After the float plane left we tried to paddle to the head of Lituya Bay. I learned this: never try to paddle into an outburst flood. Seems ridiculous that we even tried, but it was easy, for a while. The tide was with us and the wind at our back, we made good progress. Then we hit a wall of small icebergs where the outburst flood waters met the incoming tide. We got through them into a semi-open water but the wind, tide and currents were no longer in our favor. Eventually Nate tactfully pointed out that we were paddling a [View Full Entry]

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"He says Lituya Bay is full of ice and we won't be able to land." I sat in the copilot's seat in shock. The float plane was over Lake Crillon and we would reach Lituya Bay in minutes, expecting to land and begin a week of wilderness adventure. Seems the adventure was already in full swing. "I'm on the radio with another pilot and he says it was clear yesterday but today it is full of ice." I mumbled into the headset microphone, "He's pulling your leg Cable." Where could that much ice come from? We'd walked the faces of both [View Full Entry]

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Excursion Ridge, it looks so close. On a clear day you can see individual trees quite well from Gustavus. “Let's go there! How hard could it be?” Turns out it can be quite hard. Getting to the top of Excursion has a local history of colorful tales of slow uphill struggle and overnight bivouacs on steep wet slopes. There's no trail but there's nothing technical. It is more like bushwhacking at the edge of “Why are we doing this???” Imagine standing on a steep wet slope, reaching your arm straight out and your fingertips just touch the soil that is the [View Full Entry]

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Mud, and plenty of it. It is not so easy, getting to the Brady Glacier... The Taylor Bay intertidal is a place to tread lightly, very lightly. Craig and I learned this a couple years ago when we tried to paddle up the eastern tributary at low tide. Quicksand, more accurately 'quickmud' is alive and waiting for you in the low intertidal. When our kayak 'grounded' out we tested the bottom by probing with the paddle shaft. It just kept going down, slowly, into the watery mud. We managed to back up and reach shore but hiking upstream and pack-rafting across [View Full Entry]

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This morning I put on my dry suit to go skiing. My kayak buddy wrote on his Facebook status line last night that he was digging his kayak out of the snow. This morning we had to use hot water to liberate the pump, bungeed to the kayak and held fast to the frozen ground. But the ocean was flat calm. We kayaked over to Pleasant Island and skied 5 blue sky sunny hours through the open muskeg to the base of the Knob, and back. Yesterday I skied north along stream meadows and connecting woods. As I popped out from [View Full Entry]

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“What is it like in Alaska?” I was watching the lighting flash across the Buenos Aires night sky as we sat on a covered terrace in Palarmo last weekend. My Argentinean friends Javier and Griselda were curious... I described a landscape so different... cold, snow, very few houses, a town were just about everyone knows each other. They made me promise to write a blog about it... this place I call home. There's the land and there's the people. Chip met me at the airport. He had been over to the house the day before and got the heat going so [View Full Entry]

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In Zimbabwe a couple years ago... gazing at Victoria Falls, the Spanish fellow I was chatting with said, 'It is nice, but you should see Iguazu Falls.' Well..., OK. I spent 2 days at Iguazu Falls last week. As one of my hostel roommates said, 'That is too long, you only need one day!' - but this fellow also thought I'd wasted a day reading in a hammock under the palm trees by the hostel pool. He was not from Alaska... anyway... The light changes with the day. Some areas of the falls are better in the morning, others in the [View Full Entry]

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The worlds most perfect icebergs... Antarctica? I vote for Lago Argentino. I did a day long boat trip billed as 'All Glaciers'. Well we didn´t go to all glaciers but it didn´t matter. We saw a good selection of glaciers and the icebergs were spectacular. It was a day of contrasts. Rain, sun, huge lake, stunning blue icebergs with just me and a couple hundred tourists on a small, packed boat. Standing room only on the small deck out-back and on the bow when you could get there. You´ve got to like or at least be able to tolerant being in [View Full Entry]

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I like to walk on ice. Buried down in my list of blogs there are... 3 other blogs with glacier walks, all in Alaska. So when I saw excursions onto the ice offered at El Chalten and El Calafate, I just had to go... There are at least four glacier walk/treks available at El Chalten and El Calefate. I went on the mini ice trek in El Calafate and the Viedma glacier ice trek out of El Chalten. Both required boat rides to get to the glacier walk site. The El Chalten boat ride is a lot longer so the entire [View Full Entry]

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The thing about maps is that the trails look so short on paper. I arrived in El Chalten on a blue sky day at about 6:30 in the morning after a 30 hour bus ride. After finding a hostel, I glanced at a map, picked a likely destination and started walking. Tee shirt and jeans were comfortable and the day looked great. I didn´t know much about the place... my new travel philosophy is founded on last years pre-trip Internet experience - I got so much information off the web last year that I felt I´d already been there so I [View Full Entry]

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