While in Alaska

A Late Evening Hike up Cathedral

// July 3rd, 2009 // 2009: Adventuring

As usual, Cory and I have yesterday and today off from work. We both chose to sleep in and I think it was a wise choice. We rose around noon to a beautiful 70 degree day full of sun. A few nights prior, an Alyeska pipeline worker decided to be immature and write on our bathroom wall with a Sharpy notifying everyone that they should flush the urinals more frequently. Fortunately, someone on our staff put up a humorous sign ridiculing this vandal. To say the least, it put a smile on my face seeing this sign first thing in the morning.

Hilarious sign

Some of the pipeline workers, mostly surveyors staying here in the crew quarters have some growing up to do. There are a select few of them who are very kind and respectful but most of them are whiners. We’ve had problems with them writing on our tour vans, writing in the bathroom as mentioned above, and problems with them being too rowdy in the saloon. You think Alyeska would be a little bit more selective in their hiring as they are paying them exorbitant amounts. Through the grapevine, I heard that they work 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off and earn upwards to $25,000 in that time period. My advice for jobseekers: learn some high school level trigonometry and come to Alaska to survey.

Enough ranting. Yesterday, I spent most of the day reading a book that Cory lent me, Travels by Michael Crichton. The author of Jurassic Park, Crichton wrote this autobiography to detail how travel has redefined him. I’m only about a third finished but I highly recommend it so far! Between this book and my Entrepreneur and Businessweek magazine subscriptions, I never go a moment without entertaining reading. It’s really great.

After lazing around the whole day, we helped organize a whiffle ball game. Around 10-15 people showed up and we had a great time. On “Sports Night,” you can always see the inner kid come out of everyone. Sometimes the competition gets heated but we all have a great time. The game ended around 10PM and at that point, Cory and I still had tons of energy. We chose to go on a hike. We tackled the same ridge that we wrote about a few weeks ago, Cranberry Ridge. We later found out that it’s called Cathedral Mountain. I think Cathedral sounds a bit more hardcore, anyway!

A Lake to our right

Shadows

Me trudging through the tussocks

We ascended the lowest part of the ridge and climbed the peak behind it. On the way up, we found a moose skull and teeth (it looks kind of small for a moose… we really aren’t sure). We threw it in our pack for an ornament for our porch. It seems like we are the only ones around camp without any type of bones on our tent porch! Not anymore!

The mosquitoes were probably the worst I’ve ever seen here.

Just a small sampling of the cloud of mosquitoes surrounding us

The guides lent us full nets that acted as shirts and head nets. They were a godsend. When we finally reached the peak, we slipped off our headnets and were overwhelmed by the view. We caught the sun lowering behind Coldfoot Mountain. It happened so fast that we are fortunate that we witnessed it. The descent took hardly any time at all. We hiked towards the highway where we walked 3 miles backed to camp. We returned home close to 2AM. It was a very satisfying hike. The view and our little acquisition made the trip more than worth it.

I forgot to mention a few things in the last post about our trip to Fairbanks. Firstly, on our walk to the airport at 5AM, we saw a fox run through the road. Oddly, it was the first time Cory had seen wildlife in Alaska and it just so happened to be in Fairbanks. I don’t really have an explanation for that other than the fact that you won’t see much wildlife up here at Coldfoot unless you’re out hiking everyday or you take occasional overnight trips. Although, we’ve had some moose around camp, it’s rare that animals come around the actual camp in clear sight. Secondly, while waiting for our van to depart from Fairbanks to Coldfoot, I received a call from Alaska Air telling me that my itinerary had changed. It was odd that I received the call while I was in the office, just minutes before I’d be losing cell signal. Anyways, my itinerary went from somewhat of a relief compared to my trip here to almost just as bad.

Flight: Alaska Airlines AS128
Equipment: Boeing 737-900
Departs: Fairbanks (FAI) on Tue, Aug 25 at 1:10 am
Arrives: Seattle (SEA) on Tue, Aug 25 at 5:28 am
Class: W
Seats: 20F

Flight: Alaska Airlines AS676
Equipment: Boeing 737-800
Departs: Seattle (SEA) on Tue, Aug 25 at 7:40 am
Arrives: Denver (DEN) on Tue, Aug 25 at 11:18 am
Class: W
Seats: 16A

Flight: American AA872
Equipment: Boeing MD-80
Departs: Denver (DEN) on Tue, Aug 25 at 1:00 pm
Arrives: Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) on Tue, Aug 25 at 3:55 pm
Class: T
Seats: 9F

Flight: American AA2166
Equipment: Boeing 757
Departs: Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) on Tue, Aug 25 at 4:45 pm
Arrives: Boston (BOS) on Tue, Aug 25 at 9:15 pm
Class: T
Seats: 15A

Fairbanks to Seattle to Denver to Dallas to Boston. Give me a break Alaska Air!

I finally fixed the comment problem with the blog. Now, readers are no longer able to comment on posts older than 14 days. The spammer had been commenting on a post that was a bit older, hundreds upon hundreds of comments a day. So feel free to comment away. It’s always nice to hear from my readers.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July. We are heading to Wiseman for a little party. This is the first 4th of July I’ve ever gone without fireworks. It’s a small price to pay. I never was overly amused by Fireworks. As far as today goes, we will likely just lounge the rest of day. We’re off to shoot some pool in the coworker tent. Hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend.