Mission
The Brooklyn to Alaska Project is a private not-for-profit whose mission is to bring brave and adventurous urban youth to Alaska so that they may be inspired and challenged by the wilderness to overcome obstacles, develop self-confidence, and experience the power of open communication and teamwork, which will serve them for a lifetime.
Thank You!
Thanks to our many contributors; we made the Brooklyn To Alaska adventure a huge success this summer. Eight young men from Brooklyn will always remember the adventure that took them 5,000 miles away from home to the land of the midnight sun.
During this trip the young men met some concrete challenges. They confronted physical exhaustion, feelings of isolation and homesickness. Each one of the young men found a way to get through it and contribute to the group effort.
The highlights of this trip were many. These young men stayed overnight with an Alaskan wilderness homesteader. They learned exactly how this man lives a subsistence life off the land. The next day they enjoyed a hike and climb on a glacier 30 miles long and 1,000ft. thick. They also climbed a mountain and camped on the summit. During the second half of the trip, these young men, together with professional guides, ran a 4 day raft trip on the wild Chitina river. they demonstrated a commitment to teamwork and displayed tremendous leadership which made the raft trip a wonderful experience. During the raft trip they saw grizzly bears but no other humans. They swam in glacial melt waters and loved it! These are memories that will not soon be vanished.
Narrative of this year's trip written by Matt Smith, a 2008 participant
The following is a short narrative of the trip that departed from Brooklyn to Alaska on July seventh, 2008 and returned ten days later. Written by Matthew Smith, a member of the crew of 9, listed here; Emmet Gregory, Shane Olff, Timothy Murphy, Jack and Eybar Tames, Mike Rivera, Lorenzo Torres, and Remy. The Brooklyn to Alaska Project was conceptualized, organized, and masterminded by Sam Gregory.
We are in the middle of bat-shit nowhere. I'm not sure of the time or date as I don't have a watch, and the sun never truly sets here. There aren't really any working electronics at Sam's cabin and those of us who brought cell-phones are almost down to their last bar of power. The journey here was long and arduous and we've already seen many strange things along the way.
Before I begin to tell about any of that I have to say that the mountains here are among the most beautiful things I have ever seen in the world. They stand far off in the distance wreathed in mist and cloud; massive blue-steel goliaths capped in snow standing guard over this secluded wilderness.
The trip, as I said, was arduous. Once we got off of our second plane in Anchorage it was something like 9:50pm Alaska time. Several bags didn't make it to the airport after the transfer in L.A., and had to be picked up the next morning. We stayed the first night at The Puffin Inn, where we met our friend and guide Brian Quigley. Due to the time of our arrival, we quickly fell asleep and woke the next morning to see that Anchorage resembled Jersey in October. It was bleak, boring, and littered with badly named franchise stores like "Tacos del Mar". Once Sam and Brian retrieved the lost gear from the airport we went for breakfast at some crazy old Alaskan diner called Gwennies. The menu contained selections like reindeer sausage and moose, but when one of us asked for fruit the waitress looked at him askance and replied that Gwennies didn't have fruit. At breakfast we met several more of Sam's (seemingly innumerable) friends, as well as Remy, a Frenchman from La Grave who would be joining us on our adventure. Sam's plan to get us to sing the American national anthem as a greeting was artfully dodged by making ourselves scarce as soon as the food did.
We set off from Anchorage at around 11am and drove countless hours away from civilization (about eight altogether) with Sam's son Emmet climbing about the car like a monkey, attacking whomever he pleased and claiming various personal items as his own. Most of us were in a white van with Sam, and some of us switched out between two spots in Brian's truck. Later than sooner we reached the turnoff for what Brian informed me was one of the longest dirt roads in the states, stretching over 60mi in length. The scenery made a drastic change from mundane to breathtaking. Several miles down this road a vast steel-span bridge connected two towering cliff faces over a churning torrent of glacial runoff hundreds of feet below. We stopped under Brian's suggestion to walk the "footbridge" which turned out to be a 1'5" wide span that ran under the main bridge. We had to climb from the foot of the bridge up into the steelwork to even reach it. It was worth the climb... We walked on air that day, as the ivory water raged below.
As soon as we crossed the bridge we encountered a setback; Brian's truck tire blew out. The first repair attempt only worked for about a mile, and we had to wait for someone to pass by with the proper tool in their car to switch the tires and continue on. In the meantime Eybar found some cool fossils by breaking rocks against each other in a nearby clearing. Once the tire was fixed we pressed on for hours until we reached a smaller dirt trail on the side of the road. It had been decided that we would stay the night at the cabin of one of Sam's friends, Mark Vail (who I have named the mountain man). Mark met us on the end of the trail as we unpacked our gear. He had a full gray beard and was riding a mountain bike, closely followed by a 14yr old Alaskan Husky named Hubbard (the last surviving member of Mark's old sled team). We hiked down the trail for about a mile carrying supplies for the next mornings breakfast up to the smattering of handmade cabins and outbuildings that comprised Mark's abode. Every square inch of his home was covered in old treasures and trophies accumulated from his years spent there. Animal skulls and antlers adorned everything from his mantle to the fences protecting his wide gardens where the majority of his food was grown. This handcrafted fortress had everything Mark needed to sustain his life outside (and far, far away from) society.
A dinner of moose-pasta and a breakfast of bacon and eggs found us hiking back to the cars to begin the third day of our journey. However a small detour to the edge of a bluff gave us a breathtaking view of the river we would be rafting down later in the week. As we stood there, Mark the Mountain Man met the last qualification for his name by coaxing some wild birds to fly down from the trees and eat morsels of cheese from his outstretched hand.
As day three commenced we left the abode of the mountain man and piled back into the cars. Before leaving Mark presented each of us with a teal copper nugget to keep in memory. Several short hours later we reached the outskirts of Kennecott and McCarthy where we saw a small grizzly bear on the road. Remy and I jumped out of the van in perfect unison (despite the language barrier) and tried to chase it onto a wooded ridge before giving up, turning around and seeing a 6,000ft tall ice-fall sparkling off on the horizon, framed by two mountains. We had found the glacier.
We drove into the town of Kennecott, packed our daypacks, and set off for Sam's cabin. No one told us that Sam lived right on the side of a mountain, and if they had we still wouldn't have been completely prepared for the blistering hike up the switchback trail for about two miles just to get there. The vanguard soon passed out of sight of Tim, Jack, Lorenzo and myself who were bringing up the rear. Once we got there we were blown away. Sam's house is in another world, high up above the one that we had previously known. Tucked neatly into cradle of rock and greenery, the cabin shared its little valley with an ice-cold stream whose source was snow from the peak. It was truly a serene place.
Today we went out on the glacier. A two-mile hike out of Kennecott along the side of the mountains brought us past the moraine to the melt-zone. We were with three new guides, Monte, Elizabeth, and Gabriel. They were all more than competent and kept us safe throughout the day on the treacherous ice. Once we came down from the mountain onto the glacier we attached spike-pads (whose actual name escapes me) to the bottoms of our boots and hiked out onto the clear ice. The terrain was by no means what used to come to mind when I heard the word "glacial". It was a vast meteoric landscape of erratic rolling hills, steep slopes, and deadly mulans (deep gashes carved into the ice by melt water). We trekked past several deep features with strange local names such as "The Grand Canyon" and the "Dr Seuss Hole". Once we'd taken the glacier in, we headed to a predetermined spot for my favorite activity of the day; ice climbing. I personally had a blast- some of our number had problems with heights, and some abstained from the activity entirely. I went up four separate ice faces and lost my balance twice. The first time resulted in what was described to me as a 50ft aerial back flip. Needless to say, it was an awesome day.
The two days following the glacier hike were spent scaling and camping on the mountain Sam's cabin is situated on. We set out at about 10am yesterday after an enormous bacon, egg, and pancake breakfast with Monte, Gabe, and Betsy. The steepest part of the hike to base camp was the train right above Sam's house; a switchback path that took us above the tree line in a few hours time. I knew from the hike up to Sam's cabin how taxing up-mountain paths could be, so the fact that this trail was a nightmare wasn't surprising. Once we broke the tree line and hiked for about a half-mile to the spur where we made camp. The view of the valley was astounding. Both the Kennecott and Root glaciers spilled out between Fireweed Mountain and Mount Bonanza, spilling out past the moraine as it melted to form the river we would be rafting down later in the week. This is where I took my last photograph, unaware how much better the view got further up.
After camp was set, the guides cajoled us into hiking another half-hour (which was in actuality an hour and a half) up to a stream where we could refill our empty water bottles. What an intense workout that ended up being... Another, steeper switchback ridge led up the right side of the slope past an old tram station and down from there into a deep gravelly cut into the side of the peak, bisected by a white finger of avalanche snow. Here we filled our water bottles with snowmelt and were convinced into pressing the hike all the way up to the ruins of the Bonanza copper mine... on the peak. Tired, pissed off, and incredibly sore; I didn't really have the will to oppose the upward push (anymore than I did to accomplish it). Countless hours of labor intensive trudging brought us up the clouds. Yes, that's right- the damn clouds. A plane passed by at eye level and we hadn't even reached the top yet.
The group split up in the fog and each of us tried a different shortcut up the steep grade of loose rock littered with 90 year old mining machinery and bleached bones. When we finally arrived the old mining building proved to tempting for us to avoid exploring despite questionable structural integrity or fatigue. Shane decided to crest the final peak of the mountain with Monte and attack his fear of heights while the rest of us milled about hunting for the purest chunks of copper high above the clouds and marveling at the view as the fog cleared up.
When the decision was made to head back down, the marching order was almost completely inverted from the hike up. Remy and I started to run once we came to the switchback below the tram station and arrived back at camp some fifteen minutes before anyone else. Once we had dinner on a neighboring spar of rock, (in order to keep the smell of food away from the actual camp) I passed out in my tent.
The following day was one of rest; once we hiked back down to Sam's cabin we washed, ate and relaxed. There isn't much to chronicle about our last carefree day on the mountain, only that it ended far too quickly.
The last stage of our trip was a four-day rafting journey down the river we had seen from so many different vantages during the preceding days. Our guides for this last leg of the journey were Tim, Howard, and Greg All of who made what could have been a catastrophic failure into my personal favorite experience from the entire trip. Under their supervision, we learned the different oar strokes and commands we would need to navigate the rafts through the rapids. The extensive prep-work took a solid chunk of time out of day one, safety-talks and the process of loading the rafts continued past midday. It was made clear to us that the portion of river that we would be pushing off into was in fact the most treacherous water we would have to cross. As we waited to leave, the sky darkened and a light rain descended in time to lend an ominous air to the entire endeavor.
The river water was frigid and everybody got wet the first day. The surface of the rapids was strange to behold, water formed steep slopes and low valleys cut with the strongest currents. Great sheets of foam bubbled like mad and sent us skipping from one side of the river to the other like toy ducks in some mad boiling tub. It was only through the direction of Tim (in my raft) and the combined effort of all the crew that we managed to stay afloat and on course.
The water eventually settled down and we got a chance to enjoy the beauty of the wooded mountains rolling by on either side. We all eventually got comfortable with the routine of rowing periodically to keep the raft on course and out of the shallows. We stopped on a sandbar to eat lunch and dry off a bit, but soon enough we were back on the river. After about five hours in total we made camp on a secluded beach and enjoyed dinner and a fire. After the tents were set up, some of the guys devised this ridiculous game where one person would sneak behind the other, kneel down, and serve as a fulcrum for another who would push the victim backwards and cause him to fall flat on his ass. I was woken from a half-sleep in my tent on false pretenses and tipped over on the beach pretty spectacularly by Eybar, but Emmet and the rest of us caught him and doused him in the freezing river water to even the score. Regardless, not much time would pass on dry land for the rest of the journey without someone getting tipped over.
The next day found us making a detour for drinking water at a secluded inlet where several of us enjoyed a swim in the freezing water, as the others marveled at their bravado (or, as I'm sure they thought; idiocy). Sam and Howard's raft slipped off course and they missed that particular experience, but we caught up with them later on a handy sandbar where we ate our lunch. As the day wound down we made camp on a smaller beach than the previous night, had dinner, a fire, and slept.
The last full day on the river was pretty incredible, the highlight of the trip was a fully-grown grizzly bear and it's cub climbing up the rocky cliff on the right bank as we rowed past. We all stopped and stared in awe as they covered the same kind of terrain that we had been struggling over for the past week at a pace that put even Remy to shame. The image of the bear fresh in our minds, we spent the day stopping at fresh-water inlets where several more of us were coaxed into swimming as it was a solid 80 degrees in the sun on the river. After a long and exerting day we camped at our last beach and enjoyed our last night in Alaska with good food, good friends, and a few good stories.
The final part of our trip had us up at some ungodly hour of the morning freezing and filthy, to pack up the rafts and push off onto the water. It was overcast and there was a sharp bite in the air as we approached the wide inlet that would be our path to meet Brian and the van to head back to Anchorage. The current was against us and we had to fight the full force of the incoming river if we were going to make the shore. Tim had us practice rowing at full speed for stretches up to ten minutes straight before we came to the mouth of the inlet. When we finally came to it, the lot of us attacked the water with our oars screaming discordant war cries and generally working the hardest we had during the entire trip in one final fifteen minute burst. We all made the shore with hundreds of yards to spare.
This is where I'd like to leave the narrative, because after that one final glorious battle against nature the experience was over. Sure, there were goodbyes and the trip back to Anchorage, but that's not what really mattered. What mattered was that all of us who left Brooklyn on July 7th encountered something in Alaska that is truly alien to most people in this day and age. We experienced one of the last true wildernesses left in the world firsthand, and no matter how trite or profound its influence on us may have been, none of us walked away from it completely unchanged.
