2nd QUARTER 2003
EOG PEOPLE
B-2
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the passion. Gerry the wisdom and witty stories. Dick
the balance and insight. I brought along a Tom Clancy
novel, and a pad of paper and pen to chronicle what
went down. I mean, up.
We had all flown to Anchorage, and stayed at the
Earth B&B, a place known around the world as THE
place to stay in Anchorage while waiting to be flown to
big peaks, or waiting to be flown back home after
surviving big peaks. Margriet van Laake runs it. She's
a 60-ish Dutch woman who speaks seven languages
and gets to practice each of them almost daily in
climbing season. It's a large, older house in urban
Anchorage, as it were. Anchorage isn't really a city to
me, just a really big town that's very easy to get around
in. It has an REI store, a harbor, and a good-sized
airport, but there's still no traffic. We met climbers
from Spain, Switzerland, Austria, France, Latvia, South
America, England, Ireland, Italy, Russia, and America.
The Swiss and Spanish were friendliest, the French the
least.
Virtually every single person spoke at least a bit of
English. I sometimes feel we Americans have a lot to
learn to fully intermingle in the international
community. How many of us speak a second language,
let alone a third? The Swiss all speak German, Italian,
French, and English. The French all speak English, but
prefer not to let you know that tidbit. The Spanish
loved being here in America, and sought you out to
chat in English as best they could. The Latvians were
young, tall, strong, and a very handsome people. The
Irish, well, they were excited to share some of their
whiskey with us, and this was before they went off to
Denali. Almost all of the people at Earth B&B were
going to Denali itself, or a sister peak, or a lower gorge
or valley on it to ice climb. We were the other five
percent, the Bona-heads.
From Anchorage, we took a van for five hours due
east to Chitina, which is just a gravel airstrip on the
Copper River. Did I tell you about Alaskan roads?
Never mind, suffice it to say they are curvy, bumpy,
frost heaved, and long. And that's what passes for the
interstates! Our pilot, Paul Clauss, flew down in his '57
DeHavilland Otter, and landed using about 150 feet of
the runway. Granted, he had no load, and it was into
the wind, but come on! 150 feet? He took off with
about 1,800 pounds of payload, including us and our
gear, and we figured he used about 300 feet to get up.
It has a new turbocharged engine. Must have been the
into-the-wind thing. We landed 45 minutes east of
there at his resort, as it were, called Ultima Thule
Lodge. That's Scandinavian for Land at the Edge of
Nowhere, or something like that. His family home-
steaded there many decades ago, and when they made
Wrangell-St Elias National Park, they refused to sell
out and were grandfathered in as a private in-holding.
Paul, Donna, his folks, and their four kids have been
there so long, the river has now encroached upon their
buildings, and they were in the process of moving
buildings uphill to safer ground. Don't ask, it looked
like quite a process. They do most of their business
with hunters, fishermen, sightseers, river rafters, and
hikers. The W-SE is Americas' largest park. From
Claus' lodge, you can walk almost 50 miles in every
direction, and still be inside the W-SE. Talk about
remote!
His oldest daughter, Ellie, is a junior Iditarod
champ. That's right, she hushes muskies, I mean,
mushes huskies. Actually, the dogs are very small, far
smaller than a husky. Apparently, they can run forever,
or at least from Anchorage to Nome. Each dog lives in
a tiny doghouse, all lined up, all on wire runs. Ellie has
them pull her in an ATV in the summer for training.
She will turn 18 two days before next year's Iditarod
and will become the youngest person to ever run it.
Remember her name.
June 2 (Day 1). Paul flew us onto the glacier at
10,500 feet. We set up Base Camp, then carried small
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Crew members load their gear onto a 1957 DeHavilland
Otter, which will fly them from Anchorage to Base Camp
at 10,500 feet. From there, they will be on their own.
