Over the last five years or so, I've been studying treeline advance in the Brooks Range, leading me to assemble a route that I call "Walking Treeline" that pieces together a series of interesting segments between Canada and the Chukchi Sea. It's not a "through hike", but rather where my last several years of scientific research using very high satellite imagery and ecological modeling, experiences hiking and packrafting in the Brooks Range spanning portions of six decades (70s, 80s, 90s, 00's, 10s, 20s), and airstrip locations have suggested that my companions, field workers and students join ..read more

It’s difficult to imagine a better pair of people to put together a packrafting handbook than author Luc Mehl and illustrator Sarah Glaser. Both were raised in Alaska—prime packraft habitat—with wilderness literally out their backdoors. Each epitomizes the multisport, super-safe, modern adventurer who is self-propelled and self-reliant, good-natured, with broad smiles and welcoming, all-inclusive dispositions that come across clearly in this delightful and informative book. While I have only a passing personal acquaintance with Sarah, I truly admire her work. My serious packrafting bias asid ..read more

 Powerpoint from 2005, when I tried to impress Ned Rozell with my semi-quantitative ideas for Alaskan wilderness travel based on concepts from ecology and mathematical models...didn't really work, but some of you might be interested in what I said about river crossings in Alaska, finindg and holding game trails, vegetation patterns relative to travel, and a mathematical model for how far can you go fastest (previous to Arctic1000) all based on forty years and about 12,000 miles back then ..read more

If “packrafting” can be considered walk-assisted boating, then “raftpacking” can be considered boat-assisted walking. Let’s say that you and your friends or family are making a wilderness traverse of a remote range without towns, roads, or even human-made trails. You have to carry all your food for a week or more, along with camping gear, warm clothes to deal with cold rivers and rain. Then there’s the boat, paddle, PFD, maybe a helmet, throw bag, etc. These also add to the load. Let’s further assume that you are there, not necessarily as a boater but as a wilderness traveler, using packraft ..read more

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https://www.npr.org/2020/03/03/811708372/a-father-searches-for-his-son-and-answers-in-the-costa-rican-jungle ..read more

The wild ride through the publishing world has been fascinating. This podcast with Kirkus Book Reviews was memorable. The host Megan Labrise was easy to talk to, well-informed, asked good questions. She even had me recite the epigraph at the beginning of The Adventurer's Son, then asked who wrote it. Best of all she was totally non-plussed when my computer crashed in the middle of the interview while we were talking on the Skype-like "Zencastr" that recorded the interview. Later that day my six-week old computer died completely and I had to take it in for a replacement. The middle of the ne ..read more

Busy with science in a tropical tree, 200-feet off the ground, I heard a squirrel. Looking, I saw not a rodent, but a 3-foot serpent, dangling in a long, lazy S. Gently swaying, it leapt free, its body flattened and sinusoidal as it sailed away, wiggling like it would in the water.  The flying snake crossed 50 yards of empty air, approached a smooth trunk, reared up, straightened out, and stalled. After sticking its vertical landing, the reptile inched up the distant tree and disappeared.  Quite a feat for the beast famously condemned to crawl ..read more

For old-school, old-dog, old-farts like me, nothing beats the crutch of USGS topo-maps. Perhaps it sounds heretical but I'm not really a fan of Cal-Topo: too gimmicky with bad naming conventions for many features in Alaska as I've found many times when people write me for route beta in some obscure mountain range of AK. For route planning I download .kmzs of USGS topos FOR FREE (no subscription) from here: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/#4/40.00/-100.00, unzip them, and open them up in Google Earth Pro (GEP). If I'm lucky there's some good Maxar/DigitalGlobe half-meter resolution imag ..read more

Steve Rinella hosted me as a guest on a recent "Meateater Podcast." He's a pretty intense guy, and having read his book American Buffalo I really looked forward to meeting him. Here's the link https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-204-it-should-be-difficult-to-get-lost-forever My publisher has released two chapters from Part I of The Adventurer's Son as they gear up to release the book in a few weeks. Not much need be said about these chapters; if I wrote them well, then they should speak for themselves, right? https://aerbook.com/books/The_Adventurers_Son-242817.html ..read more