A run around Gustavus

I woke up two weeks ago in Gustavus looking for some solitude and adventure. So I decided to run the survey cuts marking the boundary between Gustavus and Glacier Bay National Park. I thought it might take 3 or 4 hours and packed a little food, some iodine pills to refill my water bottle and took off around 10:15am.
Leaving the beach at the west end of Gustavus, near Pt. Gustavus.

You can see from these cuts that the line has been brushed within the last few years. Many of the survey monuments are from 1998, so that may be the first time the line was cleared.

The brushing crew left some things behind. In addition to these loppers, I found a small amount of trash and a few piles of extra orange NPS boundary stakes.

Those blurry white spots are funky little mushrooms pushing up through the duff. Not sure what kind.

There were some wet spots, especially when the line started cutting back east toward Gustavus. (see google map).

One of the two roads I crossed all day. This one goes to the National Park. The other heads to the Falls Creek Hydroelectric project.

A moose hide drug around by wolves or coyotes? Or the sign of a moose shot in the park and drug back across the border? Kinda looks like the former, thankfully.

A sedge darner (type of Dragonfly). I finally got to use my new book "Dragonflies of Alaska" by John Hudson and Robert Armstrong to identify it.

The Salmon River.


The north end of the gravel pits. Supposedly, the pits were dug before the boundary was surveyed and no one knew they were digging in the park.

Found this algae growing on land (seemed very odd to me at the time) north of rink creek road. I photographed it on top of an old General Land Office (them's the homesteading folks) survey monument from 1920.

The most beautiful scenery of the trip. The tri-tone grass made me want to sit down and find my inner Andy Goldsworthy, but the hour was getting a bit late.

Finally made it to the beach. This is near the Bear Track Inn.

Running on home. I made it just after my parents started worrying, but before it was fully dark. In total, 31 miles in 8 hours and 46 minutes. I probably walked 18 miles of it due to wet conditions and the fact that I only brought six 120 calorie gel packs with me for food. The roasting moose that greeted me when I ran into our front yard was a welcome sight.

Wasatch 100

Well that was pretty fun. Geoff rocked it (see his race report and that of his major competitor, Karl Meltzer) and I had fun being his support crew. I didn't get a picture of Katherine, Karl's support crew and a veteran observer of ultrarunning, but she was great company as we waited for the lead runners to come through. Both Geoff and Karl don't rely heavily on support--and probably would prefer races where everyone just uses drop bags and the aid stations, with no personal support crews. At each aid station I would get one of Geoff's drops bags with his nutrition (basically, cliff gels and endurolyte electrolite pills) stuff and put them in a hip belt with fresh water and electrolyte drink. I'd hand this off to Geoff and he'd give me his old belt and keep running, preferably not even stopping at all.

The picture above shows Geoff's drop bag at Brighton, the last aid station where support crew can go. It includes his night running set-up, with two headlamps, one of which is worn around the waist to better illuminate the trail.

At Brighton, I joined Geoff and tried to keep up with him for the last 25 miles of the race. I made it about 12 miles before he dropped me and kept going. He ended up doing lose last 25 miles (and their ~8,000ft of climbing) is a record setting 4:57. I enjoyed running with him while I could, and being left in the dust, tired and alone in the dark on a famously gnarly section of a famously gnarly 100 mile race, was as good an introduction to the sport as I can imagine. Thanks, Geoff!

This Rural Life

From Verlyn Klinkenborg's editorial in the New York Times today,

What the insects are noticing--the bats, too--is beyond me. Our perceptions overlap without ever converging in the night. All the entangled lives on this farm seem to run on seperate tracks, except where they collide as predators and prey or companion and caretakers. Push this thought far enough, and nature seems to fray, to come apart into a disunity that is gathered up only by our human perceptions. And yet that gathering up is just our own kind of solipsism. I don't know that the horses have ever made a general proposition about nature, but then they don't know that I've made one either.

Freezing Salmon myths

Listen to this, from a blog called Beyond Salmon:

The reason I was so surprised was that I've had previously frozen salmon before that was terrible, so I concluded that salmon doesn't freeze well. What I didn't take into account was that it was wild Coho and Sockeye Salmon that tasted awful. They are extremely lean compared to farm-raised Atlantic or King salmon and do turn to mush when frozen. So when you choose your salmon for freezing, go with Atlantic (always farm-raised) or King (farm-raised or wild).

Absurd. Friends don't let friends eat farmed salmon. For one, it is terrible for the environmentas currently practiced (check out Raincoast Research Society's great work on this subject). For two, all the farmed salmon I've ever consumed has tasted like soggy cardboard--even the fresh farmed king I had in Patagonian Chile.

Also, for the record, we have been freezing king, sockeye, and coho salmon forever with a very high quality result. Our guests rarely, if ever, realize it has been frozen and when we tell them so they begin to question the idea that freezing it so bad for fish. As is mentioned on the blog I bash above (which is pretty well done over all), this is a myth; what is important is how and when the fish is frozen, not whether it was frozen. My dad has always said that freezing should be done very quickly in a good quality freezer and that whole fish survive better than fillets because their is less flesh exposed to the air. From the discussion on the Beyond Salmon blog I learned why quicker is better:

I agree with Tse-Wei aho said that ice crystals can be made smaller if you freeze it very very quickly- metallurgical fact- yes I am a materials doctoral student! So it would make sense that a fish flash frozen at sea would last longer, preserve taste and texture than if you were to do the same thing at home. Also I agree with Helen that you should never defrost meat or fish or any food for that matter very quickly- i.e. do not microwave, or on your counter top.

Staying put.

I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man's life
I am at home. Don't come with me.
You stay home too.

--Wendell Berry