September 29, 2007

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Another weekend in the Alaskan wilderness. Last weekend was spent near Devil’s Pass, a beautiful spot where three valleys meet like a Mercedes emblem.

Kris took Friday off and I skipped out of work early so that we could make the ten mile hike before dark. It is equinox, so our daylight advantage has finally faded to zero and we now enter a deficit. We got to the trailhead by two and made the hike in less than five hours, a pretty brisk pace given the 1400 foot elevation gain. Our accommodations were spectacular, a newly rebuilt cabin along the Resurrection Trail near Resurrection pass. The cabin had lots of windows and looked out over the treeless valley.

We made dinner and I screwed around with the oil stove, but couldn’t get the fuel to flow through the plugged lines. The only thing more irritating than spending a night in the cold is spending a night in the cold knowing that you carried a half a gallon of useless fuel ten miles.

I set an alarm for 2:00 AM. I got up, threw on a few layers and headed outdoors. I was hoping to see the Northern Lights, but all I got was stars, amazing stars, blinding numbers of stars. I have only seen a sky like that a few times in my life. I felt small and insignificant. I felt cold. A clear September night in the mountains is actually quite cold. We had frost. I also felt fear. Standing outdoors in the dark with a knowledge of what could be out there looking at me worked with my foggy middle-of-the-night brain to create fear. I tried to resist the temptation to turn on the light I had with me, but I simply had to scan the nearby brush to calm my nerves a little.

On Saturday, we got off to a casual start. I headed out onto the tundra to find some blueberries for breakfast. Blueberries are pretty good in oatmeal. After breakfast, we began to consider our options for the day. I looked at a map and suggested a couple of ridges to climb. Kris had a desire to see Resurrection Pass which was a couple miles up the trail. I identified a route up and over a mountain that would cut the bend in the trail and drop us down near the pass. We weren’t sure if we would make it up the route or make it down, but we were willing to turn around at any point. We had all day.

The first concern was the heavy brush near the trail level. We had to bust through chest high willows and alders on a steep side slope to get to the ridgeline we had identified as our route up. Progress was slow, but we didn’t have far to go. We finally arrived at the ridge and the slope soon reduced to a manageable level. We climbed over 2000 feet, stopping for lunch near a false summit, ducking behind the peak to get out of the wind. We continued up a wide bowl, selecting a route toward a domed peak to avoid what appeared to be a steep lip up to the next ridgeline.

As we approached the domed peak, a pointy object came into view. It was a fiberglass enclosure with lifting lugs on each of its four corners. The object sat squarely on the summit of this mountain. We tried to guess what it was. There was no power source, no solar panels or wind powered generator. There was no path leading up and no landing pad or landing strip available. In the middle of nowhere, a strange fiberglass object sat on the top of a lonely mountain.

We navigated over the top and began to get a sense of our options for the down route. The easiest slope on the map appeared to be a long hike. An alternative ridge that looked steep on the map, didn’t look all that steep from above. We selected a general route and started to descend. The terrain can dramatically change appearance from different vantage points. As we descended, we had to make some choices. Small rock ridges gave us obstacles to navigate without being able to see the whole story. It turned out to be a relatively easy slope, but the uncertainty made it interesting. We were never really sure if we would come upon a cliff line that would send us back up hill to find another route.

Once we got lower, a new obstacle began to concern us. Thick vegetation surrounded the creeks and the trail. We found our way to a little rock outcropping that gave us a view to the finish. We found a route to the trail in a relatively dry area with very little vegetation. Our little adventure was without significant obstacles, but was filled with the joy of uncertainty.

We hiked back to the cabin on the trail. It was mid afternoon and we passed a few bicyclist. I wondered if they had enough time to get out before dark. We saw a group on horseback, but soon we were back on our own. I picked some berries and tried one more unsuccessful attempt to get the stove working. We ate dinner and when darkness set in at about 8:30, we went to bed.

It rained overnight. Above us, at about the level we had climbed to the day before, the precipitation was snow. The mountains were all painted white above 4000 feet, providing an easy comparison of the relative heights of different peaks. We expected to be wet on the way out, but the rain quickly stopped. By the time we arrived at the truck, it was another partly sunny fall day. The colorful trees looked like fire. We only saw a couple other people on Sunday and that was in the last mile of our trip. We know we were following a couple of other hikers out by the footprints, but we spent another day, mostly alone in the wilderness.

We didn’t see much wildlife over the weekend. We saw signs of bears, caribou, and moose. I was surprised we didn’t see bears with all the berries above treeline after salmon season. The bears should have been up there getting their last sweet meal before turning in for the winter. We did see some ducks on the mountain lakes. We saw a large congregation of spruce grouse. We saw a few ptarmigans whose plumage was already changing into winter white. We saw a few swans on the lakes along the road on the way home. They should be making their way through now.

I had a bad day at work last week. Nothing unusual, just one of those days that makes you wonder what you are doing. I came home and did a little online job searching. It is always reassuring to find many options, even if I don’t apply for any of them. I contemplated the implications of working for an oil company on the North Slope, the disruptiveness of being away from home for two weeks at a time and long hours weigh against tripling my salary and running instead of walking toward retirement. It is a difficult mathematical equation. Lifestyle vs. money. Nothing really motivated me to change directions, but it is always helpful to remember that I have choices.

This exercise had one other benefit. I tripped across an ad for a job that sounded perfect for Kris. It is essentially a project manager position implementing a new database system for Medicaid. The job is in her current department. It would be the replacement for one of the databases she already uses. She applied and has already interviewed for it. They have already contacted at least one of her references. It seems likely that she will get an offer.

I have my official interview for the department supervisor next Monday. I thought I was looking at an unprecedented raise and a chance to leapfrog Kris in the salary department. It now seems likely that we will both get significant increases in salary and new jobs and responsibilities. It would still be less than we made in Ohio, but not by much. We shall see what happens.

I had a bit of a home project this week. The zone valves on our heating system have been a little sticky over the last year and a half. Sometimes half the condo would be cold if a valve stuck closed. Worse yet, sometimes half the condo would be hot when a valve stuck open. When I woke up to 85 degrees downstairs, I knew it was time to replace them. I found the same make and model and figured I could just swap the internals rather than messing with soldering in the new valve bodies. This should have been a half hour job, but the screws were rusted and wouldn’t budge. I finally gave up and bought some new fittings and pipe so that I could install the new valve bodies. I soldered 14 joints and filled the system. Everything looked good, no leaks. I turned on the heat and within 15 minutes, I had a major leak in one of my connections. 13/14 is still ‘A’ work, right? I drained the system again and re-soldered the leaking joint. No leaks, but 15 minutes after turning the heat on, the relief valve opened with a loud poof. Relief valves are the last layer of safety and I was a little disturbed that it had popped. I wasn’t sure what I had done wrong. I could see how I might have affected the operation of one of the temperature switches, but the second switch should have worked to prevent overheating. I figured out that the switches were wired wrong. So while I normally worry about failures after working on heating systems, this time I feel pretty good about having corrected a problem that could have had catastrophic results.