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Tailwinds in the Taiga - a bicycle trip in Alaska Manju Bansal Manju grew up in Chandigarh, India and presently lives with his wife Sheila in the San Francisco Bay Area. An adventure loving soul since his youth, Manju is a trained mountain-climber and has scaled heights over 20,000 ft high. For the past few years Manju has toured extensively on his cycle in various parts of the world, including the Rockies, the Alps and Alaska. Manju has been a columnist for the Times of India & the Economic Times, The Nation (Thailand) and Brandweek Publications (USA). He holds an MBA from UCLA and when he is not planning his next outdoor adventure he is the Founder of ThinkNotes, Inc., a knowledge-management software start-up. He can be reached at ThinkNotes@yahoo.com

Introduction

In the strong midday sun, it seemed like a boulder stuck in the gravel bar of the Toklat river. Located deep inside Alaska's Denali National Park, the Toklat was just another glacial-fed stream, a braided and silty remnant of the summer melt. Looking over the river from a slight hill, we had a vantage view of the river valley and the dirt road that snaked beside it, heading towards the Alaskan range and the snowy summit of Mt McKinley. Having biked for a few hours already that morning, we were a little tired as we stopped momentarily to rest at the Toklat crossing. The unforgiving gradients, a gravel road and constant dust clouds from passing tourist buses were slowly taking a toll on our reserves. There were stray patches of ice still lying around in the river bed and dirt and rocks in a million hues of khaki littered the landscape.

Suddenly, I noticed something moving.

"You see that"? I asked Chris, my biking partner.

"What"? he responded in guttural English, laced with tones of his native Germany.

"That big thing there". Guess I wasn't very good at giving direction since the entire river bed was littered with boulders the size of small houses.

My eyes scanned the horizon, expecting yet another moose or caribou, the more plentiful of the Park's denizens. This thing, however, seemed to be far too bulky to be a caribou and too short to be a moose. I looked again, this time using my lens as a spotting scope.

"Chris, I think that is a bear out there", I said nervously.

"Really, very good, Manju. Our first bear, this is good".

And I was thinking, if we can see the bear with our naked eyes, it couldn't be that good.

In that instant, fear and excitement became one as I found myself focusing on that unmistakable hump behind the shoulders - it was indeed a grizzly bear and at less than a hundred yards away, it was closer than I would have liked it to be.

The bear simulator at the Park Entrance had mentioned somewhere that grizzlies could run at bursts of up to 35 miles and perhaps only a champion sprinter could realistically think of outrunning one. Clearly that ruled the two of us out. At this point the bear continued to casually saunter towards us, and I could now make out its form more distinctly. I wasn't sure if humans were part of a grizzly's diet but I wasn't in any mood to find out either. Quickly taking a couple of photos, we started pedaling away briskly, my camera only half stuffed in the handlebar bag. Every 10 yards or so I looked back, trying to locate that tell-tale plume of dust that would herald the arrival of another tourist bus and hopefully our ticket to safety if things got out of hand.

The bear continued on its feeding routine, scarcely glancing at us even though it did come real close to where we were first standing.

"A little too close, no", I asked?

"Ja, maybe", Chris nodded. "But a good photo".

Denali Park, we found out, did not disappoint those who came looking for Ursus Horribilis, the mighty brown bear also known as the Grizzly.

Bring your dreams, they say, for only in Alaska will you find land large enough to realize them. Alaska is simply gigantic, by any standard. With a landmass about a fifth of the entire contiguous 48 and a coastline greater than that of both coasts combined, Alaska is home to over half of America's national parkland. A little over half a million people live in Alaska, which gives the state an average population density of about 1 person per square mile. If New York had the same population density, there would only be 12 people living on the island of Manhattan. Sitting at home, it was quite enjoyable to trace my finger over the highways in the beautifully illustrated National Geographic Atlas and chart out a route that would go right across the state. With its right blend of size, wildness and remoteness, Alaska seemed to me to be a perfect place to ride our bikes. I especially liked its state motto "The Last Frontier", something definitely more romantic than the more prosaic "Show Me State" or even the obvious "The Grand Canyon State". My friend Chris Bantel joined me from Munich and this is the story of our bike ride in the Taiga, the "land of sticks."

Our ride began in the comfortable Anchorage Guest House, a home turned into a hostel for independent travelers. The morning of the 4th of June found Chris and I in the hostel's driveway surrounded by a virtual mountain of gear. One singular thought occupied our minds - how on earth were we planning to carry all this stuff on our bikes. And even if we could fit all that gear in our panniers, how exactly were we planning to move those bikes? The conversation focused on very simple though relevant things.

"Chris, you still want to carry those black jeans with you? And those hiking boots, they look quite heavy".

"Yes, but I don't have any other street clothes".

"Its Alaska, I am not sure we will need street clothes. I just wear my Gore-Tex pants if I need to, seems to work fine".

Chris gave me the disapproving look of someone who was very style-challenged, but nonetheless continued to reduce the weight in his panniers. The pistachio nuts went in, the wool sweater was tossed out; the camera lenses went in, the leather hikers out. The extra clothes went out, the cappuccino maker went in - we may have been on a bike trip but that was no reason to abandon civilization.

A few hours later, we rolled out of the hostel driveway, our bikes weighed down like two brightly colored pack mules. The journey had begun, there was no looking back.

The Heat & The Bugs

When we were planning our gear list, we had factored in the fact that it could get quite cold in Alaska at any time of the year, with snowfall possible even in summer. What we hadn't factored in was the fact that some parts of Alaska could get as hot as Arizona or Texas, with daytime highs hitting over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you add the incessant sunlight, which was usually more than 20-22 hours depending on where one was, the days never really cooled down until well into the night. While polypropylene was useful in the chill, the unexpected continental heat totally did us in. Even so, the weather was not the worst thing to deal with. At best it involved adding or shedding layers and after some time we began appreciating the small respites we would get in order to adjust our clothing layers. Mosquitoes, however, were something else.

Summer in Alaska is characterized by 2 key things - never ending daylight and never ending swarms of mosquitoes. And just for perspective, these were not your average anopheles looking for a quick nip. Not even close. These were blood-sucking hordes who would have done Genghis proud. There never really was a time when these critters would call it a day. You moved slower than 5 miles an hour and they would be swarming all over you like an organic halo, only this one gave off not light but aggravation.

At the end of the trip we were convinced that if these mosquitoes were marine creatures, they would have been the same species as the piranha. The only thing that seemed to deter these bugs turns out to be the all-powerful DEET, a compound that is potentially toxic in higher concentrations. Just a minor side effect, DEET also has a tendency to melt (yes, melt) all kinds of plastic and synthetic fibers. Ball point pens, bike shorts, camera filters and numerous other items fell victim to this Agent Orange look-alike; the only saving grace is that DEET has been around since 1946 when it was first developed by the US Army, and while several other chemicals of that era have been discontinued DEET continues to find its way in over 230 products made by over 70 companies. I figured, forget the EPA or the FDA, it must be a safe product otherwise those liability lawyers would have been litigating it long ago like tobacco or asbestos.

Papillon

Anecdotally, Alaska is the penal outpost of the lower 48. Several long-time residents we met along the way shared some interesting (and horrifying) tales of felons being loose in the bush, the vastness of the Alaskan landscape being their perfect cloak of anonymity. One enterprising family that ran a roadhouse in Paxson, AK swore about how they never called the State Troopers if anything untoward happened. They simply chose to settle it in a manner befitting the state motto. Apparently it takes the police days if not weeks to respond to calls of burglary, armed robbery and the like, so residents in remote areas prefer to grab their weapon and personally shoot the intruder than worry about calling the posse. For someone from the Bay Area where you can get pulled over for even the slightest traffic violation, this whole scenario of lawlessness did seem a trifle unnerving.

One morning as we were walking into a small roadside café en route from Valdez, Chris heard someone call out sharply, "Drop the bag, son".

He looked around and saw that the store was empty save for a grizzled old man behind the counter. This John Muir lookalike, with a flowing long beard and very cold eyes, stared at Chris dispassionately. Chris gave him a cursory look and continued walking.

"Drop the bag, son", this time the command had an edge to it, almost as if the store clerk was losing patience with our continued interest in patronizing his establishment. Chris also saw the man bend down and grab something from under the counter.

It was the man's movement that Chris understood more than his words. He stopped in his tracks and quietly dropped the handlebar bag that he was carrying with him. For a moment we thought we were going to be mugged in this roadside café that advertised coffee, ice-cream and pop. Instead, the old man gave us a big smile and proceeded to warmly welcome us in his store. We ended up staying for over a half-hour, listening to the stories that the loquacious fellow seemed to be so full of. He later proceeded to show us his not insignificant arsenal of handguns, shotguns and semi-automatics, all apparently in his possession to guard what we thought was a pretty rickety store anyway. In his own rough and tumble way, the man was charming albeit a little paranoid. Perhaps, he too was an undiscovered felon biding his years in the vastness of the tundra, or more likely just another merchant making sure he didn't get robbed by 2 questionable bikers.

Kind Encounters

Our riding route took us on the main highways that criss-cross Alaska. The George Parks Highway which connected Anchorage to Fairbanks, the Richardson Highway that connected Fairbanks to the port town of Valdez and the Glenn Highway that linked the Parks and the Richardson. We also were fortunate to also be able to ride not only on the dirt road inside Denali Park but also on the very isolated Denali Highway (Hwy No 8), which used to be the original road that led to Denali National Park before the other roads were built. Denali Highway to this day remains unpaved and while boasting a woeful lack of support services, is one of the prettiest roads in the state. An almost complete absence of traffic, no road construction activity and a scenic placement right alongside the Alaskan range makes Denali Highway a pleasure to ride. The presence of several BLM (Bureau of Land Management) campgrounds along the way only makes it that much more enjoyable.

One evening while we were struggling on some steep grades, a converted school-bus-turned-camper-van lumbered past us. My first reaction was that this was one of those Green Tortoises buses that ply north from California carrying with them mostly foreign tourists reliving the free-spirited lifestyles of the sixties. Though we were a little surprised to see a vehicle that size on that unpaved road, we didn't think much of it since Alaska has long been overrun by the Recreational Vehicle (RV) crowd.

As we rounded a bend a little further up, we saw that same bus stopped in the middle of the road. At this point the bus was about a 100 yards away from us. As we got closer, however, we noticed a gentleman standing behind the bus, a big smile on his face and a chilled can of Coke in each of his outstretched hands. David Hanc was a schoolteacher from New England who was travelling across the country with his wife and 2 kids in that converted school bus and had been on the road for the past 10 months or so. Apparently, when he was much younger, he had been on a bike trip across Iowa and in some small prairie town a kind soul had given him a similar beverage - since then, whenever he could, David would help bikers like us, a habit he kept up with even in the wilds of Alaska.

Conclusion

In all we racked up about 800 odd miles on our bikes, over 225 of which were done on various gravel roads. It was by far the single longest ride we had ever done. We saw some truly magnificent animals - grizzly bears, caribou, moose, bald eagles, ptarmigans, foxes, snowshoe hares, all living free in their natural habitat, their lives defined not by the whims of man but by the laws of evolution. But it wasn't the animals or the rigor of the ride itself that will make it the most memorable trip - it was the independent spirit of the people that will forever stick in my mind.

Either way you cut it, Alaska is a wild and unpredictable land and not just because of the animals. At times we wound up riding amongst the most spectacular landscapes, perhaps unmatched anywhere else, where nature seemed in perfect harmony. And the there were moments when it seemed like we were riding in northern Idaho, amongst bigots and radical militiamen whose sole purpose on earth was to spread hatred and chaos. Despite their roughness, however, I was impressed by the sheer will and free-spiritedness of these hardy souls several of whom had left decent jobs in the lower 48 to pursue their dream of living in the wilderness. Irrespective of the social pecking order they came from, all individuals that we met had a slight edge to them, an attitude and an arrogance that comes from living self-sustainably in the middle of nowhere.

Alaska is the land of adventure and we thought we belonged there since we were discovering its treasures with the sweat of our brow. But the average backcountry resident viewed us in the same disdainful light he reserved for motor-home folks. We did meet some very nice people though - like the kindly orthopedic surgeon who warned us about the substance abuse problem in Alaska and the bus driver from Gray Lines who refused to take any money from us and the erudite hosts at the Denali Manor B&B in tiny Cantwell, AK. In the end, however, I realized that Alaskans didn't really welcome strangers, they only tolerated them because of economic reasons. No matter how outdoorsy our pursuits, seeking acceptance from a group that prided itself on its isolation was just asking for too much. But even though there was no soulful warmth there was no malice either, it wasn't good or bad, it just was. And that I think sums up the spirit of The Last Frontier.

Of course, next time I look at a teddy, I will think of that bear merrily feeding away in the Toklat melt-waters. Every trip we take in our lives leaves us an image that is forever branded on our minds, that grizzly was to be my memory of Alaska.

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