Ned's Pipeline Trek Page

My dog Jane and I are holed up in the sanctuary of Clara Jodwalis's house, 10 miles from the pipeline. Two nights ago, Clara, Jane and I walked from Birch Hill to the pipeline tourist viewpoint north of Fairbanks. After 350 miles of hiking, with 450 miles ahead to Prudhoe Bay, it's time to rest our paws.

When I last wrote, I was wondering how Jane and I would cross the Salcha River, which the pipeline dives under about 50 miles south of here. As soon as I saw the river, I bounced my palm off my stubbled skull-why didn't I pack my Trail Boat from Delta Junction? With the little boat, the crossing would have been easy, and fun. The Salcha ran the color of iced tea, and held the same temperature, but I could throw a rock to the north bank and the river's current seemed deceptively mellow.

While spending a hot night in my over-puffed sleeping bag on the south bank of the Salcha, I decided to swim across the river in the morning. I could carry loads of stuff over in a tough plastic bag, keeping one arm out of the water as I swam. The human ferrying job would cool me off, I thought. As an added bonus, it would force me to do something I'd never done before.

The next day dawned beautiful and bugless on the wide gravel bar. After eating a pot of oatmeal, I emptied my backpack and sorted my stuff into six loads. Jane watched me without much interest, unaware of the swim she too was about to attempt.

Driven by nervous energy and impatience, I began to shed my clothes for the first swim across. After dropping one boot, I heard the drone of a motorboat. From around a bend in the river, a boat approached Jane and I. The man driving the boat choked the motor when he saw us. He aimed the aluminum stern at the gravel bar.

After crunching to a halt, Fred Markgraf of Salcha asked me if I needed a lift.

"Don't see people out here too often without a boat," he said. "Besides, I recognized your dog."

Jane came through again. I accepted Markgraf's offer and stuffed everything back into my pack. While I was packing, Markgraf's passengers---Melissa Wills, Larry Little, Len Schmidt, twins Brianne and Britanny Schmidt, and Harley Blue Markgraf---climbed out to fish. Little hooked a grayling on his first cast. And his second.

Fred Markgraf ferried Jane and I across the Salcha River. The trip took 20 seconds. I thanked him and he wished me well, as did his entourage on the opposite shore.

I felt relieved, but a bit wimpy. I had sold myself on the idea of swimming the Salcha. When Markgraf and crew waved and headed upriver, I opted to swim across the Salcha, then swim back, just to find out how easy it was.

With mosquitoes applauding my decision, I stripped and stepped into the Salcha with Jane following. As I plunged in, the current and the cold teamed up to paralyze me. I swam a few strokes, then U-turned, aborting the swim attempt and realizing what testosterone-fueled folly it was to think I could have made six round-trips across that river. Fred Markgraf, I thank you for saving my life, or at least my possessions.

On the steep hike north from the Salcha, I topped a ridge and looked northward through a remote valley. Pump Station 8 loomed on top of a hill. It looked just like a castle in a fairy-tale forest. It was a lonely castle, having closed down its pumps a year before. The area is now occupied only by security guard Byron Adams, who gave me some water, let me use the phone, and suggested a spot for me to pitch my tent---the former site of the construction camp for Pump Station 8.

A flat, graveled area, it turned out to be the perfect place for my favorite Alaska tradition---a solstice party. To celebrate the northern hemisphere's summer nod toward the sun, a group of friends traveled to see me via a road off the Richardson Highway. Among them was Mari Johnson, who has been at every solstice observance (winter and summer) with me since winter solstice of 1994. Mari and her husband Dorian used Dutch ovens to cook chicken and potatoes over the coals of a solstice fire. To cap a great evening of good friends and poems read aloud, the moon rose bulbous and orange to the south when the sun finally dipped below the northern horizon.

I shared a few memorable hiking days from Pump Station 8 to Moose Creek Bluff with John Arntz and Nadia Sureda. We knew we were getting close to civilization when the sounds of Anthrax and a nearby party prevented us from camping on French Creek.

Moose Creek Bluff is where people start populating the pipeline's path through Fairbanks. Because I didn't have time before my trip to contact the 59 pipeline right-of-way landowners between there and the pipeline tourist viewpoint 20 miles north, I picked my way through Fairbanks on routes other than the pipe. At night, Clara brought me back to her house so I didn't have to camp on the highway or in someone's back yard. (We are, however, tenting in her yard to keep alive my streak of outside nights in a tent.)

For the first 10 miles of the detour, I didn't bring Jane, who stayed here at Clara's house. I walked in ditches filled with itchy plants along the Richardson Highway, and many times I walked on the road itself as I went through North Pole. I missed my buddy Jane, but asphalt and dogs don't mix. Besides, I never asked her if she wanted to walk across Alaska, and I don't think the omission of 10 miles has bothered her.

I walked into a nice welcome from the gang at the Geophysical Institute, including Director Syun-Ichi Akasofu, at a truck weigh station on the Richardson Highway. They held up signs and banners for Jane and me. I enjoyed the hugs and handshakes, as Jane did the pets.

From there, Jane and I ventured onto Fort Wainwright, crossed the Chena River via a narrow bridge, and walked up the downhill ski slope into Birch Hill Recreation Area. Before I reached the top of the hill, a swarm of people with ski poles descended on Jane and me. It was John Estle and his cross-country skiing training group, many people of which I knew. Over the top of Birch Hill, my friend Andy Sterns was running a 10-kilometer race on the ski trails. I also watched local humor writer Scott McCrea finish second in the race. Afterward, I invited him to hike an 800-foot section of pipeline, as he suggested in one of his columns.

A night later, Clara, Jane and I hiked to the Steese Highway tourist viewpoint, pipeline mile 450. While hiking through the heavy, cool air of a summer night, I remembered posing for pictures there two months ago, before the hike. Now, Jane and I have walked back home, but we're still not even halfway to Prudhoe Bay. After two days of rest here, and the prospect of a few more, I'm sure we'll be quite ready to finish what we started.

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