Leaving

So, by May 1975, I was pretty much ready to go. I had saved my money and gave my notice and made plans to do a whirl wind tour stateside before I headed to Guam. But it was still hard.

Truly, I had made some really great friends in Alaska. The last guy I dated before I left was Axel Bachman. He was such a sweetheart and one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. I also had one of my most memorable Alaskan adventures with Axel.

It was late March, early April and Diane Stolpe’s birthday was coming up. She lived full time on the Chatinika River and we all knew from experience that once you were in the bush for several weeks and your fresh vegetables and fruits began to run out, that was exactly what you craved. I made plans to go to Diane’s for her birthday weekend and pack in a bunch of fresh vegetables and fruits.

Axel and I were dating at the time and we planned to cross country ski in to Diane’s going down the 15-mile trail to her cabin. I figured going in would not be a problem, as it was all down hill. I gave some thought as to what it might be like, coming out, but, thought, ‘We’ll have all day Sunday, should not be a problem.” And I had the kind of working relationship with Red that if I was late Monday morning to work, no big deal.

However, all did not go well…primarily because I made some critical mistakes. First, on Friday I did not eat anything all day. Don’t ask why, even then I remember thinking, ‘Why not?’ No answer, I just didn’t that day.

By mid-afternoon when we left my office and headed to Murphy’s Dome it was a beautiful early spring day; warm enough that the top layer of snow had soften, so that as we tried to ski in on the trail, we were breaking through the snow every few feet. This meant that when we broke through we were about mid-thigh deep in snow, which meant we had to climb back up on top of the snow carefully, and try to get a glide back in our skiing. After about an hour of this really agonizing effort, we had made less than 2 miles of our 15 mile trip.

To add to our problems, someone was hiking in on the trail, and had ruined the trail surface to skiing…another major problem. Why the hiker, whoever he was, hiked directly in line with the ski trail…heaven only knows, but that person obviously didn’t realize the implications for a skier.

So, after about two hours, I was in serious trouble. It was my first, and so far, only encounter with hypothermia. The combination of no food in my system, the tremendous physical effort and the temperatures hovering around 40 degrees…I was in trouble. Hypothermia occurs when your core body temperature starts to drop below 98.6 and drops dangerously low. The remedy is to get something hot in your body. However, we had nothing hot to eat or drink and physically I could not go forward or backward.

Thank god for Axel. Axel was an experienced mountain climber, climbing some rather significant mountains around the world. He knew exactly what to do. First, he stomped the snow down to pact it in really tight and make a very comfy bed for us. Then he took all of our clothes and our extra sleeping bag and laid it out on the snow. Then he got me in the second bag, and as small as it was, he climbed in and wrapped himself around me. We also called my dog, Lady, in and made her sleep up against me on my back side. A photo of our bed for the night is to the left.

Axel’s body heat did the trick, getting my body temperature back up where it needed to be and relieving my symptoms which were some hallucinations and weakness. We slept like that through the night under the Alaskan stars. The next morning we had to give up our trip to Diane’s and instead turned around while the snow was still frozen from the night temperatures and headed back up the dome. Our first stop was a restaurant with a good, hot breakfast for both of us!

A few weeks after that, I left for stateside. I sold many belongings, put some in storage, found a new home for my cat Sarah and made arrangements for my friends Charlie and Gene in Anchorage to take Lady and Sadie and keep them while I was in Guam. I sold the van and flew from Fairbanks back to Cincinnati.

My Alaskan adventure, for the moment, was over.