Trip, race & hunt reports
For the last 12 months, my life has revolved around a singular purpose: to complete the Alaska-Yukon Expedition. In the first six months I planned how to do it, which entailed intricate spreadsheets, goodie boxes from sponsors, and Sam’s Club shopping carts overflowing with food. And for the last six months (168 days, to be…
Anaktuvuk Pass, AK I grew up in a Masschusetts suburb where I found “wilderness” in abandoned gravel pits and marshy wetlands that had escaped development. Later trips to New Hampshire’s Presidential Range and Maine’s Mahoosuc Mountains made my childhood playgrounds seem tame, and through high school they set my standards for what constituted wilderness. But…
The section between Dawson City, YT, and Fort McPherson, NT, will be memorable for several things. It was the first of my huge pushes: 390 miles long with two weeks of food. This leg was also great training for the upcoming Brooks Range: conditions were cool and damp, my pack was heavy, the route was…
Dawson, Yukon Territory There’s a point in every trip when I start to sense the finish. On trips of less than a month, I usually sense it from the start–I know about how long the trip will take and I often have concrete plans post-trip. But on longer trips, the expedition becomes a lifestyle with…
Dawson, Yukon Territory Earlier tonight I pulled into the historic gold rush town of Dawson, which marks the end of my 450-mile float on the Yukon River (starting in Whitehorse) and the beginning of my final leg through the wilds of northern Yukon and northern Alaska back to Kotzebue. I had been somewhat dreading this…
Haines, Alaska Before I began this trip in March my friend Buzz Burrell remarked that he thought “the crux” of it was the first two weeks, when I’d be facing severe winter conditions. If I could get through that, he seemed to say, I’d be in the clear, like a rock climber who makes it…
The Lost Coast’s southern half started with the same themes of the northern half: beaches, bears, bays, and (thankfully to a milder extent) bugs. But the experience was quite different — and distinctly more challenging — between Lituya Bay and the town of Gustavus. As happened to me in the western Alaska Range, nature forced…
I’m writing from Yakutat, an isolated 600-person community that marks the mental halfway point of this trip’s “Lost Coast” section. The Lost Coast is a ~400-mile-long strip of temperate rainforest squeezed widthwise by the Gulf of Alaska and the Chugach Range, and bookended lengthwise by the Copper River Delta (east of Cordova) and Icy Straits…
Cordova, Alaska Two weeks ago I shipped my skis home and picked up my packraft, which I will carry until the very end of this expedition in October. Most people have never heard of packraft, which Wikipedia defines as “small, portable inflatable boat designed for use in all bodies of water, including technical whitewater and…
Follow adventurer Andrew Skurka as he skis, hikes, and rafts 4,720 miles through eight national parks, two major mountain ranges, and some of North America’s wildest rivers in Alaska and the Yukon from March to October. Read his blog updates here. The Alaskan wilderness has brought me to tears twice on this trip, both times…