I keep getting asked about what happened. I'm pretty tired of telling this story so this is going to have to do for now... Keep in mind that this took place over about 10 to 10.5 hours. You'll just have to forgive the time frame since I forgot to look at my watch to find out what time it was when I fell into the creek.
1) Lighting conditions were bad to say the least. My sled was spitting oil out of the top of the motor oil tank (oil return line) and was the reason that I decided to start my way out to the truck and the others kept riding.
2) I chose my route because it's basically a river bottom with lots of snow and I wouldn't have to climb any hills in order to get out of the mountains.
3) While dropping down off of the final ridge in order to get into the creek bottom I reached the bottom of the ravine and found the lighting to be getting worse because of the shade from the mountains. At the bottom I went off of about an eight foot drop off at slow speeds. (Anybody that rides will know what this will do...... butt over handle bars.)
4) The sled was upright in the creek with only the back half of the track actually in the water but I was face down in the water, about nine inches of it.
5) I got out of the creek as quickly as I could got the sled unstuck and running then pulled it ahead about 100 yards to make sure that I wouldn't be falling through the snow and back into the water under neath it.
6) At this point I noticed that a bad coolant leak had arrived as a result of my nose dive. The coolant level was already low and I thought that I'd at least be able to get the sled on top of a near by ridge to make my hike out easier.
7) I decided that it would only be temporary and poured my liter of water into the coolant tank in order to give me some more time. (I refilled the bottle in the creek.)
8) The sled didn't run much longer.
9) Being wet and riding a sled makes you A LOT colder in a hurry.
10) This is when I came to my senses and stopped worrying about my sled and took care of #1, ME!
11) I stripped down to my boots (after pouring the water out) and underwear (after wringing them out). I hung my jacket, snow pants, gloves, hat, and shirt up on some willows in order to help them freeze. I did a lot of jumping jacks(when you're this cold it didn't look like I was actually doing jumping jacks) in my wet boots in order to try and keep the blood flowing while my clothes are freezing. Once they were completely stiff I beat the crap out o them in order to break the now frozen water off of the clothing which is basically helping me dry my clothes out. Once I got them broken free and put back on (much easier said then done at this point) I started hauling @$$ up the biggest hill in the area that was also in the direction that I needed to travel after doing an inventory of what I had.
12) Steps #11 and #12 took A LOT longer and are harder to do then one might think when just reading this. Steps 10-12 took about an hour and a half. Get your hands rediculously cold then try tieing your boots....... You might start to understand why this took so long.
13) The hike began. I didn't wear my dry gloves because I knew that the gloves I was wearing while climbing were going to get wet from the snow and dry gloves would be more beneficial to me later. I brought my helmet with me incase I had to build a snow cave for the night it would help a lot to keep my head off of the snow and shielded from any wind. I climbed over the first ridge thinking that I'd be able to see from there. No dice, another ridge is blocking my line of sight. I climbed over the second ridge thinking that I'd be able to see once there, no dice again. This happened five times until I found myself at a point that I know to be about 5800 feet in elevation (my sled was/is left at about 3200 feet). The snow conditions were extremely crusty and ranged in depth from walking on top of the crust to falling through over my head and having to dig out in order to find a new path. Once at elevation I had a full signal on my phone and was able to see a few cabins, Alyeska pump station, The Monument parking lot (where my truck was), and "The Tit" (the starting point for the Arctic Man race). I was now pretty warm and dry since this climb took three to four hours. I was able to get intermittent signal on my phone just long enough to send a text message (get your hands rediculously cold and wet then try to type a text message... hahahaha I found it sort of entertaining) to friends in the area (thanks Mitchell and Trevor?). It took about 2.5 hours before I really started to stop shivering and warm up even though I was pushing myself well beyond exhaustion while climbing. I needed to keep moving in order to keep my heart rate up. It's amazing how you can be entirely out of breath and hear your heart beat in your ears like snare drums but still be shivering cold and not sweating. Also keep in mind that I'm not doing this exercise at the convenience of sea level with that nice dense oxygenated air, no sir. At the beginning of this climb I was wishing that I was a fat *** so I'd have all sorts of fat to insulate me and help keep me warm........ That thought quickly passed when I realized that if I was a fat *** then I wouldn't be hiking like I was and would most likely have a heart attack before I was even out of sight of the sled and creek.
14) After making a couple of calls I sat myself down, ate my sandwich, both protein bars, drank the vitamin water, and about half of the liter of water. I filled the bottle back up with snow and carried the water bottle inside of my jacket so my that body heat would melt the snow and I'd be able to drink it later. DON'T EVER DO THIS UNLESS YOUR BODY IS BACK UP TO WARM AND YOU ARE NO LONGER COLD IN THE LEAST. It may not seem like much but eating snow and trying to thaw water out with your body heat will take a lot of heat away from your body that you may not be able to spare if you're not already warm and back to normal operating temp.
15) I didn't have the Batman spotlight with me so I wasn't able to signal anybody from up where I was. I started hiking down the other side of the mountain trying to stay on ridges and up away from water. I came down in elevation nearly 1500 feet but since I was on the cell tower side of the mountain I still had a good signal. By this point Troopers had been called and Wilcox and Tuckwood from Delta were in the monument parking lot. I was able to give them a call and signal with my light to show my location after telling them that they needed to look from the parking lot directly towards the moon since it was directly behind me. I was about five to five and a half miles (straight line) away from the parking lot at this time and had already covered about nine miles (six to seven straight line). About three hours into this trip my legs were cramping! Think of the worst foot cramp you've ever had, multiply it times 10 and that is how body was feeling from my hips to my ankles. The cramped muscles lasted so long that my calves and quads actually fell asleep (painful tingling) because while cramped up your body is extremely limited on it's ability to provide oxygenated blood to the effected areas. It eventually went away..... after about another two miles of hiking.
16) I began hiking towards the Monument and was making good time since it was down hill. The down hill stuff is easy! About three hours later and after covering another two and a half to three miles the sleds finally caught up to me. I was on the final ridge and in another two minutes would've been sliding down the slope on to the flats that the parking lot still about three miles away, is on.
Points along the way:
I had a Fox following my trail since I was blazing a nice path for him to follow. The Fox only followed me for about a mile and stayed about 50 to 100 yards behind me.
I had a young, bedded down moose get spooked by me and jump up about 25 yards from me. The moose, cow, no antlers, started to step in my direction. I immediately started yelling and threw my helmet at the moose. The helmet hit the bushes in front of the moose and it hauled balls out of the area! WHEW!!! That's all I need, is to get stomped by a moose up there.
I was curious after starting down the hill towards the truck if I could make a fire up there should I need to, also it would be a better signal then my light. I started by digging under a lot of snow and found as much dead grass and other dead, dry foliage that I could. I then cut some small willow branches, also dead and dry and placed them in my jacket to start warming them up while I was trying to get a spark going in the grass that I collected. I'd normally want to try to build the fire on a rocky area but I wasn't going to keep digging until I found some rocks so I settled on a cleared area of hill side. I used my flint fire starter at first to see if I could do it with that..... I was able to get smoke and a couple small orange sparks on the grass before I started getting cold again. I then said screw this I'll just keep hiking to the truck.
In a strange masochistic, test your mettle sort of way, I had a lot of fun out there and enjoyed the experience. I hope to never have to do that again, but if I do, I know I can handle it.
"Adversity introduces a man to himself."
1) Lighting conditions were bad to say the least. My sled was spitting oil out of the top of the motor oil tank (oil return line) and was the reason that I decided to start my way out to the truck and the others kept riding.
2) I chose my route because it's basically a river bottom with lots of snow and I wouldn't have to climb any hills in order to get out of the mountains.
3) While dropping down off of the final ridge in order to get into the creek bottom I reached the bottom of the ravine and found the lighting to be getting worse because of the shade from the mountains. At the bottom I went off of about an eight foot drop off at slow speeds. (Anybody that rides will know what this will do...... butt over handle bars.)
4) The sled was upright in the creek with only the back half of the track actually in the water but I was face down in the water, about nine inches of it.
5) I got out of the creek as quickly as I could got the sled unstuck and running then pulled it ahead about 100 yards to make sure that I wouldn't be falling through the snow and back into the water under neath it.
6) At this point I noticed that a bad coolant leak had arrived as a result of my nose dive. The coolant level was already low and I thought that I'd at least be able to get the sled on top of a near by ridge to make my hike out easier.
7) I decided that it would only be temporary and poured my liter of water into the coolant tank in order to give me some more time. (I refilled the bottle in the creek.)
8) The sled didn't run much longer.
9) Being wet and riding a sled makes you A LOT colder in a hurry.
10) This is when I came to my senses and stopped worrying about my sled and took care of #1, ME!
11) I stripped down to my boots (after pouring the water out) and underwear (after wringing them out). I hung my jacket, snow pants, gloves, hat, and shirt up on some willows in order to help them freeze. I did a lot of jumping jacks(when you're this cold it didn't look like I was actually doing jumping jacks) in my wet boots in order to try and keep the blood flowing while my clothes are freezing. Once they were completely stiff I beat the crap out o them in order to break the now frozen water off of the clothing which is basically helping me dry my clothes out. Once I got them broken free and put back on (much easier said then done at this point) I started hauling @$$ up the biggest hill in the area that was also in the direction that I needed to travel after doing an inventory of what I had.
12) Steps #11 and #12 took A LOT longer and are harder to do then one might think when just reading this. Steps 10-12 took about an hour and a half. Get your hands rediculously cold then try tieing your boots....... You might start to understand why this took so long.
13) The hike began. I didn't wear my dry gloves because I knew that the gloves I was wearing while climbing were going to get wet from the snow and dry gloves would be more beneficial to me later. I brought my helmet with me incase I had to build a snow cave for the night it would help a lot to keep my head off of the snow and shielded from any wind. I climbed over the first ridge thinking that I'd be able to see from there. No dice, another ridge is blocking my line of sight. I climbed over the second ridge thinking that I'd be able to see once there, no dice again. This happened five times until I found myself at a point that I know to be about 5800 feet in elevation (my sled was/is left at about 3200 feet). The snow conditions were extremely crusty and ranged in depth from walking on top of the crust to falling through over my head and having to dig out in order to find a new path. Once at elevation I had a full signal on my phone and was able to see a few cabins, Alyeska pump station, The Monument parking lot (where my truck was), and "The Tit" (the starting point for the Arctic Man race). I was now pretty warm and dry since this climb took three to four hours. I was able to get intermittent signal on my phone just long enough to send a text message (get your hands rediculously cold and wet then try to type a text message... hahahaha I found it sort of entertaining) to friends in the area (thanks Mitchell and Trevor?). It took about 2.5 hours before I really started to stop shivering and warm up even though I was pushing myself well beyond exhaustion while climbing. I needed to keep moving in order to keep my heart rate up. It's amazing how you can be entirely out of breath and hear your heart beat in your ears like snare drums but still be shivering cold and not sweating. Also keep in mind that I'm not doing this exercise at the convenience of sea level with that nice dense oxygenated air, no sir. At the beginning of this climb I was wishing that I was a fat *** so I'd have all sorts of fat to insulate me and help keep me warm........ That thought quickly passed when I realized that if I was a fat *** then I wouldn't be hiking like I was and would most likely have a heart attack before I was even out of sight of the sled and creek.
14) After making a couple of calls I sat myself down, ate my sandwich, both protein bars, drank the vitamin water, and about half of the liter of water. I filled the bottle back up with snow and carried the water bottle inside of my jacket so my that body heat would melt the snow and I'd be able to drink it later. DON'T EVER DO THIS UNLESS YOUR BODY IS BACK UP TO WARM AND YOU ARE NO LONGER COLD IN THE LEAST. It may not seem like much but eating snow and trying to thaw water out with your body heat will take a lot of heat away from your body that you may not be able to spare if you're not already warm and back to normal operating temp.
15) I didn't have the Batman spotlight with me so I wasn't able to signal anybody from up where I was. I started hiking down the other side of the mountain trying to stay on ridges and up away from water. I came down in elevation nearly 1500 feet but since I was on the cell tower side of the mountain I still had a good signal. By this point Troopers had been called and Wilcox and Tuckwood from Delta were in the monument parking lot. I was able to give them a call and signal with my light to show my location after telling them that they needed to look from the parking lot directly towards the moon since it was directly behind me. I was about five to five and a half miles (straight line) away from the parking lot at this time and had already covered about nine miles (six to seven straight line). About three hours into this trip my legs were cramping! Think of the worst foot cramp you've ever had, multiply it times 10 and that is how body was feeling from my hips to my ankles. The cramped muscles lasted so long that my calves and quads actually fell asleep (painful tingling) because while cramped up your body is extremely limited on it's ability to provide oxygenated blood to the effected areas. It eventually went away..... after about another two miles of hiking.
16) I began hiking towards the Monument and was making good time since it was down hill. The down hill stuff is easy! About three hours later and after covering another two and a half to three miles the sleds finally caught up to me. I was on the final ridge and in another two minutes would've been sliding down the slope on to the flats that the parking lot still about three miles away, is on.
Points along the way:
I had a Fox following my trail since I was blazing a nice path for him to follow. The Fox only followed me for about a mile and stayed about 50 to 100 yards behind me.
I had a young, bedded down moose get spooked by me and jump up about 25 yards from me. The moose, cow, no antlers, started to step in my direction. I immediately started yelling and threw my helmet at the moose. The helmet hit the bushes in front of the moose and it hauled balls out of the area! WHEW!!! That's all I need, is to get stomped by a moose up there.
I was curious after starting down the hill towards the truck if I could make a fire up there should I need to, also it would be a better signal then my light. I started by digging under a lot of snow and found as much dead grass and other dead, dry foliage that I could. I then cut some small willow branches, also dead and dry and placed them in my jacket to start warming them up while I was trying to get a spark going in the grass that I collected. I'd normally want to try to build the fire on a rocky area but I wasn't going to keep digging until I found some rocks so I settled on a cleared area of hill side. I used my flint fire starter at first to see if I could do it with that..... I was able to get smoke and a couple small orange sparks on the grass before I started getting cold again. I then said screw this I'll just keep hiking to the truck.
In a strange masochistic, test your mettle sort of way, I had a lot of fun out there and enjoyed the experience. I hope to never have to do that again, but if I do, I know I can handle it.
"Adversity introduces a man to himself."
