Tundra walking and my love/hate relationship with the lowbush cranberry

Hey blog.  It's been a while.  Let me tell you about what I did this weekend.

My roommate/co-worker Holly and I decided to go backpacking this Memorial Day weekend.  There are no formal trails to follow outside of Kotzebue.  There is an 8-mile road that loops out into the tundra and back, but that's about it.  Walking across the tundra is generally discouraged because the terrain is so difficult to cross.  More on tundra walking later.

We decided to hike south of town, down the coast.  Not even walking on the beach is easy.  The sand and loose rock gives way under your feet and you can't move as fast as you want.  We found what I believe to be seal and beluga vertebrae, which seems so common place up here.  The coast is a major pathway out of town for snowmachines and four-wheelers.  We met a few people on four-wheelers and they warned us about Sadie Creek not far away down the coast.  We came upon the creek ourselves.  It was flooded from all the spring snowmelt.  Though I was wearing tall rubber boots, the water at its shallowest point was just I little to high for me to walk through and still remain dry.

So that was a road block for us.  We decided to stop for the night and set up came.  By that time it was about 9pm with the sun still high in the sky.  We made a fire out of driftwood and melted snow for water for our dehydrated soup.  However, it took about an hour to boil the water.  Anyone who thinks I'm an outdoorsy guy should watch me try to cook outside (that includes charcoal grilling). 

As we waited for water to boil, we watched and listened to Pacific loons floating in the openings in the sea ice.  Pacific loons sound much from our friend, the Common Loon (best state bird ever!).  Pacific loons sound tone-deaf compared to the Common Loon.  When a bunch of them wail at the same time, it's kind o scary-sounding. (Note: the photo above was taken around midnight)

After waking up the next day, we spent some time around the camp since we really couldn't go any further down the coast.  I climbed the coastal bluff p to the tundra and found a moose skeleton.  It looked like someone went hunting, cut off all the meat (including the brain), and carried it down to the coast to be carried away on snowmachine.  I sat down to sketch the skeleton.  A word of caution to anyone who wants to sit down on the ground in the tundra:  there are berries everywhere!  And they will stain your pants!

We decided to head back home that afternoon, but instead of walking back along the coast, we walked across the tundra.  The tundra is covered with a mat of spongy mosses, grassy tussocks, and nets of short woody plants. It is like walking across a field of mattresses with small foot-sized potholes hidden throughout.  There are tussocks about six-inches high that are solid when your step on them but you can never quite step on them right because they are covered with grass and your foot slips off of them.  In addition, there are often soggy pools across the tundra, so it pays to wear rubber boots.  Crossing the tundra consists of a lot of high-stepping, ground-staring, and ankle-twisting.  Tundra walking may not be as terrible as I made it sound, but it's slow-going and you'll be glad once you get out of it.  You'll also sleep like a dog when you get home.