Expedition Journal

Vanessa Bacher
June 16, 1996
I'm a bit frustrated. Our weekend camping trip turned into one very long, wet night. We went up to Golden Gate State Park to a camping spot that turned out to have been reserved by someone else. Luckily, they never showed up. I was still worried about our lack of planning, but I seemed to be the only person who had a problem with being unprepared. Thank God our tents are just awesome--we had no trouble setting them up in the dark in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. After setting up the tents, we went for a walk in the dark (without flashlights--that was interesting). Jess and I stayed out afterwards and talked for a while. At the time we were listening to a cool '80s mix. Cindy Lauper fit our mood perfectly. Jess was singing and going nuts, and made me laugh. It was still raining when we woke up on Saturday and we decided to head back to civilization. I would have liked to just stick it out whether it just plain sucked or not; chalk it off as a learning experience that we would eventually be able to look back and laugh at. But I was in the minority. We ended up driving back to my house to have a meeting to see what we could learn from this trip. But that didn't work out too well either. Everyone was too tired to talk and cooperate. I was incredibly frustrated at that point, because I felt like I had so much to talk about and nobody else wanted to listen. My only option was to yell and really be a bitch. I felt terrible to have to get angry, but it did get everyone to listen and I think our hike tomorrow will go better.

Jess Haviland
June 16, 1996
The only words I can possibly conjure up at this moment to describe this weekend are: "We had a time!" And what an experience it was at that. Frustration and aggravation are steaming out of everyone, yet for some reason I find it to be the best thing that we could possibly do, like a 6-year-old being forced to eat liver and onions. Though he hates the taste of liver and onions, they're the best things for him. We ate plenty of liver and onions this weekend and found it to be quite distasteful. But for all of the difficulties of our rainy, cold training trip, I honestly believe that learning to work with one another despite our different viewpoints will make us stronger. I am grateful for this opportunity because of the differences and conflicts that have arisen. It makes each and every one of the team members that much stronger. Writing about it also helps us put the trip into a more positive perspective.

Alex Perry
June 17, 1996
As we continue to receive gear in the mail, my anticipation continues to heighten. Although I have had extensive experience outdoors, this is the first opportunity for me to go on a major expedition without the guidance of my father. I don't think the trip will pose any real physical problems for the team. The area where I have the most concern is learning to get along with my fellow team members. My goal for the trip is to deepen my friendship with every member and to be able to communicate all of my feelings--both my concerns and positive thoughts--with all of the team members.

After a day at Soda Lakes we're going to head into the backcountry of Rocky Mountain National Park. Our goal here is to work on cross-country travel and navigation. There aren't any trails where we're going in Alaska and we need to be able to depend on a compass and topo map to be able to find our way. And to be honest, we need a lot of work on this area. We'll work on these orienteering skills for the two days in Rocky Mountain National Park.

The purpose of this second training trip is to focus on the hard camping skills--navigating, cooking, making and breaking camp, getting in shape, and of course trying to break in our boots so we get the blisters now instead of when we're slogging across the tundra in Alaska. We'll still be thinking about team bonding--that's something we always need to keep in the back of our minds--but we worked through a lot of our personal and team issues during our last training trip and now need to turn our attention to learning how to survive in the wilderness.

Team spirits are up, and the tensions of the last training trip seem to be lifting as the team works together in preparation for our final goal. It is amazing how quickly our departure date approaches. All of our planning and talking will soon become a reality. We're all excited to test ourselves in Alaska's north country.

In addition to organizing our next outside adventure, I have been also making sure that the group has been exercising. Making sure everyone is getting physically fit--basically acting as the group's coach--is truly tough. I have to constantly remember not to boss everyone around, but on the other extreme, I can't go too easy on them and let them fall behind on their training. They'll be some physical challenges in Alaska and I need to make sure that we're ready for them.

Overall I feel good about the past week; we're getting along well and people are a lot more motivated.

At 10 a.m. we left the lake and headed to our destination for the night--Rocky Mountain National Park. We didn't get on the trail until 4 p.m., but we made good time to our campsite and got there by 8. Mountains and glaciers surrounded us on all sides. It was good to get out into this spectacular wilderness, because it reminded us what this trip is all about--protecting what we are enjoying.

Our group is a perfect example of this proverb. In preparation for our expedition we have talked to many people and read many pamphlets and books, but nothing can prepare us as well as actually going out and experiencing things for ourselves. The recent training trip went very well. The first day we took our canoes out to the Soda Lakes, where we met some photojournalists from Channel 7 in Denver. We went out on the lake and familiarized ourselves with our canoes and had a group interview.

After that was done with, we drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park. Our trail, recommended by my mother, was quite a challenge--6.7 miles with a 2,500-foot elevation gain to our campsite by a lake. But we ended up finishing the hike in less than four hours, which was an hour under our estimated time. I was pretty happy about that. We got up to the lake in time to set up camp when it was still light outside (quite an improvement over our last camping attempt, when we were setting up our tents in the rain and in the dark). The next learning experience came as we lit one of the stoves to cook dinner. The stove filled with liquid gas and burst into flames. Unfortunately, the stove was sitting on some dry pine needles. Jess was quick to solve the problem--she doused the fire with our remaining clean water.

Another valuable lesson we learned: Don't leave the tent stakes in the car. Of course, an even more important lesson was the value of improvisation: Rocks do a great job securing tents. Perry and Vanessa both left after we set up camp because Perry had to work the next day. Bria had turned back sooner for the same reason. Peter, Jess, and I got a good night's sleep. In the morning we cruised down the trail in an awesome 2.5 hours. It's amazing how easy it is to go downhill. In retrospect, we were all very happy with the outcome of the trip. We're just about ready to take on the "Last Frontier."