Dogsledding (A Damn Fine Adventure)

It's been well over eight months since I've written.  As evidenced by this post, I'm still alive--alive and kickin', dreaming and scheming.  Some days more so than others, to be honest.  I'm glad I took a little break from writing, but little breaks turn into big breaks more quickly than you'd imagine.  I'd been waiting for a damn fine adventure to end the big break from writing, and I finally had one:

Dogsledding.

Cornell Outdoor Education put together a group of instructors for a week long winter camping, cross-country skiing, and dogsledding expedition in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, hosted and guided by three instructors from the Voyaguer Outward Bound base near Ely.

most amazing pantry ever

We had one full and fun day of preparations.  We sorted and packed gear and food in the enormous, well-outfitted trips building (I almost fainted when I saw Outward Bound's pantry).  Outside, we tried out our skis for a brief intro to skiing lesson.  It was my first time on skis in three winters (how sad), but my legs soon remembered their groove.

At 3:00 p.m. we headed to the dog yard for dogsledding 101.  Walking into the dog yard for the first time is an unforgettable experience:  63 dogs barking, jumping, yapping, lurching, howling, begging to be put on a line and given a chance to pull.  (By the end of the week, I would be nearly immune to the sound of dogs barking and howling.)

something about milkshakes and a yard? i don't remember...

These dogs aren't indoor pets.  They have one goal and only one purpose in life:  to pull as hard as they can in a forward direction.  As such, they're treated like a precious, albeit feisty and defiant, piece of equipment.  You shove your leather mitt under their collars, stand them on their hind legs, and walk them around.  If they're on four wheel drive--i.e. all four paws on the ground--they will walk you instead of the other way around.  They sleep outside, eat chunks of lard before bed, wake up covered in frost, and don't seem to mind very much.

I, on the other hand, do mind very much when I wake up covered in frost, which is what I did for five consecutive nights.  Sleeping warm in a very cold climate is just as much performance art as technical skill.  The night before the expedition, we slept outside the trips building to practice our systems with the psychological comfort and physical safety of a heated building just steps away.  I didn't sleep much that first night.  I was excited, and though I was mostly warm, my mind churned over the question of "I wonder when I'm gonna get cold."

And then...  we were off!

five days and four nights away from civilization and everything uncivilized about it

Our days went like this.

A group of five skiers left camp first thing in the morning.  They broke trail for the dogs, orienteered with map and compass, checked the trails for hazards like downed trees that could snarl the sleds, and used a hatchet to check the thickness of the ice.  The skiers glided over frozen lakes, cutting through dense spruce forests at sections of rapids where the ice wasn't thick enough to support the sleds.  Those sections were called "crashes" for a reason.

spruce forest crash

The four mushers stayed behind in camp, packing up the two sleds and hooking the dogs to their lines.  After the skiers got a decent head start, the mushers followed behind.  Especially on the flat, smooth lakes, the sleds soon caught up to the skiers.  Skiers and mushers played tag for the rest of the day.

from the sled

As the sun pulled lower to the horizon, skiers likewise pulled into a bay, close to shore, where we would camp on the flat frozen lakeshore for the evening.  First order of business was to get the dogs out of their harnesses and onto their chain line for the night.  At this point in the day, I never got any gruff from the dogs--they were content after a day of pulling, eager for dinner, and ready to snuggle into the snow.

-20 degrees (-30 for you metric peeps)

Staying warm requires food to burn and/ or activity to burn it, plus insulation to catch the heat your body loses.  Skiers stayed warmer than mushers during the day due to physical activity, so when I was mushing, I made a point of stomping circles around my tipped-over sled any time we stopped.  Sometimes I jumped off the sled and ran along the side of it, hands always gripping the handlebar. 

Staying warm once the sleds and skis were packed away for the night used the same concept:  keep moving, keep eating, stay insulated.  We spent a lot of time processing firewood, felling dead trees, sawing logs, and splitting pieces.  We shoveled lots of snow to make benches, firewood processing areas, and one night a series of windbreaks.  We set up tarps for sleeping, and on two of the four backcountry nights, we set up a large canvas wall tent with a small metal stove.

evening chores: chop, saw, burn

With evening chores nearly complete, our instructors did all of the dinner cooking--what a vacation!  Food was great, way heartier and fattier than my usual trail chow.  Even with the massive amounts I put away, I lost a bit of weight (all of my work clothes feel much looser than usual).  Around our dinner fire, we took off our heavy boots, then our wool socks, then our VBLs (vapor barrier layers, i.e. plastic bags), and finally our liner socks.  So strange to be barefoot in the snow, but you gotta dry out those little piggies to avoid foot funk.

Every night, about a half-hour after dinner, I started to get cold.  My body cooled off from the day's activity, all of my blood was hanging out in my gut to digest dinner, and I'd been sitting on one layer of padding on top of a snow bench.  Eventually, I figured out that I needed more padding under my butt, and that pushing and pulling the sleds back and forth for a while warmed me up enough to get into my sleeping bags warm.

Then, sweet dreams.  I slept better and better as the nights went on, until I was sleeping through the night without waking at the end of the trip, even when the mercury dropped to twenty below.  I always woke up ravenous and just starting to feel the chill as the sun rejoined the lakes.

dawn

The trip was a fantastic experience.  I went in without very many expectations, but I will say that it was physically easier and not as cold as I thought it would be.  Our three instructors did a great job showing us how to stay warm, and with a cheerful attitude, -10 F isn't frightening.  We had a stellar team; though there was so much work to do, we had nine hard workers to do it.  Outward Bound as an organization has an amazing perspective and stands for some really important principles.

Just the adventure I needed.

the COE group :-)

I took a ton of photos, and my favorites are in this album.  Check them out--the few that I added in this post do not tell the whole story!

Adjustment

Going up and up and up and over the snowy Rockies. Down into the flat, empty, boring plains of eastern Colorado and Kansas. Kansas goes on forever. Missouri does, too. Grass, silos, the occasional oil well. There goes the St. Louis arch. Now southern Illinois and suddenly there are trees instead of grass. Indiana and small towns.

Kentucky and the road gets narrower, closer to the creek, the hillsides getting steeper. Bluegrass, bourbon, Daniel Boone, Appalachian Kentucky. We tucked our tent into the tent city behind Miguel's and climbed while hiding from thunderstorms. I saw my first funnel cloud forming in the sky, a weird sense of clouds going both ways at once before my brain suddenly thought of Toto and flying cows. The steep climbing in Red River Gorge is outstanding, as is the community. I had my personal best day of climbing, completely relaxed and not attached to anything other than my fingers and toes on the rock.

Moving on. I felt like I was going faster, time was speeding up, everything was more intense the farther east I went. Is that always true? The green of western Virginia (not West Virginia) was unsettling after two months in beige and brown. I recognized this landscape as familiar and pondered why it didn't feel that way. North Carolina and holy heaven so many people. How can it be so crowded here? Where are stillness and silence? Why is everything happening so fast, yet nothing is happening? Speeding up through Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey.

And now: New York State. Tompkins County. City of Ithaca.

I sit at a desk in return for money. I cook on a stove and always have a shower at my disposal. I make plans more than 24 hours in advance. I don't wear hiking boots.

I used to live like this. This used to be my normal, so part of me remembers this. I know the streets of Ithaca like the back of my hand. I'm sitting in the same cubicle in the same office (I even found some old tea I'd left in a drawer). I take the same shortcuts, shop in the same grocery store, hang out with the same people. I've slipped right back through a door that I'd thought I'd slammed shut, padlocked, bolted three times, and nailed shut with boards. It's as if I'd stayed at home for just a few days due to a nasty case of the flu, then reappeared in society. Occasionally I get a weird sense of deja vu when something is slightly different. But everything is pretty much the same.

Except I'm different. I stumble when anyone asks if and how I've changed. (Most people, though, haven't asked much about my experiences--I look the same, talk the same, even dress in my old clothes, so what could be different?). Well, of course I'm different. With every second of the minute, I, and you, and every one in this world, are changing. I'm not prepared to elaborate on my changes from the past year in a public way. I've been handed some pretty huge life lessons and perspectives, and I need to take some time to myself to make sure they stick around.  I'm sure I'll write again, at some point, when I have a better idea of what I want to say (and what I want to do with this blog in the future).

Southern Utah

Southern Utah...  where to begin...  I'll start with...  AMAZING!

Ok, ok, I won't use too many superlatives.  But my time here was, uh, really, really amazing.  Alright enough of this.  Here's the rundown...

our route through southern utah

Zion National Park: I had no idea what I'd find in Zion—all I knew was "big canyon." Then these thousand-plus foot cliffs came out of nowhere:

daaay-amn

 We hiked to Angel's Landing. I didn't know why it's called Angel's Landing until I was looking down from this:

If you're in a good mental place at this point, you think that angels probably land in the middle of the canyon.  If you're in a bad mental place at this point, you're praying to the angels!

I've turned back from a trail only once in my life; Angel's Landing nearly became the second. The first 2 miles are super easy. The last half-mile is 3rd to 4th class scrambling up a steep narrow razorback ridge with 1200 foot drops on either side to a platform that feels suspended in heaven above the valley. It's not hard, physically, but it's a bit of a mind trip! Hang on to those chains!

The way down was easier than the way up.  For sure.

I wish we'd spent more time in Zion, but we weren't sure how much time we'd have before we needed to head east, so we moved on. I would love to return here some day.

Bryce Canyon National Park: Zion is big; Bryce is intricate. It's known for its pillars of rock, called hoodoos.  This is a really fun word to say again and again.  Go ahead.  I'm not listening.  Right, eh?

these are hoodoos.  multi-colored hoodoos!

We did the "figure eight" track between the Queen's Garden, Peek-a-boo Trail, and Navajo Trail, which covers the Bryce Amphitheater pretty well. The park was still covered in snow, which was so beautiful.

hoodoo in the snow

Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument: This place is enormous, and we only scratched the surface. In that tiny scratch, though, we managed to come up with some of the most fantastic, beautiful, fun experiences of this entire trip... slot canyons!

kicking up my heels for a bit of rest!

We went through Peek-a-boo Canyon and Spooky Canyon.

Peek-a-boo Canyon was soooo beautiful, with sandstone of pink, orange, samon, gold, yellow, and white sculpted into fins, swirls, and arches. It also involved some fun scrambling and climbing.

beautiful peek-a-boo canyon's salmon-colored sandstone

Spooky Canyon was darker, gloomier, and pretty tight in places—maybe ten inches wide—not wide enough to pass through with a backpack (hint: balance it on your head or kick it forward with your foot).

making my way through spooky canyon...  a "dramatic" action shot

Neither canyon was technical or particularly difficult, but it was a perfect introduction to slot canyons. Next time, I really want to try something a bit more technical, more than just wandering and scrambling.

a tight spot in spooky

Capitol Reef National Park: I hadn't heard of Capitol Reef before this trip, but I think it's as visually stunning as the Grand Canyon or Zion. It's a big uplift of the Earth's crust, so the different layers of sandstone are visible, along with other domes, buttes, and mesas. We were only passing through, but I'd love to return in order to explore more.

beautiful rock formations in capitol reef national park

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area: Another place that was totally not on my radar, Glen Canyon has enormous, dramatic red cliffs. It seems like the type of place where you could park on the side of the road and wander off to explore. We spent a night on the banks of the Dirty Devil River, before crossing over the Colorado River. Another place I'll come back to explore!

camping next to the dirty devil river in glen canyon national recreation area

Natural Bridges National Monument: If something like this were on the East Coast, it would be a major tourist destination. Because it's in Southern Utah, it's meh. There are three big, white sandstone bridges. Worth a quick stop (that's all we gave it) and not much more.

this is a natural bridge

Canyonlands National Park: Canyonlands is actually three "parks," separated by the Colorado and Green Rivers. We went to The Needles section to do, what else, some hiking. Because it was supposed to be warm that day, I decided to wear my Chacos; I had to end the hike early because of pains in my feet. Wondering if all of this hiking has given me a stress fracture or tendon damage or something.  :-(

before i busted my foot

the needles section of canyonlands national park

Arches National Park: The way timing worked out, we went into Arches on three separate days. The first day, not knowing how much time we'd spend in Arches, we only did the scenic drive and walked to a distant viewpoint of Delicate Arch.

eyeballin' delicate arch

The second day was rainy and dreary. Oh no! This is supposed to be the desert! Maybe someone would cancel their spot on the ranger-guided Fiery Furnace walk... and someone did.  Once again, a lack of planning got us a last minute ticket on something that's usually booked well in advance.

fiery furnace walk

By the time we were done, the rain was clearing up, so we continued our hiking day with the loop through Devil's Garden via the Primitive Trail, marveling at the sandstone fins and arches. Pretty cool place.

resting at partition arch

The third day ended up being our rest day. We hung out in Moab at the library and grocery store (exciting, I know). That evening, we walked out to Delicate Arch to see it up close.

the classic delicate arch photo

San Rafael Swell: If you're in a slot canyon, you can bet your PB n' J that anyone you meet will mention "that guy who got stuck and cut off his own arm." Yeah, it happened in a slot here in the San Rafael Swell. No, I don't think it will ever happen in Little Wild Horse Canyon.

a pretty picture of the little wild horse slot canyon

This was another non-technical slot canyon that someone recommended to us. Very non-technical—it was packed with families with young children on the day we hiked it. The narrows were quite pretty, and some sections were indeed fairly narrow, but it would be hard to beat Peek-a-boo and Spooky!

Southern Utah is...  well...  the best word I can use is: AMAZING!  Not only is it superbly beautiful, many of the most amazing places are easy to explore and not in National Parks, so there's more freedom to camp and hike on previously disturbed areas using LNT principles.  It's really easy not to see anyone if you want to be alone. You know you've been in Southern Utah for a while when seeing two cars at the trailhead makes you grumble about crowds!

Eastbound, At Last

For the first time in well over a year, I'm headed eastbound instead of westbound. Moving westbound last year, west and farther west still, brought me around the globe—and then I continued west, again, this year.

Always chasing the setting sun, I've occasionally wondered if my perpetual westward heading related to some conclusion in the broader context of my life. Cutting myself free closed one chapter. This year I'll turn 29, completing my 30th year on this planet. As I turn eastbound, toward the rising sun, I can't help but think about beginnings, about joyfully opening a new chapter, and about everything I can look forward to.  :-)

sunrise over tuateawa bay, new zealand

Anyway! What's happened since I've turned eastbound? Seems like my priority has been adventuring, rather than writing about adventures. Some day I'll write more about my time out West. But, for now, here's a quick update, starting from California.

San Francisco: I rejoined Davo, and we went to Muir Woods so he could see the Redwood trees. John Muir is quite an inspiration to me (this blog is named for one of his quotations). The place was crammed with people, even though it was raining, so it wasn't really a place for quiet contemplation and reflection.

golden gate bridge, after the rain

That evening, we hung out with Jenny O, an awesome woman we know from Ithaca. The weather sucked, so we decided to move on to...

Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks: which we did not get to visit. Still snowed in, tire chains required. We continued on to...

Death Valley National Park: In the hottest, driest place in North America, I experienced the worst, coldest, wettest, nastiest weather of the road trip when a freak storm blew through. There was tons of rockfall across Towne Pass; we checked in with four cars disabled on the side of the road in poor visibility with rocks still falling around them as it snowed. So that's why they call it Death Valley!

"colorful"--for the desert--salt creek, home of the salt creek pupfish

Death Valley was more interesting than I expected, because of all of the organisms that have evolved to survive in this environment. Life will find a way! It was also more photogenic than I expected, with colorful badlands next to pure white salt flats under a blue desert sky.

Red Rocks National Conservation Area: Red Rocks NCA is ten miles in distance and a million miles in feeling from the Las Vegas strip. We did a half-day hike up Turtlehead Peak.

And, of course, we climbed! It was my first experience on desert sandstone, and I enjoyed the awesome weather, amazing scenery, super sticky rock, and very chilled out vibe. (Not going to lie, it was a nice, undeserved ego boost to climb about two grades harder than I do on the East Coast.)

red rocks panorama

The BLM campsite was totally full, but we found some guys from Colorado who had room for an extra car. Put a bunch of strangers around a campfire and you'd be surprised what wisdom results. I loved Red Rocks, and I would definitely return some day.

Grand Canyon National Park: Moving on to the Grand Canyon, I had no idea what we'd do. The weather wasn't great—overcast and spitting snow—so my first impressions of the canyon weren't, well, very impressive. Plus, backcountry camping permits book out months in advance.

Yet somehow our lack of planning and total flexibility snagged us a permit for Indian Garden! We hung out on the rim for a day and camped outside the park in Kaibab National Forest. The next day, we hiked 5,000 vertical feet down the canyon (via South Kaibab Trail), took lunch on the Colorado River, and hiked back up the canyon 2,000 vertical feet (via Bright Angel Trail). The next morning, we hiked out the remaining 3,000 vertical feet, in sunshine for the first time.

with the colorado river below us

Everyone talks about the Grand Canyon like it's the most amazing place on earth. I thought it was really impressive, but something about the hordes of people and the overly-maintained trails kept me from connecting with the Canyon. It is much more of a tourist attraction than a wilderness experience, which is fine—just not my cup of tea.

For personal and family reasons, I assumed that our southwestern adventures would probably end here. But a sweet turn of events meant that we continued to southern Utah... and that deserves a post of its own!

California or Bust!

I had a week to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco while Dave had a job on the East Coast.  I decided to head up the scenic Pacific Coast Highway, Route 1.

Santa Monica National Recreation Area:  When I think of heaven, this is what I imagine...  happy little hiking trails, cliff faces, lots of green, trickling creeks, blooming wildflowers, bird song...  ahhh it was just so darn pretty!  I hiked the Mishe Mokwa Trail to TriPeaks, where I went off trail and almost stepped on a snake (sorry buddy!), to the Backbone Trail to Sandstone Peak, the highest in the Santa Monica Mountains.


I wanted to hike in the Angeles National Forest, but a lot of the trails are still closed due to the Station Fire back in 2008.  A few different rangers suggested checking out the Morro Bay area outside San Luis Obispo, so I headed there.

Montana de Oro State Park & Morro Bay:  Let me tell you, this isn't the Jersey Shore or Malibu!  Tidal pools packed with anemones and hermit crabs...  cliffs dropping straight into the churning surf...  dense fog rolling in off the water and turning everything dream-like.  I'm not much of a beach person, I prefer the mountains, but I'm glad I went here to experience the California coast.

The next day, I decided to walk up Cerro Cabrillo, Cabrillo Hill.  It's something less than 1,000 feet, like 3 miles round-trip, I thought I'd knock it off in an hour.  Holy crap on toast, I was wrong!  The first third is a gentle uphill on a wide track.  The second third is a respectable uphill puffer on a beaten-earth track.  And the final third?  Bushwhacking through poison oak while avoiding snakes.  I totally lost the track on the way back down and survived the whackest of bushwhacks I've ever experienced.  I'm going to burn the pants I was wearing because I'm positive they're infused with 100% poison oak oil and will never be safe to wear ever again.  It was nasty and awesome.

the look on my face after the bushwhack...  WHEW!

Route 1 and Big Sur:  how to describe the California coast...  MOODY.  Not spectacular, not dramatic, not serene, but rather... infused with subtle feelings.  Everything here is a shade of gray, especially when the fog rolls in, which is always.  It seems like this would be the place to reach some sort of far-reaching personal conclusion about the workings of something or other.  Does that sound weird?  Something about the loneliness of driving this road in the middle of the week...  how the waves keep crashing, crashing, crashing against an unobserved cliff...  the way the fog burns off the peaks of the ridges before the valleys...

I visited Big Sur and day-hiked the famous Pine Ridge Trail.  It would make an awesome backpacking trip.

I was surprised to learn that Big Sur is the far southern end of the range of the great Redwood tree.  Most of the trees I saw were freaking huge by east-coast standards, but rather puny by Redwood standards.  I decided to head farther north in search of the giants.

the trees might not be huge, but the banana slugs are!

And then the highway fell into the ocean.  Oh, s***.  At first, I heard it would be closed 3-7 days.  Now crews say a month.  I backtracked a few hours and went up and over the Santa Lucia mountains.

AP Photo/Monterey Herald, Orville Myers, http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110318/WIRE/110319452?Title=Hwy-1-on-state-s-central-coast-may-be-closed-a-month

Big Basin Redwoods State Park:  Why this park?  I don't have a good reason, other than acknowledging that something told me in no uncertain terms that I had to go.  I've learned not to second guess those intuitions.

It was AMAZING.  The little half-mile "Redwoods Trail" brought me past some of the largest trees in the park.

the "father of the forest" is 66 feet, 9 inches around

the "mother of the forest" is 329 feet tall and 70 feet around.  take that, dad!

I also walked the Skyline to Sea Trail to the Dool Trail to the Creeping Forest Trail.  This park wins on trail names alone!  The forest was SO lush, SO green, and then there are monster trees everywhere.

a bridge made out of a downed redwood

The hardest part of being a bum in California has been finding non-sketchy, non-illegal places to sleep at night.  I really wanted a break from the stress of figuring out where I would park for the night, so I paid for a campsite in the park, nestled in a grove of redwoods, right next to a shower block (aaahhh!).  Wisely, I slept in the car and awoke to the pitter-patter of raindrops sliding off the redwoods, my tent still dry under the car seat.  I stayed in my sleeping bag until 9:30 a.m. when I reasoned that I had been hibernating for 12 hours.

campsite among the redwoods

Hanging out with the redwoods was a very peaceful experience. Some of these trees were seedlings during the Byzantine Empire...  saplings during the Dark Ages...  already eight feet in diameter when Columbus landed in the Americas.  Spending any length of time in a grove of redwoods reminds me that I am very small and very insignificant.  Not in a bad way, though.  It feels reassuring to know that there was so much before me and there will be so much after and beyond me.