The “Don’ts” of Bike-packing
15 August, 2022
My first bike-packing experience was a low-key dirt road foray into Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in McCarthy, Alaska. The journey, although brief, was instructive in the laws of physics, the impetus for a “real” cyclist’s use of panniers, and the reasons why it is a foolish idea to tether an adolescent cattle dog to one’s handlebars.
For those unacquainted with Wrangell-St. Elias (WSENP), the largest national park in the US, the uniquely Alaskan nature of the land might challenge your expectations for a national park. Lacking in the extensive infrastructure and relatively easy access of parks in the Lower 48, WSENP is a quiet, minimally developed world of mountains, forests, and glaciers. Park facilities are few, and many are well outside the park itself, located instead in [relatively] nearby towns that boast 2WD access along paved thoroughfares. Although the park is roughly the size of Croatia, vehicle access across the park border is limited to two dirt roads, both of which begin about 300 miles from the nearest large city.
My approach took me into the park along one of these entry points, a 60-mile, dead-end, dirt track called the McCarthy Road, once a railway to the historic copper mining community of Kennicott. The road ends at the glacier-fed Kennicott River, with further ground access limited to foot or bicycle traffic after crossing the river via footbridge.
After a 10-hour drive, I was eager to get on the trail and beat the sunset to our cabin. In my haste, I had become impatient with the still-unfamiliar strap configurations of the packs designed to fit onto my bike frame. I decided, instead, to throw my gear into my backpacking setup and hit the trail more quickly. I might have gotten away with it had my year-old heeler, Ullr, not been equally impatient to move, taking off after a bird before we even left the parking lot. The leash went taut, the unbalanced bike flipped over, and with all the dignity and cycling savvy of an inverted tortoise, I found myself flailing on the muddy ground of the parking lot beneath a tangle of bicycle, backpack, and a wildly enthusiastic dog.
“Are you good?” a passing hiker asked, trying not to laugh as his wide-eyed children stared at the wreckage.
“At least we got this out of the way at the trailhead,” I responded, prying Ullr’s teeth off of the handlebars and extracting myself from the mud.
A half hour later, after deciding that I’d make better time by investing a few minutes in packing my bike properly, we set out for our cabin with an improved center of gravity. We rolled in shortly after sunset, setting up camp in a charmingly storybook-eqsue cabin. After a backpacker’s dinner of lentils and rice, we wandered into the dark forest, watching the stars brighten through gaps in the trees and listening to the soft, cedar-flute calls of a great horned owl.
Tomorrow, we’d make our ascent to the ghost mines.
