Oh man.
I have a hard time thinking of some of the trips I took 25 or 35 years ago as “adventure” today, given cell service, gps, updated maps, the internet, etc. A big part of it was the things that simply couldnt be known ahead of time, and dealing with them in real-time. To a degree that uncertainty just doesnt exist any more. Im sure real old timers also said the same thing 30 years ago.
One adventure that stands out was canoeing a creek from the height of land between Fairbanks and Circle on the steese hi-way (which at least then was a dirt road), down to just shy of the Yukon river. Its the creek described in the book “coming into the country”, and while its not anything impressive, at the time (1993?) the internet wasnt really a thing, civilian gps didnt really exist, cell phones didnt exist, sat phones were brand new and out of reach, google earth didnt exist, and the only maps of the area were usgs quads from the early 1950’s. Our route was on 4 usgs quads, 2 of which were marked “no roads, trails or buildings on this quad”, or something to that effect. We had to line the boats down a trickle at first, then navigate a million strainers around every bend. In ine rapid a boat capsized, and the painter line snagged on a fallen tree—the boat was hung up in the current spinning around like a pinwheel. We had to unload the other boat and paddled out with a knife in my mouth, and in a brief second before being carried downstream, cut the line and tie on a new rope so we didnt lose the boat. We found that the meandering river had completely changed course in the 40 years since the maps were made, which combined with the absense of distinct landmarks made fine-scale navigation hard. We figured at one point that if anything happened there was zero chance of getting any help in less than about a week. 3 hours of dusk followed by 21 hours of daylight was new. As was waking up with the whining sound of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 mosquitos all in the space between the tent and rain-fly, which would fall out in fist-size clumps when you shook the tent. I have nightmares of that sound 30+ years later. (And I have never taken a crap so quickly in my life). Catching and cooking grayling every day. We found a trappers cabin along the way on a side creek, not sure if it was still in use or abandoned with calf-diameter trees growing out of the sod roof, and a hand painted sign iver the door that said “MAD TRAPPERS”…it was like somewhere in between abandonment and seasonal use, with traps hanging and stuff still inside, but looking like it hadnt been used in a few years. And wondering if the crazy guy we hired to drop our van off at the take-out actually did. One of my great regrets is not having a camera on that trip, as it had been stolen out of our car early that summer.
I have been extremely fortunate to have travelled a lot of very cool places and done some amazing trips—climbing, skiing, backpacking, etc all over the us, europe, canada, australia, often in places that simply dont exist the way they used to. But that trip^^ left a mark.
