Crossing the Gates of Alaska: One Man, Two Dogs, 600 Miles Off the Map

by Dave Metz

Book Overview

Driven by his calling to explore the Arctic wilderness, Dave Metz packed up his two beloved airedale dogs, a sled, 50 pounds of food and set out on a 600-mile adventure across the Gates of Alaska national park, one of the least travelled regions in the world. More people have landed on the moon than have completed the four-month journey Metx made across the inhospitable terrain. Crossing the Gates of Alaska is Metz's candid and stunning firsthand...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806531398
• ISBN13: 9780806531397
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Ten feet over the Brooks Range

Dave Metz works parttime as a biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. In a recent interview, he said that his job was a "perfect deal" for him. "I don't make a lot of money, but it's given me the chance to do all those things." "Those things" include several trips to Alaska, and hiking and kayaking trips in Canada, Peru, Brazil and Borneo. In the spring of 2007, he left Kotzebue on the west coast of Alaska with two Airedales hoping to traverse the Brooks Range on foot. Four months later he arrived at Coldfoot, a way station on the service road for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The trip covered almost a thousand miles (600 miles by air), most of it within the Gates of the Arctic National Park. (The website for the park has a fascinating history of its creation, as well as details about the typography, wild life, and weather, and much more: "The early inspiration for the creation of a vast northern national park can be traced back to a U.S. Forest Service forester named Bob Marshall, who arrived in Alaska in 1929 looking for what he called "blank spaces on maps." When Marshall first traveled to the isolated mining camp of Wiseman in northern Alaska, he was already a prominent wilderness advocate. His wilderness philosophy defined wild places as essential not only for ecological health but for human happiness as well. "For me and for thousands with similar inclinations," he wrote, "the most important passion of life is the overpowering desire to escape periodically from the strangling clutch of a mechanistic civilization." Marshall's quest for happiness led him to the Koyukuk region of the Alaska's Brooks Range where he found adventure and the companionship of local residents."} Metz skied on frozen rivers for six weeks upward toward the interior mountain ranges, towing with his dogs two plastic sleds carrying his supplies. In the mountains, he left his skis and sleds, and hiked often through deep snow. He reached the tundras of the North Slope at the time of spring thaws and often hiked in ankle high water. Metz describes fording cold streams, encountering moose and a pack of wolves, loneliness and hunger. He was able to supply himself by mailed supplies in small towns at the beginning and end of the trip, but didn't have money enough to be supplied by air during the middle section. He lost 25 pounds during the journey; "I'd eat in the evening only. I'd hike nine hours with no food. I couldn't go to bed hungry -- it was just too painful." "Sometimes thinking about [the difficulties] makes my heart race, and I start to wonder what I'm doing here, dead center in one of the wildest regions on earth -- in the heart of no man's land. I feel at the edge of my capabilities and at any time anything could go wrong. But I also feel flighty, giggly, and not held by any trivial restraints of modern civilization. I feel completely free for once in my life." I'm a sucker for books about hiking in remote regions; I often find myself converti

Because it's still there

Unless one has been in Alaska or a real wilderness you can not imagine the vastness and emptiness. Many will read `Crossing the Gates of Alaska' and ask why. Why would you struggle and face near death and definite symptoms of starvation just to cross a wilderness? One of the first thoughts many will have as they read the cover of the book; "one man, two dogs" will be to picture Huskies, but Dave Metz has his 2 Airedale terriers to help and keep him company on his journey. Metz's way of describing his journey can let you picture the wildness he travels through - its' beauty and its' danger. If you have ever had a wonderful dog, a dog that is as good as another human being, if not better, you will understand his connection with his two. His dream and love of the wilderness shows through on his day by day account of his journey across Alaska. There is some moralizing done concerning most people's disregard for the natural life and care of the earth and the philosophy of why eat locally when you can have Swiss chocolate. It's hard to understand his statement, "hunting is a nasty little act of my journey", when that is a part of the natural process of surviving. But that shouldn't turn you away from reading a captivating account of a man's test of himself and what can be a discovery for the reader of an incredible place on this planet.