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Outside Magazine May 2001

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Infinite Range (cont.)

LIKE CHAMONIX before the French arrived: That's what I'm thinking when the clouds finally slip their moorings to reveal a range of glaciated shale and sandstone peaks rising 5,000 feet from the lakeshore. Six, eight, ten, a dozen spectacular mountains, offering everything from aggressive hiking to technical rock and ice climbing—and who knows they're here? Some of the peaks aren't even indicated on the contour lines of my map.

The Tebay Lakes were named after Dall sheep—debae in the Ahtna language of Alaska's Athabaskan culture—by a young cavalry officer named Lieutenant Henry T. Allen, who led a ragtag expedition up the Copper and Chitina Rivers in 1885. Following the precedent set by earlier explorers, Allen named Mount Blackburn (16,390 feet) and Mount Drum (12,010 feet) after high-level government functionaries. Once you're out here, you begin to understand the lieutenant's impulse. After a couple of day hikes over anonymous hills and hidden valleys, Dad and I begin christening the peaks in an effort to make the landscape a little less frightening, a little more our own. Behind us rose symmetrical triplets, the Three Pyramids; their northern neighbor became Little Rainier; the emerald highland beyond: Scottish Peak.

There's a famous photograph of the Duke of Abruzzi, the turn-of-the-century Italian explorer, taken on his return from the 1897 first ascent of Mount St. Elias. The face of the 24-year-old Duke, who would later pioneer K2's famous Abruzzi Ridge, bears witness to his 50-day ordeal. His eyelids are heavy, his burned skin is peeling, and he looks kind of, well, puffy. Out there among the ponds and tussocks, you understand why. The bugs must have eaten the poor Duke alive.

"Is it my imagination, or are they going for me more than you?" I ask.

Dad studies the brown tornado swirling around my head. "Yeah," he says. "You kinda look like Pig Pen. Must be something you eat and I don't."

"What? What could I possibly eat that would turn me into a one-man Day of the Locust?"

"Pass the bug juice."

We're having some quality father-son time, irritating the Tebay trout with some ridiculously whorish spinners. We have a single bottle of deet between us and as much as I love my father I swear if he spills it there's only one of us flying out of here alive.

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