Paradox Sports RockX Shelf Road

For the second time this year Paradox Sports descended on Shelf Road, defied gravity, and ROCKED Shelf Road. I would like to start with a big thank you to everyone who showed up and made this a successful event.

The emails and phone calls flying around on Wednesday as a winter storm rolled into the front range were fast and furious. The forecast was for 8 inches of snow in the Denver/Boulder area with a little less in Shelf Road. True to the forecast we got about 8 inches here and the million dollar question was whether we should go or not. After a few phone calls we learned that Cañon Cañon City got about 3 inches and the forecast was for the mid 60’s during the following days.

Shelf Road gets a lot of traffic during the colder months due to the fact that there is a lot of south facing rock allowing climbers to climb in the sun for the majority of the day. The camping is first come first serve so Malcolm Daly and I fired to Shelf Road on Thursday to secure a group site large enough to accommodate our group. WOW it was cold! When the sun when down I crawled in my sleeping bag and tried to stay warm. I really think it was less than 10 degrees that night.

On Friday the Paradox tribe started to trickle in in the early afternoon. We were able to get a couple of pitches in late in the afternoon. The range of experience was from first time climbers to very experienced. The snow was really beginning to melt and it was warming up however after the sun went down there was a pretty close huddle around the fire. Despite the fact that this would turn out to be the largest of the Paradox RockX Shelf Road events I am not sure if there were more dogs or people at the event. Samson was holding court throughout the weekend keeping the young whippersnappers in line. He literally took a stick from a couple of dogs who were fighting over it and ended the argument. It was a funny moment.

Saturday and Sunday were the crux of the event. Before I start talking about the climbing I have to say thank you to the BLM for their work with us to allow special access to the climbing. They were very generous. I would also like to say thank you to a Paradox Sports corporate sponsor, Osprey. Grace Gamble came to Shelf Road and did a great job representing this wonderful company and we can not thank them enough for their generosity. If you are in the market for a backpack take a look at an Osprey pack.

The Shelf Road area offers great climbing, mountain biking, and fishing. On Saturday most of the tribe chose to climb. We took over the Green Pillar area of Cactus cliff which offered great  climbing with a fun base area to “hang.” I was truly inspired throughout the day to see athletes of all disabilities grind it out on rock. There is something about watching a person with no legs or a severe spinal injury grind it out on the rock. Sitting back and observing the masses walk past our climbing area was the real treat. Jaws were dropping as people walked by. I really believe that this is fulfillment of one aspect of the Paradox Sports mission… INSPIRATION! The day ended with a filling meal of gumbo and stir fry.

The tribe split up a bit on Sunday. Several people left early to fulfill work obligations, others climbed, and some took advantage of the great mountain biking in the Shelf Road area. We climbed in the Piggy Bank area which again provided a significant number of moderate to 5.11 climbs. As the afternoon rolled around we began to trickle out of the area. It was truly a euphoric feeling for me that this tribe had come together once again and had another amazing weekend.

I came home happy and inspired. The human spirit is amazing and I am so happy to be a part of a group of people who look at their “disadvantages” and say this will not stop me! I will defy gravity and live a life that is full and robust. I personally can not wait for the next opportunity to hang with this tribe. Speaking of that keep your eyes and ears open for our upcoming ice climbing events in North Conway, NH and Ouray, CO. More details soon!

If you would like to support Paradox Sports become a Paradox Sports Ambassador today.

Chad

Originally posted on www.chadbutrick.com 

Paradox Sports athlete Craig DeMartino in the Season; episode 3

Watch Craig DeMartino in the third episode of the Season. In this 5-minute clip, Craig, a below knee amputee, climbs 5.12 and summits El Cap. So what’s holding you back?

the Season, episode 3

Wild River Fish: July 2011 – a trip report by Mike Baxter

I am a forty-six year old man living with multiple sclerosis. At first, when I had unusual numbness and tingling, I thought that I must have slipped a disc doing extreme sports. My whole life, I had been very active doing a wide range of outdoor activities. After denying  that I could be sick, getting a second and third opinion involving MRI’s and a spinal tap, I started doing what I could to fight this disease. Along with modern drugs, I follow old-fashioned diet and exercise regimens. I also attend monthly meetings with guys who have MS in my county. Through this group, I met Keith Terry and Ron Parker who summited our local 10,700′ volcano last summer. Their story about climbing Mt. Baker was circulated via the internet and led to them being invited to go fly-fishing in Alaska. They asked me if I would be interested in going in the summer of 2012. My first reaction was that I had already spent lots of time camping and fishing in Alaska, shouldn’t someone who had never had the opportunity get to go? Once I learned that this was a real wilderness trip that might not appeal to everyone, I was more interested.

Since my symptoms are more advanced than Keith’s or Ron’s I worried about what condition I will be in by 2012. Already in 2011, I can barely walk unassisted, I use a cane or walker everywhere I go. Each year it is more difficult for me to climb stairs, so predicting my capabilities a year from now is tough to do. It turned out that I didn’t have to wait, Keith called my house one night and invited me to go this year. Ron had planned to go, but a work commitment had forced him to cancel less than a month before the trip. This excursion would involve flying to Dillingham, Alaska [Bristol Bay] then getting a float plane ride to a lake where we would get dropped off for a week of fishing. It sounded too good to be true. I looked online at the Wild River Fish expedition 2010 on the Paradox Sports website and got even more excited.

Paradox Sports is a non-profit organization that provides inspiration, opportunities and adaptive equipment to the disabled community, empowering their pursuit of a life of excellence through human powered outdoor sports. Wild River Guides offers unforgettable fly fishing trips on some of Alaska’s most remote rivers and waterways. I had spent three summers in different parts of Alaska’ but had seldom been as far from pavement as this trip would take me. The weeks leading up to the trip were extra productive for me at my job, in my yardwork, and swimming in the pool. Fatigue that usually slows me down had no effect, I was jubilant.

Although neither Keith or I had done much fly-fishing, we flew north with great expectations. In Anchorage, we got off our Boeing jet and climbed some flimsy steps onto a Saab 340 twin prop for the ninety minute flight to Dillingham. Our guide, Mark Rutherford and his assistant, Ollie Merrill, met us at the airport and drove us to Tom Laconner’s cabins in suburban forested Dillingham. Malcom Daly, executive director of Paradox Sports and his wife, Karen, arrived a couple of hours later. The Dalys, our guides, Keith and I looked at maps of our intended river and some of the camping gear we would be using then slept indoors with the shades drawn to block out the light.

The morning of July 8th, as the ‘last’ space shuttle launched we were informed that our first choice pilot was busy getting groups out of the bush. Retrieving people takes precedence over dropping new groups off. We  were hoping to fly three mountain ranges west, [about 100 miles]to the headwaters of the Arolik River but we were able to get two DeHaviland Beaver Floatplanes to take us two mountain ranges west to the Middle Fork of the Goodnews, where some fish were. Knowingly, as Wild River Fish, Mark has permits to work on 23 western Alaskan rivers, just for scenarios like this. Climbing aboard the floatplane was challenging for me, but the 55 year old Canadian built planes each delivered 1200 lb payloads of us and our gear to the lake without incidents. On the lake shore, our guides inflated our three rafts and divided up the gear. We had some lunch and watched our pilots leave, the last people we would see for several days.

We left the 500′ elevation lake  and floated seven miles downstream until we found a suitable gravel bar to camp on. Once we left the lake, we saw lots of sockeye salmon swimming in the clear fast flowing water. I saw one carcass stripped of meat laying on the shore, a sure sign of bear, but surprisingly, we didn’t see any on the river or flying over the tundra. Our second day started a little late, but we made it a few more miles downstream, saw a couple of moose, and caught some fish! Keith was the hot angler that day with four arctic grayling and a nice rainbow trout.

 

Each evening when we found a suitable campsite, our guides would heat water for hot drinks then we would pitch tents. I wasn’t much help, but I felt like a participant. Ollie would set up a discreet latrine with a stellar view. We would get a fire going, purify water and have dinner. Judging from all the snoring, the lack of darkness didn’t interfere with anyone’s sleep. Each day we would change boats. The first day that I was in Malcom’s boat, he was telling me that even a poor cast was in play, “Reel it in like it’s your best cast”. A moment later, I had an extra loop of line hanging out of the spinning reel that I was using. I fed out a bunch of line to clear the loop, and when I began to retrieve, fish on! Unwittingly, I caught the only sockeye of our whole trip. It was our first sushi dinner!

Spending time with this group was more meaningful than just learning new ways to tie knots. Mark has great stories of his early parenthood in the ‘bush’ earning money fighting fires as a ‘smokejumper’ and selling pelts of animals that he trapped near Tok. Originally from Chicago, he’s a real Alaskan Sourdough now, sharing knowledge from 34 summers of fishing up there. Malcom lost a foot to frostbite after a climbing accident near Denali in 1999. Nearing retirement age, on a prosthetic foot, he still leads any group that he’s a part of. When I found myself lost in conversation with these folks, any glance at the horizon would startle me with the reality of being in this place that I had recently thought was out of my reach.

The front seat in Mark’s raft wasn’t a chair, it was an emergency backboard, or our cutting board. I was sitting on it, trying to undo a tangle near my rod tip when I leaned back and ended up on the bottom of the boat. Mark told me to stay there while he landed on a gravel bar and called Ollie over to help me up. Once pulled back to a sitting position, and the bench resecured, I thought everything was okay until Mark wanted us to look for the rod and reel I had been trying to untangle. I had lost Mark’s equipment, the only spinning reel that we had brought. I transitioned to fly-fishing with immediate results, I caught a nice 16″ rainbow trout within the first half hour. A short time later, Mark and I saw the spotted back of a huge king salmon as it took my fly just in front of the raft. I fought that fish for at least thirty minutes. Mark would tell me what to do, coaching me to protect my knuckles by cupping the reel with my palm as the fish ran, or to point the rod at the fish so that I wouldn’t flex the pole past its’ breaking point. Mark was rowing our raft to keep me facing the fish at the right distance and avoiding obstructions in the river. The other two boats beached, Malcom took photographs and Ollie got ready with a net. Eventually we got ahold of the beast, freed the hook from its’ mouth, took a picture, and let it go.

Karen fought a bigger fish a day or two later, but the line broke and her big king escaped after we’d all seen it. There weren’t any big forests on the windy west coast of Alaska. We saw moose a couple of times along with lots of beaver and birds. Seagulls, arctic terns and the screaming ‘car alarm’ yellow legged sandpipers were with us every day. As we floated closer to the sea, we saw eagles, ravens, loons, tundra swans and some prehistoric looking sandhill cranes. The sockeye salmon we saw were all in the upper river, we found rainbow trout and arctic grayling throughout. The lower river was full of chum salmon leaping clear of the water and king salmon demurely displaying their dorsals. We didn’t want this trip to end, as we got closer to our pick up point we were casting feverishly, trying to catch one more ‘big one’.

Eventually though, Mark used his satphone to call our pilot and we got flown back to Dillingham. We had floated 61 miles fishing countless eddies, riffles, and seams where sloughs added volume to our river. We never saw a Bering beach, but tides affected the place where our floatplane picked us up. We spent another night at the Laconner cabins after Malcom treated us to an overpriced restaurant meal in Dillingham.

While we and our gear were drying out after some much needed cleaning, I summed it up like this:  Wheelchairs have trouble accessing true wilderness, Wildriverfish doesn’t! Disability shouldn’t mean couch-potato-for-life. This program lets people with physical limitations show themselves and everyone else that obstacles can be overcome. People need some reassurance that a change in mobility is not the first step in an indoor-only life sentence.

Gimps on Ice Recap

Gimps on Ice 2011 event was a huge success. I realize that I should have written this earlier but man has life been a whirlwind since we wrapped March 5th. Where to start…
First, this year was undoubtedly the largest Gimps on Ice to date. We had 38 registered participants/volunteers with 49 showing up for our opening dinner at the Ouray Brewery. Timmy O’Neil and Chad Jukes regaled us with stories of world travel and sick climbing. Mouses Chocolates and Coffee, The Box Canyon Lodge, The Outlaw, O’Briens Irish Pub, Das Taco, and Kristopher’s Culinaire It was really great to see Michael Brown and Luis Benitez from the Soldiers to the Summit trip out supporting the Paradox community. The Ourayle House was the next stop of the night. Live music was provided Friday and Saturday night by a rouge group of musicians put together the day before. They sounded awesome! The Ourayle House was the place to be friday and Saturday night. I can not say enough about the other supporters of Paradox that stepped up for our invasion of Ouray.

Saturday and Sunday began with a great breakfast at Mouses Chocolates and Coffee. Jon and Heidi have been taking care of Paradox Sports since the inception of Gimps on Ice and are WONDERFUL people. Shortly after breakfast we made our way into the Box Canyon to began climbing. Our guides and riggers deserve all of the credit in the world for having our ropes set up and Paradox Athletes were able to start climbing right away. Chris Folsom, Nate McKenzie, Deb Folsom, Pete Davis, Luis Benitez, Russell Facente, and anyone else that assisted up there… THANK YOU so much! We could not pull off this event without you.

The climbing was great. From the disabled athletes that had the opportunity to climb ice for the first time to athletes who had their first ice lead climb. The high point of the weekend was watching a young man who was born with a brain deterioration condition ice climb for the first time. He had to be carried to the edge of the canyon, lowered on a high line, and assisted with every step as he climbed, (Thanks Chris… I owe you a pair of pants!) but the determination in this young man inspired everyone in the canyon. Austin, keep grinding, it is an honor to know you. I have never seen a smile on someones face as big as Austin had.

I also have to say that running a close second high point for me was watching Kate lead her first ice climb. Kate, GREAT WORK. I can not wait to hear about your upcoming project. I am going to hold you to it. I remember meeting you three years ago and you are climbing great. Keep it up.

Most of the group left Ouray Sunday afternoon completely fulfilled. I am forever grateful for this event and what it means to me. This year was no different. I left town absolutely INSPIRED! To support event’s like Gimps on Ice please visit www.paradoxsports.org.

Looking forward to next year….

Chad

Originally posted on www.chadbutrick.com

Gimps on Ice 2011 from Grace Gambles perspective

Originally posted on Ospreypacks.com

This past weekend, I attended Paradox Sports’ Gimps on Ice event in Ouray. Paradox Sports is an organization that provides inspiration, opportunities and equipment to the disabled community, helping them to continue to participate in outdoor sports despite the odds. I had heard many great things about this particular event from my friends involved, namely Osprey sponsored athlete, Timmy O’Neill. In that sense, I felt prepared to be inspired. Little did I know that I was going to have the most profoundly life changing experience of my life.

Recently, Osprey became an official corporate sponsor of Paradox, and I was proud to be in attendance to represent our company. I came equipped with a bit of schwag to better represent Osprey and also to help raise money and enthusiasm for Paradox. The evening after our first climbing day in the park, Timmy and I got together to determine how best to go about raffling the grand prize, a Variant 37. We decided that the best use of that prize would be to present it to the individual who most inspired all of us, Austin Bushnell.

Austin is a young man with a brain deterioration condition. He has a seemingly endless supply of enthusiasm and self-motivation. With the help of both Chris Folsom and Chad Butrick assisting him throughout the entire route with gear placement and tips, Austin successfully topped out a climb, repeating “I will not give up, I’m going to the top” every inch of the way. Most everyone stopped in their tracks to witness this remarkable event, and I think we were all made better having witnessed this truly inspiring effort.

Paradox continues to grow, and yet will never cease to need help from the community in order to resume providing support to those affected by disabilities. Please visit their website, http://www.paradoxsports.org for information as well as how to support them.

Paradox Sports invades the North East

Paradox Sports was recently represented at the Mt. Washington Valley Ice Festival in North Conway, NH. Paradox has some AMAZING athletes and volunteers in the North East. Maureen Beck, Mike Reddy, Nate McKenzie, Lourdes Irizarry, Zuzana Svitek, and Greg Childress. It was great to connect with all of you.

This trip started off with a slideshow at EMS in Burlington, VT. Patagonia threw down with a Nano Puff Pullover and Evolv gave some climbing shoes to a lucky raffle winner. I would also like to thank Climberism.com and Petra Cliffs for making this show happen. It was a real pleasure to share my experiences in Alaska and Nepal in 2010 and talk about Paradox Sports.

It is always good to hang out with good friends and that is exactly what we did following the slideshow. I am going to leave all of the details out but let me tell you I have a new appreciation for what can be done with Maple syrup.

After a few hours of traveling from Vermont to New Hampshire we checked-in to the Maple Leaf Motel and went to see the films and dry-tooling competition. I was truly amazed at the athleticism of the competitors.

Saturday morning was the day I had been waiting for. We traveled to Franconia Notch and climbed in “The Flume.” It was a glorious blue bird day when arrived. One of the objectives of this trip was to explore the possibility of conducting a “Gimps on Ice” style ice climbing clinic in the NE. When we arrived at Franconia Notch It became apparent that this would be a great place for an adaptive ice climbing clinic. The approach was short and the climbing was really good single pitch ice. Like I said it was a beautiful day…beautiful enough that Maureen and myself decided that ice climbing topless was the thing to do. When a couple of people who are missing limbs start taking their cloths off before they climb ice people pay attention. We saw cameras being pulled out all over the bottom of that canyon. We set up a couple of routes in the Flume. It was amazing to watch Nate climb a really stout mixed route. One question someone had from the bottom was “Isn’t there supposed to be ice on a mixed route?” We had a great day climbing! The day became afternoon and into evening quicker than I thought that it would and as it became dark it began to snow. I was really surprised about how quickly the snow piled up. It was no time and there were 4 – 6 or more inches on the ground. Despite the snow we made it over the pass without incident and I was glad to get back to the hotel.

On Sunday the plan was to stay closer to town and continue our search for an adaptive ice climbing clinic. We were also going to get an opportunity to climb with Mike Reddy. Mike was involved in a mountaineering accident on Mt. Sneffels on June 30th 2009. I was really excited to climb with Mike. He had participated in an indoor rock climbing clinic that Malcolm Daly had conducted in Connecticut. This was going to be Mikes first time climbing ice and I was really excited to see another rock star “assert his mind over his disability.”

First thing in the morning we traveled to Crawford Notch State Park to look at Frankenstein cliff. What a thing of beauty. The ice flowing down that wall was absolutely beautiful. Apparently everyone at the ice festival thought that it was as gorgeous as I did because there was a line to climb it at the bottom. We found a thinner piece that didn’t have a line to play around on. We wanted to meet with Mike around noon so we kept our time at Crawford Notch short. Maureen parted ways at that point to return to work. I can not say enough about the efforts of Maureen to pull this trip off. Your awesome!

We traveled to our final ice climbing destination of the weekend the North Cathedral ledges. What a joy to watch Mike push himself up the hill and then strap on crampons and climb ice. Mike you are a true inspiration. Keep up the good work! Your tenacity is impressive. The sun began to set and I had a really happy and sad feeling. I was thrilled to see friends and supporters and climb some of the famed New England ice and sad to be leaving them. My favorite thing about Paradox Sport is the camaraderie. We are a close group and I love it! I can not wait to invade the North East with a GImps on Rock event??? We will see!

Gimps on Rock • September, 2010 • Trip Report

“You better bring lots of tape.”

“And don’t forget your Carharts.”

“If it’s not windy there will be tons of mosquitoes.

“It might be windy and snowing.”

This was the type of advice we were getting as we planned and packed up for Vedauwoo for our second annual Gimps on Rock event for Paradox Sports. Known, and feared, as the offwidth capital of the world, Vedauwoo is perched on the highest point of the trans-continental railroad, smack between Cheyenne and Laramie Wyoming. Guarded at either end of I-80 by winter closure gates, this phantasmagordical playground of tumbled rock-piles and towers is known for its crystalline cracks, offwidth horror-shows and puzzling labyrinthine approaches. Move carefully or slice yourself on the sharp crystals of the exposed Sherman batholith that stretches from the Colorado/Wyoming border all the way up to Casper. Vaguely reminiscent of Joshua Tree the area is made up a jumbled rocks of a quality that J-tree aficionados can only dream of.

Except that it makes you bleed. Sometimes a lot.

Maureen Whalley was one of the first people we called after we set the date. “Hell yeah” was her reply. “I’m getting married the next weekend and, with any luck, I’ll have some nice scabs and bruises to show off in my wedding dress.”  Okaaaay. Whatever yanks your chain, Mo. We’ll always love you. See, the thing is, Mo only has one hand. The other one, somehow, didn’t quite make it out of the womb intact. No matter, Mo has been a fixture at our Gimps on Ice events in Ouray for the last few winters and was soon to be a battle-scarred veteran of Vedauwoo. Welcome on board.

Tommy Carroll, another favorite Paradox Sports athlete, lost his leg in a fight with a motorcycle and has been hobbling around since. He doesn’t let that stop him and has been a Paradox climber since our very first event.

Chad Butrick, wounded while training with the US Army and discharged, later lost his leg in a car accident. Vedauwoo was just going to be training for him. In October Chad was scheduled to climb Lobuche Peak in Nepal. A 20,000 foot giant that towers over the glaciers around Namche Bazar. (Note: Chad summitted Lobuche on October 14, 2010)

And finally, Jeff Lowe, if not the world’s best alpinist, one of the top three in the world. At least until he was struck down by a weird affliction with symptoms similar to MS or ALS. The docs don’t really know for sure what it is, but Jeff can barely walk and mostly gets around in a powered chair. That doesn’t stop him from hanging out with the crew, joining in on the stories and lies and generally participating in, if not instigating a lot of the mayhem which always seems to follow the gimps around.

We were also lucky to have a group of dedicated volunteers, family and friends to hang the ropes, help with camp and dinner and make pictures. I think there were 25 pople in all. What a pack.

We were there to climbs so on Saturday morning, after a hearty breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon in the campground, we set off to the Walt’s Wall and Fall Wall areas. And promptly got lost. Well, not quite lost. We got split into two groups and didn’t catch up with each other until we were back at camp. Half the group, including Tommy and Mo climbed over at Walt’s Wall, while the other half climbed the routes on the Coldfinger slabs. Lots of successes, some falls and just enough blood to satisfy Mo’s need to bleed.

Dinner that night was a festive affair with lots of swag doled out and raffled off. Many thanks to Osprey Packs for their donations and Evolv Shoes for the hook-ups. Evolv also loaned us an entire demo kit so we could all try out the latest climbing shoes.

Sunday morning was slow, as Sunday mornings after Saturday nights tend to be, but after a hearty dutch oven pile of eggs, sausage, potatoes, cheese and coffee, we all managed to head over to the Ames Monument for a mass assault. This pyramid marks the highest point of the original transcontinental railroad and wherever you climb, it’s 5.6. All the gimps made it to the summit along with a handful of the volunteers for the summit shot.

What a weekend it was!

Wild River Fish • August 2010 • Trip Report

On August 12, 2010, eight friends loaded into tiny float planes and flew into Ongivinuk Lake, located in the remote Togiak NationalWildlife Refuge in southwest Alaska. They were out to raft and fish the Ongivinuk River to its confluence with the Togiak River, an adventurous trip to be sure, but not much different that any of the hundreds of trips similar to this which are completed each year. What was different was that, out of the eight participants, two were paraplegics, two were amputees and one was legally blind.

The trip was the brainchild of Mark Rutherford and Malcolm Daly who had met at a film festival in 2008 and hatched the plan while wading for Rainbows in the Frying Pan River. After Erik Weihenmayer, totally blind, summited Mt. Everest and Mark Wellman, a paraplegic, climbed El Capitan, there was little reason that a group of people with disabilities couldn’t put together a first-rate wilderness adventure. Our idea was to gather a group of like-minded individuals with disabilities who would do whatever it took to plan, organize and participate in a real adventure.

We first organized a trip down the Nayoruru River in the Togiak in 2009, a river that had seen little sport fishing activity because, to get to it, you had to portage a mile over the tundra and through the alders just to get to the river. That’s a big deal for most groups of fishermen but to a group which included a paraplegic and an amputee, it’s huge. We signed up Vijay Viswanathan, a paraplegic and Malcolm Daly, an amputee, as well as Kate Rutherford, Karen Daly, Alex Rutherford, Mikey Schaefer and Richard Voss. Everyone on the trip had a proven track record in the outdoors and we knew that if anyone could pull this trip off, it would be this group. The entire team worked tirelessly to help Vijay do what he couldn’t: negotiate through the incredibly difficult Alaskan bush. While he could get his wheelchair through almost any terrain where you could negotiate a mountain bike, the hummocky tundra, thick alders and the rushing streamlets braided around the river required help. We sledged him in an inflated raft where we could and then backpacked him through and over the thick and steep stuff.

Once on the river, the terrain got easy for Vijay with perfect gravel bars to negotiate, the fishing got good, the weather stabilized and the rest of the trip was terrific. When Vijay wasn’t fishing, he was setting up tents, chopping wood, cooking over the open fire or washing dishes. We depended on his participation just as much as he depended on us to help him with the portage. More than a success, the 2009 trip inspired us further and gave us the confidence to put together trip for 2010.

Once the 2010 team landed at Ongivinuk Lake we started landing fish. Kitt Daly was the first and had a nice Sockeye on the line within minutes. Off to the side Larry and Wayne were teaching Nicole how to cast a fly rod from her chair and in short order she had hooked up with a nice Grayling. In the meantime the rest of the crew assembled and loaded up the rafts so we could begin the float. Because of our late arrival we made camp just a mile or two down river on a nice gravel bar on river left. Setting up the first camp is always a project and we split up into tent teams, kitchen teams and latrine teams so the first camp went up rather smoothly. That night we fished late into the evening and everyone caught lots of Sockeye, Grayling and ‘Bows.

We woke to a smattering of rain hitting the tents but it stopped in short order so we were able to dry out easily. Oatmeal and dried fruit chased down with coffee started our engines and we got out for a quick fish before we broke down camp and headed downriver. It was a lovely float with the sun chasing rain showers chasing the sun while the passengers in the rafts kept their lines in the water and the landing nets full. Camp was on a beautiful gravel bar that was easy for the wheelchairs to negotiate and dinner was fish tacos loaded up with freshly caught Dolly Varden.

Our goal for the next day was to reach the confluence of No Lake Creek and the Ongivinuk. The fishing there was rumored to be superb and everyone was looking forward to a two-night stay there. We battled out way downriver though wind, rain showers and mist, eventually making camp on a huge gravel bar at the confluence at around 7:30 pm. Little did we suspect that that day’s weather was a tiny taste of what was to come. We set up camp on the highest parts of the bar, 2-3 feet above river level, and made sure everything was staked down securely and the tents pitched taut. The fishing was slow that evening, even though we were supposed to be at the best fishing on the river. Maybe the fish knew something we didn’t?

The storm slammed into us early in the morning, waking all of us up and flattening our tents to the point where we had to brace them with our hands and bodies from inside. Everyone rallied and reinforced the tents, staking out all the guy-lines and switching tiny aluminum stakes out for deadmen. Two rafts were conscripted as wind barriers for the Parawing tarp and everything that was strapped down, weighted or clipped in was battened down securely. The rain poured down in sheets powered by gale force winds strong enough to pick water right up off the river and hurl it at us. Huddled under the ‘wing and holding onto the poles so we wouldn’t blow away, we estimated the winds at 60-70mph.

At 10:00am we noticed that the river was rising and had lost its beautiful clarity. Mud, debris and small trees were washing into the river and turning this normally tranquil river into an angry torrent. At 1:00pm the river was rising at more than an inch an hour and we started thinking about escape. First we searched for higher ground on our bar to which we could move. No such luck: if the river kept rising we’d be flooded out. Then the tents started to break despite the heroic staking-out job we had done. Broken poles sticking out of a $450 mountain tent is a sad sight and a clear warning that this storm meant business, so we began to plan our evacuation. By now, what had been low spots in our gravel bar were flowing river channels. Everything went back into their respective drybags which were lined up, ready to load into the rafts. Taking down the tents required planning and teamwork. With the high winds we were having it took at least four people to strike each tent: each person kept one hand on each corner and used the other to de-rig the poles. We found we could keep them the driest by pulling the poles out when the fly was still on then rolling the whole thing into itself. One set of poles got bent pretty badly but overall it went well. Then it was all hands on deck for the ‘wing. The upwind side was buttressed by the two rafts so we pulled the huge flapping ‘wing off the top first, stuffed it into its bag, then carefully laid the rafts over hoping they wouldn’t blow away.

At 6:00pm we loaded into the rafts and were chased down the river by 60-70 mph winds. At first we had the people in the front of the rafts hunker down to present a lower profile to the wind but, because of the high stack of gear on the back, the rafts would tend to weathervane terribly despite all our efforts at control. Our goal was to make it to a native allotment cabin that was marked on the map, 6 miles downstream. We ricocheted down the river to the cabin in less than two hours, pulling out at a grassy bench that was about two feet above river level. We unloaded and carried everything and everyone up a slippery otter trail, hauled the rafts up on to the bench and tied them securely to the alders lining the banks. Ascending this bit of trail was the only time during the entire trip that the paraplegic women had to be carried anywhere!

If you remember the school bus where Chris McCandless (Into The Wild) lived out his last days, you have a good idea of what this cabin was like. Pounded up out of  4’ x 8’ sheets of plywood, it was a classic trapper’s shack, complete with cracked windows, a leaky ceiling, a rusted out barrel stove that we didn’t dare to light, a pantry filled with very suspect food and a couple of sad-looking cots. But it was our home for the night and we made do.

At 8:00am the next morning we were awoken by voices outside. We would have been less surprised if a bear had knocked at the door. A group had landed at the lake just after us and was not even slightly prepared for the foul weather: they had been flooded out of their gravel-bar camp at four in the morning. They put on the river in the dark and floated down because they had no other options. They didn’t know about the cabin: they were simply floating on hope, and they got lucky. Three of the four were wearing neoprene wetsuits and summer sandals and by the time they got to us they were shivering through the early stages of hypothermia. We warmed them up with coffee, tea and oatmeal, got them dried out and helped them, via Sat-phone, arrange for a pickup on the Togiak River, another 4 miles downstream.

By the time we had cleaned up after breakfast the storm had abated and the skies had started clearing. Taking advantage of the mellow weather, we spent a few hours exploring the old cabin’s surroundings (we found an old, flattened outhouse that still had a toilet seat!), picking blueberries, drying clothes, making photos and planning the rest of our trip.

Given the sad state of our tentage, the unknown duration of our good weather and the willingness of our pilot to pick us up that day, we made the tough decision to shorten our already brief trip. Humping all the gear and the women down the hill to the rafts was a slippery ordeal and everybody went down at least once. We had hauled the rafts up on to the grassy bench the night before and that morning discovered that the bench was now under 18” of water. The river had come up another three feet since we landed! Good thing we tied them up.

The rest of the day was comparatively uneventful. We floated down to the confluence of the Ongivinuk and the Togiak and found that the gravel bar that is the usual pickup point was under three feet of water so we continued down another few miles until we found a suitable bar.  On the way we passed a native family pinballing downriver in a boat with a broken engine and no control so we gave them a spare oar and shepherded them down to our pickup point. The river at this point was madly swollen and full of storm detritus. Large pieces of driftwood, clumps of sod and bank moss were the most common but occasionally, and frighteningly, we would come upon an entire tree rolling downstream. These would disappear into the murky river only to rear up randomly at unsuspecting moments. All we could think of was the possibility of one of these coming up swallowing a raft. Or the floatplane. Yikes!

We had survived the worst summer storm in Alaska that anyone can remember in 60 years. We’d been dumped on with 16” of rain in 14 hours. The rivers had come up four feet and the winds howled at 70mph. But we’d survived, proudly, in style and with our spirits and humor intact. We’d done it by working as a team, drawing deeply upon the wide range of outdoor and survival skills that were distributed throughout the group and, importantly, treating every decision as if it was the last decision in our lives.

Wild River Fish • 2009 • Trip Report

Our goal was in Malcolm Daly’s words “We want to redefine normal for the disabled outdoors community!” We would attempt to gain access by portage and then to descend a remote Alaskan river with 2 significantly disabled participants. As a team comprised of disabled outdoorsmen matched with able bodied participants we would challenge the traditional notion that the vast roadless Alaskan outback is inaccessible to those without legs. This was a team whose disabled team mates would be integral participants, and not clients or guests, with passive roles. All the team mates were fully invested in the challenges, inspirations, delights and hardships and fully savored the remarkable success of their overland and river borne travels. The trip was funded by donors who pledged financial support to Paradox Sports a non profit organization, earmarked to send disabled athletes to test the limits of expeditionary travel through the wildlife and Salmon rich Bristol Bay landscape.

The team members were Malcolm Daly who hikes and climbs with a prosthetic leg, the result of a 1999 Alaskan climbing accident coupled with frostbite. Michael Schaefer, outdoor photographer and big wall climbing guide, Vijay Viswanathan, paraplegic outdoorsman whose 5’Th thoracic vertebrae was transected in 2003 in a rappelling accident. Richard Voss, an Alaska wilderness expert, and fly fisherman, Alex Rutherford, Alaska wilderness guide, and surfer, Kate Rutherford, Alaska wilderness guide and big wall climber, Karen Daly, Rocky Mountain outdoorswoman and educator.  Mark Rutherford, an Alaska wilderness guide and logistics enthusiast.

Our goals: To travel safely across thirty to forty miles of tundra landscape in the designated wilderness of Togiak National Wildlife Refuge estimating our progress as the landforms change, taking note as mountains recede, as canyons approach, and waterfalls thunder. We’d try to fully absorb the immensity and timeless quality of the landscape and  its native fish and wildlife. We’d try to capture the experience in words or photographs whether documenting success or failure. Above all, to traverse the landscape while leaving no trace of our passage so that the same opportunity awaits the next group.

Our two disabled team members guided our objective toward a very small, very remote river that by accounts only a handful of contemporary humans had traveled by boat before. It was known from prior accounts that this would be a very difficult trip for any team of able bodied outdoors enthusiasts. The successful outcome while very uncertain, seemed on the whole to be “do-able” by our team. None of the team wanted to get trapped by our ambition and bite off more than we could safely chew. Still there was consensus to aim very high and challenge the limits of what might seem impossible for a paraplegic outdoorsman and a one legged climber!

This report intentionally omits the names of rivers and creeks and any USGS map or Lat/Long GPS references. This is not a “How to” nor a “Where to” narrative. I am hopeful that you will discover similar wilderness landscapes on your own!

We planned, we consulted maps, talked to Bristol Bay pilots and outdoorsmen, we questioned Vijay and Malcolm at length about their abilities, disabilities, goals, stamina, and motivation for such an ambitious quest and then finally we launched.  We would attempt one of the more technically challenging rivers in the region with one participant in a wheelchair and another with a prosthetic leg. Even with a strong team we still understood that we might fail.

If it is true that the human genome contains the DNA code enabling coordinated, graceful physical movement across the landscape through time and space, then it is particularly true that our long time friend and professional bush pilot Rick Grant has a very fine strand of DNA indeed. In Rick’s celebrated 1953 Dehavailland Beaver “N911W” Alex, Vijay, Mikey Schaefer and I made up the first load and flew west through Sunshine Pass crossing No Lake Creek, and the Ongivinuk River leaving treeline behind.

The rivers that our flight path transected were high and roiled after a month of rain. We looked at the Togiak River which was bank full then we crossed other streams opaque with runoff. Hmmm. I had second thoughts; perhaps we should consider “plan B” where we would select a straightforward float trip down a well known river such as the Goodnews or Kanektok instead of attempting an unknown river under these stormy conditions? But I kept recalling Malcolm’s guiding words. “We want to redefine normal for the disabled outdoors community!”  “We don’t want to come all the way to Alaska to do a “gimp trip” rather we want to show the disabled community ways to fully integrate back into the outdoor lifestyle, to participate in everything. To climb to ski, hike, fly fish, hunt and get out of the “Disabled Rut”!

Flying on and on Vijay strained for his first view of his dreamed for Wild River. Then the Beaver float plane banked steeply and there below was our stream. It was high, but clear. We looked at one another with excitement and concern. “It might be doable”, I thought to myself. I asked Rick for another low level pass over one of the portages around a small gorge. It still looked doable, but the volume of water funneled through the canyon walls was breath taking. I wondered what Richard Voss’s opinion would be when he saw it on the next flight bringing the remaining team members?

In the past several days since the group assembled in Dillingham, Alaska. We’d learned a bit about Vijay and Malcolm’s routine logistic needs, getting in and out of vehicles with prosthetic leg and chair, and up and down stairs. We practiced various ways of assisting Vijay on the chair, off the chair, and with short fireman carries and piggyback rides. He had decided how he could transfer to a float plane from the chair. Malcolm’s mobility with prosthesis was remarkable and he helped teach us the basics of a disabled outdoorsman’s daily routines. I recalled the advice that Bob Roark, a Colorado “T12-C1” paraplegic outdoorsman gave me about wheel chairs when used off the road. “Friction plus obstacles equals work.” Looking down at the cross country portage we’d have to make to get to the river I saw lot’s of friction!

Day one. Our challenge after unloading both aircraft loads would be to portage 1057 pounds directly up hill to a bluff top camp that we’d identified as our portage staging area. We’d move people, rafts and gear up a muddy, bear trail to Camp One set on a Tundra ridge.  Transferring Vijay to a wheelchair on the beach from the aircraft was smooth and we all made a line to handle gear as it was off loaded from the plane. The mountain bike tire equipped wheelchair was pretty mobile on the gravel lakeshore but friction looked to me like it was going to be a big part of Vijay’s world. The plane went back for the second load, Alex then carried Vijay piggyback across the waist deep outlet and up the Brown Bear trail about 200 feet vertical,  preceded by Mikey carrying the wheelchair” The second plane load arrived with 2 more rafts, gear, Richard Voss, Malcolm Daly, Karen Daly, and Kate Rutherford. Up the hill they came and Camp  One was established.

Dinner of Pasta, with friendly, though anxious, conversation about what lay ahead, followed by 8:00 pm bed time. No reflection on the company but we all could see the cross country portage route ahead of us along dry tundra ridges and wet bear trails through dwarf willow. So we went to bed as the best defense against what tomorrow might bring understanding that if the portage fails that we must abandon our wilderness travel dream and retreat back to the lake for a float plane extraction. I wondered what it was like for Malcolm Daly to be back in Alaska. In his words “The last time I was in Alaska I was 2,500 feet up an unclimbed route on an unnamed peak in the Alaska Range and took a 200′ fall. I had shattered both of my legs and was stranded on an ice ledge waiting, freezing”.  The last sentence in my journal that night was “Common Loons are calling, a beaver patrols the shoreline, a small falcon pesters an eagle, and the blue berries are ripe enough to graze!”

Day Two. From the log of July 31, 2009. Kate, Mikey, and Alex out of camp early with the first portage load followed by Karen, Malcolm, and I. Vijay is packing and organizing gear, staying in camp until we have established some sort of trail to use for him to use in the trek cross country. The weather is recorded each day in my field journal as it has been for 34 some years: Rain held off till mid afternoon then grew steadily heavier. Barometer 29.7. Bugs not bad”. (Since bugs are a significant force of nature, in my notes they are recorded as weather).

The portage scene for the next 6 hours was a series of trips back and forth across the grandest landscape imaginable. The Bristol Bay region is primarily known to sport fishers and commercial fishing crews leaving the wilderness back country (away from the prime fisheries) essentially devoid of humans from snowmelt in May until hunting season. The ecosystems are largely untouched by industry or recreation. Today the scene was persons with bowed heads and backpacks and teams dragging inflated rafts. It was all back dropped by mist shrouded mountains and glacially carved valleys.

It seemed like paradise except for the uncertainty of our ability to safely carry out this day’s work and perhaps two more days of portaging ahead. Smiles were shared as crew members passed one another returning for a second, third, fourth, fifth… load.  A smile and a word of encouragement eclipsed the worry lines on our faces tempered with the enormity of the undertaking. Talk centered on evolving options to assist Vijay overland about three quarters of a mile to the river now that we understood the lay of the land. Lunch was just taking on the biggest possible load of carbohydrates and electrolytes  between loads.

Malcolm made the portage with his prosthetic leg across blueberry fields, side hills, bear tracks, waist high dwarf birch thickets, and then the final push over a bluff and through the flooded willows? During this portage day he was driven as all of us were to load the portage packs heavy and push hard. I knew Malcolm had to be in some pain with the stump of his amputated leg strapped into the socket of the prosthesis but his upbeat attitude was an inspiration! Later he said: “Okay, the portages had me worried. Walking across 3-dimensional tundra, shot through with water-filled potholes, was going to be hard. Prosthetic feet are carefully calibrated and optimized for striding on flat pavement, not for the 2-foot hummocks that form the Alaskan tundra. Each step could land me randomly on an uphill step, a downhill slide or a knee-deep pothole that may or may not be running with water and could throw me in a random direction, cranking my leg like it was in a vice…”

When I asked Vijay, shown above in a raft with wheelchair forward, “what was the challenge of your day?” he hesitated not at all, “The challenge was figuring out with Alex and Kate that we could lash me into a raft, strap the wheelchair in the bow, and then pull me from Camp One across the tundra to the river. The side hilling was Epic!” the rest of us watched in complete awe as the three of them traversed the tundra then in complete amazement as the raft and Vijay was lowered foot by foot down a bluff belayed by some of the climbers on the team..

Later in reflection he added  “who knows where I’d be…without that support, people willing to take some risk and think outside the box.”

We loaded boats and we shoved off thankful the first portage was behind us and that for a short sweet spell we would enjoy a raft trip. True another portage lay ahead of us later tonight, and again another portage the following day, but eventually the plan was that we’d be rewarded with a wonderful float down a wild Salmon River.

From the journal:  Arriving at an eddy below Camp Two, the lead boaters waded out to catch my raft with Vijay on board just in case I missed a crucial oar stroke…above an unsurvivable waterfall.  A blond Grizzly/ Brown Bear was across the river grazing with her young twins… “the thunder of the river now being compressed into a tiny gorge can be felt in ones belly from camp… Dinner of beans and rice, tortillas, and cheese were not enough for our calorie starved crew. A 12 hour day had brought us two miles”.

Breakfast day 3. “The weather foul, we were supposed to portage around a waterfall and a small gorge today but by breakfast I felt that we shouldn’t travel until the storm let up”. I delivered coffee to tents along with my suggestion we wait for better weather tomorrow. My thinking was that if we broke camp in this rain and our tents got soaked, which would be nearly unavoidable, and further if it turned into a weeklong storm, which fit the pattern of prior storms, the discomfort would be substantial. Let’s take a rest day and we’ll make up time and mileage later in the week. No need to hurry our breakfast of oatmeal and blueberries. Winds gusting, rain hammered the camp, we added tie out guy lines to each tent, set up a raft windbreak, and rested in its lee. By mid afternoon the wind and rain seemed to taper.

By mid afternoon, stormbound, needing an outing the gang hadn’t come all this way to see the river disappear over the falls into a gorge from a distance. Vijay determined he could wheel overland to the rim. An hour into it; the wheel chair had progressed to a point where the grizzly trail he followed crossed sloping shattered bedrock, went through an 8 inch gap between boulders, and onto the face of the falls.

From my able bodied perspective, the falls were close at hand, perhaps a two minute stroll but watching Vijay’s wheelchair progress was so slow…each little change in elevation, slope, and rock surface required a new series of movements. Alex worked with him ready to catch the chair if it toppled over. Together they worked through difficult side hill and down hill moves through rocks, tussocks, and then unexpectedly Vijay took a face-forward-tumble! The chair falling on top of Vijay as he sprawled. After a quick recovery Vijay looked at the increasingly challenging terrain ahead, one choice could be to halt the snail pace wheelchair movements and humbly consider the progress thus far gained sufficient. The able bodied could continue ahead leaving Vijay and a companion behind on the rocky promontory to observe. Alex weighed in, his opinion firm in solidarity with Vijay that this trek to the falls was do-able: “I reckon we should stay together. Just a little more patience and the whole team could succeed”.

Five of the eight team members including the two disabled participants were experienced rock climbers, and alpinists of some renown but neither Alex, Richard nor I have had that experience. As our progress toward the river ground meter by meter closer maybe the climber’s mindset of visualizing “pitch by pitch” one set of challenges to the next applied best to this expedition. Instead of vertical rock objectives ours were mostly horizontal pitches. Some pitches crossed tundra firm while others transect boulder fields or beach cobble. So meter by careful meter the wheel chair crunched down over ledges, and listed  off kilter into muddy bear trails. Vijay sometimes ran short of self propulsion options. Later he recollected that “there were times when I realized it would save so much time to just carry me”. So to continue forward progress he’d request a “power assist” from Alex and me to lift the chair “litter” style up and over a Volkswagen size boulder. In hindsight he told me he’d thought he could “definitely do it” all self propelled, indeed he told me a story about one of his “Para” friends who would definitely have spent the entire week on the first portage just to prove that point.

Vijay felt that as a team member he was free to ask for help like a piggyback through a cleft in the granite or a quick lift to save time and move us toward our larger landscape objectives. We leaned on Alex for many of the “carries”. Alex weighs in at 150 pounds. Years of surfing give him a relatively high power to weight ratio and in a snap he’d load 145 pounds of Vijay on his back. Mikey and I “spotted” bouldering style as Alex & Vijay’s two bodies merged into one, ground covering, machine. During some moments on rain slicked lichen rock you could cut the tension with a knife but then it was past and  Vijay went to the next pitch…

August 2, 2009. No option but to travel in “less than stellar” weather. Still it is good to be moving! From the log: Stormy, south wind at 10 mph, gusting 25. Barometer 29.85. Unrelenting wind, drizzle, and showers. We finished what we’d begun 2 days prior, the third and final leg of the portage, and began rafting down the small river. The wheelchair and four rafts, camp, and equipment was carried down to the river on trails carved by millennia of bear traffic. We had earned ourselves a river!

The “river plan” was for a lead boat to scout followed by two lightly loaded rafts, and a chase boat to bring up the rear.  (The reason for four boats instead of 2 or 3 was so that no raft would be loaded with more than six hundred pounds for responsive shallow stream maneuverability.) PFD’s and throw ropes on board, spare oars lashed, the boats were “rigged to flip”. Rigging to flip might ensure that we’d lose minimal gear if a boat flipped which is an awful scenario in this Bering Sea weather. We decided that all channels would be scouted on foot if the outcome couldn’t be seen by the upstream boat. By days end we had scouted and rowed our way down only 4.75 miles of river.  But by god we were on a river trip now!

Bears! Doesn’t their presence help define the wildness we love about this salmon enchanted landscape? All of these Bristol Bay rivers are prime Grizzly / Brown Bear habitat. The sighting of the big bears during our trip became a common, but never a casual occurrence, and we took great pains to avoid close encounters. We watched bears chase salmon, or stand erect to see the fish in the riffles. Others grazed with cubs in the on tundra hillsides changing to autumn colors of gold and red. These were not “Park Bears” habituated to humans any more than were we “Park People”.  This group didn’t seek out Park style accessibility nor cling to the notion that we were on top of the food chain here. Both species, we humans and the Brown/ Grizzly bears, took pains to give the other room.

We rowed down the little valley, exhilarated by our movement through the fog, the bears, and the glacier etched mountains. Breaching an awful topic, “that there may be no gravel bars to camp on, due to high water” I proposed that we might find a camp on a ridge above the river? But we all prayed secretly for a gravel bar, anything but another uphill portage. The river split into channels which disappeared around willow choked bends. Scouts went forward and again.  If we couldn’t travel comfortably then at least we would travel safely!

On one scouting stop Karen strung up her fly rod and cast a streamer. The rod tip violently slammed down and a Rainbow Trout rocketed out in full view of all the group.  Karen had tangled with a grand wild Rainbow. The fish, as charismatic to some anglers as the big bears of this land, are to others. The outcome of the struggle was never certain until the moment Malcolm scooped up the prize in the net. Through the battle her face was a wonderful collage of excitement and joy tinged with fear that such a precious thing might be so easily lost.

A fish in the hand posed a dilemma for hungry campers. I won’t belabor Karen’s grand Rainbow trout which was quickly released, but we were hungry, and it raised a question. We eat fish, don’t we? The team knew and accepted that we had not packed enough food for the extraordinary demands this type of travel made on the participants. They also knew we’d travel a river which should be rich with migratory fish. From the outset we planned: that to reduce weight on the portages, we’d pack as backpackers do, in contrast to the over-laden style of rafters. Among other things we would eliminate the heavier foods. Certainly no canned items. If a meal called for 3 cups of rice we cut it to 2 cups. Weight was shaved ruthlessly. So “Pilot Biscuits” were packed but not bagels, 1 energy bar per person/ per day, rolled oats for breakfast. Beer was only a fleeting consideration, an amber dream left behind. A typical dinner menu was Grayling Cheddar Potato Chowder. On the river we hoped we could depend on fresh Dolly Varden Char or Grayling to supplement our simple fare.

We carried just enough stove fuel for the first portage camps in the tundra, some for an emergency, and then switched to fires in pits dug on gravel bars. Truly planning to cook on wood is a fine idea, saves weight, and conserves fossil fuel. But tell that to Malcolm and Vijay whittling willow driftwood creating the shavings for tinder prior to any attempt to kindle the flame in the wind and rain. They began to fantasize about having a hatchet to get at the dry “heartwood” of the rain sodden driftwood available for fuel. Fully a fantasy, no such hatchet. Too heavy! Before leaving each camp the fire pits were filled in with rock and smoothed over by boots.

For cooking purposes the best gravel bar fire pits were trench shaped, and aligned with the wind to oxygenate the fire. A narrow trench about 1 meter was dug with boot heel and oar blade.

Insert image 20090804_Togiak_0921 Alex Vjay cook

Pots could be balanced atop the driftwood fuel so no grill/grate was needed. How about pan seared Dolly Varden Char rolled in Nori seaweed with rice, ginger, cream cheese, and wasabe?  Washed down with liters and liters of hot Tang, Gatorade, and tea.

Insert image Rich eats something hot

Day 5. August 3,  2009. “Weather very well behaved. No rain until near midnight. Only some pesky headwinds. Nice considering the past several days…5 bear seen. There was a pair of yearling cubs on river right. An adolescent bear on river left standing up to see salmon with his shaggy head bobbing. Richard and Karen saw another juvenile on the far bank which could have been the adolescent “head bobbers” sibling.

Vijay described the interaction involving a young Brown Bear frightened by our appearance and memories of which may be ingrained in both man and bear forever. “The young bear…the way it looked at our “extraterrestrial convey” floating by, while it was fishing… My heart leaped, and we were in that moment experiencing true wilderness…” all the while rescinding the consequences [of the rappelling accident which] was so real just 6 years ago. That feeling is what I live forS…”

“We found rich Chum Salmon spawning grounds in the lower river and Dolly Varden Char. In clear side channels we watched the spawning process unfold with the newer salmon arrivals digging redds, while those that had been in the system awhile spawned. As the salmon spawned, the Dolly Varden darted through the redds eating eggs, which in turn stimulated the hooked nose male salmon to attack the offending Char. Meanwhile the oldest, spawned out fish, drifted off to the side in varying degrees of decay. Salmon becoming  compost, entering the landscape as nutrients.

We entered the last small canyon late in the afternoon. It looked both inviting and unnerving. Black volcanic rock funneled the emerald water.  Curling wave trains formed. Bedrock ledges created foaming holes. All of it disappeared out of sight around a bend. We pulled all 4 rafts over into a modest eddy, from there to climb the rock bluffs and scout. Richard and I were not sure which rapid this was from our prior experience and the airplane over-flight. Could it be safely run by our party? If not what would that mean?

In that tension between knowing and not knowing if we will succeed or fail on this rapid, the sensation of time stretches. It is like the sensation of powerlessness that we share with the lemming in the moment when the shadow of the Rough legged Hawk passes over. The tension of not knowing tips the scales. Now I was put in the dilemma of a small animal on a large landscape. Now I could more easily understand the dilemma of Vijay dependant on the resources of the clan/ team for assistance and protection. Now I didn’t feel at all like the ruler of the world. I did understand the lemming though and in this tension I was more alive than ever!

Aliveness felt in every simple act, every blueberry nervously picked and eaten by scrambling scouts, every sound heard of curling wave breaking on rock, every footfall on bear trail walking to the viewpoint. Every moment saturated with aliveness! Certainly the tension between knowing and not knowing was heightened by the weather and logistic challenges we’d faced these past days. What if these rapids were not safely runable at this level? What then, could they be portaged?

Sweet Joy! From the viewpoint the rapid was simple and runable. We skipped down slope, shared our plan with the team and took the modest rapid just right of center skirting the bigger standing waves.  I can still see the smile on Vijay’s face as the bow of our little raft rose to meet that gray sky! Turning around, we watched as the other oars-men and oar-women each rowed their chosen lines confidently through the canyon. Down came our precious little “Clan” of travelers. Even as I write this, I see Alex & Kate leaning on their oars. Those two, who are my “blood”, are my grown children. I felt gripped as I watched each of them. Gripped down in some ancestral part of my soul, some place, perhaps common to all humans crossing the vastness of the landscape. There they rowed helping move our little clan down the river…. There went Richard with an appreciative and gratefull smile. He rowed the green Puma precisely where he wanted, dancing it through the haystacks and nimbly avoiding the holes.

Day 6, From the Journal of August 4, 2009. Weather: “No rain last night. Each evening we set small rock cairns marking the river water level at each camp. The river has dropped for three days in a row. The barometer looks like a roller coaster, it’s still windy and spitting rain but the river level is dropping. It was a long day. We covered fifteen miles to make up for prior weather and scouting… Midnight before anyone got to sleep” Richard rowed Vijay, Malcolm and Karen shared the oars, Alex rowed me, Kate & Mikey switched off.

The sloughs of the lower river, out of the main current, were full of spawning Salmon.  Malcolm set down the oars, knotted on a fly and waded into the river. Like all of us, he was awe inspired by the salmon spawning pageant.

Prosthetic leg in Waders and a gleam in his eye. Malcolm had come far and worked hard to be in this one place, on this small tundra river, at this exact moment!… I think when the sun came out and he went fly fishing the strains of the voyage began melting away.

As someone who spends lots of time watching and teaching fly fishers to cast I was curious how Vijay would adapt. He hadn’t been able to fish much in the six years since his rappelling accident. Would his cast be effective? Without strong abdominals could he remain upright when fighting a powerful Char or Salmon? I had prepared as best I could to support Vijay’s rafting and casting needs by asking for advice. Chuck Ash, an outstanding guide, owner of Brightwater Alaska Fly fishing, had considerable prior experience with disabled U.S. veterans and was really supportive. Ron Ferris, in Colorado, www.riverboatworks.com, passed along valuable first hand advice about modifying rafts for paraplegics. Bob Roark, lifelong outdoorsman and white water kayaker, who’d lost the use of his legs, had advice both as a fly caster and regarding the expeditionary medical issues for a paraplegic fly fisherman.

During rafting periods and at lunch, or during scouting breaks and on arrival at camp Vijay would hoist himself out of the raft and into his chair and then wheel up and down the beaches casting for Char and Trout. His focus shifted from traveling amidst the bears and wildlife across the landscape to fly-casting among the salmon spawning, participating in the Char, and Rainbow drama. Karen and Malcolm joined Vijay and pretty soon all the team was fly casting from the beach or walking up channels A report came downriver that Alex caught a notable rainbow. I sat on the side of the blue raft, ate lunch, and watched Vijay catch rainbows and char. A sow with twins appeared and disappeared quietly along the base of a riverside mountain. We moved on.

We were near the end. The challenges were behind us. Our sense of relief was palpable. Vijay later said “it’s so hard to put into words just how meaningful and extraordinary my time in Alaska was. I can compare it to [a surfer] dropping in on a perfect wave, or the sublime feeling of floating through the aspens on a perfect powder day [skiing]. These moments are when I feel most alive, and more in harmony with the way I was supposed to live….You might imagine the feelings that swept over me when I woke up [after the rappelling accident] in the hospital and realized that [my accident] was real. It was me, it was permanent, and as hard as I wished it wasn’t a nightmare!”

Reflections: Mark  “I was so inspired seeing Vijay use his determination to gracefully pass thousands of obstacles that lay in the path of his wheel chair. He tried techniques to travel across the landscape that he’d never done before. Some worked and some didn’t. He was committed minute by minute to the entire expedition which obviously was a huge challenge. For me to travel through the wilderness with Vijay was a lesson in applied bravery. He is not simply a risk taker. He was most certainly afraid at times, like we all were, and yet he proceeded onward through the fear”.

“ I learned so much from Malcolm while organizing and working side by side this past year. First of all the trip was Malcolm’s idea. It was his strong belief that participants with disabilities could do so much more “athletically” than they or the public knows.  Malcolm’s prosthetic leg turned out to be a fine tool, when coupled with his strong will.  If Malcolm had a gap in his education as an outdoorsman, it was that his Colorado life left him unprepared for the Bristol Bay “moisture” (i.e. 24/7 wind driven rain). By trips end he reflected that in Colorado: “When it rains, we go inside or hide under a rock because we know it’s going to end soon. In Alaska, it doesn’t end, so I had to figure out how to “Zen” my way through it. I learned that it doesn’t matter. Need fire? Just hack away at a stick with your knife to find dry wood. We’d put on our waders in the tent before we got out and leave them on until we went to bed. No big deal. Besides, when it rained the mosquitoes would lay down. Every time the sun would come out so would the headnet and DEET. I learned to prefer the rain.”

These participants fundamentally raised the bar for what I know outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen are capable of.

Final Journal entry. “Flying back to town Vijay and I counted 13 Brown / Grizzly bears out the window of the floatplane”. I wrote: “this was the most fulfilling wilderness trip of my life!”  I’d witnessed Vijay Viswanathan make the journey without use of legs. I’d watched Malcolm Daly wading in swift water with a prosthetic leg to net his wife’s fish!

Karen reflected on the factors that made the trip such a profound experience for her after we returned: “it has nothing to do with the negatives: cold, rain, small rations or fear of bear attacks. It was not the tears of joy, or the exhilaration of catching the big fish, nor the glory of the portages. It has taken me weeks to really understand; as with any strong emotion, the answer is complex. There was “balance”. First we couldn’t have succeeded without the wisdom and experience of our “older” crew—the ones with the guns”.

“And we literally couldn’t have succeeded without the strength and kindness of our “younger” crew and the many loads they carried. “

“We couldn’t have had the trip at all without Malcolm and Vijay. They were the heart and soul of the trip.”

“But, it wasn’t just the perfect balance of experience, brains, … and brawn. There was more. The remaining components are intangible – courage, joy, respect, humor, patience, and humbleness. In short … love that was pervasive, unexpected and authentic”.

Finally I want to emphasize that this narrative is foremost about the Bristol Bay wilderness ecosystem that we were all extremely privileged to enjoy and only in hind site, since the group members were profoundly moved, did we tell this story in greater detail. Especially and with their permission, portions regarding the disabilities of two members. We felt that the athletic accomplishments of the whole group raised the bar in various ways, about what outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen could accomplish. In that light we took special care to recollect our thoughts and share this story.

Special thanks to: John Merritt, without whose generous financial support none of this could have occurred. John, a writer, fished in Alaska with me for many years and explored many vast and wild Bristol Bay landscapes while battling Multiple Sclerosis. He would have been here if not for his MS which now keeps him closer to home. The Bedell World Citizenship Fund contributed generously making it possible for Vijay and Malcolm to travel into the Alaskan bush. Patagonia provided waders and boots and outerwear and encouragement for this trip, which made comfort in outrageous weather possible! Without Paradox Sports’ vision, this trip could never have occurred. It took the abilities of Malcolm Daly, Paradox Sports Executive Director, to inspire us all to complete a journey whose scope was so large. Thanks to outdoor photographers Mikey Schaefer and Richard Voss for the use of their professional photographs and for all the crew for snapshots and personal reflections. Any factual errors in recounting this are my own.