[Riding South] Life in Alaska.

[Eric]

Greetings,

Amee and I flew into Fairbanks almost three weeks ago and life since has been quite interesting. The first thing we noticied, at 3am, was the amount of light. It never really gets dark. On cloudy days when I put away my watch, the days stretch together and never seem to end. This has been quite nice in many ways - we've been able to ride whenever we like without worrying about darkness.

We stayed in Fairbanks for a few days finishing up preparation for the trip and then road south to Denali national park. The park and it's mountains are incredible. It runs in the area between two ranges. In the north, one can see the softer hills formed by glacers. In the south are the jagged peaks formed by, I believe, an active fault with the mountains rising a few inches per year. The park is a wildlife sanctuary, protected from hunting with all of Alaska's big mammals running around. We took a bus into the park and passed by grizzlies, caribou, moose, a wolf or two, and lots of big horn sheep.

From Denali we pushed south to the small mountaineering town of Talkeetna. Our bodies needed a rest at this point - the bikes weigh close to 100lbs and neither of us had trained beforehand. Amee had developed a bit of knee pain and I ended up with a fever. Luckily, the town is full of friendly folk. Thanks to Amee's social abilities, we made lots of friends. Several of those friends work in the K2 Aviation office and we were able to take a flightseeing trip around Denali. This is the way to sightsee in Alaska. Denali (which rises to over 20,000 ft) and the glaciers that surround it are beautiful. The few climbers we could see were dwarfed as they slowly pushed their way up the mountain.

After resting up for a few days, I biked south to Anchorage via Hatcher's Pass. This meant traveling onto dirt roads, gaining 3500 ft in elevation and careening down the steep roads off the pass. It was in many ways the most interesting riding thus far with lots of forested hills rising into the clouds on all sides, snow-fed mountain lakes and a very remote feel. It reminded me of the Scottish highlands and was a nice change from the busy roads clogged with RVs.

Anchorage has been the most pleasant place so far. We've been here almost a week letting our joints and muscles heal. The highlight of the stay for me (other then the amazing hospitality of our host) was a fishing trip. For a few weeks every year, Alaskans fish with dipnets (large nets on poles) and then preserve the fish they catch to last the winter. I spent a very enjoyable night standing out in the water, staring out at the horizon which stayed red for 6 hours and pulling in lots of fish (donated to my hosts). And not having fished before it was a very interesting experience killing and filleting the fish.

That's all for now, I'm heading east. I've posted a few pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/e.apt.dudfield/FairbanksAnchorageAK

Eric

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Eric Apt-Dudfield
e.apt.d...@gmail.com

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Posted by Eric to Riding South at 7/11/2006 02:03:37 PM