Turning an Idea Into an Adventure

Editor: Orion11

Moments of insanity happen. I had spent practically every day from March through December living out of a kayak, canoe, bivy sack and a tent. When all that you have is what you are doing, where you are, the route ahead, and the equipment you rely on, live in, talk to, brace against and possibly lose to the ripping wind, you can get a little crazy.

An Idea

I had shared a crazy idea for an unsupported winter sea kayak expedition with my first paddling partner, Jason: to kayak through the Inside Passage, Alaska to Seattle, in winter. The idea was laid on me in December, in Alaska, in the middle of dog mushing territory, a hundred miles north of Denali and even farther from the ocean to the North and South. I had never been in a kayak but I was game. I was also kind of tired of carrying all the hardware and supplies needed to slog through the Alaska Range for multi-week climbing trips on my back. That night, a tall cute dude I had never met sat down next to me in a dark saloon with saw dust covering the wooden floor. As I cooled off from dancing, he told me about this trip and couldn't find anyone crazy enough to do it with him. I couldn't find anyone crazy enough to do a winter traverse in the Alaska Range so out of pure need for my next big trip and a reliable partner, I told him I was in.

We became fast friends. In the next few days, we packed up, geared up and drove south to Valdez to test the waters. My first time in a sea kayak was at night in minus 20° F temperatures. It was quiet except for the winter winds sloughing off the eastern Chugach Range and no one was in the harbor but us. We unloaded the boats, brought them to the water's edge and got in. Jason showed me how to use the spray skirt then we pogied up (paddle pogies) and set off for a test run. We paddled slowly out into the harbor. I knew that during the winter expedition just one year away, much of the paddling would be in the dark so I began to imagine it. My mind deconstructed the town behind me, the harbor around me and anything else of human creation. Before I knew it, both my boat and blades had accrued roughly ten pounds of sea ice. I knew if I tipped and fell I stood a good chance of not making it. Every motion counted, ever breath was measured, my chest was tight. Then I exhaled and realized my place in the situation. It was icy, freezing, totally dark, winter and I was in a kayak for the first time. I was hooked. Like a drug my mind locked on to something that felt good in a sick sort of way. We turned back, pulled the boats up, giggled for a long time as we broke ice off the boats, and set up my tent in the snow. That night was a shiver-fest.

Planning

The next week was spent plotting our training schedule. Trips would get us mentally and technically prepared, train our bodies, work out our systems. It went something like this: apply for grants like mad, work like a dog for two months, then hit the water. We spent February working a hard construction job in the lower 48, tearing down an old hospital. Breaking down walls and shoveling and hauling bricks made my body strong and my mind numb. In late February we drove towards California then into Baja. We spent a month paddling the coast of Baja. There were fantastic week-long stretches of no towns, coyotes, fishing, and learning to paddle. I let the water, wind and my boat and blade teach me what to do because listening to the immediate environment, your micro-environment, is so important for quick reactions. This taught me to think as though my arm extended as part of the shaft, blade and the wave I braced against as well as the wind howling over it. Important in dealing with fear when experience level is bested by nature.

Preparation

The first month-long paddling trip didn't build endurance. My mind just wasn't there for it and my paddling muscles were not yet developed. You really have to become a machine to pull off 40-60 miles a day with a loaded boat. In March I could comfortably paddle 8 nautical miles in a loaded boat, but by September I pulled my first 60-mile per day training trip without a whiff of soreness.

From Baja we headed north to Alaska, stopping at many different kayak manufacturers along the way so I could hunt the perfect boat design that would carry me through the ice, wind, frozen hatches and cold hours on the water each day. I found mine in Seattle at Pacific Water Sports - the bow wouldn't catch the expected high winds and the hatches were bomber and raised so ice wouldn't freeze them shut. Plus I had a water tight hatch behind my cockpit for my gps, vhf radio and other items to be accessed on the water. Lee, the owner, agreed to customize the cockpit by lining it with foam for insulation. They hooked me up with the perfect blade from Werner, similar to a traditional Greenlandic blade - long and narrow - that would cut through the high winds and allow me to paddle for an average of forty miles a day. My storm and endurance blade.

From Seattle, we finished the long haul across the US/Canadian border twice, back to Fairbanks, Alaska to do a quick turn around. We switched gear from tropical to sub-arctic. All of May was spent paddling in Price William Sound doing long, 12-mile open crossings. I learned to read current charts, plot routes, understand the wind, the tides, gauge speed and timing and learn the value of neoprene hand gear and a paddle shaft that fits your hand. On long, windy, fast-current crossings the pain of gripping the shaft for hours straight with gloves that are too big can cause sickening pain and you can't let go or stop paddling for a second. Mess up and you can get shot out into the Pacific. In case you are wondering, it is possible to paddle and hurl at the same time. Just make sure you have a bomber spray skirt; thick Neoprene.

Jason had entered an ultra-marathon canoe race taking place in Canada's Yukon Territory months earlier. His partner canceled so I reluctantly stepped in. In June we returned to Fairbanks, and went to see a friend that was the best canoe racer in the area. He taught us the racing stroke. Jason and I spent two intense weeks training. I went from zero canoe experience to ready to race 600 miles with 2 required checkpoint layovers. Jason and I trained on a river in Alaska's interior in stretches of 70 miles at a time that flowed fast enough to kill a few people each year. We paddled without rests to teach our muscles to perform day after day and through the night.

In our free time we customized a Kevlar racing canoe with a homemade spray skirt for the rapids and rain we would see, built in our hydration systems, how we would pee or use the stove for coffee while paddling non-stop. Race day came in mid-June. The race began with a hike up over a snowy mountain pass with a required 50 pound pack (half my body weight). The first checkpoint was in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada and the second 100 miles from the finish line. We raced in a field of over 100 international paddlers including people like Roman Dial - 600 miles along the Yukon river from the headwaters to Dawson City. Of the co-ed teams we were the first to cross the finish, and passed all but 16 or so of the all-male teams. As the first woman to run up the banks in Dawson, I promptly collapsed after four days of almost no sleep, bracing for speed stroke strength and shoulder pain that made me want to hurl for two days straight plus serious hallucinations). It was fantastic.

We had a trip right after that - a 200 mile fun trip along the Yukon with Jason's friends from Germany - also canoe racers. Unfortunately, half way through the trip I couldn't stand him anymore, even after all we'd been through. It was like a married couple, when all the other person's idiosyncrasies become your worst pet peeves. That comes from months of never being apart and living in tight quarters (i.e. a tent), so we split our gear and hugged goodbye. I told him I was moving to southeast Alaska to train on the north Pacific for the winter expedition, alone. I left Whitehorse in the Yukon, feeling pretty sad but totally blown open inside, and headed north again to close up shop in Fairbanks and say my farewells. This was unlike any change I had ever undertaken, and change was my specialty, being unnaturally nomadic. There was nothing known in my world anymore. Nothing familiar in my future. I took the table of my life and in one quick swipe of my arm cleared it of everything but the expedition.

I reluctantly assert that anyone that has done solo expeditions and long remote trips has the right to express confusion about that mentally murky world. When you experience being alone in totally remote regions, no one to talk with, some degree of sensory deprivation, you can develop anthropomorphic behavior *1,2 towards your gear, which I did with my kayak. I've done this with my bike as well, as we traveled thousands of solo miles all over Alaska, spending an average of 13 hours per day on the bike. At night I slept next to the bike in my bivy sack in the snow. I got a little attached to my gear, but I think it is more sane than attachment to other things like furniture. Furniture is scary. It makes people stay even when they want to go somewhere new.

1 In the movie, Cast Away, Tom Hanks befriends a soccer ball he names Wilson. 2 I had one climbing partner that always named his sled. You know who you are.

Focus

I returned to Fairbanks, packed up, moved out of the cabin and shipped a few boxes to Sitka. Then I packed minimal gear on my bike and rode through Alaska and Canada to the water. I had biked that route from Fairbanks to Whitehorse before but never right through Whitehorse over the Canadian/US border again, off the plateau down to Skagway. I don't know how but I covered the 1,000 mile trip in four delirious days. The last night I only stopped around 2 AM after crossing back into the US. The customs officer was making tea and graciously invited me to join her before heading on down the winding canyon to the fjord. Then I rolled past the lights of the border checkpoint, ducked behind a few trees, laid my bike down, and passed out next to it for two hours. I hit the road again around 4 AM. It was fantastic to ride alone, before sunrise, in a tuck for an hour down the winding canyon.

The Inside Passage supposedly has the highest incidence of non-tropical hurricane-force winds during the winter months. Imagine the fetch - all the way from Japan and Russia which rips through Dixon Entrance at the center of the Passage. It is such an exposed area that even large ships passing Vancouver Island into the Entrance rock as they cruise through. I was terrified.

In Skagway, I hopped the ferry to Juneau then to Sitka. It was August when I rolled off the ferry onto Baranoff Island for the first time. Baranoff and it's surrounding islands and satellite islands are beautiful emeralds along the Pacific: green, steep, rocky, and dotted with sharp peaks that rise quickly out of the water and above the mist. It is a short distance north to Glacier Bay and just north from there is the Fairweather and St. Elias ranges rising in ten miles from the coast. It is a magical area one can purposefully get lost in, watch deer eat seaweed on the beach at sunrise from your bivy sack, pass bear, eagle, orcas, mink and sea otters and in the Fall, paddle alone surrounded by a pod of Humpbacks.

Within two days of arriving in Sitka, I had a boat to live on, a job and my own radio show. The boat was fantastically tiny but it allowed me to live in the marina and store my kayak on the back. For a while I worked in town part time to supplement grant money for the expedition, trained, and nights in town were spent on expedition logistics down to each leg's emergency pull off in case of storms or planned camps being iced in barring access. My only two friends in town were fishermen. One a poet, one a musician, both had bought their own boats and fished for a living. My new friend Dave taught me how to be first mate and fish for Kings (salmon) and long line for halibut. It was hard work, it was winter, we fished through hail, sleet and raced in front of storms back to town in the winter darkness with never enough fish in the hold.

Showdown::Defending Your Gear

We decided to go shrimping in the fjords south of Sitka, hike around, and visiit the hot springs to recharge and take in the views. While we were motoring out of the hot springs, Dave noticed another fisherman's boat far enough away but paralleling our course. It was someone he knew, but he didn't have time to fill me in on why he didn't like him. The other skipper was pretty wasted and yelling at us in a half-friendly, half-razzing manner. Then we heard a small explosion. He set off a depth charge in the water to scare the fish. He was laughing wildly. That's when Dave started cursing and we were about to change course when a second zipped through the air right past me and exploded through my kayak's cockpit that we kept strapped along the top of the fishing pit while under way. It knocked a hole through my beautiful, new, customized glass expedition boat. I snapped and felt like my insides burst. I have no recollection of what Dave was doing but I heard yelling while my eyes quickly darted to the sawed-off shot gun I was to take on the expedition. My kayak was under attack. The next think I knew the gun was in my hand and I was taking aim. It was pure fury and the need to defend my gear. I was going to get that bastard. But nothing happened. I screamed over the engines at the other boat, grabbed the radio, set the frequency to what I knew he'd be listening on and told him just how he would pay - in cash. Back in town I found the best glass man around who fixed my cockpit like new. The boat was customized for me with an insulated cockpit to protect against the cold, and skid plates for when I had to blast out of the water during a storm. One storm was so bad that 99 knot winds were recorded. I noticed the barometer falling fast over a 30 minute interval and got off the water just as winds were hitting around 45 knots. At 50 knots, if I am not grabbing onto something secured down or heavier, the wind knocks me off my feet. There was no land mass around to protect me as it was a rather flat area and I had no time so I found a sturdy tree. I kept an 8mm fairly long cordilette tied to my harness and PFD all the time (connected to a survival bag that floated while I swam, should I get rolled in a wicked storm and loose my boat, having to survive ashore). I tied another line to the bow, pointed the bow into the wind, tied both blades flush against the boat's hull on either side, secured all hatches, covered the cockpit then secured my line to the tree as well and shoved whatever I'd need to survive the next eight hours into the watertight zipper opening in my drysuit. I laid flat out next to my boat in the high winds for five hours straight, through the night.

"The time has come to ride hard and fast" - John Wayne. The fishing vessel, the shotgun, the bike and the Fairweather Range in the background. Winter fishing uniform: oil skins with 1 parka, 1 jacket, 1 layer of expedition capilene, 1 layer of mid-weight and one layer of silk-weight plus a few expedition weight socks and rubber boots. It's a miracle I could move]

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