Today in our Blogger Network, backpacking writer Carrot Quinn reveals plans for an ambitious traverse of the Brooks Range, Alaska
Carrot Quinn is perhaps best known for writing Thru-hiking will Break your Heart, an account of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. She is also a backpacking blogger who has written extensively about her various trails in North America.
This year, her major hiking project will be a 1,000-mile traverse of the Brooks Range, Alaska, together with friend Bunny. It’s a serious environment. Close to the continental divide, they’ll be crossing rivers that may or may not be fordable, and could require lengthy detours or even the building of rafts to get across. They’ll cross only one road and pass through only one village on their planned walk.
The route is entirely off-trail and planning has been extensive. Carrot says that, to her knowledge, only three people have traversed the entire Brooks Range in one continuous trip; two (Buck Nelson and Andy Skurka) have helped her form the plans.
Carrot and Bunny will be raising money for Defend the Sacred AK, an organisation fighting to protect wild lands in Alaska sacred to indigenous peoples. Part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is currently at risk from oil drilling.
We’ll cover about fifteen miles per day, for the walking part of the trip. There will be 24 hours of sunlight when we begin the route in mid June, although night will have returned by the time we finish, in mid august. We’ll be hiking in peak mosquito season. Depending on who you ask, the Alaskan arctic has the highest concentration of mosquitoes on earth. There will be many, many grizzly bears, although the arctic, being generally north of treeline, is a less sketchy environment in which to encounter a grizzly, because the land is open and you can more often see the bear from a long ways away and give it a wide berth.
Read the full post here.