not a road, not a known or encouraged route. It was illegal to walk through the tunnel unless you were an employee of the railroad.
I’m also sure that during the winter months, the train did not keep a regular schedule going in and out of Whittier. In other words, we had no idea if or when a train would come through while we were in the tunnel.
Our trip began well, with an easy ski to the tunnel entrance. Once there, we took off our skis and opened a door meant only for railroad employees. Inside it was pitch black. No lights. We all had flashlights or headlamps, and it was these that guided us down the tracks, with our skis and poles slung over our shoulders.
The walking was perilous. Here and there mounds of ice had formed on the dark tracks where water dripped inside the tunnel.
I don’t remember if I had been in on the planning of this trip or if others had meticulously planned the excursion. All I know is that I blindly went along. Once inside the train tunnel, I was terrified that a train might come along.
As I walked, I looked to either side of the track, trying to gauge if there was room for us to stand against the wall and not be hit by the sides of a train. It didn’t look like it. In my mind, I practiced splaying my body against the wall, making myself as flat as I could, hoping not to be dragged off.
Fortunately for us, no train came that day, and we reached the other side safely. But our troubles had just begun.
The wind was so strong when we left the tunnel that it knocked us over like matchsticks. We retreated back inside to figure out what to do. The original plan had been for us to ski into Whittier and find a place to camp. But the town was several miles down the tracks, and every time we tried to step outside and put on our skis, the wind would knock us down.
We decided to trek to the side of the tunnel to find a spot to build a snow cave and camp. Leaving our skis and poles in the tunnel, we stumbled along the lower slopes of the mountain, trudging like mountaineers on Everest: Step. Stop. Brace. Step. Stop. Brace.
What we had not prepared for was how deep the snow was around Whittier, which receives an average of nearly 270 inches of snow a year. It snows so much there that walls of snow regularly cover the first-story windows of homes.
Eventually we came to a jagged tree that offered a slim buffer to the winds. There, we set up camp. We didn’t have tents, so we dug out under and around the tree and covered the whole contraption with a piece of plastic sheeting.
The Ritz, it was not.
We did have a small propane stove to heat food and drink though. Once inside our makeshift shelter, we were warm enough to take off wet outer layers and hang them on a string tied across the top of the shelter and relax in our long underwear. Our space roomed three comfortably. Maybe four. But five of us? We somehow managed to crisscross our sleeping bags and eventually go to sleep.
The next morning, after thawing clothing that froze on the clothesline overnight, we broke camp and decided to try to get into town again. One of our party, the guy in the leg cast—the least likely to get ahead—struck out on his own. By the time we got to the tunnel to retrieve our skis, he was long gone.
Some of us tried to ski along the snow-covered tracks. Every few feet, the wind would knock us down. Eventually, we took shelter in a small, abandoned wooden building.
There, I cried. My fingers and feet were frozen and hurt. After resting a few minutes, we decided to go back to the tunnel and regroup. Once there, we warmed up. God only knows what we thought we were going to do next.
Then, deep inside the tunnel, we saw a tiny, bright light. As we stared at it, it got bigger and closer. Something was coming down the tracks. Fortunately, it wasn’t big enough to be a train.
Like a knight in shining armor upon a white horse, a railroad worker riding a white Polaris snow machine pulled up to us and stopped. He was a young and friendly guy who might have encountered people like us before. He told us to stay put. He went into town, and a short while later, he pulled up outside in a pickup truck.
We loaded our skis and our shivering selves into the back, and he drove us into Whittier. Our rescuer took us to his house, where we camped on his living room floor. Later that night we reunited with our friend in the cast, who had successfully skied all the way into town.
When it was time to go home to Anchorage a day later, we bought tickets on the train.
THAT WAS MY LAST winter camping trip, but not my last attempt at wilderness camping.
One summer in high school, I went with two friends (including one who had been on the ill-advised ski-through-the-tunnel fiasco) to Denali National Park. The park is home to Mount Denali, the tallest mountain in North America at 20,320 feet.
Sigrid, Kim, and I got to the park and picked up our backcountry permit. It would allow us to leave the only road through the nearly ten-thousand-square-mile park and designated wilderness area. That road is ninety-two miles long.
Aside from a fall lottery that allows some lucky motorists to get a pass to drive into the park, most of it is strictly off limits to motorized vehicles of any kind. A yellow school bus, then and now, takes tourists on a long, slow ride through the park all the way to Wonder Lake.
The bus dropped us off at our designated camping area. To assure no disruption of the wildlife in the area—wolves, grizzly bears, and dozens of other types of animals—only so many backcountry passes are issued at any given time.
We felt lucky to get ours the moment we stepped off the bus. Shaggy tundra and bright wildflowers and rippling streams unrolled before us. The mountains we had traveled through on our way to the park suddenly looked like foothills beside massive Denali. There is no view like it on earth.
Our drop-off point was on a high ridge with a gentle slope that went down to a braided river. Carrying heavy backpacks, we easily descended the slope to the bottom of the river valley that runs through the park. We wore our hiking boots but had nothing waterproof for wading through the shallower parts of the river.
We walked up and down, leaping from sandbar to sandbar, as we made our way across. But at one point, there were no more areas we could jump over. We would have to wade across what seemed to be a nonthreatening and slow-flowing branch of the river.
We discussed our options: get our boots and clothes wet or go barefoot and, well, in our underwear. We hadn’t brought shorts of any kind, nor perhaps a dry change of pants.
With summer evening temperatures on the cool side, we opted to keep our clothing dry. We stripped off our boots and pants, threw them in our packs, and began to wade through the water.
I discovered, as anyone who has ever crossed rivers and streams in Alaska in summer knows, that the water was freezing cold. Bitterly cold. Painfully cold, as if you are being stabbed with a thousand knives. You feel you can’t breathe. You just might die.
Or, in our case, die of embarrassment. As we began our crossing, we turned to see that another park bus was stopped on the road high above us. The bus drivers usually stop to allow tourists to photograph wildlife. Using our binoculars, the three of us realized that the tourists all seemed to be looking in our direction.
We looked around. Could there be something nearby? A moose? A bear?
Nope.
We realized the tourists were looking at three teenage girls in their underwear crossing a small stream
