Finding That Farthest Point - Alaska

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Finding That Farthest Point

Alaska


A wolf leaped at the throat of a caribou, again and again, until the elderly female fell to her knees. We watched through binoculars at the Savage River. That was a pretty good day, surrounded by awe-struck tourists at the base of Denali. But what about a wilder place, a place where no one goes, a moment at the end of a long trail into untrod country?

The essence of getting out there is finding that farthest point, the place and the moment most unique and full of wonder, most utterly removed from ordinary life. From that point, it's a homeward journey, step by step away from the brink and back.

Leaving Mount McKinley National Park, I studied my maps and chose Highway 8, an unpaved route east along the Alaska Range, imagining utter solitude out on the rim of reality. The road came into a high, sandy upland. It was mid-August and families had come for blueberry picking. Dozens of vans and campers gathered in wide off-road parking areas. Families, children, folding chairs, barbecues, full buckets and empties lined up beside them. It looked like fun and it was. I'd never miss a chance to join the crowd and gorge on berries.

To the east, the tundra swept out over the vast, undulating land of Monahan Flat, then rose to the harsh grandeur of the Nenana Mountains to the north. The big Susitna rises here. Beyond the Clearwater Mountains, visible from a small lodge near the bridge crossing, the McClaren River flowed from its own glacier. At High Valley, fog misted the air and partly hid the crowd of little ponds. I pushed on to Tangle Lake and stayed at a friendly hunting lodge where we all gathered in the main room to eat and share stories, watching caribou through a telescope on a little tripod that sat on the bar.

Well, that was nice. But the journey still lacked its farthest point. One more road called to me. Along the Copper River, the towns of Galkona, Chistochina, Sinona Lodge had heart-stopping views of the Wrangell Mountains, with Mount Sanford (16,237 feet) at the center. From Slana, unpaved Nabesna Road followed the boundary of the Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park, along Caribou Creek and into the heart of nowhere.

Twenty miles along the gravel track, a stream cut across the lane, its fast water deep enough and wide enough to scare me. How embarrassing it would be, not to mention expensive, to lose a rental car in that. A rusted out station wagon appeared. I asked about crossing. "Follow us, it's not hard." The next three streams I took like a pro. An hour later, the road ended in a wide valley that sloped down to the Nabesna River, a braided brown torrent rushing off the Ice Fields Plateau and four-mile wide Nabesna Glacier.

In bright sunshine, I walked toward a hanger beside a grass airstrip. A man was packing his car.

"Been hunting?"

"Sure. They flew me in to a lake and we went out from there. I got my first Dall Sheep."

He was from Palmer and agreed to pose for a photo, holding up a white head with great curling horns.

A small plane circled and landed into the south wind. The gray-haired pilot climbed out. I asked why the plane was labeled Experimental.

"I built it myself. I needed something that would carry three people, a plane I could sleep in, out somewhere."

I wanted to know where he'd been. He gave me a big smile and hefted out a portable generator, cans of fuel and a heavy toolbox.

"Been up on the glacier, fixing a plane."

Whose was it?

"My son-in-law's, and my son with him. My son-in-law never landed on a glacier before, so I went in first to show him how, then moved off to the side. Coming in, he clipped my stablizer and bent up his wing."

My mind jumped through a couple of hoops. Ok, somehow, this guy had fixed his own plane up there, then flown in here to borrow tools, flew up again and welded the bent wing back together.

"I'm going back now. We'll spend the night up there, then go after our sheep."

A woman with white hair offered to show me around, adding that she and her husband had been there since 1958.

"Both our sons built homes nearby. One of them does the U.S. Weather Service report."

She said they served three meals a day for guests and either flew in or packed in for hunting. A couple of burly men talked hunting in the living room of the old, two-story lodge. A young woman was visible in the kitchen, frying meat on a commercial range.

"Have you seen our museum?" she called. "It's full of stuffed animals."

We walked up past the old bunkhouse on the edge of the woods and looked into one of the family cabins.

"The squirrels keep getting in here. We tried just about everything but they find a way in."

Both lodge and bunkhouse were built in the 1920s to serve men who worked up the road at the mine.

The mine?

"They mined gold. It ran until 1942. They closed during the war and never reopened."

Could I go up there?

"Nobody can drive because of all the mud holes. We use horses when we go in."

Up the two-track lane, overgrown with weeds and wild flowers, the sun was hot, the wind rustling in the trees. A couple of miles in lay the dry, bleached remains of a horse-drawn snowplow.

Soon after, the whole hillside opened out, the barren soil stained. Every plant was gone. Hundreds of rusting steel drums told a tale of chemical poisoning more than half a century earlier. I studied the wood structures far up on the vertical crags of Devil's Mountain and the long curve of a high cable linking the shaft to buildings up the hill. Looked interesting.

A steep overgrown trail led to an entire village of cabins, boardwalks and paths, a schoolroom with books and a little house where someone had been living recently. In a ramshackle building, lay payroll records with the names of workers, paper flapping in the breeze. The ledger read: Nabesna Mine 1939, 1940, 1941. I tucked them in my pack to make sure they got to the state archives.

Up the slope, heavy gears and equipment lay rusting in the sun. The wind hummed in the cables. Glittering golden rocks clustered at my feet. With a length of heavy rusted pipe, I whacked at stones, seeking the beauty of a fresh break. It was the richest rock I'd ever seen outside a museum - full of colors and glitter, pyrites and heavy metals. I had to take samples back, but it was tough to choose only a few.

I climbed a rickety, zigzag incline to the top of the main tower, built of heavy timbers gone to splinters and dust now. The view took in the whole valley and the towering peaks beyond. A gust of wind pushed me sideways and I grabbed at a rail.

Sighting along the rusted droop of the ore bucket cable, it was easy to imagine men working at the top of the line in a bitter winter wind. The place must have been overrun with workmen, the machinery cranking and groaning, the acrid smell of acids, meals served under these roofs and men sleeping warm in the freezing night. Quite an operation.

But now, it was forgotten. Probably no more than a few dozen outsiders had come here, curious since it closed. This was the end of the road. Beyond were vast forbidden highlands, white summits, the ice at the top of the world. From this place and this moment, the journey would carry me home. I hefted my heavy daypack, the broken ore poking into my back. With a smile of satisfaction, I headed down the trail.

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