A month back at InterDigital :
Me: "NO, It's NOT Cruise, nor it's a hike. It's backpacking trip".
Boss: "Sounds like torture to yourself".
Me: "So be it".

Couple of times, after reading "What to expect in Backpacking in Alaska", Boss sounded more correct (Even if we don't agree, typically they are !). However the big-mouthed-me, had told just too many folks about the 'adventurous trip' and just wasn't ready to be seen as a wimpy kid. Statistics said, 'only 10 fatal Grizzly attacks happened last decade' and there was very minuscule probability that I'll be the 11^th. This pumped up some more confidence in me. Not to mention, CheapTickets are non-refundable, which made cancellation a no-no. (Photo by Tanya)

Maps - Compass - Rucksack - BearCanister - Crampons - IceAxe - Poles - Backpacking Food - Deet- Sleeping bag - a pinch of nervousness and I was ready to rock-n-roll.
(Of course, I didn't forget my harmonica or camera)

Closeness to nature, eh?
If camping in a national park in designated camping space and walking on a maintained-trail is considered as coming close to nature, Backcountry Backpacking 7 days in Wrangell St-Elias National park is rough sex with nature with multiple spurs of non-promised orgasm at unexpected times.

Flea Flea, fly, Flea fly flo Vista Kumala, kumala, kumala vista Oh no no no not the vista Eenie meeny essa meeny doowah da wahda meeny Essa meeny solomeeny doowah da wahda meeny Beep biddlee ohten bohten bah bah shee wahten dahten  SHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I still can't get the tune out of my head. So can't remove the word 'Oso'.. I can still hear each of us echoing it one after other.

So the game begins !!

11 Osos ( 3 - Bears, 2 - Мишки, 4 - भालू, 1 - 熊, 1 -يحمل) finally meet each other at Anchorage 26th street Hostel. Leave Anchorage, drive to McCarthy, passing the Alaska Pipeline. Start walking towards Kannicott on a nice trail. If the trail disappears and a game of guessing the 'best' route begins. I know, many of my co-backpackers will disagree, but there is just no best route. All routes are equally good/bad when the 'game of guess' is not aided by NPS. All the arguments end up being coffee-toffee arguments.

Wilderness looks pretty from far far away !
After some flat-NPS-marked-trails, you crave for some wilderness. Once you start going in the wilderness, you come across grass with ankle deep mud. Than you crave for some dry land. Instead it puts you on moraines sediments. You walk on these loose rocks, twist your ankle bad and you starve for flatter surface. So it takes you to a glacier. With your crampons on, you love walking on glacier. Pretty soon the crevasse scares the hell out of you. You pray for the glacier to end. You want to return to the ground. But sorry my friend, moraines again !.... Now if you don't want ice, moraines or the flat ground, wilderness can offer you an area of dense bushes. (bushes - word sounds lull.. eh? They are no better than 'the Bush' when it comes to war. They fight you. Even if you give up, they don't stop molesting you). You start wondering, what you hate more (or rather hates you more?) - those shitty moraines rocks, which want you to go off-balance - or the bushes, who fight you endlessly. If you don't want either, Wrangell St-Elias can give you some rivers to cross, or loosely packed snow to pass. This is the beauty of Wrangell St-Elias. Every hour is a surprise of new terrain.
I am sure, when Einstein said "God doesn't play dice", he didn't mean it for terrains in Wrangell St-Elias.

• The distance between the first and last guy is always directly proportional to the time passed.
• If you are walking behind someone in the snow, you better be tall. Else, the footsteps to be followed will invariably twice longer steps than yours. (You can't out-smart snow. It just waits to pull you in)
• If you walk ahead in a pack you enjoy the longest breaks.
• Being at the end of pack has a non-apparent advantage. If everyone is going on wrong direction, you don't waste too much time and energy going that way.
• Camera doesn't always works as an excuse for being slow. :)

• Bushes : Did you even think that bushes could hate you? Oh boy, they could rob your camera and water bottle and also poles. I wouldn't blame them otherwise, but imagine bushes stealing my camera on the second day itself. Good thing, I keep having insuppressible urges to take picture every now and then. So I knew of the theft very soon. I walked back and saw they happily hung my camera on one of their nasty branches (which was how they seized the camera out of the cover). They could also hate your sleeping pad and tear it apart. Applying force is futile. If they decide, they just wouldn't let you pass. They can poke in your eyes. Or even hit the person walking behind you.
• Rucksack: She was the last thing you would expect to hate you. But if she doesn't like your BearCanister or food stored in it, she can decide to give you hard time. She can give you blue bruises on waist, irrespective of the adjustments you make in waist-support. If she makes her mind up, she would not let you take out the water bottle nor let you put it back. She could conspire with the bushes and give away your water bottle or other stuff.
  
• Messy 'Sweat-proof' Sun-block.
  
• Sun-glasses - Make sure you have best of them. Or have a spare pair. If on second day they decide to break, snow can start hating you too.. (and it HURTS ! )
  
• Shoes - They always 'try' to protect your ankle. Blisters are just by-product. You don't expect to get everything. do you? Remember, crampons could make blisters worse..

That's 11:30 at night ! (Photo by Andrei)

If Murphy hates you probably everything else does. And this not-liking-list becomes endless. But if you become less whiny, some things could like you too. You could have your days with fog with 0 visibility, extreme cold with single digit F, some snow fall at nights, extreme hot afternoons with no breeze. You can have days with 20 hours of sun-light and even ithe remaining 4 hours might not be completely dark! But you have no rights to complain about the weather if it doesn't rain !! You could, should, would consider the weather, your best friend. You of course love it.

That's 3 am - view from tent :) (Photo by Steve)

Time for Deet
Everything in Alaska is huge they say, (One can measure distances in terms of 'Manhattan length') and so are their the state birds. If you are sweet and bloody, they will love you. For the first day, I thought just the head-net would do. But boy... they get you.  Stinky-deet is the only option you have. You don't care if folks around you hate you or if your tent-mate hates you. Even if you loose track of the time because of the day long sunlight, they won't. 4pm sharp. They can find their ways.

Water and Water-Filter You thank yourself for not carrying big-huge-mechanical filter because of it's weight. Also thank yourself for not buying the UV filter, because it's just doesn't clean the muddiest-shittiest dirtiest water (except for few waterfalls, this is the only kind of water available for you). But you hate yourself for getting just drops of chemicals. That makes you feel like you are drinking some liquid trapped in pile of contamination. You hope that the chemical is doing what it is supposed to do. If it's only cooking you are gonna do with your water, you don't even care about contamination, as you boil it anyways.

Food You start counting calories per gram. You swear on being vegetarian because no veg food can compete to give equivalent cal/g. Still you love your packs of Kathmandu Curry - Louisiana Rice with beans - Mac-n-Cheese. You have endless discussions with folks about the awesome taste of food. By the end of second day, you develop distate for those fucking bad-tasting protein bars and cliff bars. You start trading cliff-bars with real food at nyc-backpackers-board-of-trade. If you are smart, you have all oat-meals for breakfast. But you hate yourself for having the same annoying taste every morning. You trade some cliff bars for honey to change the taste of oat-meal. or trade cliff bars to get a pack of swiss-mix.. (yes, the same coca you swear at workplace:))

Yoga on mountaintop

Yoga classes This can happen to you only if you are VERY lucky. You have a yoga master in your group. Indisputably the best thing could be the super-flexible yoga Master conducting yoga and stretching class in the morning. The grounds are never flat enough for yoga. You also have to bring your own yoga mats. But hey, it is free-of-cost.

Tents and camp-sites
Like the terrains you can expect camping on totally different kinds of grounds each night.
It could be tents on the snow, muddy riverbanks, bushy grounds, sloppy mountain tops, pretty lakesides, or the flattest area near the old-age-air-stripe

Duct-tape You start finding more use of same thing. Duct-tape can fix broken shoes. It can fix punctures in pack-covers, pack even jacket. It can fix torn pants. It can fix blisters. It can work as a water bottle cap. Using it we can make a cover for iceaxe so that it doesn't hurt anyone. It could be a better sun-block than 'Neutrogena' . Trust me, if you are lost on an island, and you are allowed to keep only ONE thing with you, you don't want to keep a lighter. you want a Duct-tape. Do you want me to write "1001 distinct use of Duct-tape?"

Ultimate blister fix (Photo by Viren)

It just saves, from anything .. (you name it)

Principles of Leave no trace
Ice-axe could prove to be a versatile tool. Crossing Glaciers is secondary use of ice-axe. There can be far more important uses for it.
If you see someone after-hours with an iceaxe, you know where not-to-go with your iceaxe to minimize probability of an ugly surprise.
Also, even if you don't leave a mark on nature, nature does leave marks on you. You can always expect hands to get cuts/bruises

Oops! waterfall !
Going downhill is awesome. On snow, it's even more awesome. You just don't have to care. You can throw your legs instead of taking careful steps. You start calling it "heel technique", as if you invented something efficient. As the down-slope of snow doesn't end, you start getting psyched. you have gone down for more than 2000 feets in less than a mile of distance just in an hour. Your legs/knees start shacking because of those 'careless throwing' of leg. You wait for the snow to merge into a glacier but....   "Oops waterfall".
At the end of 3/4 of trip, you know you can't go further. You have to follow back the same route you came.

Going down the slop..

Oopss Waterfall.... (Photo: Viren)

You blame the park ranger. You blame the folks you met at Kennicott. You blame the moon phases and you even blame the tides. You don't want to think that you can't throw your legs going back the same steep slope covered with loose snow, but work hard all the way up. This would mean walking 12+ hours a day for 2 more days with couple of blisters, bruises and limited food. (You swear yourself for eating more in order to reduce weight from rucksack) Not to forget the going up the steep slope on the same night till you find a flat ground to sleep on

Going up the slop

The chain of thoughts becomes : in loop : { how much was the cost for helicopter rescue?               will anyone else share cost? who will?               should I stay here only till the helicopters come?               part-of-tent and part-of-stove is with tent-partner. will he give that to me?               what should I do? how do I call?             } loop breaks down: error.. error... error... I can't call rescue. no phone.. " You remember, "If you can't bear the rape, enjoy it" In retrospect You thank heavens, You didn't listen to folks and didn't rent a satellite phone. You would have probably chickened out and called for a rescue.

Footsteps !

Resurgence You come on your day-one-mode. Charge yourself with enthusiasm. Forget the pain in the ankle/knee. Tighten your shoe lace.Fill up the bottle with some water. Even put some Gatorade in it ;). Fill pockets with some cliff-bars and cliff-shots. Once again ready to rock-n-roll ... This time each step is with a lot more confidence. Run across the Glacier. This time the legs won't shake and bushes won't bite. Irrespective of # of photographs taken, You still remain in first few of the group. Walk for 12+ Hours. Sing Kumala-kumala, play the harmonica. And you make it !!You also read stories about "Denali-hikers" and feel good about yourself.

Moose ?

Fauna - You see might include far-away Black-Osos, dead goats, flying chickens, herds the unofficial state bird, Some bees, some eggs of some bird. Maaaan... the changing weather really is doing something to animals !! If we don't see lots of fauna in Alaskan wilderness something is seriously wrong (I am not talking about 5 bears / 10 moose 'at places where NPS makes sure that they-are-there') !

Mr. Oso was here.

Buttaineering ATP from an InterDigital guy the only thing you can expect with high level of confidence is "Thoughts of IPR" With the help of suggestions I designed "Fully Steerable Buttaineering ATP". Inspiration came from someone who almost damaged his knee and had to Buttaineer for a long time. "Made with poly-carbonate adjustable for various butt sizes. Steering can be done using carbon fiber rudder paddle. Our ATP (All Terrain Pants) are awesome for all Mountaineering / Buttaineering trips. They come for rescue when no one can/does (see the picture on right?)" Design will be revealed once I get patent-pending status.

Buttaineering

Severe Buttaineering

Noone needs vacation more than the one who just had it ! Well it's hard to be back at work... I'd rather be hiking, carrying the rucksack with bear-canister and enjoy the rough encounter with nature. Of course this wasn't my first back-packing or first Glacier hiking. But thanks to the team-mates, this definitely was my most memorable trip of all... Mansarovar is on cards .. (next spring ?). Interested?

Alaska 11 (Photo by Kevin)

© Text and Photos : Nirav Shah
Some photographs: courtesy my co-backpackers - Akasla11 from NYC-Backpackers.