This post covers logistics and planning for our Haute Route trip in April 2019. This is the first part of the series that will also cover gear and trip log.

Introduction

The Haute Route (literally “high route”) is a famous ski touring and mountaineering route in Swiss and French Alps. The route is a traverse from the town of Argentière in France to the town of Zermatt in Switzerland. The route hops between alpine huts and follows mountain passes and glacial basins in between. This is arguably the most iconic ski touring route in the world. There are many variations of the route. …

In August, Michael Scheuerer and I did a packrafting traverse of the Arctic Refuge. After the last year’s Sag packrafting trip I wanted to go bigger and better this summer. We considered Hulahula, Jago and Okpilak rivers and wanted to have an interesting walking section to the route. The limiting factors were available time off work (two weeks on the outside) and amount of food we could carry without a resupply (about 10 days). A logical choice would have been to start walking at Arctic Village, but we did not feel we had enough time and food carrying capacity to pull this off. As far as the rivers, Hulahula was the most reliable with water levels in August and was easier to get to over the Continental Divide. …

This route connects the Delicate Arch and the stretch of the Colorado river called Moab Daily. A few years ago a friend floated and hiked from the river to the arch. We added the missing section and created a loop. The route is similar to the Hayduke Trail in that it opportunistically uses trails, dirt roads and canyons to take a shortest viable path between the two points on a map.

General Notes

The route starts and ends at the Delicate Arch trailhead. This is a loop, no car shuttle required.

The route map can be found here (the online Caltopo map) or here (the KML file). …

Packrafting Brooks Range with road access

Overview

On August 20 — August 23 2017 a friend (Marty Smith) and I did a packrafting trip in the Alaska Brooks Range. We floated from the upper reaches of the Sagavanirktok (“Sag”) river to the Pump Station 3 on Dalton highway.

The distance was 18 miles of hiking and 50 miles of floating. The Sag flowed at around 5000 cfs (and falling). The upper river was Class 2, then Class 1 with one Class 4 drop, and then continuous Class 3.

We had mild conditions with the temps from freezing to the 50-ies, no significant rain and light winds. The high peaks of the range had a dusting of snow with some slopes that looked almost skiable. There were no bugs at higher elevations. …