The Inaugural Running of Kesugi Ridge Traverse

“ I do not always run ultra marathons, but when I do, I prefer Kasugi Ridge”

    Captain Paul -Chaplin active duty JBER

  Paul, Nate, and I were taking up the rear.  Anyone that was going to drop from the race had already done so at the Ermine hill trail intersection.  Essentially the halfway point of the race, there was still another fifteen miles to go.  We were the last of the Mohicans.  Never having met before, Paul and Nate soon discovered that they both grew up in Pennsylvania.  Down the trail we jogged, hiked and shared stories.  We all realized that the miles passed a little easier with each others company.

     It’s true the thought of bailing out at Ermine had crossed my mind.  By then my legs were already barking at me, but when I found out that I’d made the cut-off time (by a margin of five whole minutes!) I had to keep going.

     I quickly realized that If I’d gone down at Ermine,  I wouldn't have been able to let it go.  It would have festered in me ( much like the blister that formed on my left foot), and in a couple of months it would have even gone-so-far as to bother me and before too long I would have had to commit myself to coming back to try again.   A few hours of physical suffering now is better than months of self-loathing later.  Know thyself.

    We dropped down the backside of Ermine down a steep slope  losing much of the elevation that we’d gained. From there we had a few miles of winding through swampy, muddy lowlands.  At least a mile of it we traveled on the tops of two-by-sixes.  The plank walkways were built by the park service rangers and crew and it was a nice break from the drudgery of trekking through the soupy glop of the muddy trail.

     Finally we began to climb out of the brushy lowlands and onto some of most remarkable terrain that I've ever encountered.  I followed the trail to where it seemed to end at the base of a giant smooth granite formation.  It was like a colossal granite UFO had been pushed up from the earth somehow.  The next cairn trail marker was near the top of it. Up we went.  From there we could see that we were only on the first of a whole series of these things.  To call them boulders would be to disregard their enormity.  We walked along the tops and sides of these wondrous geologic formations for almost a mile.  Up and over and along the smooth rounded surfaces we went.  “Wow, I should have brought my skateboard”  I remarked, earning only modest chuckles from my equally exhausted companions.  

   

    “Kasugi ridge was named by Shem Pete.”  Dave Johnston told us.  He was on hand at the beginning of the race to give us a brief history of the trail.  Dave, who was instrumental in building most of the trails in Denali State park in his rangering days,  is a local treasure and has a wealth of geographic and cultural knowledge of the area.  “It means the ancient one in the native tongue of the Tanaina”.  Ironically, ancient is exactly how I felt in the days after as I hobbled and winced with muscle soreness. I digress.

    “There are two things to be thankful of today while you are running the Kasugi trail.  The first one is that you can thank Brian Okonek for dissuading me from putting the trail on the tops of those peaks.  That would have been an additional 1,500 vertical feet for you to climb today.”  The race course as it stands gains around 4,500 vertical feet of elevation gain over the course of the whole race.  Another 1,500 would be the equivalent of climbing Pioneer Peak located just outside of Palmer, a formidable climb.

     “The other thing to be thankful for is that at one time there was a proposal to put a road from the Princess lodge area, up onto the ridge running it’s entire length.  Luckily it didn't come to pass.”

     Dave was right, that is something to be thankful-for indeed.  The thought of bulldozers carving and scarring their way through the alpine tundra to make way for the inevitable barrage of vehicular traffic is an abhorrent one.  To punch a road into the park would be to trivialize it.  I am reminded of a passage in Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire: “A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.”  Abbey, referred to once as the most prickly of American conservationists was an ardent defender of the wild lands and outspoken critic of what he called industrial tourism.  

   Kesugi Ridge forms the backbone of Denali State Park and as it stands today remains a wild passageway through a ruggedly beautiful place that has yet to be tainted by the progress of Abbey’s industrial tourism.  A handful of artfully worked trails gracefully meander along its length.  The touch of man here is visibly and otherwise unnoticeable.  It’s the overwhelming brushstroke of the alpine biome swirling with the wet tundra meadows, paper birch forest and rugged geology that overcomes the senses here,  as it should be.

    As for the inaugural running of the Kesugi ridge traverse my hat goes off in a windy gale to race organizers Dave and his son David Johnston (Yes, there were three Dave Johnstons.  I know it’s confusing)  and mama Andrea Hambach.  Many other volunteers (whose names elude me- I was too tired!) brilliantly pulled it all together for us in the drizzling rain.

   And, as for myself, I was happy for the opportunity to experience the expanse of Kasugi’s ridges and to fill-in the blanks of my geographic sense-of-place alongside such excellent people.  Excellent people who apparently share my affinity for Alaska’s wild places.