Yesterday was a day that I will not soon forget. To start let me say that alot of people have the conception of Alaska as not only a beautiful and remote place but a place that is very dangerous. Since we moved here, Tracy, Emily and I have experienced the remoteness and the beauty, however, this place never seemed to have the extreme danger factor that everyone always talks about. I was fortunate enough to experience this "danger" first hand yesterday and make it out in one piece.
The people here are always saying how the weather can change in an instant...you say to yourself, "yeah but how long is an instant? A couple hours? Probably...so I am not going to worry about it." A couple of guys that I work with wanted to go snowboarding at the local resort, Pyramid Mountain...haha, there's no resort...our skiing/snowboading facilities consist of open terrain and the runs are as long as you are willing to hike, no lifts, no lodge, no ski patrol...nothing. Most of the guys that wanted to do this have done this several times on this mountain, it is the most popular place to go for this. I expressed interest in going, I mean, what an experience! Hike to the top of a mountain and then ski down? Uh, yeah. I'm in. Well we were set to go on Saturday but the weather was bad, snowed all day, visibility was horrible. We woke up Sunday and decided the weather was good enough to go. The weather wasn't great, but it was WAY better than the day before.
So, me being the guy who is always prepared for anything, I overloaded my backpack with survival items; I even brought an avalanche shovel just in case. I also brought my rescue swimmer radio (completely waterproof handheld radio), among many other things. Now, I had a full pack, and then my skis and shovel were attached to the outside of the bag. There was too much snow just to hike, so we decided to snowshoe up the mountain. We started up the mountain at about 12 pm; usually takes about an hour to summit this mountain, its really not a big deal. As we ascented, the weather seemed to get a little worse, visibilty was getting lower, we decided to press on. We got near the top and I am telling you, just like the "people" told us, the weather turned unbearable in about 3 minutes. No joke. Suddenly we had 50mph plus winds, couldn't see 5 feet in front of us, and before we knew it our group had been seperated. We called out for one of the guys, he could not hear us. We hunkered down on the side of this mountain, discussing our options, and after about 5 minutes, he showed back up. "Ok, lets get our skis/snowboards on and head down," we decided. We strapped in and took off. That lasted about 4 feet for me. The snow was so thick and wet, I could not turn my skis. I fought with this for about 100 yards and gave up. I decided at this point that it would be safer and more productive for me to hike down. Strapped my snowshoes back on and told the guys, whom were all riding snowboards, to head down the hill and I would meet them at the bottom. They took off and I started walking.
It took me about 10 minutes to realize this wasn't going to be very easy. I had no idea what direction I was heading in and I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I was following tracks left by someone else. It was pouring rain at this point, my straps holding my skis on my bag were slipping loose becasue they were so wet and my snowshoes kept on coming apart. I must have stopped 10 times to fix my gear. At about the tenth time and having no reason to think I was anywhere near the bottom of this mountain, I sat down in the snow, and started to think. I needed to come clean with myself that this could be a bad situation. I am trained in rescuing idiots like me so I had every bad scenario running through my head. I ran through my gear real quick, had a change of clothes, had a shovel to build a snow cave, had hand warmers that last 12 hours, had my radio to call for help, had a headlamp to see in the dark, had food and water. Pretty much had the means to stay alive for one night in this situation. Ok, I said to myself, if u get stuck, you will be ok til tomorrow. I knew people would look for me becasue I had told Tracy if she didn't hear from me by 6pm AK time, to call the Military Police. Also, I had 5 other guys that snowboarded down ahead of me, for sure they would be lookiing.
I walked down the mountain, having my skis slide out of my bag straps at least 3 more times. I said to myself, "if this happens again I am ditching my skis, I don't need them and they are keeping me from getting home in a timely fashion." I mean it gets dark at 4:30 here and it was after 5pm at this point. I crested the next ridge and I could see a valley through the fog. I thought, "this better be the valley at the bottom of the mountain or I am staying the night." I kept on hiking, and then out of the corner of my eye I saw a pair of headlights though the fog. "Thank you GOD! I am getting off this mountain!" I hiked down, only took me about 10 minutes to get down after that...I was kind of running. I got to the cars where my buddies were for sure waiting for me...nope. Nobody. Cars were there, buddies, none. I thought, crap, they went looking for me and they are lost. Just then I saw one of my friends walking down the road. I met up with him and he told me that they all got seperated and not everyone was accounted for. We went up with 6 and now there were 2 missing. These guys got so lost trying to snowboard, they went so far off course, they ended up upwards of a mile away from the parking lot. I was lucky and took a straight shot down the mountain; you wouldn't have convinced me of that when I was up there. We got in the cars and drove down the road and found our two friends walking up the road. After talking to them, they were way worse off than I ever was, ending up in tight valleys, knocking down bushes to get down the mountain. Oh and I was the only one outfitted to last a night out there. They would have been dead for sure. Turns out that I actually made it off the mountain well before any of them did, and I walked the whole way. They tried to board, but ended up walking most of the way as well.
I got off the mountian and back to the house at 5:50pm. I picked up the phone and called Tracy before she called the Military Police. That was a close one. I got a first hand experience of the true "Alaska." This place is in fact very dangerous and the weather can in fact change on you in an instant. I was prepared, so I am comfortable with knowing that I would have lasted another day up there. I will always go out as prepared if not more prepared than I was this time. Just goes to show you that you can never be too prepared. That picure at the top is of Pyramid Mountain, the one on the left. Welcome to Alaska Chris!!!
