Being in over your head. With sprinkles on the side.

For my new plan of posting once a week…an essay I wrote a few years ago after my first summer of working outdoor ed…

“Why aren’t you wearing hiking boots?” a cocky sixteen year old boy asked me, his voice laced with suspicion. Despite the teenager’s accusatory tone, the question itself wouldn’t have been at all noteworthy to me a month earlier, but in the last several weeks, at least twelve of this boy’s seventeen fellow students had one by one asked me the exact same question. Having witnessed the confusion and horror on their faces, one might assume that I was hiking in flip flops. These kids were functioning under the assumption that being a real hiker meant donning huge, stiff, waterproof boots, and my low-cut trail runners just weren’t going to cut it in the Alaskan backcountry. Fancying myself an experienced, long-distance, ultra-light hiker, the thought of wearing shoes more substantial than your average Nikes, hadn’t crossed my mind in years. But now, as I looked down at my cold, wet, muddy feet and fumbled to justify my choice in footwear to precocious teenagers, I began to wonder if a more substantial boot might indeed have some merit.

Over the past six years, I have hiked more than 5,000 miles including thru hikes of the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails. During that time I have, at least on occasion, allowed myself to believe that I had become a competent outdoors-woman. At the very least, I have learned to be proficient in taking care of myself in the backcountry and efficient in hiking big mileage over difficult terrain. So when the opportunity came to spend a summer taking kids into the wilderness of Alaska, I confidently jumped at the chance. Little did I know then that taking care of myself in the backcountry was the least of my worries or that crushing mileage was not part of the job description. This is the story of how a summer spent exploring the last frontier with a crew of high-schoolers was both humbling and inspiring.

By the day that my co-instructors and I were to pick up our students at the Anchorage airport, we had already been in Alaska for several days, preparing for the arrival of eighteen teenagers. We sorted thousands of dollars worth of bulk foods, labeled bowls, spoons, sleeping bags and sleeping pads, set up tents, and because it seemed to rain just about everyday in Alaska, we set up several large tarps so that the students would have somewhere to hangout when the inevitable rain began. This tarp setting up process was the first inclination that my technical skills might not be up to muster. I learned during orientation that we use a trucker’s hitch to tie off tarps. I didn’t know what that meant, but I waited as long as possible before I admitted to Kai, my trip leader and boss for the summer, that I didn’t really know any knots. She demonstrated the truckers hitch. I tried to duplicate her creation. I failed. Then she showed me the knot again. I tried to recreate it, again. I failed, again. This process went on for nearly an hour as Kai put on a display of patience that I will not soon forget. By the end I decided that I would avoid tarp set up in the future, and – I later found out – Kai had decided to keep me as far away from tarp setup as possible.

With tarps tied taught, no thanks to me, we began making runs to the airport. I was excited to meet the kids. I may not know the difference between a truckers hitch and a bowline, but interacting with teenagers is something I would have considered an area of expertise as a college History instructor and a high school basketball coach. Within two days of the students’ arrival in Anchorage, it was time to depart for our first backpack. For all of our backcountry activities we divided the kids into two groups of nine. With two instructors, that meant that we traveled as a group of eleven. The night before my co-instructor, Pete and I set off with our students on a four day – three night trek through Chugach State Park, our trip leader, Kai sat us down to go over the maps for our route. Kai had been on the Alaska trip last year, and thus was an invaluable resource that the rest of us relied on heavily. Kai had done the exact same hike with students the previous summer,  that Pete and I would begin the following day. It was 11pm, but still looked like late afternoon on a June Alaskan evening. Kai spread the maps out on a picnic table and began to describe to Pete and I what our next four days would look like. She said things like, “You want to shoot for this saddle,” and “Make sure to stay on the south side of the river.”

“How hard can it be?” I thought, noting the dotted line on the map; we’ll just stay on the trail. It didn’t even look like we needed to be aware of any complicated trail junctions that could potentially throw us off course.  Our entire section of the Chugach was only crossed by this one dotted line.

The first day of our backpack was awesome. We climbed a well maintained trail for several miles and maybe a thousand feet of elevation gain to 360 degree views of the valley below. We took an afternoon snack break and basked in the warm sunshine. Later that evening, after descending to a valley we selected one of the most scenic backcountry campsites that I have ever enjoyed. That night before going to sleep, Pete and I looked over the maps together to prepare for the next day’s hike. It was then that I noticed that the trail we had been following changed appearance on the map within a mile or so from our current campsite. The dashed line would transition to dotted line. “Hmmm,” I thought. “I wonder what that means?” I looked at the key, and learned that while a dashed line represents a backcountry trail, a dotted line indicates a “backcountry route.” Hmmm, I thought again, I wonder what the difference is. I didn’t give it much more thought, set the maps aside and feel asleep instantly.

The next morning we awoke to a cold mist. Cold mist would come to characterize the remainder of our four weeks in Alaska. Shortly after we began hiking, the maintained trail on which we had been walking petered out into a game trail. Eventually, the game trail became nonexistent as well. When we took a short break, Pete and I consulted each other and our maps. By this point, I had begun to accept that back country route, meant something completely different from backcountry trail. “So have you done a lot of cross country hiking?” I asked Pete, out of earshot of the students and trying to sound nonchalant. “None,” he said, “You?” “Not so much,” I replied. Certainly a part of me hoped that Pete had spent previous summer’s blazing his own trail across an isolated tundra. Had this been the case, I would have defaulted to his map reading skills and happily hiked along trusting that we’d safely reach our destination. That’s what I had done on the Pacific Crest Trail. For the most part, the PCT is a well-worn and easy to follow path. Despite the absence of the ever-present white blazes that one comes to expect on the Appalachian Trail, the PCT is pretty easy to follow. That is of course, unless the trail is completely obscured by snow.  Such was the case in the high Sierra in July of 2010. However, instead of using that experience to hone my map and compass navigation abilities, I hiked through the Sierra following the footprints and instincts of two more experienced friends. As I now had the responsibility for nine teenagers in my hands, that cop out in 2010 seemed regrettable. But there wasn’t time to reflect, instead Pete and I studied the map, took stock of the surrounding terrain and together decided how we should proceed.

The next day and a half continued in much the same vein. We might not have always chosen the most direct route. Maybe we did more bushwhacking through thick vegetation than we really needed to. Either way, we made it. Everyone was safe, and the kids even enjoyed climbing through the vegetation, calling it a giant obstacle course. The craziest thing was that I actually LIKED using the map, and I could see myself becoming more and more adept at navigating off trail. Some of the kids took an interest in looking at the maps with Pete and me. At sixteen years old, they were learning the skills that I had not developed over the course of two thru hikes.

Our second major activity, following four cool, damp days of backpacking was five days of sea kayaking, in which cool and damp transitioned fully to dangerously cold and completely soaked. After spending a wet and miserable fourth of July evening camped on the floor of the office of Alaska Sea Kayakers in the god forsaken port-town of Whittier, Alaska we woke up at 6am to ferry out towards Harriman Ford in Prince William Sound. The plan was to spend the next five days paddling back to Whittier. The thought of spending five days paddling in 40 degree rain was at least as unbearable to me as it was to our students. I am a huge wimp in cold weather, and I secretly hoped that perhaps our guides would declare the conditions to harsh and postpone the trip. Instead, the owner of Alaska Sea Kayakers spoke to the four of us instructors and said that he did not consider cold temperatures and rain to be an issue: “We’re confident that you guys know how to keep your kids warm, and our rain gear will keep them dry.” I wasn’t at all sure that I could keep myself anywhere near warm, and I only hoped that the students had done a better job of packing warm synthetic layers than I had. Dread is the only word that can describe how I felt as we loaded the ferry. Two hours later when we unloaded on beach in the middle of nowhere Prince William Sound, I felt a little better. The rain had let up a bit, and we had escaped the dingy hopelessness of Whittier.

When we began paddling I had no idea what I was doing, and my rudder flopped from side to side. I needed a little extra coaching from our guide. Our most difficult student paddled up next to me. “So you said that you’re not a climber, and I can obviously see that you haven’t done a lot of kayaking before,” he said to me. “Besides backpacking can you do anything else outdoors?”

I thought for a moment. “Does road biking count?” I replied weakly. With much help from our incredibly patient, competent and helpful guide, Drew, I became better at kayaking, and ultimately had no trouble keeping up with the group.

Unfortunately, the actual kayaking was the least of our concerns. Although most of us had warmed up a bit kayaking to our first campsite, as we set up camp the downpour resumed. Black Sands Beach was one of the most striking places I have ever seen in my life – surrounded by glaciers on three sides, and the ocean on the other. Unfortunately all those pretty glaciers made our campsite a bit cold. Two of the girls began shivering. Although I’m sure that we made them each put on dry clothes as soon as the tents were set up, I can’t recall if they had many dry layers available to put on after spending a wet afternoon on the ocean. I know I sure didn’t. With their shivering becoming more violent, and Mike and I becoming more concerned about the possibility of hypothermia, we put the kids in their tents and made dinner for the group ourselves.  Understandably, they didn’t want to venture out to eat, but we forced them out of their bags for a quick bite and enough conversation to make certain that our two shivering ladies were still functioning. We boiled water continuously through the evening so that the kids could have hot drinks as well as to a hot Nalgene to snuggle with in their sleeping bag for warmth. We told the girls to wake us up in the night if they became uncomfortably cold when their hot water bottles cooled down. Not having taken the opportunity to get into dry clothes in the midst of everyone else’s needs, I found myself shivering. Before dinner cleanup was even finished I told Mike that if I didn’t get into my sleeping bag soon, I worried that I would become another patient for him to deal with. I got in my sleeping bag, and prayed that the girls would not need me to wake up during the night and boil water for them in the rain.

Everyone made it through the first night, and since we were not moving camps that day, we took a leisurely morning before paddling around the ford to check out the glaciers, icebergs, seals and otters that surrounded us. We saw huge chunks of ice break off the glaciers and crash into the ocean with a thunderous boom. We spent most of the next several cold, wet days paddling through the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen. Our next campsite was warmer than Black Sands, but the rain never really stopped. We saw a whale, and I developed insane tendonitis in my right wrist. Finally, after what seemed like a surreal lifetime of cold mornings, wet afternoons and long nights, we made it to our final campsite, just a three hour paddle away from Whittier and our wonderful climate controlled minivans that would carry us back to dryer environs.

When we paddled onto the beach, finding a suitable place to camp was our immediate concern. We scoped out some really nice tent platforms, but decided they were too spread out to work for our group.  We then check out the beach where we had initially come ashore. It was small, rocky and sloped. Beyond a strip of marshy grass though was a reasonably dry looking sandbar. With some reservation, we decided that this was where the kids should set up their tents. In addition to the usual end of the day desperation to get settled for the night, there was an added urgency because of the expected arrival of another group of similar size. One of our friendly competitors was also paddling with Alaska sea kayakers that week and Drew had been on the radio with their guide and anticipated that they’d be shooting for the same camping beach. By the time their group paddled ashore we had already staked our claim.

As we finished unloading the kayaks I realized that we were missing a set of tent poles. Each day as we tried to make use of every nook and cranny in the kayaks, we took the poles out of the tent bags and slid them into the narrow front of the kayaks. After a few minutes of denial, I realized that the missing poles were the ones to the tent Mike and I had been using. I felt a little ill thinking about those poles, probably left on a beach a day’s paddle away just lying there, waiting to be taken by the rising tide. Once again, Drew came to the rescue. He had spoken to the other group’s guide and learned that they were carrying an extra tent. I couldn’t imagine how an extra tent was possible as we struggled to cram all of our gear into the kayaks each morning, but I didn’t dwell on this topic for long. Drew broached the subject of us borrowing the tent from the other group with their guide.

We were making pancakes that night, with rainbow sprinkles, of course. We waited until the students had produced four perfect pancakes to make the exchange – a pancake meal for a tent. We arranged our four most beautiful rainbow pancakes in a bowl along with a side of bacon for Drew to present as an offering. Mike and I laughed at ourselves, imagining our explanation of the situation – “You see there was just no way to fit the tent poles and the rainbow sprinkles, so something had to go.” I wondered if the other group ever made pancakes in the backcountry- with or without sprinkles. We got the tent and made it through our final night in Prince William Sound.

After paddling back to Whittier and exchanging battle stories with the other half of our group we still had two backpacking trips – one in Denali and one in the Talkeetnas, whitewater rafting and ice climbing remaining. Our summer had barely begun, but we had made it through the toughest part. While I still don’t get why those kids insisted on carrying, along with two large pots, a frying pan resembling a case iron skillet into backcountry, I did allow myself to be convinced that pancakes truly are the ultimate backcountry food, and I must admit that I was caught hoarding extra rainbow sprinkles on more than one occasion. Despite nearly losing a tennis shoe in knee deep mud in the Talkeetnas, I continue to hike in sneakers with no regrets. I’d gladly spend another summer roaming the wilderness with teenagers, and I’m confident that once again I’d learn as much as these kids that I’m supposedly teaching.