Some people enjoy adventures; some people do not. I unabashedly do, and one of the primary reasons is because adventures force me to learn new skills, new ways of coping in foreign situations, and test my personal capabilities at the same time. While sometimes scary, I find the challenge of "not getting hurt" and "staying alive" to be fundamentally much more satisfying than my typical day, which tends to evoke stress of the "how many emails can you send out in an hour, while completing paperwork, not drinking too much coffee, and not hitting anyone in frustration" variety.
What I enjoy about Alaskan adventures in particular is that, for me, the primary skill learned can often be boiled down to a singular memory that in turn becomes symbolic of the entire trip. During the moose trip, the word "adventure" became synonymous with "ATV."
We've talked a bit about the terrain in past entries, but if you would like a better idea of the degree of difficulty and the stress we put on the four wheelers, watch the videos posted on Facebook (add me as "Jan Shultis Bowers") or on YouTube. The four-wheelers were the only way to get people and gear where we needed it to be. My driving experience prior to this trip consisted of slow jaunts around the flat hunting grounds of my family's ranch in the "hill country" of Texas to gather fire wood; this was another, uncomfortable planet.
Jason and I began the trip riding together so that I could leap off the back and take pictures at every opportunity. I was thrilled with this arrangement, which offered a chance to hang out with my husband, limited my ability to harm others or an expensive machine, and allowed me take photos. Jason, who is a highly capable driver and enjoys a challenging course, was also content. Not so thrilling were the bruises on my palms, back, and legs from clinging to the machine, but those four-wheelers took us where we wanted to go without fail, and I remain grateful for their capabilities.
As the days wore on, the hours of daily driving over rocks, up hills, and through rivers began to show, and machines broke down. From shift pins to flat tires, if something wasn't broken, it was probably frozen (read "Part 3" for more about the weather). Two machines dumped in the river, including us when a steep embankment tipped us backward and into cold waters. Laden with camera gear in a backpack on my back, I floated like a turtle downriver until Jason grabbed my jacket and hauled me out. I stripped down to a sodden t-shirt, hat and gloves lost, to dry off our rifles and camera gear as best as we could. As my father-in-law says, "save the rifles, then the camera gear, then yourselves." While at first a funny statement, this is sound advice!
Several other riders found themselves clinging to their machines and drifting downriver on various occasions when water that looked passable got a tad bit deep. Luckily, no one was hurt, and each day we laughed, cracked open repair kits, and did the best we could. On the last day, down to a few machines and a lot of riders who wanted one last crack at a moose, we doubled up and took four machines up the river with the twin purposes of hunting and cleaning the moose Jason took the night prior. This meant that we would tow a Pak Rat up, and haul out an additional 500+ pounds of meat. Due to the load on each machine, the most experienced drivers were assigned, and the rest of us charged with clinging to the back.
At least, that was the plan. As evening began to fall, a member of our party suffered a stroke (cut to the bottom line: he was fine, received medical care the next day, and is now fully recovered). This gentleman was one of our drivers. Jason, one of our most capable, immediately left to transport the injured man all the way back to camp for an attempt at a medivac out (ultimately denied due to the snow that rolled in and made a flight in next to impossible).
Three challenges now lay before us:
1) A worried Jason had to safely transport an injured man on the back of his ATV without causing further harm.
2) Four people and two machines were left at the kill site. This meant that Jason's father had to haul out the meat and a passenger, and
3) left me turning to the fourth person and asking "well, okay..... you better hop on the back and hang on tight, and how do I turn this thing on?"
In my opinion, the true display of courage was the woman who hopped on the behind me without batting an eye!
It took us three hours, but the group returned to base camp intact. Jason returned to us after dropping off the injured man with those who remained at camp, enabling the overburdened ATV with the meat to be relieved at least of the weight of one body. Onward we trekked, crossing one obstacle at a time, while I thanked the heavens above that I had strong arms and a strong back from powerlifting; patient teachers who only told me later that they panicked when I stopped making forward progress across the deepest river we crossed; and the type of Irish stubbornness that causes women to hike up their sleeves and figure that while we may or may not be able to do it, we stand as good a chance as anyone else, so might as well get to it already.
Or at least as soon as one figures out how to turn that darned thing on.....
