Off Yonder » Adventure Travel Stories

Arctic Rafting: Returned

July 21, 2010

After 15 days on the Kongakut river, we’ve returned to Anchorage via Kaktovik and Fairbanks. We nearly got stranded on Icy Reef on the shore of the Arctic Ocean as a big storm was moving in, but we managed to squeak out and make it home. Below are some photos and a satellite map of the area with the river route and some of our camps marked.

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Kayak Fishing

July 10, 2010

After getting off the Kongakut, rest certainly was not an option! We’re in Alaska for crying out loud! So, after the 6 hour drive…

Arctic Rafting

June 22, 2010

I came to the Arctic to experience ice lined rivers, wolves on the hunt, and to see if the mosquitoes were as bad as everyone predicted.

Final Touches: Kongakut River

June 21, 2010

The trip is on. I departed PDX at 9.30pm in the dark and chased the sun down by flying north and arrived in Anchorage around midnight where, though it was overcast, it was still dusk out.

Nathaniel Wilder with Sune and Lindsay Tamm picked me up and we stayed up until 2.30am catching up on all the corners of the world we had been to since seeing each other last, fully aware that we had the next 18 days to do this on the river and that we should get some much needed sleep.

New Gear & Prep for Alaska

June 9, 2010

While I’ve spent some time on rivers, including a great 18-day trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, I have yet to…

Ghost Town Visit

March 3, 2010

After a wonderful few days of diving into the Gospel of John, Adventure Unlimited offered a few trips off camp for the boys. One group went to Leadville to check out the mining museum and I took a group to St. Elmo. Just half an hour from camp up a side canyon this little town has mostly been abandoned. Many old buildings still stand, and it does say that folks are welcome to wander down the road, but asked not to poke around in the buildings and someone does actually own them still.

The town didn’t keep the interest of the group much, but a nice hike further into the mountains was perfect after sitting and studying the bible for 3 days. Here’s a few of the shots I got. Click on any of the images to see the rest of the gallery:

Antarctic Questions from Mrs. Higdon’s Preschool class

February 24, 2010

This morning I got to answer questions over Skype from Mrs.Higdon’s Preschool class. Mrs. Higdon (Liz) and I went to college together and now…

Five Fingers Time Lapse

January 13, 2010

While at Christmas camp, I set up my camera to take 30 second exposures for as long as the battery would last. Then I put another battery in and kept going. You’ll see the frame shift now and then, that’s probably a new battery going in. It’s not the most exciting video you’ve seen, but then again, this is my experimentation laboratory. Welcome to it. I’ll try to get a better one another time. Stay tuned.

Christmas Camp at the Ranches

January 4, 2010

Christmas this year was a blast. I was up at the Adventure Unlimited Ranches in Buena Vista, Colorado with my mom. My primary job was to drive ski vans to Monarch and other ski areas as necessary, but I was also asked to put the “end of camp slideshow” together. Guests submitted their photos and Andy helped me sort through them (though, we asked the submitters to do a bit of editing themselves – this helped heaps). I took little video clips throughout the week and put it all together in iMovie.

In looking for a good soundtrack, I texted my friend Alex Cook and asked if I could feature songs from his recently released “Tree of Life” album and he was all for it. Better yet, he was cool with me posting the whole thing to YouTube. Since YouTube limits videos to 10 minutes, the slideshow is in two parts, both are below. Enjoy!

PART 1