alaska v2.0 – getting in

so we finally get to the park all in one piece. the visitors center and entrance area of the park is very different than what you see when you actually get inside the park. at the entrance of the park you will find a traditional campground outfitted for RVs, trailers, and camping of most types. You’ll find modern bathrooms and even a mercantile where you can take a shower, wash your clothes, or get an ice cream cone and read the newspaper. They even have wireless internet! Even before you get into the park there is a little strip of commercial territory where you will find all sorts of touristy hang-outs. More on that in a later post.

The Wilderness Access Center (WAC) is a nice big building where you can make your reservations for campsites, tour buses, watch a movie about the park, and grab a quick souvenir. Right next to the WAC, is a wee little building called the Backcountry Information Center (BIC). The BIC is where you must go before you can enter the backcountry. So here we are in the BIC looking at maps that cover the walls and getting some advice from one of the park employee’s. After checking things out, DeeAnn, Ren and I file into a little room to watch a 20 minute safety video. Then we decide on which units we’d like to stay in the backcountry. The units are not campsites or campgrounds. The units are used to mark out different areas of the park. They only allow a certain number of backpackers into each unit at a time. This is enforced to keep the human “imprint” down and also to traffic backpackers and keep everyone from being in the more popular parts of the park. After this is all sorted out, they give you your bear kegs to keep the bears out of our food and our backcountry permit.

From here we quickly pack the food we are going to use for the next 2 1/2 days and every possible thing that carries a scent(toothpaste, some first aide items, soap, etc.) into the bear kegs and all the other food is thrown in a heavy duty garbage sack. Then we jump on the 4pm bus into the backcountry(the last one that goes out because it is a 4-5 hour ride one way to the end of the road which is only 90 miles long). It was only one hour to our first unit, however the time flies on those camper buses. If any wildlife is spotted, and there is plenty to go around, they stop the bus(and even shut it off sometimes) and everyone gets their photos and a peek at whatever might be hanging around.

Once we reach our unit, the driver stops, we grab our stuff and they drive away, leaving us miles away from anything familiar. What a strange feeling; relief with a touch of panic.

So we take our garbage bag of extra food and put it in a safe, locked container at the road, check our map, GPS, and compass, and start our hike. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into…..