Somehow I missed it when the Outdoors section of the Anchorage Daily News was dropped and Outdoors Editor, Craig Medred, was gone.

The Outdoors section disappeared without fanfare. But every once in a while---in the fairly intact (spectator) Sports section---a bit of space is made for an “outdoors” themed article.

For 25 years Craig Medred was an Outdoors writer and/or editor for the Anchorage Daily News. He now writes online for Alaska Dispatch---giving more expression to a right-wing slant than when he wrote for ADN. My thanks for his years of outdoors coverage and best wishes in his future endeavors.

I miss Craig Medred’s outdoors columns. He covered a variety of outdoors subjects from personal, political and legal perspectives. He dealt with skiing and snowmachining alike. Hiking and snowshoeing. Clothing and equipment. And dogs---skiing with dogs and bird-hunting with dogs.

Craig Medred used to write about outdoors gear. There is no way I can replicate his connections to various agencies, organizations and individuals in the outdoors trade and the various bureaucracies. Nor is it possible for me to test the varieties of gear to which he had better access. Anchorage is where my outdoors gear mostly derives---but it’s a trek I only make about once every three years. So my ability to evaluate gear is limited to the stuff I use until it wears out or gets broken.

I call myself an outdoorsman because I spend a lot of time outdoors---right to the limits of physiology and logistics. It’s all I have to offer.

The information I pass on is done in the following spirit and applies equally to machine operators and the muscle-powered: As an outdoorsman I try to be as accurate as possible because I expect the same from every other outdoors person I meet---precisely because our physical wellbeing could be adversely affected by tall tales, embellished facts, exaggerations, inattention and hazy recollections. In other words, information about the Alaska outdoors only helps the actual outdoors person when it is accurate. And if it is utilized.

Craig wrote his outdoors columns with integrity and a certain degree of fatalism about wild Nature and fellow Humans. He believed in tooth and claw for wild animals. He also believed that only people who had any sense in the first place would respond to such things as avalanche warnings and other cautions; and they would most likely already be aware (at least that‘s what I gathered from our brief phone conversations). Nevertheless, we give our little warnings.

In addition to what I have observed in my mostly foot travels, I also incorporate and pass on information received from hunters, trappers, snowmachiners, four-wheelerists and aircraft pilots. In that spirit---and within the limitations of my mostly non-vehicular mobility---I pass on the following:

THIN ICE ON WILLOW CREEK -

Beware thin ice on many portions of Willow Creek from Hatcher Pass on down to the mouth. A lot of the ice is new, barely a few months old. Some ice may be safe---much of it, in my opinion, is not.

You may recall the flooding in residential areas reported on lower Willow Creek last November. Each section of the Creek has it’s own dynamics, but in the Canyon areas I frequent, the cause of that flooding was obvious: ice dams---many of them.

Actually, it was quite spectacular to me as a photographer and a wanderer of the ice. At first there was high-rising water and large pools of a beautiful turquoise green hue that formed slush and then froze---right up to the roots of big trees. My photographs of these initial flooding phases end at around November 15.

Then, sometime before November 18, the ice dams gave way, the water levels rose drastically and then dropped suddenly and substantially. Ice floes were washed up and stranded twenty feet high up the banks on both sides of the creek. Subsequent observations and reports from people living up and down the creek verified that this dynamic flooding took place all along the waterway. [These ice floes are really solid---however, now that they are covered with snow, footing in this jumbled ice along the shores may be unfamiliar and tricky.]

Much of the old ice on the creek itself was washed away and the new ice that has since formed is only around two months old---and it is thin and often high above the creekbed. Walking on some of this stuff sounds like I am treading on a storm window covered by a thin layer of snow. And yes, it does crack!

I usually never cross the creek unless a moose has done so first---that‘s the best indicator of safe ice. Snowmachine tracks may or may not indicate safe ice. But I never trust ice under any circumstances---even after I or something else has already been there. Ice changes rapidly and may become weakened by previous crossings.

In places where I could usually cross on the ice of Willow Creek I now wouldn’t dare. In places where I could usually travel up and down on the creek I must now beat my way through brush along the shore in many places. [It’s all fun to me but that’s not the point here.]

Snowmachines have crossed Willow Creek in places like the Dave Churchill Trail leading to the Baldy Mountain Ridges---but in some areas like the upper end of the Houston Trail these tracks have already been invaded by open water. I walked on one local snowmachine crossing in a Canyon where machines had recently made a zigzag trail across the ice, but I did so with trepidation---there were numerous places where the ice gave that resonant, hollow sound underfoot. And it was high above the creek bed---a long fall!

FALLING -

I am not using snowshoes or skis on the creek for now because they give a false sense of security on thin ice and if I were to go in, anything strapped or cabled to my feet might hang me up or drag me down. One thing about ice collapsing under foot---it mostly drops me fast! Sometimes I make a hole and just drop straight down. Sometimes entire sections of ice give way at once and I slide inexorably into the water on this slanting, sinking slab. Sometimes the whole slab just drops straight down all at once. Sometimes only one foot pokes through a weak spot and I just get banged up and stretched out.

Falling into the water is one danger. The other thing to watch out for is dropping from a height onto rocks below. When ice freezes behind ice dams and the ice dam is breached (which happens all the time and is happening now), the layer of ice left behind becomes a frozen shelf which is often very thin and is high above subsequent water levels. So, one could---and I have a friend who did---break through the creek ice and then drop as far as twelve feet onto rocks or into shallow water. My friend had his fall after he had already crossed the same section with snowshoes while trying to break a trail for snowmachines. He was fortunate to have companions who snowmachined to bring rope and a ladder to rescue him.

New ice is forming all the time so some of these nice, flat sections of ice could have formed very recently and be very thin. A general hint is the amount of snow on this new ice---obviously, little or no snow atop a layer of ice indicates it has just formed and is very thin.

GETTING OUT -

When falling into fast-moving water the idea is not to get sucked under the ice. I carry an “ice gripper” with nails sticking out to dig into the ice and pull myself up and out of this very slippery, usually slanted surface. More likely I would “choke up” on my ski poles which I always carry to pull myself out. Like I said, these mishaps occur quickly.

I have heard reports that the Peters-Purches crossing is okay for snowmachines but can’t help thinking all these streams are similar to Willow Creek. I crossed various places on Deception Creek where snowmachines have been but also saw lots of open water.

I don’t expect the ice to get much thicker before breakup. So, without going further into the fascinating dynamics of ice and water, freeze and thaw cycles---be careful on Willow Creek ice. I would not trust any ice---even if snow machines have already crossed.

Rudy Wittshirk