girls swooning, but not over me, was a flashback to the 60s summer of love (sadly I was too young then to participate).  

I'm the tall one and the guitar playing "cool dude" is in front - with the blond.

From Juneau I flew to Anchorage and met my former girlfriend again, now a ranger in Chugach State Park.  We hiked across the eponomous range led by her friend "Black-ass" Griffith.  He was an old-timer/homesteader and got his nickname from snowshoeing in the far north thirty years before during a deep subzero snowstorm with the wind at his back.  Frostbite bit his butt.  

Black-ass Griffith and Jill at his cabin.

I left Anchorage and hiked in Denali N.P.; flew on a seaplane to a remote lake somewhere for three days fishing (a total failure as I knew nothing and there was no guide); and drove to Homer on the Kenai Peninsula just to reach Tom Bodett's End of the Road.  

Denali "The Great One"

So, when long time travel companions invited us to join them on the on their June trip this year to Alaska I was not eager.  We had just returned from eight months of travel, were settling into our temporary housing, and were actively house hunting.  However, after a couple months we got itchy twitchy not being on the move.  Robin needed only four more states, including Alaska, to visit them all. And traveling with friends seemed like a good opportunity for for a break.  I also looked at the pins on my wall world-travel map and realized that while I'd been in the state I'd never been Into the Country, as John McPhee referred to the far north.  I plotted out an itinerary that would take us up the Inside Passage and tour Glacier Bay N.P. with our friends.  Then, while they traveled to Denali and Homer, we'd go north: to the Arctic Circle, the Brooks Range, and Utqaigvik (Barrow) on the Arctic Ocean, furthest north in the US. After it all was planned out, we decided to add the Kenai Fjords N.P. to touch both ends of the state.

There was also symmetry to this plan.  Nineteen years ago in 2003 my good friend Thom, whom I previously wrote about in Ukraine, said we should do something adventurous for our 50th birth-year.  He suggested Antarctica!  These two regions, the Arctic and Antarctic, are Poles Apart - in more than just geographic terms!  As an arm-chair student of the Antarctic for decades I was fascinated by its history, exploration, and biology; and its comparison to the Arctic.  Here're comparisons from a presentation I've given.

• Antarctica vs The Arctic 

·      Antarctica is land surrounded by water, the Arctic is water surrounded by land.

·      Average Antarctic temp at pole is –58°, average Arctic temp at pole is 0°.

·      Less than 20 bird species south of 60° Lat. vs. more than 100 north of 60° Lat.

·      Only lichens south of Lat 82° vs. 100s of flowering plants north of Lat 82°.

·      No indigenous people in Antarctica vs. numerous tribes for thousands of years in the Arctic.

·      No land mammals in Antarctica vs. numerous large animal herds in the Arctic.

·      Icebergs measured in km in Antarctica vs. meters in the Arctic.

·      Permanent sea ice in Antarctica vs annual sea ice in the Arctic

Crossing Drake Passage to Antarctica

For sheer downright misery, give me a hurricane, not too warm, the yard of a sailing ship, a wet sail and a bout of seasickness.  Apsley Cherry Garrard

"The first view of Antarctica is always an iceberg.  It may be a monolith hovering on the horizon, a barely discernable specter looming out of the mist, or perhaps a sun-spangled, dazzling icon marking the gateway to this new world.  It will undoubtedly be icebergs that leave the most lasting impressions on the imaginations of the visitors."  Mark Jones

Kayaking near an ice berg.  Don't get too close because if ice breaks off below water 

the COG changes and the entire berg can roll creating a tsunami and swamp you. 

Shore-leave with our Russian research vessel in the background.

Ice is the beginning of Antarctica and ice is its end.  As one moves from perimeter to interior, the proportion of ice relentlessly increases.  Ice creates more ice, and ice defines ice.  Stephen Pyne

Gentoo Penguin

Who would believe in penguins unless he had seen them?  Conor O’Brien

Blue Eyed Adele Penguin

They are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the Antarctic world, either like children or like old men, full of their own importance and late for dinner, in their black tailcoats and white shirts fronts – and rather portly withal.  Apsley Cherry Garrard

Fluke of diving Humpback Whale

100 year old explorer hut

100 y.o. preserved canned food left on the shelf of Explorer hut.

Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy-tale.  Pinnacle, peak after peak, crevassed, wild as any land on our globe, it lies, unseen and un-trodden.  Roald Amundsen

Soaring on 12 wingspan, an albatross approaches Cape Horn, S.A. 

I now belong to a higher cult of mortals, for I have seen the Albatross.  Robert Cushman Murphy

The trip to the north will be a very different!

Next Post:  The Inside Passage