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(written 07/95)
Well it started out innocently enough, my best friend(Matt Carling) asked me if I wanted to go to Alaska with his Boy Scout troop. You see, Matt is an Eagle Scout and his dad is the Scout Master. So I agreed to go; thinking that this would be a great adventure. Of course I'm not an expert at backpacking, but I'm no slacker ether. I went through the process of getting all the necessary things for 5 days in the wilderness. The troop ordered all the food from some big Boy Scout camp, so all I needed was to get my pack, sleeping bag and utensils. The sleeping bag and utensils were really no problem, I already had them. However, I had to borrow a pack from my boss; this pack was huge! It sort of fit me but it wasn't great. So Matt and I switched packs, which was to my advantage. Matt's pack was much smaller, therefore I could carry much less; Matt definitely got the short end of the stick.
On July 22 we left for Alaska, all 24 of us; 14 scouts, 7 adults, a sister and her friend, and of course me. The plane ride up was pretty uneventful, no one puked. We arrived in Anchorage in the afternoon and immediately loaded onto a bus and began to drive to the Resurrection Trail trailhead. We finally got there (after 3 hours) and we hiked about a 100 yards to our first campsite; it was a real light day :) Man, you know when people joke about how the mosquito is the Alaskan state bird? Well, its really not that funny once you get there. We were practically taking baths in bug repellent just to stay comfortable. Of course we were prepared for rain (boy scout motto, be prepared and all that), but we didn't see a drop anywhere. But man, could we see. The countryside was a sight to behold. Plus, it stayed light out till about 12:30 every night. Talk about screwing with your system. About the only eventful thing worth documenting on that first day is the Bear Bag incident. Now when backpacking its common practice to hang all food items and smellables in bags far away from your camp site when there are bears about, that way the bears eat the bags and not you. So the job of finding a suitable tree to hang the bag was delegated to a small group of us. When doing this one must find a tree with high branches so the bear cannot get to the food. Well, you know that saying, “Everything's bigger in Texas”? Well its all bigger in Alaska. The trees had no lower branches! So here we are with a rope tied around a rock, trying to throw the rock over a tree limb. Matt, thinking he'll be smart and play a little joke on me, decided to step on the rope after I threw it. I wound up and hucked the rock as hard as I could. Of course when Matt stepped on the line, the rock came zipping back and thunked him in the head. Everyone was busting up. Me, I was still looking for the rock. It was then I realized that Matt was holding his head a doing that little pain dance. You know, running in circles going," ow, ow, ow, etc." Well I thought that I somehow hit him with the rock when I threw it. So I was asking him if he was all right. And of course, he did not want me to know that it was his fault, so he said that he fell on the rope as I threw it. This sent the rest of the guys rolling in peals of laughter, as they had seen what had really happened. Finally they told me what really happened, I was mad at Matt because I thought that I had actually hit him the rock, instead it was his fault; what a dork!
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