Words and Photos by Eric Parsons, Founder of Revelate Designs
“It’s DEAD!” came spewing from my mouth as I flung the expensive chunk of aluminum that was our stove into the snow. More swearing flew as my frozen fingers dove into mitts from attempting to light it and, more importantly, make water for the day. This was not good. Nick and I were breaking camp along rolling mounds of permafrost masked under a veneer of snow that are the foothills of the north side of Alaska’s Brooks Range. It’s early April, and the morning sun glowing on the horizon gave depth to the ice fog hanging in the sub-zero air. Nick and I were participating in the Alaska Mountain Winter Wilderness Classic, a point-to-point, brisk-paced ski traverse that encourages route creativity and always challenges in ways one might not expect.
Dead stove plus Arctic winter ski trip equals deal breaker. Nick and I both knew that, fortunately, we were not alone. Leaving camp while I wrestled with the stove were eight other like-minded souls attempting to put in a new route through the mountains that made up the first third of the Classic. The path we were taking is like an outstretched hand (indulge me and take a look at your right hand). The spaces between the fingers are river valleys separated by gentle ridges. These lead to the knuckles, tight clusters of limestone peaks, which are then followed by miles of exposed barren openness. Finally, the outstretched thumb is a frozen highway of ice that leads to the native village of Anaktuvuk Pass, which is roughly the halfway point of the trip. Starting at the tip of the pinky, we were at the fingernail of the ring finger and had a long way to go.
By mid-day, we caught up to our friends Malcolm and Haley, who had stopped to brew up just before skinning up for another climb. I mentioned our stove woes and asked if we could borrow their burner and give it back in the evening. Miraculously, Malcolm had actually brought a spare stove, a tiny 1L Jetboil, and offered it to us. We were elated, as needing to bail back to the road was quickly becoming a reality. With the ability to melt snow (however slowly) and hydrate, I relaxed for the first time all day and could revel in kicking and gliding through the arctic expanse before us.
Following wolf tracks on the ice, we traveled up the Nanushuk River Valley. The jagged limestone peaks and slot canyons felt claustrophobic after seeing everything at a distance for the prior two days. My heart was ecstatic–this was a place I had long daydreamed about skiing through, but my feet and legs were a mess. A last-minute boot failure the week leading up to the trip made me bring a pair that was warm and comfortable but much more flexible. The increase in flex that I had not trained with, paired with a 40+lb pack, was turning my calves into rocks and my entire posterior chain into a tight mess with every ski stroke. I was slow, inefficient, somewhat grumpy, and could feel twinges of overuse injuries coming on.
Midway through the day, I realized we could probably get a replacement stove and boots flown in since the village of Anaktuvuk Pass gets daily commercial air service. A flurry of in-reach messages to friends in Fairbanks and my wife in Anchorage, and another to a friend who works for Alaska Airlines air cargo, magically coalesced to have a fresh stove and different boots on the mail-run flight in two days. While I cringed and stomached my ego at having to rely on technology and outside support, it would enable us to go the distance.
Spindrift covered everything as if a garbage bag of glitter popped during the night. High winds racked our mid and pumped snow crystals in through tiny openings as we peeled ourselves out of our sleeping bags. Camped in upper Greylime Creek, we were exposed to the winds that nuke through from the upper Koyukuk valley to the West. It was my third time skiing through here, and it’s always a literal blast. After breaking camp, we hit the wall-to-wall ice of the Anaktuvuk River. The river freezes in the fall, and then groundwater keeps trickling in over the entire winter, forming layers upon layers of ice until the entire valley is covered with it. With a tailwind and steel edge skis, you can seriously cover ground, and that we did!
Late afternoon found us still in the wind, but this time, heading straight into it, plodding along wearing full face coverage, we rounded the corner to Anaktuvuk Pass. Caribou trotted along, indifferent to our trivial struggles, perfectly suited for the environment. Somewhere along the way, Nick fell and broke his carbon poles again for the 4th or 5th time; I’d lost count and, by now, were out of splinting hacks, and he one poled it along on the hardpack tundra. Our team “issues” were starting to add up in a way we could only laugh at when we reached the Village of Anaktuvuk Pass after a hard four days of skiing.
Nick and I skied out of Anaktuvuk Pass across caribou, dropping laden tundra in a much different place than when we arrived. We spent the night shacked up with a bunch of friends who were ending their trip there and flying out, mostly from wrecked feet. Nick mooched replacement poles and bonus food, and I got our replacement stove and boots, which had been flown in. We were good to go again! Every Winter Classic I’ve done tends to have an emerging theme–my first was about burying the needle and pushing hard, another was a wild solo vision quest, another was about managing extended arctic cold–this time was shaping up to be a humbling experience of resilience where we relied on our community to keep moving onward when bailing was an easy option dangling before us.
With revived energy, we skied all day over a pass into the Tingagugk river valley, making powder turns through a notch in the mountains, which somehow perfectly suited our skinny skis. We saw trees for the first time all week as we sunk into the rotten depth-hoar sugar snow now in the south side of the Brooks Ranger. Further on, we found the result of a warm spell in the Arctic the week prior, as weak river ice and slushy overflow caused some of the worst skiing conditions imaginable. Submerging our boots over the cuffs became common, as did adrenaline surges from crossing sketchy snow bridges over hip-deep running water.
Day seven was our last and a big one, 45 miles from the confluence of the Koyukuk and Tingaguk rivers. We marveled at the snaking trench of knee-deep sugar snow before that was put in, as we later learned by a rotating 24-hour crew of up to 12 strong trailbreakers. Under sunny skies, Nick and I tried to take care of our feet and keep moving to the finish in Wiseman. By early afternoon, as we crested the gentle Delay Pass, we reveled in hero kick and glide on an old snowmachine trail with some of the best scenery yet. An inner giddiness and self-satisfaction build that comes when you’ve put in an effort you’re proud of. The stresses and challenges of the week fading away to an inner glow.
Nick and I glided up to the Arctic Getaway cabin at dusk, finishing a few hours after the main group. The stories from the past week were enthusiastically shared amidst piles of food. I was super pumped for Nick, this having been his first Classic, and how we worked together as a team. Any finish in a Classic is hard-earned, and I had to accept the support we got along the way with a dose of humility, knowing that we were not the strongest or fastest, but we were resourceful enough to make it. We do these wilderness traverses for the adventures and fun, but you can never predict how a trip like this will probe your inner soul, and that’s what keeps us coming back again and again.
