Camping Disaster

The camping trip started out great. Temps were in the 40s and 50s during the day, and didn't get too cold at night. Clear-ish skies during the day, a little cloudy at night. Sounds perfect, right? Early Saturday morning, I awoke with the worst sore throat I've had since I was a kid. It was hard to swallow, talk, even breathe. After a wonderful breakfast quesadilla of cheese and onion, I started to feel feverish. We loaded up the car with our snowshoes and headed into the park. Our first stop was the winter visitor's center. There we discovered, in addition to the use of a plumbed bathroom, it was free admission to all national parks for the week. What luck! After a quick sponge-bath shower with baby wipes and a sink hair washing, we were set to go. ((I'm 100% religious about washing my hair each day and have done so at temps below -10F where I had to wash with extra hot water and rinse through the ice chunks))

We searched for a good place to start our snowshoe. We originally had planned on the Savage River to see some Dall sheep, but the path was icy and the wind was blowing. A chinook (very windy weather pattern that brings warmer air for a few days) was coming through the area and the 50mph wind was too much to handle. We backtracked a little bit and found a storm/melt-off river to hike up. At this point, I wanted to just go to sleep in the car and skip the trip. I downed some Dayquil and was on my way. I kept having to add and remove clothing layers the entire hike. I think this is when my fever started to kick in, because suddenly I was sweating in places that I only sweat when I'm sick (i.e.- stomach). We turned around after three miles of walking uphill through various depths of snow. The view was spectacular. The mountains that were shrouded in fog when we started out were suddenly revealed. This was our earliest trip (only one in April) and the park looks so different under a blanket of white. After taking in the view and enjoying the sunshine on our faces, we headed back to the car. It took us about 1/3 the time getting back as it did on the way out. All four of us following in a line had packed down a pretty wonderful trail in the snow. That was good though. When we got to the car, I was beat and nearly fell asleep with my snowshoes still strapped on. Once in the car, I re-drugged myself, blew my nose until I was out of breath, and almost fell asleep on the way out.

One final stop on the way back to the campground was to visit the park rangers' sled dogs. Since the park is motor-free in the winter, rangers travel between the different stations throughout the 90-mile park road area by dog team. This has been the tradition since the park opened as Mt McKinley National Park nearly 100 years ago. The dogs were well-behaved and we got to pet and play with them. We left at 5pm, when feeding time occurred. The dogs knew what was going on too. As the ranger disappeared into a small shed, the dogs grew quiet and hopped onto their individual dog houses. Not a peep came out of them and they all looked toward the shed. The ranger emerged with a bowl of water and food for one dog at a time, but once the first was fed, the barking erupted and was nearly deafening.

We returned to our campsite at 7pm, with plenty of daylight to build a fire and make dinner. I was thoroughly spent by now, and even with a cold med arsenal in my stomach, I still was ready to collapse. Brittany started to feel really awful too, with a terrible sore throat. After some debate, and neither of us wanting to be the one to end the trip for all of us, we finally decided that it was probably best to go home after dinner and a fire than to sleep restlessly on the ground for maybe another two hour hike the next morning. Brittany and I sat in a drowsy daze in the back seat of the car while Matt and Oliver chatted happily about weather related things. Oliver is a meteorology grad student in the building Matt works in, so they had lots to talk about.

When we were approaching Ester, we could see the lights of Fairbanks in the distance. It was then that I realized, we have never driven back to town in the dark. Our trips were always during the midnight sun or early enough in the day that it wasn't dark yet. At about midnight, we were finally home. We abandoned all of our camping gear in the living room, pausing only to remove smoky clothing layers. I took a bubble bath. The steam of the bath helped, but I still felt terrible. Matt and I slept for 10 hours until noon on Sunday. Definitely made the right decision about coming home early. We are both fighting off our cold today, Brittany uses me as a forecast of what is coming up in her cold's progression. We didn't give it to her, but she seems to have the same illness, with a 24 hour delay. Oliver escaped unharmed. Lucky bugger. We all vowed to go on another trip soon, one that promises to be more successful than this one.