Andrew Skurka is an accomplished 28-year-old professional backpacker who is most well known for his two monumental long-distance hiking firsts -– the 6,875-mile Great Western Loop and the 7,778-mile Sea-to-Sea Route. He was named the 2007 “Adventurer of the Year” by National Geographic Adventure and the 2005 “Person of the Year” by Backpacker. (read more)
Starting June 17: Track me in Alaska via my SPOT Satellite Messenger!
SUMMER & FALL 2009 SCHEDULE
(Posted in the wee hours of May 27th)
A busy Summer and Fall starts a few hours from now, when I slide behind the wheel of my car and begin driving towards Bozeman, MT. The 10-hour drive will be broken up by a few pit-stops, including at the La Sportiva and Headsweats offices here in Boulder in order to pick up some gear, and at the Cabella's in Billings, MT, for some other needs. I should stop and get a haircut too but I think that's going to have to wait. Given the hour (2 AM), coffee breaks are a given.
I'm really excited about the next 4 months:
May 28-30 | I start with a 3-day packrafting instructor's training course with Backpacking Light Magazine, which will be held on the Madison River just outside of Yellowstone National Park.
June 1-5 | Immediately afterwards I travel to southern Utah in order to help teach a 5-day lightweight backpacking course for Realms of Inquiry, a progressive private school based in Salt Lake City with a student body that really impressed me when I presented there in January 2007.
June 12-14 | I return to Bozeman after the course in order to instruct a 3-day lightweight backpacking course (WS1-LWB) for Backpacking Light Magazine. I understand there are still a few open slots for this course if you're interested -- it will be a very helpful course if you are just getting into backpacking or lightweight backpacking.
June 15 through July 22 | This is my biggest single trip of the summer -- 700 miles through the Alaskan wilderness, through the Kenai Mountains, Kenai Fjords, Chugach Range, and the Talkeetna Mountains. Of the 700 miles, about 200 miles will be done in a packraft and about 350 miles will be off-trail, leaving only about 150 miles of trails and roads.
July 26 through August 1 | The Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic is the "original" adventure race. The rules are very simple: start at the Gerstle River where it crosses the Denali Highway at 10am on the 26th, and finish 180 miles later at McKinley Village by 5pm on the 1st; you have to carry a satellite phone; you can't follow paved roads; and if you are willing to carry it, you can use it (e.g. packraft, bicycle, hang glider, skis, etc.). The finish rate among rookies is less than 25 percent; some years have seen less than half the entrants finish, which says a lot about the difficulty of the courses since most entrants are native Alaskans.
August 2-13 | In the 2 weeks between the AMWC and my return flight, I would like to get up to the Brooks Range in the northern part of the state. This area is notably different than the other places I will have been in Alaska, including the fact that it's mostly north of the continent's treeline. Hopefully by early-August the bugs will not be as bad and the bears will not be as hungry as they usually are earlier in the summer.
August 15 through late-September | I will be back in Bozeman in order to instruct more backpacking courses. Backpacking Light is offering two courses that I really want to point out: the 7-day Summer Lightweight Backpacking (WT1-SBP) course and the 2-week Long-Distance Backpacking (WS2-LDB) course, both of which will run out of Bozeman and be held in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I hopefully will also be going to California for a week in order to guide a trip with the Southern Yosemite Mountain Guides.
I would like to try to post some photos and/or some short comments between trips here on the website, though between a tight schedule and limited internet/computer access, I'm not sure if that's going to happen very often. I'll definitely get caught up once I return in the Fall -- I'm sure that I'll be brining back some awesome footage and stories!
LATEST NEWS
June 6, 2009
A quick check-in between outings...
Returned to Bozeman this morning from an awesome 5-day trip in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument with eight high school students from Realms of Inquiry. The Colorado Plateau is not a preferred destination of mine in early-June but the temperatures were relatively cool, and it helped greatly that we were walking (or, on occasion, swimming) through water for about two-thirds of the trip (in Death Hollow and the Escalante River).
This was my first extended outing as an instructor with a high school group, and I feel fortunate that the students were top-notch -- smart, motivated, inquisitive, and good humored -- and that their teacher, Nate Auck, spent the last month working with the students to have this be a lightweight backpacking trip. I don't think it's a coincidence that the students experienced zero blisters or that there were no complaints about sore muscles or about the hiking experience in general. I guess that today's youth can discover the joys of hiking, especially when it's not work!
A few pictures...
Our 36-mile loop started just outside of Esclante. We followed the Boulder Mail Trail to Death Hollow, descended Death Hollow to the Escalante River, and hiked east to the Escalante Natural Bridge before following the river canyon back west to our van. The highlight of the trip was definitely Death Hollow, which has at least one pool that hikers must swim across.
All of the students began the trip with a pack weight of less than 22 lbs, including food for 4 full days and some water; their base weights were less than 15 lbs. Kudos to their teacher, Nate Auck (on far left), for showing his students "the light."
Immediately before the Realms trip I was on a 3-day packrafting trip with five other instructor's from Backpacking Light Magazine. We floated about 40 miles of Class I-II water on the Madison River, which flows out of Yellowstone National Park and becomes the Missouri River when it merges near Three Forks with the Gallatin and Jefferson Rivers. It was undoubtedly the easiest 40 miles I've ever covered through a wild area -- the potential of a packraft for wilderness travel is now completely clear to me.
Journalist Brett French from the Billings Gazette joined us for the trip. You can read the article on the Gazette's website.
A few pictures from the float...
Inflating our packrafts at the end of Bear Trap Canyon, which we mostly portaged in order to avoid some Class IV rapids that are especially dangerous right now with the high spring run-off.
Below Bear Trap Canyon the river became wide with occasional Class II features. The Madison's headwaters, the majestic-looking Spanish Peaks, loomed behind us.