Hiking – Page 4 – The Destinators

Wrangell-St Elias National Park

Regal Mountain and the Stairway Icefield

Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve is the most superlative and unique-est we’ve ever visited. It’s the largest National Park in the US. At 13 million acres, it’s roughly 6 times the size of Yellowstone. It is surrounded on 3 sides by other parks including Glacier Bay National Park (US), as well as Canada’s Kluane National Park and Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, creating an enormous international wilderness area. Mount St Elias is the tallest peak in the park at 18,008 ft and the second highest peak in the US (Denali is 20,308 ft). Mount St Elias is also 10 miles as the eagle or raven flies (we’ve not seen many crows in Alaska!) from the ocean, providing one of the highest reliefs in the world as well as a uniquely preserved ecosystem in its entirety. Established in 1980, Wrangell-St Elias is one of the most recent additions to the National Park Service.

Like most National Parks, WSE’s mission is to preserve and protect natural scenic beauty, wildlife populations and their habitats all while providing and balancing access and recreational opportunities by visitors. WSE also celebrates the region’s 20th century mining history. Unlike most National Parks, WSE also provides continued opportunities for the few small communities and the subsistence lifestyles of the people who live there – yes, people live deep in this wilderness, surrounded by the National Park.

Steese Highway

Our Arctic Ocean excursion took 4 long days of intense driving (there’re no public spaces or sightseeing spots in Deadhorse other than the shuttle, so we didn’t spend a whole day there), and we needed a brief respite before our re-provisioning stop back in Fairbanks.

Outstanding items on Nick’s list included a drive on the Steese Highway and a hike there. The Steese is an older road north of Fairbanks originally build to connect the city to the Yukon River where goods were shipped in. After the construction of the Alaska Highway, the port on the Yukon was less busy, though it is still in use today. There are also some mining operations along the way. Recreationally, the Steese is a beautiful drive to and through the tallest of the White Mountains. Since the road begins between the end of the Dalton Highway and the city of Fairbanks, it was a perfect opportunity for us.

Fairbanks

We’ve known Nick for a pretty long time. He was 2 months old when we first visited Stump Sprouts, the World’s Greatest B&B, owned by his parents Lloyd and Suzanne in the Berkshires. Little did we know at the time, that visit would evolve into a same-time-next-year, Memorial Day get-together with a group of close friends for over 30 years. Through the years, we got to know Nick initially as a little guy hanging around, then a kid who could come on some of our shorter bike rides, then as a teen who’d kick our butts on our longer bike rides. Then, he was off to college. Although we saw less of him, Lloyd and Suzanne kept us updated. As a young adult ready to take on the world as a nordic ski coach and continue living his outdoor adventure lifestyle, Nick moved around a bit, settling in Fairbanks.

We checked in with Nick. C’mon over!

Denali National Park

Denali is Athabascan for ‘The High One.’ That is an understatement. There is so much rich, fascinating history about Denali and its relationship with the history of Alaska, gold mining, environmentalism and national park development it’s hard to know where to start. So, I decided to start with an abbreviated, simplified history of the Park Road.

Haines Junction, YT/Kluane National Park

We’ve been on the Alaska Highway for 10 days. Several times a day, we pause and note – ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’ or ‘Look at that!’ Soon after we left Whitehorse, we started to see what appeared to be snow-covered peaks on the horizon. ‘Whoa, what’s that?’ As we approached Haines Junction, we realized the Kluane Range was in our faces. Our jaws dropped. We had to stop!

Literally. Ok, there was a crossroads in town where you had to bear left, turn right, or crash into the mountains that were in your face. According to the staff at the visitor center, these towering peaks were the foothills to the Kluane Mountains, among which are the 15 tallest peaks in Canada, #1 being Mount Logan at 5,959 m (19,551 feet). And although the Kluane National Park is ginormous, the only day hiking trails are right near Haines Junction. So we had to stop!

Edmonton, part 2 – the city

In an RV, hanging around somewhere is not really a big deal – we have everything we need to stay wherever we are, and it can be downright fun. Although we’d hoped to be closer to Alaska by now, we had to wait in Edmonton for at least another 2 days while our part made its way across Canada. Let’s check out the city!

Edmonton, North America’s northernmost city with a population over one million, is the capital of the Province of Alberta. Although it’s in the prairie and the surrounding areas are flat to slightly rolling, the North Saskatchewan River flows from southwest to northeast through the heart of the city in a tree-lined ravine. Two chains of 25 contiguous city parks link together to form the largest urban park in Canada, spanning both sides of the river. The epic walking, biking, roller blading, and x-c skiing paths go on for hundreds of kilometers throughout the city. People from Edmonton really know how to play outside!

Edmonton, part 1 – Jasper National Park side trip

We were about a 6-hour drive away from the end of our self-imposed sprint to the Alaska Highway when we decided we really did need to have our RV, built on a Sprinter chassis, checked out. We thought it maybe might possibly be intermittently losing power one day in Wyoming. Then it was fine. Then it was definitely probably intermittently losing power for two days in Alberta. We stopped at the Sprinter dealer in Edmonton to have it checked out. We’d had the rig serviced there last year and we liked their work. And it was the last Sprinter service center we’d see until Anchorage, 3,200 km (2,000 miles) away.

We arrived on a Friday and the initial diagnosis was a torque converter issue. Yes, they could fix it, but not until Tuesday. It was the May long weekend in Canada. We’d have to hover for four days. Hey, let’s go to Jasper National Park!

First Gig!

Bear Swamp Blues Band (Photo by Jim Panos)

It was yet another great ski season, and the call of fabulous spring skiing has been distracting us a bit from thoughts of travel.

As did our gig. Yup! We set a goal for our blues band to play at least one gig this winter. Success! We made our debut on April 7 to a well attended party at the Castlerock Pub, at Sugarbush, our local ski resort. Judging by the smiles, dancing, high fives, hugs and smiles, our friends appear to have had fun. Our 6-piece band, the Bear Swamp Blues Band, had a great time as well. With planning, rehearsals and requisite jitters behind us all, it’s now time for the Destinators to start focusing on this year’s trip.

But first, a quick recap of our 2018 trip.

Telluride, CO

Howard was the first snowboarder we ever got to know. The year was 2000 and a dedicated group of us were all skiing with the Black Diamond Club, a Sugarbush program for expert adult skiers – and one snowboarder. According to Howard, he switched to snowboarding so he could ride with his young sons. Still, he didn’t want to give up hanging with his friends in the BDC. Howard, with his characteristic big grin, had the best of both worlds! For so long a part of our tight-knit Sugarbush community, we love Howard!

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Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Continuing to follow the Google-Maps-suggested route south towards Telluride brought us within 9 miles of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. We’ve got time – let’s check it out!

Although it had been a National Monument since 1933, the Black Canyon was designated a National Park in 1999, so it’s one of America’s newest National Parks. Though its walls are, indeed, darker in color than some (we’d just hiked in the pink-walled canyons of Colorado National Monument…), the name actually comes from the limited sunlight that reaches the canyon floor – in some places, only 33 minutes a day – leaving much of the canyon in the shadows most of the time. The park surrounds about 12 miles (25%) of the Gunnison River where it forms one of the longest, narrowest and deepest gorges in the world. The Gunnison has been at work for millions of years creating the steep, narrow, deep V-shaped canyons – the Black Canyon’s tallest cliff (near the Painted Wall) is 2,250 feet and the narrowest point (near Devils Lookout, and surprisingly close to the Painted Wall) is 40 feet.

As we might have anticipated, this National Park is a paradise for technical climbers and boaters; for hiking, not so much…

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