Photos From my Hike over Labor Day Weekend

I've uploaded a few pictures from my last hike. The hike covered three days, two nights, and about 25 miles. I'll try to tell you more about it later, but here are the pics at least, for now. Seems if I wait until I have time to tell the story of the hike, there may never see another post on this blog.

This path leads up to Powerline Pass, where I usually enter the Chugach mountains. Its about 15 minute's walk from my home. This is actually a shot taken at the end of the hike, when it was partly sunny. When I set off, on Saturday morning, it was socked in, foggy and drizzly.

Sorry for the lousy formatting. Blogger is really ridiculously lame for formatting posts.

I replenished my water from this crystal mountain stream, on my way to climbing over the second pass of the hike.

Here's the valley I camped in the first night. This picture was taken on the second day, however, after hiking most of the way out of the valley. My camp was actually just beneath that peak on the left, and I hiked into the valley by climbing over a pass to the right of the peak.

The abundance of berries is incredible this year. These are what we call "crow berries" up here. The seeds are slightly bitter, but the berry juice makes fantastic jelly.
More crow berries, with lichen. We've got lots of blueberries this year, too. I spent about four hours picking blueberries a couple weeks ago, and got about one gallon. Using about a third of a gallon, I made nine jars of jam. They're all gone.

Self-portrait.
Sunday night, I camped on that knoll on the mountainside, above the lake.Dusk.
Dawn, looking out the tent flap at 6:00 AM.

Morning.

Back into Powerline Pass. Almost home. For my sore feet. Aaaahhhhh.

The blogger software that comes with blogger.com is hugely frustrating, klunky, and buggy. It won't let me upload more than five photos at a time, and I can't format or place them in any manageable way. Even text is likewise unmanageable. Sometimes I have to insert hyphens between paragraphs to keep them all from running together, and other times I have to delete truckloads of line-feeds that get mysteriously inserted between paragraphs. Is there some other blogging software anyone would recommend I try?

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Jacob: Thank you for your very insightful & helpful comments. I plan to respond.
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Best regards,

tn

Hiking Solo in Alaska - Risk Analysis

Well, I really ought to get my last hike blogged. I've got several beautiful photos to show. But the most dramatic event of the hike was that I was awakened by a curious visitor outside my tent the first night at 3:30 AM, snuffing, snorting, and pawing around. Needless to say, I was totally freaked out. More about that when I get around to blogging that hike.

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In the meantime, however, as you may well imagine, I've been thinking an awful lot about bears. Mainly, I've been thinking about the risk of getting killed by one while hiking solo in the Alaska wilderness. Aside from the embarrassment of being described in the papers as foolhardy (as if I should mind - being dead and all - but still...) I don't much like the idea of becoming trail mix for a bear family.

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So, being an engineer, I couldn't help but ask myself what the statistical risks are, of getting kilt by one of those critters while traipsing through the wilderness.

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Joe Anders has compiled a list of known outdoor fatalities in Alaska. His website is a wonderful resource for Alaska hikers.

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Here are the results of my analysis of Joe's list.

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If you are going to die outdoors in Alaska, the statistical cause will be:

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38% - Falling

24% - Drowning

11% - Exposure

9% - Avalanche

8% - Bear

8% - Other

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So, bear attack would be the 5th on the list of risks. In fact, you're about 13 times more likely to die of some other cause. All of those other causes being so eminently avoidable makes me feel pretty certain I won't succumb to them. And statistically, bear attack is even less likely than all the other causes I feel certain I'll avoid. Well, that all seems vaguely reassuring. But these are relative risk comparisons. What are the absolute risks?

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From Joe's list, I calculate the risk of dieing by a bear attack on any given day-hike in Alaska to be about 1 in 360,000. To put this in perspective, you would have to hike every single day for ten average lifetimes (700 years) to incur more than 50% risk of dieing by bear attack. (However, there's a 100% chance your feet would hurt un-bear-ably by then. Sorry.) I estimate the risk of dieing in a car accident for the average American on any given day is about 1 in 2,000,000. So, yes, hiking in Alaska is more dangerous than driving in America, but statistically, driving - and hiking - is very, exceedingly, safe. Still, when you are awakened in the darkness hearing one just outside the tent...

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I started to describe the assumptions and math that went into my analysis, but then decided this would be boring to almost everyone. However, I'll go ahead and post it if I'm wrong and there's enough interest after all.

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Best regards,

tn

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ps: The photo shows where I camped the night I had an uninvited visitor.

Why?

I wanted the gold, and I got it -
Came out with a fortune last fall, -
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it.
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth - and I'm one.

(Excerpt from "The Spell of the Yukon", by Robert Service)

Whenever I have the privilege of standing spell-bound in the vast alone, this passage echos through my thoughts, and I find myself wishing I were a poet so I could capture the experience so eloquently as Robert Service. I took this picture yesterday. See what I mean? (I think if you left-click on the thumbnail, you'll get an enlarged view.)

They say the best thing about living in Anchorage is you're only 45 minutes from Alaska. The Chugach Mountains rake the sky just behind my house. I hike back there when time and circumstances allow. Never often enough. Almost always, alone.

Alas, I'm no poet. But I do take a camera with me. I'll pass on a few of my experiences, thoughts, and photos to you here from my solo treks out the back yard.

best regards,
tn