Crossing the Gates of Alaska by Dave Metz

Author:Dave Metz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2010-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

NAKMAKTUAK PASS

May 5, 2007, ninety-five miles past Ambler

I hike hard and steady up the long, steep slope out of the serenity of the Ambler River basin. I creep upward with my heavy load and stop to bend over now and then to relieve some of the strain on my shoulders. A ptarmigan flies off making a series of guttural squawks—about thirty in ten seconds while retreating from me. This bird is the first one I’ve seen and I watch it land in the distance. These grouse-like birds don’t like to fly that far and have to beat their wings really fast, so they have strong pectoral muscles. Ptarmigans fly low to the ground and don’t catch the air currents to soar aloft like raptors and some other birds. They don’t need to because their food is all over the tundra and they don’t migrate.

I turn around and stare at the canyon behind me from where I’ve just come. The higher I go the deeper and steeper the valley looks. I trudge on and keep my breathing even, making sure not to exert too much effort. It’s better to hike that way when you have a long way to go. Hiking with too many vigorous efforts is less efficient than hiking steady. You can travel farther in a day with less energy. I crest a mountain, which is actually the beginning of a high, vast plateau that seems to stretch forever northward. I have to pick my way across an unstable rocky slide near the top, but it isn’t too bad. I stay off the snow because it forms the beginning of a long chute, that falls a thousand feet. I can’t risk slipping on it so I step along the edge, up and around where there is solid rock. I reach the top of the climb, believing I have an easy shot to the Noatak River now.

I think the worst is behind me, but I couldn’t be more wrong. I come over a rise to find myself on the upland plateau. I wince and take a deep breath knowing I have to cross it. The land appears grimly desolate, with rocks and boulders strewn upon the surface and wind-scoured mountains posed to devour me from both sides. My course runs dead north into the arctic like a gigantic trench—an abyssal canyon hemmed in on both sides by sheer, icy peaks that appear to be from either a prehistoric time or another world where megatherian mammals or beastly aliens reign. It’s an eerie place, so exposed that there is nowhere to take shelter except in my dwarfed tent that buckles in the wind. The idea that I’m exploring such a wild region doesn’t really dawn on me. I begin to feel desperate to get moving through this cyclopean corridor of ice and rock toward the Noatak River and out of these mountains. But it’s a grueling stretch and will take several days.

The north side of Nakmaktuak Pass is treacherous and cold during the first part of May.

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