Father-daughter trip to Adak, Aleutian Islands.
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I tried to post a trip report as a trip report:
(https://backpackinglight.com/member-trip-reports/father-daughter-trip-to-adak-aleutian-islands/), but this lifetime member wasn’t allowed to post photos so I stopped that effort and I’ll try here instead. First a photo here to see if I’ve been granted those privileges since the regime change.
Okay, the forum still seems to work, so I’ll do my write-up here in the next post.Second post with trip report (currently being editted).
Years ago, one of the dads of my daughter’s middle-school friend-group proposed reserving a cabin in the wildlife refuge, canoeing across the lake to get there, catching fish, cooking over the fire, swimming, learning to canoe, etc. It was such a great idea all the rest of us said “Hell yes!” and scheduled a vacation day that Friday for a long weekend.
The next year it was a backpacking trip with intro-to-UL and building a “monkey bridge” across a stream. Then sea kayaking (we did roll clinics in the school pool beforehand) across Kachemak Bay from Homer. Two years ago, it was RVing to Denali NP (park bus tour of the scenery and critters in the park plus whitewater rafting and ziplining outside the park). Nothing in pandemic 2020, but I proposed going as far west as you can (without a passport) and stomping around Adak Island in the Aleutians, 1100 miles west of us in Kenai.
The plan was for a week on the island, (there are two flights a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays), but on the first Saturday, the ceiling was at minimum and there was a 40 mph crosswind, so the jet circled hoping for weather to improve, did an ILS approach but had to reject the landing when they couldn’t see the runway and we ended up back in Anchorage. Sigh. First time that’s happened to me on Adak (more often happens in Dutch Harbor and Juneau). So we scrambled for lodging and fun things to do on the Mainland until we could try again on Wednesday.
Based out of an AirBnB in the ski resort town of Girdwood (there was still skiing on May 22nd), we took hikes to the local water fall and then headed through the world’s only bidirectional, single-lane rail&vehicle tunnel to the town of Whittier:
And my photos are posting upside down and sideways on the new system. Even though I’m doing it exactly like I used to on the old system.I’m tapping out. Try to do something for community (I have some new ideas about how a really budget Adak trip could be quite comfortable in all weather), and there is hurdle upon hurdle in the way.
DavidG: I took the girls to the “White Alice” cold-war-era communications site on top of a mountain and we hiked down to the beach from there. On the way, I went over some roads I’d never (and you’ve never) been on. Instead of those WWII-era ammunition depots in buried Quonset huts (which were all wet and moldy and nasty) that you saw at the trailhead to Husky Pass when you and I hiked to Expedition Harbor:
there are a few cold-war-era ammo depots in massive poured-in-place reinforced concrete bunkers – completely, remarkably clean and dry inside. Huge – 100 feet by 40 and with operable swinging metal doors so you could block any weather. Literally bomb-proof.
We didn’t find one with the badminton court inside, but they were exactly that size and construction but with a concrete floor.
If someone wanted to tent-camp it in a perfectly dry, huge, storm-proof “tent”, that would be an option. Part of why they were so dry was they were constructed on ridge tops instead of excavated into the side of hills with water seeps like that WWII-era ones were.
Yeah, it seems I can post images from my computer into the forums, but not from my phone and not into a Trip Report™.
And my photos are posting upside down and sideways on the new system. Even though I’m doing it exactly like I used to on the old system.
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