Day 100 - Juneau (Mendenhall Glacier Campground), Alaska
24 August - Rest day - 23.86 miles 1:45 hours
I got up early this morning and took a walk up the western side of the Mendenhall glacier. I was only expecting a few hours round trip but the amazing views made me want to just keep going up and up. The trail eventually passed the tree-line, through fields of snow and stopped at the top of Mount McGuinnis (4228 feet). The peak was just a grassy mound so it provided an amazing 360 degree view of mountains (all snow-capped except the one I was on, the closest of which was the rocky crag of Mount Stroller White, elevation 5150 feet), the islands of the Inside Passage, part of the town (Mendenhall Valley), the glacier (several miles across, and from my height it was barely possible to spot the helicopters landing on the glacier for ice trekking tours), everything! It really felt like I was on top of the world and I get a small inkling of what mountain climbers must feel when they reach a peak.
I got very lost on the way down, the path was marked by small orange ribbons tied to bushes and trees and I eventually found myself crawling through very thick undergrowth getting quite paranoid about bears. I eventually managed to climb to the top of a large rock and spent ten minutes trying to spot the nearest orange ribbon using my camera zoom lens. I was exhausted by the time I got down to my tent, eight and a half hours after I’d started and with only two Snickers bars for lunch.
To celebrate my 100th day, I sadly went to McDonalds for dinner and had super-size fries and a super-size chocolate thickshake. And after I left, I decided that I never, ever needed to go to McDonalds again.
Day 101 - Juneau (Mendenhall Glacier Campground), Alaska
25 August - Rest day - 41.18 miles 2:52 hours
So I had McDonalds again for lunch. Tried to book a ferry to Haines or Skagway but found out that the ferry at the end of the month to Seward doesn’t stop at either of these places.
So thanks to my ferry timetable skills I’m stuck in Juneau for another five days. But definitely not a bad place to get stuck.
Day 102 - Juneau (Mendenhall Glacier Campground), Alaska
26 August- Rest day
Day 103 - Juneau (Mendenhall Glacier Campground), Alaska
27 August- Rest day
It looks like I was lucky to have those three days of sunshine when I first got here. It’s been nothing but drizzle and more drizzle since. I’ve been spending my days in the State Library, insulated from nature by glass, the sounds of birds and the wind muted by brick, I’m out of the weather and into comfortable climate controlled air-conditioning.
And I’m enjoying every moment of it. In over three months of being outside for nearly twenty four hours a day, as much as I love the outdoors, it’s good to suddenly be out of it.
Day 104 - Juneau (Mendenhall Glacier Campground), Alaska
28 August - Rest day
When I stole Ted’s jerky and dried fruits almost seventy days ago, I knew Karma would catch up with me. When I got back to the campgrounds last night I found that someone had nicked my half bottle of Aussie wine and a can of beans from the bear-proof food locker.
Yet there was no one else camped within a stones throw from me. So Karma has finally paid me back, hopefully everything is in balance now and no more will go wrong.
Day 105 - Juneau (Mendenhall Glacier Campground), Alaska
29 August - Rest day - 57.79 miles 3:42 hours
Day 106 - Juneau (Mendenhall Glacier Campground), Alaska
30 August - Rest day
Day 107 - Ferry to Seward, Alaska
31 August - 19.19 miles 1:28 hours
On the ferry again. The ship doesn’t have a very good lounge section so I immediately set myself up on the open air solarium where I’ve been ever since. It’s a bit chilly though, but there’s a bunch of other thick-skinned (or thick-headed) people up here braving the elements also. Got talking to Dan, a forty-two year old artist who told me he’d seen the Northern Lights last night.
We spotted some humpback whales breaching which was pretty cool. Dan was telling me that they’re not too sure why whales breach, but one possible explanation was to aid digestion. Dan told me that his brother works up in Alaska on the US missile defence system, but their family never knows quite where he is or what exactly it is that he does.
Day 108 - Ferry to Seward, Alaska
1 September - Rest day
Kept waking up last night to see if there was any aurora action happening, but nothing. Someone mentioned that it’s a long weekend this Monday, which apparently marks the end of summer. I’m starting to get a bit worried about this attempt at getting to the Arctic Circle, there’s no way I’m gonna ride there so I’m hoping to hitchhike, but not sure what my chances are.
Met a guy, Lejon, who’s planning on finding work on a fishing boat up in Seward.
Lejon and I ended up talking most of the evening about everything from Tsunamis and other natural disasters, to cult suicides, and climbing mountains and giving up smoking and grog. Also met another Aussie guy, David from Brisbane, who is here with his wife and eventually going to head down to South America. It’s great to be able to have these longer-than-five-minute conversations with people and to not talk about anything to do with bicycles.
Day 109 - Anchorage, Alaska
2 September - 5.08 miles 0:24 hours
It started raining last night and a very cold cross breeze was blowing through my part of the solarium. There were two other people sleeping in my area, one in a tent and another with a sleeping bag on a reclining chair like me. Everyone else in the solarium is in the more sheltered areas, but I found it far too stuffy there. So I contested with the biting winds and still I refrained from putting on my beanie or zipping up the bottom of my sleeping bag. I learned many months ago that leaving my feet sticking out the end of the sleeping bag was the only way I could regulate my body heat and not wake up soaked in sweat. I woke up several times in the night but no aurora because of the rain.
When we arrived in Valdez at 3am the ship’s female pursuer seemed to take great pleasure in making as many loudspeaker announcements as possible. Then security personnel started waking each of us up to see who we were. By this time I was alone in my solarium, the smarter pair had withdrawn to warmer and dryer locations.
In the morning I found out from Lejon why there had been so much commotion in Valdez. Apparently when Lejon had first got on the boat he’d been accosted, like many other people by a guy called Paul. Paul, who everyone had nicknamed Jesus, spent his day talking to most people about faith and God.
Jesus had a ticket to Valdez. But when the ship arrived in Valdez, Jesus was nowhere to be seen. They knew he was stowing away because Jesus had a Jeep Cherokee in the hull. So all the announcements at 3am in the morning had been to try and find Jesus. Then security went to every single person to check whether they were Jesus or knew Jesus. Eventually the Valdez police were called in and they found Jesus in one of the private rooms that he had managed to sneak into. Jesus refused to put his pants on and so Jesus got carted off the boat in his underpants.
Spent quite a bit of time today copying down parts of the “Milepost”. The “Milepost” gives a mile by mile description of all the highways in the Alaska/Yukon area. There’s not that many highways up here, literally just a handful, so it can afford to go into quite a lot of detail. I’ve copied down every campground, water stop and grocery store between the Arctic Circle and Edmonton, a total of 2024 miles. I must be bloody mad.
We got into Seward at 3:30pm, and I hopped on the train heading to Anchorage an hour later. For 109 days I’ve been able to stop anywhere I like and take photos. Now I’m on a train and all of a sudden it feels like life is moving too fast and I’m not in control anymore.
Day 110 - Train to Denali National Park (Reiley Campground), Alaska
3 September - 2.1 miles 0:15 hours
Last night we arrived in Anchorage after 10pm and I had no idea where I was going to stay. While slowly assembling my bike outside the station I started talking to the security guard and he eventually got around to asking where I was staying. After my vague reply he pointed me towards an RV park just a half mile down the road. As I crept in under the stealth of darkness, a kiwi voice shouted out “Another touring cyclist!”. It was Heidi, and her partner Nigel who had just finished a ten month trip from Argentina to Anchorage on a tandem bicycle. This morning I crept out of the RV park before light and without paying. There’s another bit of bad Karma that will come back and bite me in the arse one day.
At Denali, David, Sophie whom I’d met on the train earlier had dinner at my campsite and finished off a bottle a wine I’d been carrying since Juneau. They are a wonderful couple and when not braving the elements in Denali, live and work in London. They eloped about six months ago to avoid the lavish wedding that both pairs of their parents want. They still haven’t let their parents know yet. After dinner they made hot chocolate with a generous splashing of traveller’s rum (plastic bottle) and we got to see the first flakes of snowfall. They invited me to join them to camp inside the park tomorrow night, but unfortunately I don’t have anywhere to stash my gear in the meantime (the lockers at the visitor centre were not designed to house an acoustic 12-string guitar).
Day 111 - Denali National Park (Reiley Campground), Alaska
4 September - Rest day
An amazing day. The Autumn colours are out in full and it snowed last night so everything looks bloody splendid. And so said the tour bus driver Peter who gave a wonderful commentary along the entire trip into the park. We saw moose early in the morning. Peter spotted a bear and after waiting patiently while it hid out of sight for several minutes, we were rewarded with it wandering down the slope in front of us and then walking a few feet from my window. It wandered under some trees, bumping snow off the branches and looked like a sugar-frosted bear. It then stood up and gave itself a back rub against a small tree that shuddered under the bear’s weight. We spotted a small herd of caribou, quite some distance away, but close enough to see the male’s bloodied antlers from where all the velvet had fallen off.
When we got to the East Fork River bed Peter spotted a wolf, then another, and another. Peter, who’s been driving here for ten years was really surprised to see one, let alone three. When we got to the bridge, we discovered why.
A caribou had been freshly killed, about thirty metres from us and the wolves were taking it in turn to rip it to shreds. When we returned in the afternoon, it was a field day for photographers who were standing at the edge of the river with ten thousand dollar telephoto lenses. Apparently not long after we left, a bear and its two cubs wanted a share of the action. We were pretty lucky. Peter offered a prize to anyone who could spot the next bear and I managed to win that one. We didn’t go all the way into the park, but instead stopped at a visitor centre overlooking the highest mountain in the USA; Mount Denali (McKinley) standing at 20,320 feet. Like most days though, we weren’t overlooking the mountain, but looking at a large cloud covering the mountain. Lastly, we spotted some Dall sheep high overhead on a rocky cliff.
After getting back from the bus trip I headed over to see National Park dog sled team. I miss dogs. A lot of the huskies have eerie clear blue eyes, it’s almost unsettling.
Day 112 - Fairbanks (Boyle’s Hostel), Alaska
5 September - Rest day
Woke up quite a few times during the night, feeling totally refreshed and ready to get up. I could hear it raining on my tent so I ended up turning off my 2am aurora alarm clock. Woke up cold and for the first time on this trip, zipped up the bottom of my sleeping bag. When I did finally get out of bed, my $5 REI compass/thermometer that probably has an accuracy of plus or minus 20 degrees, read slightly above freezing. Catching the 3pm train to Fairbanks, and as per usual, I have no idea where I’m gonna sleep.
When I got to Fairbanks, I found some hostel pamphlets and rode out to the first place that took my fancy. It’s actually just some old guy’s house with some rooms in the basement. When I first got there and knocked on the door I got no answer. So I opened the front door to find an old lady with a goatee in a wheelchair.
Turned out that she can’t hear a thing so she called her husband. An old hunched-over man came out from somewhere, took his hat off and went about getting my name, etc. Then he grabbed the hat, and seriously asked me if it was mine. No, it’s yours, I said, kind of embarrassed. He took me out the back of his house and showed me where I could camp, a tiny spot in between the patio and the garden shed. The garden shed actually turned out to be another room with a bed in it. There was only one other person there, a serious Japanese guy, Tadashi, who was on his mountain bike and had more gear than me. He’d done East Africa (Egypt down to South Africa), spent a year riding around South America and now up to here.
Then two other Japanese, that I’d met on the train, Mariko and Seiji showed up. None had fantastic English and I know about two words of Japanese but we still managed to have some great, often funny conversations.
At 11pm, Boyle, the old man, came down and told us the Northern Lights were out. We rushed out and could make out a greenish cloud fading and moving in the sky. It disappeared but we waited and eventually it came back, filling most of the sky, rapidly moving, hovering, twisting and fading in and out of intensity. It finally started twisting together like wool being spun and turned an intense white, purple and red. It was fantastic. I kept laughing so much. I was so intensely happy and so was Seiji, who was also seeing it for the first time. We put our arms around each other and laughed drunkenly with happiness. I couldn’t stop laughing. Who needs TV when you have this sort of thing?
Mariko is not so impressed. She works up at Yellowknife where Japanese tourists take weekend trips all the way from Japan just to see the Northern Lights. Mariko and several other young guides, have to stand outside in the sub-freezing temperatures, waiting for the aurora, while the paying tourists drink and eat inside the warm lodge. When they give the signal, all the tourists come rushing out and Mariko and company have to rush around taking photos for everyone. It’s all over in about ten minutes, then the tourists head back to the warm lodge and Mariko and company are left to defrost their fingers and toes until another night.
Day 113 - Fairbanks (Boyle’s Hostel), Alaska
6 September - Rest day - 18.57 miles 1:39 hours
This morning I discovered with horror that the clip on one of my rear panniers has snapped. It may have happened while it was on the train. Made a panicked call to Arkel in Quebec but unfortunately they were already closed. I sent an email and just hope they can recommend a place I can get some spares.
I’m planning to leave for the Arctic Circle tomorrow morning, but will leave the broken pannier, my guitar and other non-necessary items here at the Boyles.
Day 114 - Arctic Circle, (Dawson Highway), Alaska
7 September - 42.59 miles 3:38 hours
When I got up this morning I checked the thermometer hanging on the Boyles back porch. It read 22 degrees Fahrenheit at 7am. I called Arkel, and the lady who answered told me that she had four spare clips packaged up and ready to be sent express post (it arrived the next day while I was away). I then spoke to Kevin, one of the designers who wanted to give me a prize for being the first to break one of the clips. He was real cool, and asked me all about my trip and hoped that the broken clip hadn’t ruined any plans. What plans? I’m even more impressed with Arkel after this experience.
I set off towards the Arctic Circle with two mismatched panniers, eight litres of water and two days worth of food. I was either being really optimistic or really foolish, probably a bit of both, and hoped to be able to hitch a ride all the way there and all the way back to be in Fairbanks again tomorrow night. It was so goddamn cold. The hair below my bottom lip kept frosting up from my breath and I had to be careful not to spill water on my goatee, as that kept icing up too. I quickly lost feeling in my toes, and my fingers, only covered with old, holey Thinsulate gloves, hurt like hell. My cheeks, nose and ears stung like crazy. I figured it was better that my extremities hurt like hell rather than not being able to feel them at all, but before long, I couldn’t feel them at all. My water bottles kept icing up and whenever I was thirsty, I had to stop and smash the ice at the top of the bottles. I stuck out my frozen hitchhiking thumb at every passing pick-up, but it was not until I was 35 miles out of Fairbanks that I got lucky. The bike went on top of two big eskies (ice coolers) on the back, one full of beer. It was two First Nations people, who took much humour in calling me a dumb Aussie for being out here on a bike. They took me all the way to the banks of the mighty Yukon River, where they had a cabin and were going to spend the winter (and they were calling me crazy?).
It was still another sixty miles to the Circle and unpaved road all the way. After about five miles, I pulled into the Hot Spot cafe and got a chocolate thick-shake while the owner (apparently an ex-stripper, she sells “Hot Spot” t-shirts featuring the silhouette of a well endowed women reclining in a seductive manner) told me all about a crazy Italian girl who had passed through a few days before on a bicycle while it was snowing and insisted on making it to Prudhoe Bay. I’m getting the impression that the locals, who anyone else would consider crazy for living up here, consider anyone else who travels up here, crazy.
Two guys working for the oil pipeline company showed up and joined in on the jokes about crazy cyclists. I tried to argue and convince them of my sanity, hence the hitchhiking up here instead of cycling all the way, but they weren’t convinced. I didn’t even really convince myself.
I left, but about ten minutes down the road, the two guys stopped for my outstretched thumb and gave me a lift. My bike once again, perched precariously on the back of the pick-up against a cable roll (Oh why, oh why do I never get picked up by people with empty pick-ups?). The scenery towards the Arctic Circle was nothing like I imagined, no polar bears and no floating slabs of ice, just a lot of tundra, a lot of smoke (Alaska had something like six million acres of land go up in smoke this year), and a lot of drunken trees skewed every which way, which they told me was due to global warming and the rising of the permafrost. Now there’s a strange concept for someone from a warm country – a permanent layer of frost, sometimes several feet below the soil’s surface. The sun also doesn’t get very high, it always feels like early morning or late evening.
The guys dropped me off at the Arctic Circle sign, after we had accidentally driven five miles past it (we’d been busy looking at the drunken trees and smoke). Talk about feeling isolated, I felt like I was the only living being for miles. I took the obligatory photo shots at the Arctic Circle sign and happily considered myself the winner of the “Steber Family Race to the Arctic Circle”.
Seeing as I was pretty alone out here, I decided I would do the permanently-sealed-victory sort of nudie shot to clinch the deal. Just as I was busting out of my bicycle shorts, in drives a car with a girl from Colorado:
“Ah, I see you’re well prepared!”,
she said as I quickly chucked my shirt back on in embarrassment. It turned out she was referring to my camera tripod which was all set up for the nudie shot. As she drove off, a procession of other people started showing up, so there was no chance of completing the nudie shot. A small minivan drove in with half a dozen people, including Andrew, a travel guide from Melbourne that I had met on the train to Denali. He was with a group that had flown to Prudhoe Bay and then driven back.
They even had a piece of carpet with a painted dotted line on it, which they rolled out for photographs. So much for feeling alone out here.
I set up my tent at the empty, undeveloped camping sites about a quarter mile from the Arctic Circle sign. Now I felt really alone and also a little paranoid about bears. So I cooked my dinner back at the sign and then put my food pannier in the drop toilet outhouse back at the campground. The sound here carries remarkably well, another guy showed up at the campgrounds, and though he is over 100 metres away, I can clearly hear him as if he was right outside my tent. Richard came over and introduced himself and offered me a glass of wine. I’d been sitting outside of my tent and because I’d packed so lightly and had no entertainment, I was literally doing nothing but looking at the magnificent Autumn colours and waiting for the sun to go down. Richard is a taxi driver from Las Vegas and comes up to Alaska every year for a holiday. He was kind enough to offer me a lift all the way back to Fairbanks tomorrow, very cool.
After Richard headed back to his tent I checked my $5 REI compass/thermometer that probably has an accuracy of plus or minus 20 degrees and it was at freezing point. It was 9:30pm by the time the sun set and by this time I had every piece of clothing I could find on, and even with two pairs of wool socks my feet were stinging from the cold. I crawled into my sleeping bag with everything on, and it was not until 2am that the full feeling in my toes came back. Every hour I woke up with my alarm to check if the aurora had come out. At 11:30pm, I peaked outside my tent to find a thin white cloud streaked all the way from the north horizon to the south horizon. It was possible to mistake it for a jet’s exhaust stream but it illuminated the ground with the same intensity as a full moon. Slowly it started shimmering vertically like a wind-blown plastic phosphorous-coated shower curtain, tinged with purple and red. And then it would change into cloud shapes that moved and stretched across the entire sky in a matter of moments. It’s something I’d been wanting to see for many years now and it was so much better than I expected and really indescribable. It was lovely. I had planned to get up and take a bunch of long exposure photographs, but when it’s below freezing outside it’s very easy to justify that a photograph would not do the Northern Lights justice.
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