Chapter 6 | Beyond the Edge
Chapter 6 | Stories from ‘Beyond the Edge’
Hopefully the irony of this Chapters title won’t be lost on you too much. For those of you who don’t really know me well, I can be sarcastic to the point of irreverent. This brief description, which explains the title, is just such a moment. You’ll understand more later, but give me your ear and let me explain what ‘Beyond the Edge’ alludes to.
In 2008 a friend and fellow photographer Art Wolfe created a documentary film series called Travels to the Edge. If memory serves PBS picked it up and I think they are still airing it to this day. Check it out because Art did a great job with it. A couple years later in 2011 the infamous Peter Lik in what must have been a clarifying moment of marketing genius for him, created a documentary film series called From the Edge. It aired for only one season on the Weather Channel.
I just have one question on the title that maybe someone could help me out with; couldn’t Pete have come up with something a tiny bit better? It sort of seems a bit like he copied Art’s lead there…Travels to the Edge, to From the Edge. Just sayin’.
Because I know both of them, Art & Pete, I decided to poke a little fun and we created, though has never been released or seen, a very short video which we called “Beyond the Edge”. It was all done in good fun and who knows maybe someday I’ll let it slip out of the archives. But not just yet, because it’s beyond sarcastic verging on indigent and funny as heck. Maybe in another ten years, when I become senile, might be better timing than today.
Now that that’s out of the box, lets take a moment if you’ll allow me, and let me share a few of the stories from my years on the trail. After all you have been so patient getting to this point with all that boring back story stuff, you deserve to have a little fun about now. So here we go…
Chapter 6 | Beyond the Edge | The Masters List
There I was in the middle of nowhere visiting Misty Fjords National Monument in Southern Alaska literally in the boon docks. Ring ring. Ring ring. Are you kidding me, is that my phone, if they’re getting through to me here then maybe I should answer it…“Hello?”
“Rodney? Are you sitting down?” Why would I be sitting down, I’m out hiking. It was Matt, a collector and friend from Texas.
The image below is where I was, just prior to the call…titled “Misty Glacier View”.
What Matt didn’t know is that I had stopped along the trail and had been spying a potential scene up the hillside. Well hillside isn’t very accurate because it was more like three cliff edges. Yet from the angle I was standing one could see there was definitely potential up there. It would take some doing to get up there on the hope of something being there, of course there’s no guarantees either - that’s just the risk you have to take sometimes. So there I stood wondering if I ‘should’.
Curious about his comment I asked, “Why should I be sitting down? Is there something wrong Matt?”, he said, “You’ve been listed on the Yahoo’s Master Photographers List!” I could tell he was super excited for me as I looked up the hillside again, wondering if it was worth it.
“That’s great! But what is the Yahoo’s Master Photographers List?” I had to ask, you see I had never heard of such a thing so it meant nothing to me at the time. But he went on to explain what a huge deal it was to be placed on this list. It (Yahoo!) had recognized and listed me as a “Landscape photographer known for his purest style.” And I was listed on the same page as Edward Weston, Christopher Burkett and a host of other very famous photographers (most of them dead.) To me it was all fresh news because I hadn’t been keeping track. I’m not a credit junkie so I typically don’t know the who’s who, even to this very day. So please don’t be offended if you’re '‘InstaFamous'“ and I don’t have a clue who you are. (it’s happened, trust me)
We talked a bit more and then got off the phone. But it made me think hmm…I’m a ‘Master’ eh?
The three cliff climbs I had been thinking might not be worth going up for prior to the phone call, had now become the challenge only a ‘Master’ would take on. So up I went, tasking myself to do what only a ‘Master’ could. Up to the first level cliff. It took some scrambling to get up to the second level, with the final goal in sight, but I made it. The final cliff didn’t seem that hard after the first two. What I could only get a glimpse of from below was far more amazing than I could have hoped. There was a small meadow with three streams running through it. At the far side was another cliff (unseen from below) where five waterfalls were flowing over the cliffs edge with small pine trees scattered through the meadow. My description here pales in comparison to what my eyes were looking at. It was stunning.
There I was starring at a true ‘Master’ class image. As quickly as I could I put my 8x10 camera together and checked all my calculation. I was ready if only the Wind would be my Friend for just a few seconds. While ascending the cliffs the weather, which looked as if it could turn bad, did in fact turn bad.
Misty Fjords National Monument is along the coast and not too far up in elevation from sea level. So when the weather comes in, it can come in hard & fast. It started to rain and the fog drifted in and what was a glorious and stunningly magnificent image soon disappeared behind the curtain of foggy rainy weather.
It’ll pass, I thought. Two hours went by with pounding rain. Surely it won’t last much longer after all a ‘Master’ would wait it out. From time to time the fog would fade back just enough to get a glimpse of what awaited should one be patient enough to wait it out. Four hours went by. More rain. More wind. More fog. But I’m a ‘Master’! My montra had become ‘wait just a little more.’
After six hours I realized that had I actually been a ‘Master’ I would have known five and a half hours ago that the best course of action would have been to come back another time. I like to think I’m not the dullest tool in the shed, but this moment caused me to ponder on that.
Sopping wet I packed everything back into my pack and headed down. Interestingly enough, when I was climbing up from each cliff to cliff plateau the stones, which had been dry, were no longer dry. In fact they had become like little marbles of glass, which required every step to be calculated or someone (me) could seriously get hurt.
Down safely off the top plateau. Down to the middle plateau, where I could see the trail far below. Next was the most dangerous cliff, for it had about a 30ft drop straight down. I was almost down when…I don’t remember much after that point other than the landing some 30 feet below. Somehow I hit the ground with my head pointing down the very steep hill onto the scree field with my hands pushed up into each arm pit. I rolled down a bit further and when I came to stop the wind in my lungs had been completely pushed out and it felt as if it took ten minutes for my lungs to begin working again.
What do you suppose was the first thought that came to mind when conscienceless came back to me? That’s right – How’s the Camera!? That is how dedicated I am to my craft. Right…as if falling off a cliff has just become routine.
But seriously, after my initial assessment, I was going to be able to walk away from a 30ft fall off a cliff in the middle of the wilderness. It would not be unscathed though because both of my wrists were wrecked. Not broken, but severally sprained. It took a long time for them to become functional again, and I was stuck there for another week as they healed enough and allowed me to continue my journey.
As I sat there wondering if it was all worth it I remember clearly thinking to myself “maybe they should take me off that ‘Masters’ list, because I’m not ready to die just yet.”
Chapter 6 | Beyond the Edge | Fishy Fishy
At one time we owned a 16ft ribbed Zodiac inflatable boat, with a 40 horsepower engine on it. In hindsight the sales guy did a great job of making me feel as though it could go anywhere, in fact, everywhere. If it was good enough for Jacques Cousteau, it was certainly good enough for me, and my exotic (or dare I say psychotic) adventures. Surely it was. Nothing to worry about, it’s a Zodiac – what could go wrong?
Funny how one looks back on really stupid things only to realize how stupid that stupid thing really was. By ‘stupid’ I really mean dangerous. Of course at the time it wasn’t either of those things in my mind, yet there was some level (if even at a small primal base level) of mental justification. Thin perhaps. But at the time the justification felt as thick as a small ice covered lake in the Arctic during winter. Which meant that taking a 16ft Zodiac out into the Pacific Ocean along Alaska’s southern shoreline in late September made perfect sense. It was an adventure, and meant to feel like one as well.
I set out from the port of Prince Rupert in British Columbia Canada and headed out across the open water, fully loaded for a 3 week trip ‘out there’, wherever ‘there’ ended up being because I had no real idea where I was going. Now someone who had done this type of thing before might have had the foresight to check the extended weather forecast. About now you are starting to think, ‘this is stupid’, and ‘he deserves whatever is coming’ and you’d be right. I don’t even have a ‘but’ to utter a retort here.
The first days trip took me past Tree Point Lighthouse where the seas, away from the coastline, were actually very pleasant and easy going.
The other thing I should have done, though I’d been warned about it, was to take a closer look at the tide tables. Alaska is notorious for having huge tidal swings, as much as 28ft+. That means high tide is 28 feet higher than low tide. If you live in California you likely know what 2-3ft max tide looks like? I don’t know for sure, but I do know it’s NOT 28ft.
Progressing up the coast the weather began to slowly turn, but not too bad to begin with. There were still plenty of sun breaks but it seemed wise to find a place to head inland. Not far away from the De Long Islands near foggy bay on the mainland side I found a small but passable inlet access point. The tides were in full shift and the Zodiac was tossed around like a Porsche at Le Mans. It was truly a wild ride. The prop whacked across an unseen rock in the tidal furry while headed upstream into the safe harbor of an inland lake. The prop had survived, so far.
The lake was scattered with haystack type rocks and moss covered trees on the very tops of them. At the far end of the lake was a pool, where hundreds of salmon were spawning. All of them were bright red (which I failed to photograph - what a rookie move that was.) In hindsight I should have taken out the camera, but I was too busy staring and enjoying the simple life cycle before me. It was a sight that to this day lives a healthy life inside my memory. But I had made it to safety inside the inlet lake, right as the winds had begun to pick up. I needed to find a place to camp for the night and quickly.
The haystack rocks were out of the question, but were certainly high enough to avoid the tidal shift. Though being stuck, should the boat rip loose from its mooring in the night, on a tiny island wasn’t really appealing to me. I had to find some space along the shore, even if that meant being near the high tide mark.
On the southern edge of the lake I found a very nice spot that I was sure would be above the high tide mark. As the tide continued out I spent my time prepping a campsite. Cooked me some dry good goods and then ate some chips and a cliff bar for desert and then snuggled into my tent and sleeping bag for the night. As it turns out, riding around in a little boat on the ocean can really do a number on you. I was tired and ready for a great nights sleep.
I was so tired it turns out that I didn’t feel the tide waters as they began creeping up the outside edge of the tent. That wasn’t until a loud slap hit the side of the tent. Too tired to care I tried to go back to sleep, until another slap on the tent woke me up with a little adrenalin bringing me to a full sitting position. Something was wrong, something was very wrong.
Smack! Again, the tent shook. That was not what immediately concerned me. The water had penetrated the tent and I was in water up to my waste. It was 2am and Salmon were slapping against the side of my tent from the outside. This is the kind of story no one could even think up – spawned from actual events (see what I did there with the word ‘spawn’?) I could hear the rain coming down in buckets and I was soaking wet. In fact almost everything I had was wet at this point, except the camera which was outside and uphill another 5 feet or so.
It’s not the kind of mistake I will ever make again mind you but getting out of the tent in the pitch blackness of night in a rainstorm at what was surely high tide is not something I want to ever have to do again. Several hours later I was able to wring out most everything, get it hung, put on dry clothes and slipped back into my sleeping bag (the bottom half was still very damp) and try to get back to sleep. Luckily the sound of rain, on the tents fly, always lull me to sleep, no matter the conditions.
Sometime later that morning I got out to truly assess my situation. Say do think fresh Mountain Lion tracks would alarm you? On the beach, low tide again, some ten feet away from my tent, a fresh set of tracks had gone walking by. Do you think it could have been my snoring that dissuaded the big cat? Because LeeAnna says I can wake the dead with that ‘awful’ noise.
My shore-to-shore radio was working just fine and I discovered that a huge storm was coming in, even larger than last nights storm. It did not take much encouragement to get packed and head back the way I came. Have you seen the movie The Perfect Storm? While the rolling waves weren’t as big as the ones in the movie, I can tell you that a 40hp engine didn’t always make it to the top of some of those waves. It took three hours to get up the coast and eight hours to get back down. Did I mention the ground glass on my 8x10 broke on the way back through the crashing waves? Next time. We’re gonna need a bigger boat.
Chapter 6 | Beyond the Edge | Now That, Was Stupid
Have you ever seen an iceberg up close? By that I’m really asking if you’ve ever stood on an iceberg. If not, please do not ever follow this example of getting onto one.
After my disaster along the southern Alaska coast in the Zodiac I thought it might be a good idea to give it another try. So I made my way to Valdez. Made famous for being the site of one of the worst oil at sea disasters the world has ever known. Even though it was a long time ago, if you look for it, you can still find traces of oil to this day. It is so very sad because this part of Alaska is so stunning. It still is, don’t get me wrong. Should you have the chance to get here you absolutely must! You will never forget the wild you can see here. Oh, and the fish and chips are AWESOME!
Putting the boat in the water at the harbor was easy. By now I’d gotten very adapt at putting it in and taking it out. Making sure everything I might ‘actually’ need was packed, including tide tables, detailed maps, food, extra gear in a dry bag, a detailed weather forecast, you get the idea. This plan did not include a repeat trip like the one out of Prince Rupert.
The plan was to head out to a nearby bay, known for its iceberg-riddled waters, stay a few nights and then come back to Valdez. This time everything worked out just as planned. Except there was this one time…
Hypothermia employs the 1-10-1 principle. Once immersed you have one minute to control your breathing, 10 minutes of muscle control and if you’re lucky enough to still be above water after those 11 minutes (like hopefully you were able to get to shore or back into a boat) you’ll have one hour before full Hypothermia sets in. After that the body starts to shut down, unless you immediately begin warming your body. If that happens, especially in the wilderness, your chances of survival go down really fast.
It’s recommended that you take and have easily and readily available an immersion|survival suit with you at all times. I was told it was legally required, so I made sure I always had one in the boat when I went out. You may have seen these suits in the movies, big, bulky, bright red, which can save your life if you’re going down or fall overboard. Now ask yourself if you think I bothered ever putting it on.
I left Valdez harbor on a beautiful fall morning with calm, glass like, conditions. My heading had me pushing down the Valdez Arm south southwest. My first night camp location had me slated to be on Heather Island about two hours away. If you’ve ever seen my image titled Tundra Island, it was taken from Heather Island the following sunrise. This time I was very sure to be well above the high tide mark.
It is almost indescribable how remarkably beautiful this part of the world is. The bay was filled is icebergs as promised and the black sand beaches were littered with huge chunks of blue ice. Writing this makes we want to plan a trip back and stay another week. During my stay, there wasn’t a single sound of another person or piece of mechanical machinery. The only sounds were those of eagles flying overhead, the waves rolling softly onto the shore, playing sea lions and the infrequent calving from the glacier at the end of the bay. It really was something.
During my stay the wind was light overall however it was enough to push the many icebergs down the bay and landed them on the bay side beaches of Heather Island. One of my images from that week is incorrectly titled, though I’ve never taken the time to fix it, “Icy College Fjord”. In that image, directly below, one can see the bay packed with icebergs.
Now the real adventure began. For some reason it seemed as though the Zodiac could make its way through that tumbled mess of ice. The thought never occurred that it might be able to get in, but could it get out? Ice moves while floating in water. Icebergs also move around and they’re not easily moved especially in a 16’ Zodiac with a 40hp engine.
After some searching I had found it, the perfect iceberg I’d been looking for. Now all I had to do was to find another one, just across from it at the perfect angle so I could set my tripod up and take the shot. Ummm..right.
You’ve guessed it already haven’t you. I had to get onto an iceberg. I had to stand on it and I had to somehow keep the boat close by. It seems so easy doesn’t it.
I found the perfect one, but trying to step onto it was not going to happen. The only choice, remember that ‘not the dullest tool’ comment made earlier, was to run the Zodiac up onto that berg. The problem though was getting it to stay on the berg while I got out. Vroom….up onto the berg and just as quickly it would slide back down into the freezing cold, waiting to kill you, water.
Einstein said the definition on Insanity was repeating the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Well I was certainly showing some of that behavior that day I can tell you. If I just go a little bit faster, farther up onto it, that’ll do it. And to some extent it did. The further up on the berg I got the longer it took for the boat to slide back off.
What was a guy to do!? Oh I know what to do…this is a great idea, this is going to work!
All I need to do is simply coil the bow line up and place it right at the front of the bow. The plan was simple. Race the boat up on the berg. Right as it was about to hit the berg lift the motor out of the way. Then turn the motor off, pull the dead man key, run to the front of the boat while the boat runs up on the ice, grab the bow line so nicely coiled up front and JUMP from the boat onto the iceberg. What could possibly go wrong with this plan!?
It was a choreographed scene the likes of which you can probably only image in your mind because the reality of it can’t be so. It was as if I were destined to dance Swan Lake in Carnegie Hall. Where were the GoPros of the world back then because this one moment would have made worldwide news!
It wasn’t until my feet were on the berg, rope in hand, did I start to wonder if this was a good idea. The boat was sliding back into the bay and my hand was hanging onto the rope. Take a guess where the survival suit was. Hint. I wasn’t wearing it. To this day I am not sure how it is that boat didn’t pull me straight into the icy death trap I was only a few feet away from.
I tied the boat off on a vertical chunk of ice and pulled it up onto the berg. After all I needed to get my camera out and set it up to still this moment, a perfect moment, my adrenaline filled mind told me it was.
Here’s the thing, that wasn’t the scariest part of the whole deal.
All the while I’m standing there with my camera I could hear the iceberg beneath me moaning, creaking and cracking. That was when it came to me “I’m an idiot!” But, what a way to go, right?
And oh, the image (below)…not so awesome at all. And ridiculously titled “Ice Ice Baby”, what was I thinking?
Chapter 6 | Beyond the Edge | To Be a Wilderness Guide
On Village Island, a First Nation site named Mamalilikulla (which means village with rocks and island out in front of it), it was rumored, though long ago abandoned, to have a rare snake totem. By rare, it’s really rare. I wanted to go see it, had to see it, just to find out if it the totem was still standing and to have a look in person at this rare thing. But to get there would require a boat.
We’d long ago retired the 16’ Zodiac. Besides, it would not have been up to the task this trip would require. LeeAnna has always been patient with me when it came to acquiring ‘things’ needed to go get the job done. I certainly could have done everything I’ve done over the past 25 years with a 35mm camera, but she understood my desire to create the best finished artistry I could, which of course required getting an 8x10 film camera. An 8x10 camera has 64 times the resolution of a 35mm which means you can expose and then create a photograph really large without loss of detail. If you’ve ever seen such a thing in person you will know what I’m talking about.
So we got a 26’ Idaho Boats, jet boat. That would do the trick.
This thing was amazing! The seats could turn down into a queen sized bed fully enclosed from the elements, set up a kitchen, had a disposable toilet, refrigerator with freezer, huge fuel tanks, big engine, was sea worthy, etc. but most importantly it could haul butt! Properly provisioned I would be able to take it out for months at a time and travel just about anywhere I wanted to go given it could plane in 18 inches of water, except in iceberg territories doing nearly 50mph (forget all the ‘knots’ stuff - fast is fast.)
A plan was set into motion, I’d be headed out to explore the coastal inlets of every tiny little accessible spot between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. I’d begin near Vancouver BC and go all the way up to just past Port Hardy of Vancouver Island. Take out your map to see just how big an area this ‘little’ trip planned on covering. It would take two and a half months to circumnavigate this area and more amazing stories than I probably have life left to tell.
Finally I was there. Mamalilikulla, the island I had dreamed to get to.
Now, to be a wilderness guide in many National Parks here in the US one is required to take a number of back country and/or wilderness courses. From basic first aid, wilderness survival, first responder, etc. etc. Basically they want you to be able to respond to just about every thing that might happen. To put it in perspective, I have a suture kit in my first aid kit.
Glacier National Park in Montana, right up at the Canadian border, has it’s list of requirements just like any other park might. Except they make you take a course none of the others require. It is a Bear Encounter course. Primarily you are required to watch a video, and in my case I’ve had to watch it some 30 times over the years, before they will issue you your backcountry permit. As one might expect the video goes into really great detail on how you need to react when encountering a bear, in a multitude of bear encounter scenarios.
The video begins with a basic encounter where you and the bear see each other, or maybe only you see it (because let’s face facts here, it seeing you first without you seeing it could turn disastrous very quickly) and how you are to take a submissive posture and when (hopefully) the bear looses interest in you, you slowly back away. This is the most likely encounter one is expected to have happen.
The Bear Encounter course escalates from there up to a worst-case scenario in which a bear attacks. The course pretty much takes you through the A to Z of how to handle a bear encounter in the wild. Admittedly during some of my workshops we have encountered bears. Each time we and the bear acted, per our training, just as it was expected to and we’ve never had an issue. We once, in Glacier as it turns out, had a mother and two cubs come within thirty feet of our group in an area where we would not have been able to get out, should mama wanted to make a point, and would not have had any issue getting ‘past’ us. I attribute us remaining safe to the course. After taking it so many times and having had occasion to exercise it from time to time I’ve gotten about as comfortable with bear encounters as taking a trip to the supermarket. Sounds crazy, I get it. They just don’t scare me like they use to.
Back to Mamalilikulla.
There appeared to be only one place to land/tie up the boat. An old Pier system was in shambles, but with care I was able to tie up the boat and make my way to shore over the timbers. In hindsight it was pretty dumb, but somehow it wasn’t sketchy enough for me not to try. LeeAnna is just now hearing this story and she’s probably just shaking her head at me in silent disgust.
On shore I could see what was clearly a trail going from the dock, up over a small rise, down to where the remains of the village were. Putting my pack on I started the leisurely stroll down the trail to the village. Wait a minute, the village was long ago abandoned…why was there a trail?
It wasn’t long before the trail narrowed, though very easy to follow, down to a small single lane. On both sides the blackberry bushes grew well over twelve feet high. The trail sort of leisurely wound left for a little bit and then back around to the right, all the time inside the blackberry labyrinth where you could only see twenty of so feet in front of you.
I knew that there were black bears on these island, but I had not encountered one so far on my journeying’s. But cautioning on the side of it’s better to be safe than sorry, I began to make a lot of noise. “Hey Bear!”, over and over – surely any bear that hears me, and they should surely hear me because I was dang loud, would make it’s way away from me. It turns out that was probably a good thing to start doing since bear scat, fresh poop, started showing up on the trail!
If a bear came around a corner I’d be in big trouble as there was no where for me to escape.
Then the most unlikely thing happened, as I turned the final corner into the crumbling village. A bear was right there, right in front of me with its butt staring me in the face! This had to be either the dumbest bear, or it couldn’t hear a thing, because I was right on top of it.
Of all the scenarios the Bear Encounter course covers…this is NOT ONE OF THEM.
All the scenarios came to mind in an instant…slowly back away (but what if it hears me, sees me retreating and decides to attack) that wouldn’t work…make a lot of noise and try to scare it away (but what if it instead feels threatened and decides to attack) that wouldn’t work…make myself look larger than I was and the same thing happens as making a lot of noise, that wouldn’t work either. None of the scenarios had prepared me for this situation. What was I to do? They say during your last moments your life flashes before you…it does. No kidding.
This was a serious situation with real consequences in the balance. What the heck was I to do!?
I did the only thing I thought had the tiniest chance of working was a combination of everything all thrown in together…I made myself as big as I was able to and simultaneously yelled “HEY BEAR” while simultaneously slapping it in the ass as hard as I could. For a nanosecond I just knew it was all over for me and the price of all my artwork would suddenly skyrocket.
That bear looked back at me and it’s eyes got huge, and I wasn’t sure yet what was going to happen. I must have scared the crap out of it because it turned away from me as fast as it could and ran off into the woods in the opposite direction. Honestly I’m not sure if a little wee may have made it’s way out, but somehow I’d made it into the clear where that bear was concerned.
Needless to say my visit in the village went pretty quick. Just think of what might happen if that bear had friends and they somehow got organized, well…am I right?
I quickly found the totem, it had fallen to the ground and was mostly covered with moss, surrounded by bushes. It wasn’t photogenic to me, remember, the ‘Master’. So I left it be and returned to the boat aptly named ‘Run-a-Muk’. On my return trip back to the dilapidated pier, I went via the beach, which during low tide makes for a far better access to the village.
I’ll never forget the look on that bears face. Nor it mine, I suppose.