Mountaintops and Fogplay

07 June, 2008 11:21
Warning to those who love me and worry for my safety: This entry details exploits which may cause you slight discomfort.

Also: please excuse the many typos. I have written this on an Apple and don't quite get the dang machine yet. I will edit this when I get to a REAL computer.

The reason for the lack of post last week was because I was out having adventures to post about. Namely, I was climbing A&B Mountain with a number of my co-workers. It started off manageable enough. Steep but well marked. Sometimes gravel, sometimes soft dirt, and other stretches were large smooth rock surfaces, smoothed better than the nicest sidewalk by thousands of years of glacier pressure. Glaciers...the original highway construction teams. 30 minutes up we reached a rock off of which we could look down, over the trees, at the town of Skagway, several hundred feet below. THe ridge across the other side of town, packed with an assortment of trees, led up and over to our glacier home. Up there where the clouds played like halos around the peaks. Another hour up the trail we crossed a stream and entered what seemed like a wonder playland for woodland wanderers. Moss like icing on the cake. Roots of the deep brown and red standing trees gave body to the texture. Below was marsh. We could hear it, deep under our feet gasping everywhere we stepped and inhaling deeply as we moved on. Part way though the bog I stopped and listened as two trees played their story on each others branches. For the rest of the hike I tried to imagine which instrument in an orchestra best fit the different aspects of the mountains. The rocks were a deep resonating drum. The wind was the flutes. The trees whispered like so many woodwinds. And all the while the mountain was the sound in between. The echo of the silencing instruments and the body of the song.

Just through the marsh the trail decided it had had enough with the wandering and the switchbacks. It was time to go straight up. Through shrubs. Scamper up those same sidewalk rocks. This time wishing they had even one crack to put your hand into. Turns out the water melting off the top of the mountains picked the best ways down and seemed to be of the impression that was also the best way up. Stomping now through bouts of snow. Winding through thickets. Sometimes all I could think of was getting one foot one step further up the trickle of waterfall. Planting the feet. Ascertaining that the ground would hold. Step up. Plotting the next step as I took the first. The going got slow and the slow got going. Jumping the spots that were deep and rushing with water. But don't jump too high b/c the optic nerve hangers (branches) were everywhere.

Finally the scrubs ended and the waterfalls we were on layers of moss on top of rocks. Alaska all around us. Above. Below. Crumbled into the cuffs of my Carhartts. Woven into my hair and sticking to my palms and jacket. But there we were. Watching the patterns of the clouds play across the fjord below. The way the water from the rivers pushed to make its mark out into the ocean water. Again, clouds snaking across the mountain tops. Tickling the tree tops in whisps. Twirling and skipping. Moving pockets of sunlight everchanging. Epic.

Then, after 5 minutes in the wind, we decided to work our way back down. Now, when I say 'work' our way back down...well, that had different meanings for all of us. For Joel, a musher from Minnesota it meant schpeil down the mountain-side at a pace that frightened me to even think about. We got back down to the bramble and I had lost sight of the group ahead and the trail as well. I heard a voice coming from the tangle. My friend Karl, asking if I would like someone to maneuver down with. I most certainly did. Of course, we immediately lost the trail and found ourselves climbing and crawling and scrambling through impossibly thick bushes. I was using my hands and arms like I never had before when hiking. At one point I looked to my left and there was a 20 foot ledge leading down to a smooth patch of snow running down the mountain side. Looked easier than climbing through the bushes until I realized it was covering a stream. However, the bushes kept maneuvering me closer to the ledge and then the ground under my feet decided to relocate to the bottom of the ledge and I was left hanging from the trees I had grabbed. Shaking hands with Alaska in a very intimate way. About 20 minutes later we started marco/poloing with some other kids from the group and finally found Travis a Katie sitting on the bit of trail. Kate was eating chips and Travis was smoking a cigar. We made our way back down the sidewalk rocks by sliding and grabbing at tree limbs to slow us down. Until we finally made it back into the boggy playland where the others had waited. Then. Then we ran my friends. We bolted from one spot to the next. Up the mossy rises, down the rock faces. Up the gravel trails and back down. Once the pace was well set in our legs we began to play. Leaping off of stumps. Hopping on the rocks. Flying. At some point the joy of it all welled up inside me so much that I could not help but hoot out loud and started laughing. Laughing until I could not tell if my sides hurt from laughing or from running. And then there we were. Passing the old shack that had leaned against the trees next to it b/c it was tired of standing by itself. And we could see the road. And the truck. And five miles later we returned to our trailers. Victorious and ravishingly hungry. So we went to the Pizza shop in town. That morning we had planned a fire by the river that night but instead we found ourselves asleep almost before we could zip our sleeping bags all the way up.

An epic adventure for sure.

Since then I have been on the glacier for 7 or 8 days. I have learned that trying to know what the weather will be like in 5 minutes is really a waste of effort. You can try, and you can fret. Or you can learn to enjoy the mystery and just be prepared for anything. I am retraining myself from the first to the second although my endeavour to learn the clouds goes on. We have started getting snow again which means clouds and fog as well. Meaning sometimes days are WXCLD, sometimes sessions are WXCLD, sometimes you are just so sure it will be WXCLD and then there the helicopters are, unloading bundles of awestruck, camera toting visitors. Some of them, we never see their faces. THey seem to be growing out of the back of digital cam-corders or massive cameras. So desperate to capture the moment that they miss the whole thing in the first place. Others, you can see, are just there to have the time of their lives. They don't need much of a prompt to start laughing I have learned and I join them sometimes. THose are my favorites. The ones who understand to just laugh and have fun. IT feels so right because, being up here, I can't help but wonder if this whole thing is just one big cosmic comic. I love it. I love it. I love it.