Summer 2010

Well the Summer of 2010 has already come and gone. As usual the Interior's long days had everybody working and playing at a frenetic pace. I have not made the time to enter any blog posts but figured that I would document some of the good times that were had.

Halibut fishing with Captain Al and the gang-

Pack rafting on Windy Creek-

Floating the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk River with my dad and Brett-
Sheep Hunting with Bernie-

Fishing the Kenai with Magan-

Moose hunting the Chatanika River with Luke-

Ptarmagain hunting on the dome with Luke and Jeff-

Princess Kathleen

In 1952 Princess Kathleen went aground on Point Lena, approximately 15 miles north of Juneau Alaska. Not long after grounding she flooded with the incoming tide and slid back into 120 feet of water. The vessel has been stationary for almost 60 years but there had been increased reports of tar balls on shore and sheen in the water off of Point Lena so the US Coast Guard and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation implemented a plan to extract the fuel oil from the cruise ship and mitigate the potential for a major release.


Global Diving and Salvage are the contracted diving company tasked with the underwater operations. They are a well travelled group with a ton of talent and a pretty interesting job.


This is the work platform that we are using to dive off of and house the oil that is being extracted from Princess Kathleen.


I had not done any work on marine responses before so everything was fairly new to me. The barge on the right will ultimately accept the old oil and haul it down to Seattle. When I left we had recovered over 10,000 gallons of oil and it looks like there could be as much as 50,000 more gallons to go.



This is one of the divers getting prepped to do some work on Kathleen.



This is one of the divers coming out of the water after working inside of the vessel.


We had deployed harbor boom and absorbent boom around the work platform in an attempt to catch the majority of the oil that escaped with the divers or from the fuel tanks.

The "Neka Bay" was one of the response vessels that was always on site prepared to assist if there was a major release while constantly assisting with booming operations.

Deploying boom away from the work site. This was a secondary layer of protection and picked up the remaining oil that escaped the first line.

After a long day of setting boom in the rain and wind we were treated to a rainbow pointing out our last anchor point. Overall this is a fairly technical operation that I was not exactly trained up on, but I certainly learned a lot about maritime operations and I think the Feds and the State are doing a real service to Alaskan waters by removing a large threat to the area.

The Wilderness Classic (Act II)

The Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic is, by most standards, a significant physical and mental challenge. Since I first became aware of the Wilderness Classic it has challenged me more than anything else to attain the skill set needed to successfully complete this race. My Midwestern agricultural background educated me about how to read a soil sample and how to calibrate a corn planter but I never knew what a climbing skin was and had never touched a crampon.
Two years ago Ed and I competed in our first Classic in the Wrangell Mountains. Prior to that the only real information I had came from Daily News Miner articles and from a few conversations with friends that had competed in the event. The 2008 Classic in the Wrangell Mountains was a great experience and afforded us the experience to prepare more adequately for the 2010 Classic. This year’s race started and ended at the same point that the race did four years ago but this traverse was longer and allowed the competitors more route choices. There was a checkpoint about 80 miles into the race at the Native Village of Aniktuvik Pass. This year I was fortunate to be a part of a four man team of friends. We have all skied and trained together for a handful of years and have the unique luxury of knowing that we all travel at a similar pace and really like spending a lot of time together in the backcountry. This race was much different than the route through the Wrangell’s but the challenge was just as significant. The unbelievable Glaciers and huge mountains that created an awe inspiring traverse in the Wrangell/St. Elias National Park were replaced by night skies filled with dancing northern lights while wolves howled in the naked mountain valley. We had spectacular views of the actual Gates of the Artic that Bob Marshall named during his early travels into the arctic on the Koyukuk River. In a nut shell this race was filled with challenges and fun, but most importantly it was filled with a week of enjoying the freedom of the hills and the spirit of the Classic!

Many of these images were taken by Ed Plumb or John Shook.

The field of racers is filled with a great group of adventures, athletes, and most importantly characters.

We were treated to some phenomenal visual entertainment for the first few nights after we set up camp. Apparently there was some extreme solar activity coinciding with the start of the race which made for some of the best Aurora displays that I have ever seen.

This is a series of pictures taken while we climbed Peregrine Pass. It proved to be the most difficult part of the race for me, but we enjoyed the short time we spent up high.

We spent hours a day melting snow to provide us with enough liquid water.

Ed had an ugly wipe out –which is very rare- and he bent his pole in the wreck. After a minute of retooling he had his gear back in order and powered through the rest of the course.

We made it to the check point in Aniktuvik Pass and enjoyed an hour and a half in the National Park Service building before skiing off into a fairly cold headwind.

We bumped into Dave Cramer and Rob Kerher on the “out and back” stretch of our route. Dave and Rob were bucking a stiff head wind but drove on to Aniktuvik Pass that night. Dave has been the race director for years and is a man that I truly respect. He homesteaded in bush Alaska years ago and has carved out a great life, family, and business since. His race organization is first class, and I hope he continues to be the director for years to come.

John skis down into the Valley of the Precipices. We had a blast ripping though the 3% grade and the twisting icy creek.

Dan skis down the Koyukuk on our way towards the finish.

We saw thousands of ptarmigan throughout the race. It was pretty awesome to see the huge coveys moving across the south slopes enjoying the open tundra after the long winter.

We hit a few patches of bare ground that forced us to drop our skis, but for the most part we were locked into our boards.

Four happy campers just skied into Wiseman after a tough twenty hour push; we covered about fifty miles to reach the finish and grabbed a quick self portrait to put an end the 2010 Classic. 5:30 A.M.

A member of the winning team, Luc Mehl created a fun video that gives a great feel for the Classic. That video can be viewed through the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuxAAaFwciQ

Below is a link to the Article in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner:
http://www.newsminer.com/view/full_story/7080445/article-From-bears-to-aurora--this-year-s-Wilderness-Classic-had-it-all?instance=home_lead_story

Spring Harvest

Early March always brings with it a case of cabin fever. I have found that one of the best remedies for this annual ailment is a trip up to the north slope in search of some caribou and some sun soaked adventure with my hunting partner Luke. This year, like the couple before proved to provide us with everything we hoped for: plenty of exercise, plenty of stories and plenty of red meat.
This year we invested in a new lightweight wall tent along with a folding wood stove. After a few modifications we were living large in a warm and spacious dwelling.

The trip into our normal site was a little brutal this year. We bucked a fairly stiff headwind that brought the windchill down in the -35 degree range.

Our new tent was pitched and Luke was dressed for action. Goggles and face shield for protection from the wind and cold, and the trusty Tyvek suit for winter camo.

This photo was a little staged (we had already shot a few caribou out of the herd behind Luke) but it is still pretty cool to see the herd of caribou moving away from us after we thinned the herd by three.

Luke with a nice mature cow.

There is just something spectacular about this hunt. I think it is a combination of solitude, good success, the time of the year and the memories that are created from each trip. I am already looking forward to next years outing.

A Welcome Change of Scenery

Magan and I had the good fortune of trading a week of sub-Arctic winter for a week on the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. We gave up about 42 degrees of latitude but gained about 110 degrees of ambient temperature. The vacation was great and entailed a week of enjoying the sun, good food, fishing and each other. Some friends gave us a great deal on their time share so we uncharacteristically lived in posh comfort and spent a fair amount of time around the pool and the swim up bar.



Just a few days prior to leaving I was regulating hazardous substance clean-ups on the North Slope oil fields. It was a welcome change of scenery in Cabo.


The second day in town we got out on a charter and had good success catching Dorado...when the day was done we had hooked 8 and put 5 in the boat. We saw whales, porpoises and marlin to go along with our catch.



On the way back into the harbor we threw the rest of the live bait to the well trained local birds.


This friendly pelican thought that he could get one last Mackerel out of us...no such luck.

Once we made it back to the harbor we took most of our fish to get frozen and packaged. We took one nice fillet to a local restaurant where they made us fish tacos and blackened Dorado...mighty tasty!

We enjoyed a few of libations throughout the week.

The local entertainment was fun and made for an even better dining experience.

We had a hot tub on our front porch that got a fair amount of use...all we needed was a sunset or a cocktail or a cup of coffee to make for a nice soak and a great vacation.