Coldfoot Mountain, Philosophy Friday, and Ping Pong Palooza
// July 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // 2009: Adventuring, 2009: The Workplace
It’s been quite some time since I’ve written last. It seems the time between each post has grown longer and longer as it gets later in the season. I think it’s mainly because the notable events usually occur on our days off which come once a week. Anyways, we had a busy work week. On Wednesday, the Princess Cruise auditors came to evaluate our services here at Coldfoot. This means that the days prior to Wednesday, we scoured the inn to an almost flawless state. Well, not really but close enough. There is the possibility the Princess and Holland America could cancel their tours to the Arctic Ocean. However, there is nowhere else to accommodate the passengers. We are the only form of hospitality for over 200 miles in each direction. The continuation of the tour is also dependent on 2 other hotels, the Arctic Caribou Inn in Prudhoe Bay and the Westmark in Fairbanks. One can only hope that Princess and Holland are booking enough tours up to the North Slope to keep Coldfoot in business.
Last week, we had a ping pong tournament. It was very official for Coldfoot standards. We even had an elaborate bracket. Ping pong has become the official sport of Coldfoot. Kickball has faded out, apparently. Cory and I have been playing a lot and we’re getting pretty good or at least better. Cory even advanced to the finals. Ian, the chef is quite the ping pong guru and we figured that he would take the crown. He ended up handily beating Cory but his comeback was worthy enough to celebrate. I think we are going to try and make this a weekly thing.
Our “Ping Pong Table”
In other Coldfoot happenings, Mark hosted Philosophy Friday last week. It was essentially a forum for a host of different world issues. I attended for an hour but became tired of the argument. It seemed every topic of discussion encompassed the central argument between the right and left. A fair amount of coworkers here have had experiences that have driven them to become very socialist minded. Many have lived and volunteered in third world countries and their experiences have shaped their overall beliefs. Others argued for the sake of free market capitalism. I’ll likely attend the next Philosophy Friday simply to listen to the interesting experiences of our coworkers.
Mark, the host of Philosophy Friday walked a marathon along the Dalton a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, he decided to run a full marathon. It seemed like a rather spontaneous decision for such an arduous task. He completed it in 3 hours and 36 minutes. That’s around 8 minutes per each mile! Quite the feat. It turns out that at the beginning of the season, he lost his iPod. Well, remember the iPod that I found a month or so ago? It wasn’t the one that he lost but I ended up giving it to him. I know how it feels when you lose something so expensive so I thought it would be a nice gesture to let him have it.
Thursday night, Kevin, Cory, and I decided to climb Coldfoot Mountain. That same day we experienced the biggest hail that I’ve ever seen.
Hail on the porch of our tent
It continued to rain into our hike. Coldfoot Mountain is the largest peak in the area, topping out at 4,380 feet. It’s no Mt. McKinley by any means (20,000 feet) but it’s somewhat comparable to Mt. Katahdin, the biggest peak in Maine. The only difference is that this mountain does not have any trails whatsoever. We initially planned to tent out close to the top. We each carried packs around 40 or 50 pounds. Cory and Kevin borrowed large packs that weighed a lot more than mine. We each had a tent and a sleeping bag along with extra clothes and food. We started out the trip around 7:30PM having to cross a river. We crossed in the same spot that we normally cross when we go swimming. Rather than have soggy clothing, we stripped down and carried our packs on our heads. It was cold but not unbearable. We made it up to first ridge where we laid our packs down. The next and final part of the climb was steep and very rocky. None of us are in the best shape of our lives so our legs became very sore by the final ascent.
Taken from the top. Coldfoot Camp can be seen close to a mile below us.
We made it to the top where a large AT&T tower stood to handle communications for all of Coldfoot and Alyeska. By the tower was a very rudimentary helipad. It’s rumored that a few coworkers who had climbed this mountain last season were climbing the tower and a helicopter flew down and demanded them to descend the mountain immediately where a trooper would be waiting for them! We didn’t stay very long on the top. By the time we got down to where our packs were, we decided not to stay the night. We didn’t bring enough water and we were very thirsty. The descent wasn’t too bad but it got a bit dark (yes, it’s finally getting a little dark here) and cold towards the end. We were all very tired and just wanted to get back to camp where we could have a nice glass of water. When we made it back to the base, we had to cross the river again. This time we did it in our clothes. It seemed 10 times harder to cross. I don’t know if the pants made it harder or if it was the fact that my legs were shot. We completed the walk back to camp in our soaked pants. At this point, the air temperature was in the 40s. We arrived back at camp around 1:30AM after 6 hours of hiking. We scurried for food. Jason, the cook who I mentioned packed me an egg for the Atigun Pass trip that he deliberately didn’t hard boil, brought out an actual hardboiled egg for me. I suppose he figured that I deserved it this time. We wanted to stay up till 6 when breakfast started but we only made it until 3. That’s no surprise to me.
One month from today, I’ll be flying back to Boston. I have a feeling that August is just going to fly by. Cory and I have our 3 day break this week (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off). We are trying to switch that to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday so we can make the Andersen Bluegrass Festival. Does anyone know much about it? We may have to hitchhike from Fairbanks to the event. I shall keep you all updated on the coming events.
