Is there anything out there to remind you more of your New Yorker-ness than the act of stepping into a proper sporting goods store?
For me, no — unless maybe that sporting goods store is in Alaska. At which point my fish-out-of-water-ness gives way to abject terror.
There was no backing out of this one, unfortunately. I was up in Anchorage for a summertime visit and the purpose of my trip was to go hiking. This was not one of those, Oh, let’s walk up the Hudson River type deals. It wasn’t even a Let’s take the train upstate and hike that mountain someone told us about that one time.
This was Alaska hiking. The kind where you can die from exposure in August. The kind where animals will tear you, limb from limb, just for fun. The kind that comes with packing lists.
Wandering in the front door of the REI store on Northern Lights Boulevard (at the corner of Arctic, in case you ever need it), clad in track pants and a hooded sweatshirt, I looked better dressed for a Saturday morning bagel run than for hiking the Crow Pass Trail in Alaska’s Chugach Range.
To an Alaskan, the hike’s probably not much: Just a few thousand feet up in a few miles — from the sea-level coastal rainforest landscape that characterizes the area south of the city of Anchorage, up above the treeline, into some hardcore, Alpine-like bare rocks and onto a mountain pass covered in snow.
If I was lucky, I was told, it wouldn’t be blizzarding; that way we could hike over the pass and down a bit to the nearby Raven Glacier. (Oh, boy. A blizzard in June. Where do I sign.)
The packing list seemed pretty serious for a day hike. Also, I had nothing on it, either. Day pack. (I gave up carrying a backpack around when I graduated highschool.) Rain gear. (You mean, an umbrella? No?) Warm layers. Sunglasses, sunscreen, bug repellent. There was more.
All I could think of was that I was now on the hook for $100 or more worth of gear and supplies, just to get out on the trail without being laughed at. At least I’d brought proper hiking boots. (I gave myself a little pat on the back for that.)
Hiding out behind the clearance rack, I was hoping to do some stealth price-checking when a smiling employee appeared out of nowhere.
I’m hiking Crow Pass tomorrow, I asked her. What do I need? She didn’t know. So she went and got another salesperson, Ben.
Okay, Ben, I said. Give it to me straight. How unprepared am I.
“Honestly? You’re fine,” he said. Some good wool socks, some long underwear, my good boots, a breathable t-shirt and I’d be set, he reckoned.
As Ben found me what I needed, the he went on to talk about how, you know, really, do people actually need all of that fancy equipment, and hey, remember when you used to just put bread bags over your socks and call it waterproofing?
I should have known. This a town, after all, where you can almost die scrambling up a windswept, treeless peak called Flattop; where you, as you are about to collapse from breathing so hard, will be overtaken by chubby ladies in Juicy Couture tracksuits, rocking out to their iPods. By small children. By old people walking their dogs. In New York, we go to the gym and watch “The Good Wife” on our iPads to get us through our 30 minutes on the elliptical. Anchorage does 5 miles and 3,500 feet up into the damned sky before breakfast. Gear? Please. For many locals, gear means bringing the dog along in order to scare off bears. Or perhaps a gun. Or both.
The next day, feeling toasty in my $18 (on clearance!) long underwear and $14 wool socks, I drove south along the shores of the Turnagain Arm — one of Alaska’s most scenic drives, conveniently located just outside of Anchorage — to the small town of Girdwood, 35 miles away. Girdwood is renowned for its hippie-ish leanings and known for being home to the state’s only proper ski resort, Alyeska. In the shadow of the tram, which in winter takes skiers up to the 2,300-foot summit, I poked my head into the small yurt were I’d been told I’d find my guide for the Crow Pass hike. She was there — a diminutive but hearty, born-and-raised Alaskan named Amy.
As I considered the day’s hike, in which one gains more than 2,000 feet in elevation in barely 3 miles (surely, someone could build a tram up there?), Amy’s Subaru Outback bounced along Girdwood’s back roads to collect the only other hiker in our group. Her name was Evy, a Belgian scientist down from Anchorage for the day, taking time out from a business trip. Both ladies were dressed to the nines in waterproof gear, but neither of them gave my rubber band / paperclip get-up even close to a second look. I felt reassured.
And then we climbed. Through the almost rainforest-like thicket of northern foliage and out onto the treeless peak, past waterfalls, across massive snowfields, over streams, through small clumps of mostly friendly mountain goats, past a still partially frozen (in late June) lake and into more than a few clouds. It was amazing.
Rounding the final corner to the actual pass, Amy warned us to put on warm gear — it could, she said, get pretty rough up there, with winds and snow. I’d been too cheap to buy a waterproof jacket — something I knew I wouldn’t need again until the fall, so I’d take my chances — but it turned out that it barely mattered. Making the final turn into the pass, not only was the wind barely noticeable, the sun had come out in earnest, for the first time that morning. It was so peaceful, we ended up sitting directly at the top of the pass for nearly an hour, eating our various lunches (mine was raw almonds, freeze-dried apples and bottled water, totaling $8 at the store in Anchorage — thrifty and delicious).
The climb up had been intense; the climb down proved just as much of a workout, in its own way. We stopped again to see the mountain goats, which let us hang and take pictures before eventually giving us the stare of death, sending us on our way. With the sun now out, we saw our first fellow hikers of the day (surprising, since this, apparently, qualifies as one of the more popular hikes in the state). Halfway down, I had lost most feeling in my lower extremities, but somehow made it down to the car and back to Anchorage in time for happy hour, because all great wilderness adventures deserve to end in beer.
The Crow Pass hike with Ascending Path costs $99 per person; it takes approximately 5 hours to complete the 6-mile round-trip. More information at ascendingpath.com. To learn more about visiting the state, check out travelalaska.com.
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