AdventuresNW
“Each of us has an Up North. It is a time and a place from the here and now. It’s a map on the wall, a dream in the making, a tugging at one’s soul. For those who feel the tug, who make the dream happen, who put the map in a packsack and go, the world is never quite the same.”
– Sam Cook, Up North, 1986
For a boy who attended high school in Alabama, “wide open space” was a football field, and there was no “Up North” unless you considered Tennessee. That changed when I drove across the grassland prairies to my graduate school program at the University of British Columbia. The metropolis of Vancouver, perched on the southwestern corner of endless fiords and glaciated mountains leading north to wild landscape, was unfathomable to a boy raised in the deep south.
The granite towers of Monolith and Tombstone soared above the tundra landscape, which was turning gold with each shortening day of autumn.
Embracing the Zen lifestyle of outdoor adventure launched me on a trajectory leading north, first to ski and climb in the majestic Canadian Rockies, then on expeditions to the highest peaks on this continent, then on a dozen sea kayak trips in the icy fiords of Alaska, and finally to the Yukon and a rafting trip heading down the Firth River to the Arctic Ocean. It was on the drive back from this raft trip, when on the endless gravel of the Dempster Highway, I spotted the shark fin silhouette of Tombstone Mountain jutting out of the tundra. With rain and snow squalls lashing the windshield and another thousand miles to drive, I mentally bookmarked another “Up North” destination to which I had to return.
“Something inside me has got knocked loose, something inevitable, like gravity, or irretrievable, like time”
– Michael Engelhard
Another dozen years raced by before a chance meeting with a couple from Prince George, BC on a rugged trail above Lake O’Hara in the Canadian Rockies rekindled the fantasy of hiking into the Tombstone Mountains. We made some backcountry reservations in March for an early September backpack into these mythic mountains. In mid-August, we left Bellingham on a convoluted drive through British Columbia, then over to Anchorage, up to Wonder Lake in Denali National Park, before we headed northeast to the Yukon and Tombstone Territorial Park.
“We come to Alaska to watch; to catch a glimpse of the primeval… Each of us will take some inspiration home: a touch of tundra will enter our lives and deep inside make us all poets and kindred spirits.”
– Adolph Murie
At the campground at the Visitor and Interpretive Center, we carefully packed five days of dried food into bear canisters, loaded warm clothes, and left the trailhead for Grizzly Lake. Here the term “trail” is an illusion. At first we climbed through a tangle of willows to the ridge where we were humbled by the view. Large swaths of impenetrable vegetation filled the valley while the hillside ahead was a jumble of sofa-sized boulders.
The seven-mile hike took seven hours as we perched precariously on the lichen-covered talus. Exhausted, we arrived at the nirvana-like setting of the Grizzly Lake campsite nestled under the granite ramparts of Monolith Mountain. Tombstone Park has three designated backcountry campgrounds, provisioned with outhouses where all the waste, collected in 50-gallon drums, is helicoptered out along with any ‘gray’ water from cooking and cleaning, done at a communal canvas cooking tent. There are raised tent platforms with rubber matting which protects the sensitive tundra from degradation. Campers store food in bear boxes. With this attention to sanitation, there is little to attract wildlife to the campsites.
“The worthiest journeys are journeys of daring.”
– Michael Engelhard
Exhausted by the approach hike, we spent two nights at Grizzly Lake, allowing a casual exploration south to a ridge overlooking the austere basin containing Twin Lakes. The following day we ascended the steep but dry south-facing slopes to Glissade Pass, aptly named for its precipitous scree-covered northern aspect. The recent snowfall had created a crusty surface which was ideal for microspikes, allowing for a more controlled descent. The view over the continental divide toward the watershed of the McKenzie River was spectacular.
“The Arctic will do this to you. Just when the time comes to leave, it takes your heart and squeezes it.”
– Michael Engelhard
We spent two nights at Divide Lake with the layover day spent hiking out and back to Talus Lake––one of the most iconic alpine settings in the world, comparable to the Patagonian spires of Cerro Torre and Torres de Paine. The granite towers of Monolith and Tombstone soared above the tundra landscape, which was turning gold with each shortening day of autumn. We spent a few precious hours in this magical setting before we returned to Divide Lake.
“I often think the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” –
– Vincent Van Gogh
Early September at this latitude still holds 12 hours of daylight though the low angle of the sun, even at noon, provides little warmth, and at night the temperatures were dropping into the low twenties. On our last night at Divide Lake, we were treated to one of nature’s most surreal and sublime phenomena. Before midnight, a green glow emerged from the horizon, rapidly sending tendrils of wispy green patterns over the jagged peaks. We lay ensconced in our sleeping bags in awe as the Aurora Borealis streamed like green cirrus clouds overhead.
“Thank God there is a Land of Beyond for us true to the trail.”
– Robert Service
Retracing our path over Glissade Pass then out to the highway was a journey more of reflection than of discovery. Our legs and spirits were weary knowing each step forward was removing us from the arctic Shangri-la of the Tombstone Range. The long drive south passed meandering rivers and through spectacular mountains ablaze with autumn colors, making us realize that it’s the journey “Up North” as much as the destination.
“There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There’s a land – oh it beckons and beckons. And I want to go back – and I will.”
– Robert Service
Embracing the uncertainty of true adventure has been a driving theme in Bob Kandiko’s lifestyle. Choosing “the new and the unknown” has not always been easy, but the rewards have been huge. He is planning more adventures.
