The Roof of Alaska

Originally published in the book, The Bikeraft Guide.

Prelude:

Bjorn Olson and Kim McNett have completed a series of fat-bike trips across Alaska that culminated in a contiguous 2000-mile wilderness route from their home in Homer to the northernmost point in Alaska. Together they share their stories of Arctic adventure, culture and climate change from the two northernmost portions of their route: Tikigaq (Point Hope) to Utqiagvik (Barrow) in 2017 and Kotzebue to Tikigaq (Point Hope) in 2019. None of this 600-mile stretch had ever been attempted by fat-bike and packraft.

June 24th, 2017

Lisburne Hills:

Kim:

I donned my sunglasses, not for the glare, but to guard against the pebble projectiles that were assailing us. I looked ahead to my three companions who were grinding their fat-bikes eastward through loose gravel. The wind charged onto the beach, driving them toward the water in drunken trajectories. White spray swirled hundreds of feet into the air as the waves churned outward towards the unimaginable void of the Arctic Ocean.

This was the first attempt anyone had made to ride a bike across this wild terrain in the very northwestern corner of Alaska. Bjorn and I have gotten ourselves into some outlandish adventures over the years and this one was no exception. From the outset, we had no way of knowing how well our bikes would work on the trailless tundra or loose beach sediment (among many other variables that would influence our forward progress and well-being along the way). I began to question whether we were pretty brave or just downright stupid. I looked to my other two companions, Alayne and Daniel, and for a moment pitied their foolishness at trusting to follow such fools.

Three days prior, a generous tail wind had assisted our party as we paddled our inflatable rafts along the coast. With fat-bikes disassembled and stowed on the bows, our minimal crafts were highly subject to the temperamental moods of the sea. Soon the waves began to peel and cap. With our judgment in working order, we pulled out in a gully where a pleasant waterfall and terraced streambed offered a lovely little campsite. We pitched our floorless mid-shetlers, using our paddles as centerpoles, and settled in to sleep through the storm. We had no idea what was in store.

As the accelerating wind spilled from the hills, its strength became bottlenecked in our gully like a funnel. Though well-anchored, our pyramid shelters rattled like spaceships ejecting from the atmosphere. The thrashing nylon along the perimeter eventually sawed itself through on the hard edges of the rock anchors and Bjorn and my shelter began to come loose. “Get out and anchor it!” Bjorn hollerded as he clung to the now loosened center pole. Regretting my request to sleep closest to the door, I bursted from my cowering hovel to secure the camp lest it obliviate into the sea. For a brief moment I was frozen in astonishment. The water that had been spilling over the small falls was now being jettisoned horizontally. The stream was flowing through the gully in mid-air.

In the morning we used our InReach device to get a weather report. The windstorm was massive, and it had no end in sight. It became clear that waiting this out would require more time than our provisions would allow. With our game faces on, we scouted the hills and found the ground firm and dry, good for biking. We looked at the maps and planned an overland route of some 30 miles through the northwestern corner of the Brooks Range in order to cut off Cape Lisburne and arrive on the open coast of the North Slope to the east.

Away we raced, the force of the tailwind propelling us across the open landscape. We bore down on our brakes as we crossed areas of sharp rock scree. The wind would at times drive us upwards over the most unlikely surfaces, that is if we managed to stay in control. Suddenly a great gust tore down a side valley and sent all four of us simultaneously tumbling with our bikes like autumn leaves across a lawn. We clung to our precious possessions with white knuckles and yelled into each other’s ears to communicate. The changing of a layer or the eating of a snack became tasks of incredible diligence. But we were doing it. We were biking the Lisburne Hills.

Cheerful alpine flowers blanketed the landscape, jingling in the wind. Impossibly oversized compared to the miniature twigs that supported them, they were delightfully bright and precious. I was reminded that for life on the Arctic tundra such circumstances are not crises but just an example of the endurance required to survive. Their work had to be done before the assured arrival of the deep freeze and the perpetual darkness of the polar night. “If they can survive out here,” I thought, “perhaps so can we”.

Like the dwarfed plants, we would sprawl ourselves on the ground for a brief rest, seeking any degree of shelter that the treeless landscape could offer. Omnipotent and omnipresent, the wind was the singular authority around which everything revolved. The glossy grass undulated like waves on the sea and the birds tousled around us in a shared chaos. “It’s going to feel really weird when the wind finally stops,” Daniel said, revealing how deeply we had become naturalized to its influence.

I huddled against Bjorn, my anchor of support and self-assurance. It had been nearly 10 years since I moved to Alaska and joined his life of wilderness pursuit. Coercing me beyond my doubts, he helped me find my strength as paddle strokes and crank rotations slowly accumulated toward seemingly impossible goals. I found my humility as we negotiated forces against which humans, whether slender or bulky, don’t even register. I also found my heart as we recognized that our capabilities and sense of well-being are one and the same. Through the wilderness we have tested the type of material our relationship is made of, time and time again.

After two momentous days we arrived back on the coast, weatherworn and exhausted, yet completely invigorated by the wild ride. Here the shoreline would guide our way to the distant village of Kali (Point Lay). Later, I would look up the wind speed from the Cape Lisburne weather station and find that the wind had been gusting at 100 mph. We had biked through a hurricane.

July 1st, 2017

Village of Kali (Point Lay)

Bjorn:

Walking down an unfamiliar school hallway, my ears led me toward the cacophonous gymnasium. As I crossed the threshold into the bustling space, I paused for a second, allowing my brain to calibrate. After eleven days in the un-peopled wilderness, the flickering fluorescent lights, strong odors of food, and the sound of a hundred voices bouncing off the walls posed a stark sensory contrast.

When we arrived at Point Lay, known locally as Kali, the first village along our 400-mile route, our bodies were running on fumes. We desired a resupply and advice from locals about the way ahead. For Daniel and Alayne, the village, replete with a gravel airstrip serviced daily by a 12-seater airplane, was to be the end of their journey.

“Welcome to Kali,” an Inupiaq elder with a bent spine and kind smile said as he lifted his soft hand to mine. “Come in and eat. Today is Nalukatak - the whale festival.”

The day before our little cadre arrived in Kali, we’d seen a pod of perhaps one hundred or more beluga whales – the most any of us had ever seen at one time. The Kali hunters had seen the white whales too. Using contemporary means yet millennia-old strategy, they herded some of the pod with their skiffs to the inside of a lagoon and dispatched the number of animals they needed to see the community through the long, cold winter ahead.

The gymnasium had been transformed into a mess hall outfitted with school cafeteria folding tables covered in butcher paper. Blue tarps lined the floor, protecting it from errant drips or spills. A string of serving tables lined the far wall, piled with pots, disposable aluminum platters and five gallon buckets bursting with food. Paper plates, jugs of juice, carafes of coffee and tea crammed into every bit of remaining space on the overburdened tables.

I peered down the aisles of seated locals looking for my teammates. I found them at the far end of the gymnasium, map already out, engaged in conversation with a man whose calloused finger pointed out landmarks. “This is Doug Rexford,” Kim said. “He’s the captain of the whaling crew.” We were invited to sit and eat with the praiseworthy hunter at the table of honor.

“Would you like some boiled beluga maktak,” a woman holding a 3-gallon pot and ladle asked me. “Quyanaq. Yes, please.” Through many shared meals with my Siberian Yup’ik godmother and her family, I’ve eaten a lot of Bowhead whale and had tasted beluga before but this was to be my first experience eating it boiled.

“The boiled maktak is best when the beluga is fresh,” Doug told me as I picked up a one-inch cube of the warm blubber and skin layer--a circumpolar mainstay and calorie-dense food that has sustained human life on the North Slope for thousands of years. My teeth effortlessly fell through the substance, oozing a smooth, rich oily flavor throughout my mouth. I closed my eyes and slowly chewed, savoring every molecule. Before reaching for my second piece, I offered my impression: “To say that boiled beluga is like butter is a disservice. They should say that butter is like boiled beluga, but not as good.”

Over the next several hours, we glued our trail-worn bottoms to the cafeteria seats and relished one course after another. As soon as the swan soup had been served and consumed, along came someone to dish out caribou ribs or seal steaks or dried whitefish with seal oil. The waitrons walked the aisles, filling every plate or bowl, always serving the elders first, until each offering was finished.

Our wind chapped faces glistened with grease and a surge of nutrition flooded our hungry mitochondria. The food that had supported our host’s ancestors in this severe Arctic environment was also the exact fuel we needed to continue our journey.

After the meal, and before the drumming and dancing began, a group of young men carried in several dozen brimming sacks of frozen whale meat and maktak to the center of the gym and began distributing it to every household. In many Alaskan Native communities wealth is rarely measured by how much an individual owns, but rather by how much one can give away, an ancient and time honored tradition of survival and community wellness. The hunters had had a successful harvest and no one would lack for meat in the village of Kali.

While the distribution of food was underway, Kim and I were surrounded by a group of kids that were curious about the strange white people that had arrived in their community by bicycle. After answering their questions, we asked ours. They were only too happy to oblige, often competing with one another to tell their shared stories and experiences. We heard stories of Silla the weather goddess, the Big Mouth Baby and other tales of Inupiat lore. In the care of these children, Arctic history and mythology seemed to be in safekeeping for future generations.

The following day Kim and I said goodbye to our two traveling companions and rode away from the village. The insecurity we had begun our expedition with had been gradually replaced by careful confidence. We continued out of Kali on our way to the northernmost point of Alaska armed with insights, encouraged by new friends and loaded down with leftovers.

August 18th, 2019

Cape Thompson:

Kim-

Bjorn and I landed our rafts shortly after sundown, which here meant well after midnight. With the familiar relief of getting off the water at last, we silently and methodically went about our camp chores while shaking the cold from our stiff joints. We had just rounded the front of Cape Thompson in the Arctic Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Tomorrow would be the final day on our 180 mile route from Kotzebue to Tikigaq (Point Hope). Though not in sequence, this was the final segment of our series of wilderness routes that connected our home on the Gulf of Alaska to the very top of the state.

The term victory lap perfectly described our experience. When I think back on all the days and miles that we store in our memory banks, these will stand out as some of the most wonderful. Our beaches had been firm, pleasant weather was the norm, and our equipment ideal. Our familiarity with this sort of travel offered us total freedom to shamelessly enjoy ourselves without troubling over logistical details. We took time to sketch, take photos, and watch the wildlife. We know how to take the bad, but we also know how to take the good.

While our personal well-being on this trip had been nothing short of optimal, it had been exceedingly apparent that the well-being of the Arctic ecosystem was not. The evidence of rapid climate change was everywhere, from melting permafrost, shore-zone erosion, numerous dead walrus, the presence of atypical species like bull kelp and jellyfish, and stories from locals all hinted that something unprecedented was underfoot in the Arctic. Even the prolific pink salmon run and pleasantly warm conditions that had made our trip so enjoyable were indicative of a de-stabilizing normal.

With evidence of landscape change at nearly every turn, these remote trips offer unique opportunities to collect data in places that are rarely visited by scientists. Citizen science projects cause us to step outside ourselves and increase our curiosity about the places where we travel. Over the years, we have documented retreating shorelines, glacial melt, and the spreading of trees as a response to warming conditions.

Knowing that seabirds had been facing starvation in recent years due to water temperature shifts, I had come with a plan. I was going to use my camera with a built-in GPS to document every dead seabird that I encountered along the way. I would then culminate the data and submit it to the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) to add to their running database on unusual seabird mortality events.

I pedaled up to the first dead bird, a black-legged kittiwake, and snapped a photo. Soon I found another. Then another. On and on they went like a breadcrumb trail, mile after mile. I identified horned puffins, common and thick-billed murres, gulls, fulmars, auklets, and most abundant of all, short-tailed shearwaters.

The extra effort it took to record the birds made me feel like an energetic dog on a hike as I swerved up and down the beach, covering many times the necessary distance. Still, I found myself fervently committed to the task. I knew that without my efforts the stranded birds would be washed away into the sands and tides, never to enter the hearts and minds of humans.

It is said that the more that you pay attention to something, the more you learn to love it. As I paused to acknowledge every single bird, I felt my grief sink deeper and deeper. The expressive gestures of their splayed wings, arched necks, and immaculate feathers made them seem to me like fallen soldiers on the battlefield of climate change. I tallied 921 dead birds. I couldn’t help but wonder how the collective choices of humanity, my own included, had led to this unseen and yet profound loss.

The climax of our trip would offer a redeeming perspective to the grim mood caused by the seabird die-off. Cape Thompson, one of the greatest natural treasures in Alaska, is a 7-mile stretch of cliffs that boasts a rookery of seabirds some several hundred thousand strong. While we could have traveled overland, we chose to wait 4 days for the wind to calm so that we could paddle underneath the towering cliffs, something we had dreamed of doing for many years.

A blizzard of birds whirred overhead, our voices muted under their croaks and calls. The stimulation was like that of a major metropolis and we felt like country bumpkins dumbstruck at our first experience on the streets of a big city. Our rafts bounced against an unexpected current as we desperately tried to take in as much of the scene as we could. The utter busyness made it impossible to distinguish which exciting occurrence the other person was pointing to. Kittiwakes curbed in unison and erupted in chatter as they relanded on the cliffs. The penguin-like murres plunged toward the water, their new chicks faithfully leaping after them in their one and only plummet from their natal ledge to sea. Looking to the heights, I could not tell what was rock and what was bird. The cliff faces themselves appeared to be alive.

This remarkable expression of life renewed me with hope. In the face of plummeting biodiversity and environmental collapse, individual actions can feel futile in the grand scheme. Yet just as each paddle stroke alone is insignificant, the only way to make any crossing is to take the next one. I believe it is our duty, as the most mindful and influential species on our planet, to both appreciate and work to keep these natural systems intact...because we haven’t lost them all. Not yet.

July 13th, 2017

Walakpa Bay

Bjorn:

Kim and I strained on our cranks as we rode over the unconsolidated sand and gravel beach. In the distance we could hear the din of a small generator and saw a group of people, several tents and a small hive of activity. Curiosity compelled us into a state of doddering composure and we cranked a little harder. When we arrived at the encampment we quickly deduced that this was a team of archeologists hard at work.

Our strange means of travel and shabby appearance caught their attention. After we answered their questions about our unusual expedition, Anne Jensen, the lead archeologist, gave us a tour of their dig.

Several hundred years ago, a multi-family sod hut complex had been located several miles inland. Rapid sea-level rise and coastal erosion has brought the Arctic Ocean right to the front door of this intricate and well designed house site. The archeologists and their team of undergraduate students, working as fast as possible, raced an accelerated clock to preserve this slice of Arctic history before it would be lost to the ages in a rising sea.

Exposed by coastal erosion, the seaward edge of the complex was already poking through the bluff edge and a mound of sand bags had been placed below in a feeble attempt to buy the archeologists a little more time before the next storm. The team, working from the top down, had carefully peeled off the roofs to expose the houses, side tunnels, sheds and storerooms. Kim and I peered down into a recently bygone yet millenia-old history. In the meat cache wing, a 600-year-old seal had been perfectly preserved in the permafrost. It looked as though it had been caught last week.

Roughly one quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere is permafrost, and it is thickest in the Arctic. Frozen within the permafrost is more than double the amount of carbon already in our atmosphere. As our planet rapidly warms from our wholesale combustion of fossil fuels, the melting of permafrost is accelerating and releasing this trapped carbon. This causes a cascade of more warming, more thawing and more heat trapping gasses released into the atmosphere. Known as a “positive feedback loop,” this phenomena will be anything except positive if left unchecked.

Kim and I declined the generous offer to spend a night with the archaeologists. After the protracted break and enlightening visit, we wished them well and resumed our path. We were eagerly nearing the end of our trip and our weather forecast for the remaining days couldn’t have been better.

That evening we found a sun-drenched valley where we would make our last camp and finally put to rest our doubts about this un-tested fat-bike and packraft route. Since my teenage years, I have been gravitated to and inspired by tales of exploration and scientific discovery. The adventurers that most ignited my young imagination were the few that set out into the unknown to attempt something novel, who returned transformed by their well-earned and prized insights. Never did I imagine that my own good fortune would lead me to Kim, an inspired and capable life companion to face the unknown with, to share in a life of adventure and inquiry.

Over the last dozen years, the fat-bike and packraft have rapidly evolved in form and functionality. Both of these instruments of human-powered wilderness travel were originally conceived and developed in Alaska, but the efficiency and practicality of both have caught the imagination of people worldwide. Use of a fat-bike in conjunction with a lightweight, one-person packraft has opened a new era of creative exploration.

Traversing these landscapes at human speed has expanded our appreciation for the grave ecological messages that the Arctic is signaling to the world. Our lives have been enriched by the villages we passed through and the lasting friendships we have made. We stand in awe of the Inupiat people’s traditions of community, survival and resiliency in a temperamental climate bordering on the untenable. It is sobering to confront the fact that these people now face unprecedented forces that will thaw and erode the foundations of their civilization.

We arrived in the northernmost community in the United States three weeks and 400-miles after leaving Tikigaq. On this exceptionally remote expedition, the sun never set nor was certainty ever assured. Fat-bike trips through varied and rough terrain often require us to hike our bikes over great distances. At times challenging and at times exhilarating, we were delighted to find that the majority of this route was bikeable. Kim and I returned home with our own well-earned and prized insights, eyes set to future expeditions, and with an invigorated sense of urgency about our climate crisis.