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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Jun 14, 2016 - 06:18pm PT
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and then there was one wolverine...
to catch up:
days 30+31: no tracking due, according to Gavin, to lack of sun creating dead batteries. so somehow at least about 55 miles plus was covered [since the last update] over june 9-11 [including likely more covered on day 29 than was noted above]. this got them back out of the park and to where they crossed their first highway of the journey... as was noted above, Dave had to cut his adventure short due to prior commitments, and so after getting to the third food cache, Gavin loaded up with food for two creating a very heavy 80lb pack...
days 32+33: Gavin parked on a ridge, a few miles from the highway, hoping to fly, but was shut down by more snow and cloud on both days.
day 34: in the air again! but Gavin wrote this about the flight: "Most terrifying flight of my life. Once heart under control will position for good weather that is supposed to be coming. That was...difficult." he flew about 15ish miles in forty minutes with some of his speeds up over 40 mph... he's currently back on the ground hiking and has made it about two miles, though he's still on the move... the next three days look to have one of the better forecast windows they've had the whole trip, although there are high winds currently forecasted for friday. his next food cache is about 80 miles from where he's currently at and is near to only the second highway crossing of the adventure...
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Jun 15, 2016 - 09:19pm PT
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the monkey is sending...
day 35: while his day might not be over yet, it's already been a big one... after hiking a couple thousand feet over a little over a mile he hung out on top of a small ridge/peak with the day starting off as a perfectly clear one. as winds were high in the morning he waited most of the day and started flying later in the afternoon, catching a great 19ish mile flight that lasted a little over an hour... after repacking and taking another hour to hike another mile or so back up another small hill, he very nearly immediately took off flying again and flew another thirteenish miles over a "MASSIVE glacier" that would have taken him two days on foot [his words] in a little under an hour...
assuming he's done for the day, as this is the end of week five, here's the latest update:
week 1: 70ish miles total with 27ish of that flying over two days and the other 43ish on the ground hiking mostly during the four other days. grounded on day one but made it to and found their first food cache on day five.
week 2: 29ish miles total with all of that on the ground over four days. the other three days were spent pinned down by weather and/or resting. they found a food stocked cabin along the iditarod trail on day nine.
week 3: 72ish miles total. during four days hik/fly-ing and one day completely on the ground they covered about 38 miles in the air and another 34 on the ground. they spent two more days likely grounded due to weather, but received some food from hunters on day seventeen and made it to their second cache on day twenty.
week 4: woot: 72ish miles over two days! finally a big flight of 55ish miles over one day with another 17ish miles on the ground during the big flight and subsequent day. five days spent grounded waiting for a shot at a long flight over most of the national park.
week 5: best week in terms of gross mileage yet, as he/they covered a total of 111ish miles including three mystery days where they covered about 60 miles likely on the ground, but possibly in the air for some of it as well. after two days being grounded and after Dave had to return home, Gavin has continued on solo and over two days has covered about 47ish miles in the air and another 4ish on the ground. he made it to the third food cache on day 31, the same day that Dave left.
total to date: 354ish miles with 240ish of those in the air and the other 114ish on the ground. this was comprised of nine days with some flying and some hiking, three days comprised of of mystery movement, ten days solely hiking and the other thirteen either grounded or resting.
a note on cumulative mileages: Dave said they had covered about 450 km [280ish miles] when i had them at about 295ish miles, meaning that given the difficulties in determining exact mileage covered when in the air vs on the ground [does one include thermalling vertical, just tracking on the ground, and etc] and because there are three mystery days, i've used dave's breakdown of 64% up to day 31 being in the air to come up with the above cumulative total... because of this, the cumulative total doesn't entirely jive with the weekly summaries above it... still, given that all of these mileages should be considered very "ish" it's probably all reasonably close even if it more tells a bit of the relative proportions of the adventure rather than exact mileages...
Gavin's already made it roughly 50% of the distance from food cache three to food cache four and is currently around 15 miles as the crow flies directly south of mt. deborah...
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Jun 16, 2016 - 09:32pm PT
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dam son...
day 36: another big day... lots of flights, as there were four in total... and relative to the trip so far, a considerable amount of mileage covered, as most of his time was spent in the air.
after a short milish long hike and on what he described as a bluebird day, he started the day by taking a quick puddle [valley] jumper of a flight to gain another milish of distance before hiking for another milish to gain a ridge top over from where he started... from here he got in his technically second, but first real flight lasting 21ish miles over about an hour and a half.
after a quick half mile hike and an hour and a half later he took off on his third flight which lasted another 19ish miles. after one more milish long ridge top gaining hike he took off on his final flight for the day... because i'm assuming he's flying a more southern line than what they originally intended he appears to have skipped the fourth cache and at 24ish miles into the flight, while roughly 15 miles south of his cache it looks like he chose to keep on flying past the richardson highway in what appears to have been a flight that lasted about 39ish miles in total...
so for the day in total he covered about 83ish miles in total with about 79 of them in the air...
and so now the end is in site, as being only roughly 50 miles as the crow flies from the last cache and the end of the journey at the glenn highway and metasta lake, he had even hoped to finish it up today if it wouldn't have been for more high winds.
bananas! 135ish miles covered in the last three days... more than he'd covered in all the single weeks and most of the two week periods of his trip thus far... finally some serious breaks.
and with one, maybe two more good looking days weather-wise, he might just wrap this thing up sooner rather than later! [with an obligatory knock to some wood]
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ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
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Jun 16, 2016 - 10:00pm PT
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trying to digest it all, but it sounds epic. Very much want to see the flight path, including altitude, when you passed over Foraker/Denali/Hunter
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Jun 16, 2016 - 10:09pm PT
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F*#king WOOT!
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Jun 16, 2016 - 10:30pm PT
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here you go ms55401:
the above is from Gavin's flight tracking... he enters into this screen shot at about 10000 ft and then he spent the majority of the flight shown above moving between 5000 and 8500 ft before landing just outside of the screen shot at a little over 3000 ft.
Dave's flight was similar but he was flying a few more miles to the north and landed a little earlier than Gavin...
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2016 - 07:53am PT
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Dave, did you do a before and after weigh in?
If it came down to it were you prepared to eat Gavin?
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Jun 17, 2016 - 06:42pm PT
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done and dusted!
Gavin landed at his end goal at Lake Mentasta 15 min ago...
37 days in total with a little over a third of the route covered in the last four days...
congrats to both Gavin and Dave... badass mother ruckers for sure.
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Jun 17, 2016 - 06:50pm PT
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Sweet. Nice work Gavin, props for finishing it off.
Enjoy the burgers and beers.
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feralfae
Boulder climber
in the midst of a metaphysical mystery
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Jun 17, 2016 - 06:54pm PT
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Super Congratulations from Fairbanks!
Splendid effort, beautiful work, excellent adventure.
Thank you for sharing.
feralfae
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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Jun 17, 2016 - 07:17pm PT
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Wow. Great job. Talk about an effort!!
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Kurt Jensen
Trad climber
Aptos,CA
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Jun 17, 2016 - 09:13pm PT
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That's the most crazy Alaska adventure I've ever heard of! Huge congratulations to Dave and Gavin!
I've really enjoyed following along with this adventure here on good old Supertopo. It reads like an epic climbing adventure tale, minus the climbing. This is such a bad ass evolution of what's possible. The monkeys suffered and worked hard for this one!
A friend of mine, Jef, got to experience an overnight vol-biv with Dave T. in the Eastern Sierra, shortly before he left on the Alaska Range traverse. It was awesome to hear about just in time to follow along on the taco and get all the updates. Proud epic send! Amazing finish by Gavin!
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Aug 10, 2016 - 07:41pm PT
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Bump for sickness.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Aug 10, 2016 - 08:10pm PT
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missed the finish on this one, great bump. there is badass sh#t and there je BADASS SH#T. latter here, clearly! chapeau!
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Oct 10, 2016 - 07:46pm PT
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Bump the gnar
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skywalker1
Trad climber
co
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May 16, 2019 - 12:59pm PT
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Ok. Bump! I still need to go through this again. Thanks Hooblie for directing me back to this. I'm such a sh#ty pilot compared to everything posted but I'm learning if slowly.
Thanks!
Cheers!
S....
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