We left Shishmaref two mornings ago for the 100-mile ride cross-country to the village of Deering. Before we left Shish, we stopped for gas again, because one of our five-gallon jugs was missing and the tanks on our machines were also a bit light. Here’s a donation can at the Shish store for the potential move to the Tin Creek site. There’s a price tag of $180 million, and the villagers will have to pitch in if they are going to pull off the move.

 

 

Here’s our friend Kaji, who flew into Shishmaref to help us with the drilling and logistics, and because he likes Shishmaref. He did a great film series on Shishmaref:

http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~vision-q/works.html 

 

Out of Shishmaref to Deering, more than 100 miles across tundra and sea ice, Kenji was again breaking trail, taking us on a straight line through very flat light. I asked him how he could navigate so well, and he says he uses the sun or other features of the landscape to keep oriented, and checks his GPS when he needs to.

 

We had almost no visibility for the entire 100 miles, and the light got so flat that I couldn’t see Tohru’s tracks in front of me. It was surreal, bumpy and a bit brutal, and I was glad to get to Deering, the first one-street village we had seen since Shaktoolik. Steve, the principal, let us into the school, and we met a few locals, including Calvin Moto and eighth-grader Ting-Mac Hailstone.

 

This morning, we took off again into flat light that Tohru described as being inside a ping-pong ball, and riding wasn’t much fun–we’d hit bumps on the sea ice without seeing them. We rode this way for about 5 hours and 90 miles.

 

Here we are finally hitting the markers for Kotzebue, after another stellar navigation job by Kenji. Today, with an invisible sun, he said he used the clouds to keep his bearings. And we were on sea ice. I continue to be impressed.

 

 

We made it! More than two weeks and 800 miles, stopping at 16 villages and installing permafrost monitoring stations at all of them. Saw a good portion of the fantastic, varied terrain of the Seward Peninsula. From the mouth of the Yukon to north of the Arctic Circle. We fly back to Fairbanks tomorrow. Thanks for coming along.

 

 

Named for Glieb Shishmarev, who sailed with Otto Kotzebue back in the day.

We rode about 80 bumpy miles in about a straight line on the shore of the frozen Chukchi Sea, having left the Bering behind. Probably never got above zero, but with the spring sun and all our snowmachining clothes, we are impervious.

Here's Ikpek, an Alaska place name but no longer really a place. Cabin's a little drifted.

When I dared take my eyes off the snow bumps in front of me, I looked left to the infinite sea ice of the Chukchi Sea. I was thinking, hoping, I might see a creature I never have, a beast that might not be here when my daughter is my age. Then, I crossed a fresh track!

Didn't see the polar bear, who seems to be walking off the horizon of the moon. But his track was fresh, and he probably heard the whine of our machines. The white bear lives!!

Kenji drilled his last borehole today, a nice one in the sandy soil of Shishmaref. Teacher and good guy Ken Stenak hung out with us and then gave us some coffee to ward off the -9 degree air temp. So sunny it doesn't seem to matter.

Here's how far we've gone. More than 600 miles in two weeks. Tomorrow, we break trail to Deering, and then we continue on to Kotzebue. As Dan Bull might have said, this one's off the charts.

We're closer to Russia than to the nearest movie theater.

Got here on a 75-mile ride, no trail, in Kenji we trust. The man who runs the store and sells the gas in Brevig Mission told us to come overland rather than go by the sea ice. Open water. Here he is telling Kenji the way.

On the way here, we crossed the Continental Divide, saw three musk ox, a moose, two foxes, and many tracks, among them wolverine, wolf, and what looked to be weasels.

Then we ran out of North America and into Wales. Wales is home to some of the most consistent winds in North America. And maybe the biggest snowdrifts:

It's also a place where three young Natives murdered this cocky white missionary in the late 1800s. Below is his monument. The older villagers weren't crazy about the missionary either, but they didn't like that the boys had acted without consulting the elders. The story is that the boys' uncles had each dig his own grave, then they shot the boys.

No shots fired today in Wales. Just the sound of Kenji's drill echoing off Cape Prince of Wales, the northern terminus of the continental divide.

And, though I have a column due tomorrow for Alaska mag that's nowhere near done, I was in Wales with the sun shining until 9:48 p.m. and not much wind, so I had to hike to the divide. Rebecca, the editor at AK, has to give me a break, because, how many times do you get to Wales? And you do read this blog, right Rebecca? Anyway, the late hike was my favorite part of the day. I sat on a rock near ancient gravesites on the cape, listened to a village dog bark and cakes of sea ice knocking against one another, and saw the sun set behind Fairway Rock, just this side of the dateline. Out from the end of America.

We're in Brevig now, a little village with an unusual story involving a mass grave and the 1918 flu. Seventy two of the eighty people living here in 1918 died within a week:

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF13/1386.html

We started the day in Nome, which was surprisingly sleepy despite today being the start of the All-Alaska Sweepstakes race.

We had to leave before the race start at 10 a.m. for our long ride along the road to Teller, about 70 miles away. But when Tohru and I walked into the Polar Cafe for breakfast, we recognized the only other people in there right away.

Lance Mackey, going for the triple crown, and his wife Tonya. I was more nervous than Lance was when I asked to take this picture. He's on the trail now, probably around Council. He's a living example of the law of attraction–good things happen if you envision them for yourself. And earlier this year he said he desired to finish in the top three in the Quest, top 10 in the Iditarod, and he wanted to win the All-Alaska Sweepstakes. He already borders on legend. A Sweepstakes win would make it official.

Our ride to Teller was surprisingly nice. I expected a road to be less thrilling than the country we have covered so far, but there was cool stuff out there.

Like this mountain, 3,879-foot Grand Singatook, taking a hit from the wind.

And this wolf, that must have been watching us as we motored by.

And this moose, hanging out in this old mining camp.

I was in Brevig a few years ago with my pal and then co-worker Hal, pictured risking his life below. He and I installed a Davis weather station on the roof of this school. Buddy, I'm happy to report that the current temperature is 8, and the wind is from the northeast at 4 mph.

My favorite village of all. The south-facing hillside it sits on, making for so many sunny days, the forest of tall spruce that make it an oasis in a land of tundra, the nice people like Jack and Joanna Adams who have us over for caribou stir fry, the caribou caught by Adrian. Something just feels right here.

T'was a nice ride from Elim, too. The sun had just popped above the horizon when Kenji finished talking with the three Elim students in the science class. We were on the trail again, and the snowmachine felt good. We're getting into a ryhthm now, that travel vibe where you just want to go, and see new stuff.

We scaled what some mushers call Little McKinley today. It's a white world of hills between Elim and Golovin. Here's Tohru making short work of it with his iron horse.

Windy up there, but it had been windier, as you can see from this lovely sastrugi. Sastrugi definition from Wiki–"Sastrugi are various surface irregularities resulting from wind erosion . . . Travel on the irregular surface of sastrugi can be very tiring, and can risk breaking skis—ripples and waves are often undercut, the surface is hard and unforgiving with constant minor topographic changes between ridge and trough."

We spent a good few hours in Golovin, where Kenji lectured and drilled two holes, and then we headed the 17 miles to White Mountain. The sun dazzled us all afternoon. Welcome to White Mountain.

And, finally, a sign from the Elim school library: