After a flight from McCarthy to Gakona on the mail plane, a drive to Summit Consulting on the Tok Cutoff, a visit to Fast Eddie's in Tok, and a five-hour drive home, my friend Andy and I returned from the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic about a week ago. I'm just now mustering the strength to write.

Andy, Rob Dapice, and I took nine days to cover the 150 miles from Nabesna to McCarthy. And we were moving for 14 hours a day and couldn't do it any faster. We spent half our time carrying skis and walking over haystacks of glacial moraine, which is hard on the daily mileage and the soul.

Skolai Creek is the crux of this trip. Flowing from one high glacier to another, Skolai Creek looks like 15 innocent miles on the map until you zoom in on the contour lines. Then you see the canyons you need to cross to travel its length. You can't travel along the creek because of pinch-points that create frozen waterfalls. So, the creek forces you to walk uphill, for miles, in directions that don't lead to McCarthy. Took us two very full days to make it those 15 east-west miles. But while stuck there we had some of the most scenic camping in Alaska, with avalanching Hole-in-the-Wall Glacier our breakfast view. Sublime.

I'll write up the trip more thoroughly in an Alaska magazine article or two, but wrap up here by saying the Classic made me feel like crying every day. At other times, I thought I was the luckiest person alive. And Andy and I had the honor of traveling with Robbie, a man who had gotten out of the Army one day before the race. Robbie said the Classic was harder than Ranger school, and flying to Gakona reminded him in ways of flying out of Iraq. He had a great spirit for the trip, picking me up many times at my lower points, and he always fired up the stove with a smile every night. He's now headed for a new life in Washington, DC, a long way from Skolai Creek, and his wife Juliana is expecting their first child. Happy travels to a good man.

An early morning water-ski on the Nizina River. Refreshing!