The Antidote to the Dialed-in Adventure Trek
[author:Greg Fensterman/Trek Alaska Public time:Feb 23, 2006] |
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Sometimes on a packaged hiking tour you get the feeling that the guide has been on the route so many times that he knows every rock and twig along the way. Campsites, photo ops and breaks are all so planned out that you swear you can still feel the heat from the last guy who sat on your rock for a rest stop.
If you're signing on to a guided trek then you are looking for a bit of security and convenience. But you might still want more of a feeling of adventure and discovery than many packaged tours offer. Trek Alaska, a wilderness guiding company in McCarthy Alaska, has launched a new type of backcountry adventure: the Explorer Series.
The idea for the new series took shape last summer when founder Greg Fensterman was checking out a new route idea deep in the backcountry of Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This park is the largest in the nation and redefines the idea of remote wilderness. He only had a few days of fast and light travel to explore the area and felt that more research would be needed before the trek could be added to the lineup of trips that the company offers.
Then one of the guides suggested, why not invite some guests to go along on an exploratory trip and share in the sense of exploration and discovery. And the Explorer Series was born.
Unlike other guided tours, the Explorer trips are anything but dialed in routes. In the case of Martin Creek, the first in the series, the route has only been traveled once and many sections of the route planned for this summer have never been traveled, even by the guide. Future trips will include routes that have never been done at all, by anyone.
Such adventures are clearly not for everyone. If the idea of your guide scratching her head and calling the group around the map to discuss route possibilities makes you jittery, than an Explorer trip is not for you. Routefinding and wilderness navigation are a big part of these trips. When you're hiking through a region for the first time some of your choices might not work out, forcing you to backtrack, make a correction or plow through a patch of brush you hadn't planned on. Campsites aren't pre-determined and will be selected by the group as they travel.
Everyone will be a more active participant than on a typical trip where the guide simply leads the way. A trip like this can be a great way to hone your wilderness skills like map reading and navigation.
Last summer a family of Texans traveling the Seven Pass trek in Wrangell-St. Elias got a taste of what an exploratory trip is like. The guide was interested in trying a new variation on one section of the route. He had never seen the new leg of the route except for a quick fly over. He explained this to the group, that there might be some surprises along the way but they were game for trying the new way.
They arrived in a pass where we planned to stay the night, but because the guide had never been there before, he didn't have a campsite all picked out. So they broke into groups and scouted out the area... in the rain. But they found a great spot, set up, got warm and whipped up some chow.
The next morning they took off up the next pass in a pea soup fog. Navigating an unknown route in a thick fog is not easy. They headed up the pass but misread the fog shrouded terrain at one point and took a wrong turn into the mist. It quickly became apparent that they were off route. Twenty minutes of back tracking and the group was on course again.
That's what it can be like at times on a new route. That's why it's called exploring. And Greg says there is an extra bonus on the Martin Creek exploratory - the search for the lost hot spring. He said there are rumors of a hot spring down in one of the valleys and while no one reports having seen it on the ground he has these GPS coordinates...
More information on this year's Explorer Trek is available online. http://www.trekalaska.com or by calling 907.350.3710
About Trek Alaska
Trek Alaska, founded in 2001 provides guided backcountry adventures, specializing in the remote wilderness of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.
Otherinfo:info@trekalaska.com
907.350.3710
Website:http://www.trekalaska.com/
Printed From:http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200602/1140717674.html
Source:Free Press Release
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