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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 10, 2013 - 11:59pm PT
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Been feelin a bit homesick lately. So maybe I'll make this a thread to show what Alaska is.
All you cheechako's listen up..
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land — oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back — and I will.
Robert Service
Hey RonA.. bet you will love this.
Quite few folks like this out there still. Not a life for most.. but it sure makes more sense than many.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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MisterE
Social climber
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Feb 11, 2013 - 12:12am PT
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I am all over this forum with my experiences from age 16 to 25. I'll try and sort them out and link.
Love the place, but don't miss it one bit.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2013 - 12:28am PT
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I lived right here for three years.. just a few miles from where this was made.
There are times when the aurora fills the whole sky and it pulses and flickers in a instant from one horizon to the other.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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enjoimx
Trad climber
Yosemite, ca
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Feb 11, 2013 - 01:28am PT
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That documentary was really good.
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bergbryce
Mountain climber
California
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Feb 11, 2013 - 01:49am PT
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I miss it too. Dipnetting, late nights in July up smoking fish, having more sockeye salmon in my freezer than I know what to do with, suicide runs after work down to the Kenai, great ice, Snow City Cafe, Bear Tooth, alpine climbs on the edge of town that would be 4 star routes in the lower 48, BIG mountains, glaciers, nosehair freezing cold temps, MCA ice fest, skate skiing, halibut kebobs on the grill, ARG core class, UAA hockey games, moose meat, packrafting, Thursday night EPICS, friends left behind, September having Quartz Creek to myself, climbing after work in the summer until midnight, the rare sunny and dry summer day at Hatcher Pass. Probably a few other things too.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2013 - 02:01am PT
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Love the place, but don't miss it one bit.
There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
R. Service
Archangel Valley (Hatchers Pass)
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 11, 2013 - 02:07am PT
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There is a good book about Heimo called The Last Frontiersman. It is pretty good. I wonder what he thinks about all of this attention.
We have some common friends. At least the same bush pilot. I've never stopped that far south. He lives in Fort Yukon during the summers I believe.
So have any of you been to the Brooks Range? I love that place dearly. I doubt I will go back since part of my knee up and died and all of the crap involved with that. Meaning no more 80 lb packs.
Seriously. How many of you Anchorage types have made it up there and then too off to check it out? A guided float of the Hula Hula or the Kongakut doesn't count. Those places got too crowded twenty years ago.
But yep, I loves the Alaska. I'll post my muktuk story for the twentieth time: I hiked across ANWR from Arctic Village to Kaktovik and back one summer. It was really soggy from runoff and it was just after breakup. I ran out of food about two days from Kaktovik. I had an eskimo buddy up there that I had sent a resupply box to before I left. I was a few days late and he had a gallon ziplock bulging with whale muktuk for me right when I walked into town and went to Waldo's for coffee.
I had been starving and ate the whole thing right there without stopping. It must have been two or three pounds. I was the only white guy sitting around the table and finally one of them says, "I ain't never seen a white guy eat that much muktuk." Then they all busted out laughing. In bush Alaska, white people are the minority.
Sorry about my Anchorage attitude, but I have only spent one night there other than sleeping in the airport on my gear, which they are very cool about. It is kind of like Seattle North. Sure, it is pretty and all that, but it isn't really remote. If you want to get remote, you find it and go there. I have gone many weeks up there without seeing a soul.
Life changing experiences, though.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2013 - 02:13am PT
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I'm kinda a product of the Pipeline days.
No never north of the Circle. But I've skipped rocks on the Yukon. Been on the marge of lake Le'Barge..Lived on the Bering Sea. Seen -72F and +90F degrees in the same place.. Remember being a Gussuk kid and getting pushed off a roof by the Eskimo kids. Blown off my feet and flying like a kite in a Berring Gale. I laughed with glee.. Still have a taste for dried fish and seal oil.. waay back that is. They didn't cancel school unless it was 55 below.. and we had recess every day unless colder than -30.
Toksook Bay
Bethel
Delta Junction
After that I kinda enjoyed living in Anchorage.
But Anchorage ain't really Alaska although it's fairly close to the place, you can almost see it from there on a stormy day.. Alaska is the Bush. And the folks who make it home.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 11, 2013 - 02:18am PT
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Some of my best times were in Alaska. I even have a cabin outside of Seward. The cabin is for sale. I'm kinda with Eric on this one. I'm done up there. The place is full of people that want to get away from the madness, so they can make there own madness. That sunlight/darkness thing can make it even more weird. And the fact remains that I will return again and again just to be blessed by the sheer beauty of the place.
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bergbryce
Mountain climber
California
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Feb 11, 2013 - 02:27am PT
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Base, you'd fit right in in Fairbanks. Half the people live there so they can hate on Anchorage.
I've got a list of probably 4 dozen native villages I went to for work all months of the year. Bringing your own clif bars and ramen on business trips, using honey buckets and sleeping on the office floor ain't that glamorous. I'll take Anchorage.
Certainly saw and experienced many things in the bush, but never 2 lbs of muktuk. wow.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2013 - 02:29am PT
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HONEY BUCKETS.....
Now that's Alaskan!
Fairbanks? lol that's just Anchorage envy with bad inversion air. A cesspool of freaks who can't hack it in the bush or civilization.... ahh man I can't help myself... not really a fair point... or is it? Hmmmm
I do miss Alaskaland though (A park in Fairbanks that I exlored endlessly when visiting from Delta)
Fairbanks
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bergbryce
Mountain climber
California
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Feb 11, 2013 - 02:43am PT
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It's snowmachine, not snowmobile!!
How about some hooligan? Can't get those inland.
One thing is for sure, it's always shittier in Whittier.
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John M
climber
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Feb 11, 2013 - 03:08am PT
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading Ordinary Wolves. And I loved visiting Alaska. My brother lived up there for 8 years, plus 3 years on Adak. Such an intense place with incredible weather extremes. I got to experience what the locals called a 100 year storm while driving the Alaska highway back to the lower 48. 27 feet of snow in one pass.. then a warm chinook melted the snow and caused major flooding. We crossed one bridge where the river was about to overflow it. Then as we drove out of the valley I happened to look back and saw a major landslide come down and completely bury the highway we had just driven over.
I only had the pleasure of a short visit, But I did get to stay in a friends cabin in Moose Pass. Her grandfather built it when there were only a couple of cabins there. I know its an overused word, but it was an amazing experience. There was just something very deep and primal about the place. I will never forget it. Her Father was in the big quake in Seward Alaska and had some incredible stories to tell.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Feb 11, 2013 - 09:43am PT
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A vast land with endless vistas.......hell, you can see all the way from Wasilla to Russia!
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LilaBiene
Trad climber
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Feb 11, 2013 - 10:03am PT
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Donini, you are starting to give me a case of the willies! ;D
I was born in Anchorage and grew up doing most of my school reports about all things Alaska. (Fronting, as I'd never been there, but have always known that I will someday go...)
My birth mom was living in Wasilla when she passed away last year.
Thanks so much for starting this thread...I can't wait to watch everything when I get home after work. Stuck on a commuter bus heading into Boston for an hour...so far. ")
Thank you thank you thank you!!!
Edit: Loved both videos...beautiful and primal.
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mhay
climber
Reno, NV
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Feb 11, 2013 - 12:00pm PT
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3 years in Fairbanks, 5 years in Anchorage. I miss pulling up to our chosen ski area for the day, and if there's one car there continuing on to another spot because it's too crowded at the first. I miss skate skiing by headlamp at Kincaid after work. I miss midwinter bonfires in Fairbanks. I miss the after work walk/packraft loop on Glacier Creek. I miss having world class ski tours through the Chugach right out the back door.
I also would not move back though. I'm too much of a vitamin D addict. Didn't realize how bad it was until I moved back down to a lower latitude. I am very, very grateful for the time I had there, and will always remember fondly, but I'm moving forward, not back.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Feb 11, 2013 - 12:50pm PT
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You don't have to strain your eyes Donini to see Russia from Wasilla as the place is overrun with Russians,Ukranians and other former Soviet block refugees. They are resourceful people who know quite well how to navigate the maze of rules, regulations and government bureaucracy by virtue of having survived the "cental planning" of the nation of their birth.
The claim, by a few here to have experienced the "real Alaska" by stumbling around solo in the saturated muskeg of northern coast, or having a small amphitheater of one of the famous mountain ranges all to themselves,or experienced the real flavor of Alaska in Fairbanks versus Los Anchorage, is all quite laughable.
The place is almost unimaginably vast and the imprint of humanity exceedingly tiny when viewed as a portion of the whole. The state stretches over 1500 miles from the Bering Sea to the tip of the southeast panhandle, well over 2000 miles from the eastern border of Canada to the tip of the Aleutians.The length of the coast line is, i believe, greater than the rest of the lower 48 combined coastline.
A person could spend many, many lifetimes exploring there and still not see it all.Every little bit of it is real. Between my wife and I we have a combined 70 year residency and even though we've been to many sections of the state (her as a geologist doing mineral exploration out of remote camps in northern, western, and eastern parts of the state and me in construction in many a town or village over similarly wide flung sections of the state)we could never lay claim to having seen "the real Alaska".
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mhay
climber
Reno, NV
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Feb 11, 2013 - 01:07pm PT
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