Local Food Challenge

For the month of August I intend to only consume food from local sources. In this post I will attempt to lay out what I intend to eat and not eat, my feasting/fasting protocol, my inspirations, plus some resources for anyone else interested in taking on this nutritional challenge.

The genesis and inspiration for this challenge was born from the Bristol Bay village of Igiugig. In 2017 the entire community ate only local food for six weeks. Although I grew up in Alaska eating a lot of wild-harvested food, this will be the first time I have attempted to eat that exclusively.

Over the last year and a half, I have fallen down a rabbit hole of nutrition science and anthropology. My original impetus was simple: weight loss. I soon discovered, however, that the dietary thread I was tugging on was more holistic. By learning to become a fat burner and “metabolically flexible,” I soon began to experience a cascade of positive health improvements.

For example: my 20-year-plus eczema rash disappeared, achy joints and soreness have been nearly eradicated; I most often sleep a full night for the first time in my adult life; my mood and temperament have improved; I no longer suffer from low blood sugar crashes or feelings of “hangryness;” I have become insulin sensitive; my cognition, focus and ability to be present and in the moment are acute; most of the small skin tags I had have disappeared; chronic inflammation is a thing of the past; and the list goes on.   

In order to feel so much better and healthier it might seem like I must have to consume a complicated diet, compounded with loads of supplements, perhaps even pharmaceuticals, with dogged persistence and loads of will power. Nothing could be further from the truth. My diet, fasting, exercise/recovery and hormetic stress practices are remarkably simple. This local food challenge will be a lucid progression of my current lifestyle.

There are many ways to approach the topic of Ketosis and even more ways to label it. I am a fan of calling the approach that I am pursuing an “ancestral diet.”

Because of climate change, roughly 2 million years ago, our hominid ancestors had to move out of the trees and onto the open prairies of eastern Africa. Brain size of these early humans (Homo habillis) was roughly 500cc. In this new and likely more intimidating environment, humans learned to scavenge and eventually hunt for their sustenance. It’s theorized that animal fat and protein propelled our evolution and brain size, which is now 1,400cc. (Homo sapiens brain size peaked at 1,500cc about 10,000 years ago and has been in decline since the advent of agriculture.)

From the book, Carnivore Code by MD. Paul Saladino.

There is no known, one size fits all, optimal human diet. Furthermore, there are as many opinions about proper diet as there are nutritionists, bloggers, bro-scientists, YouTubers, and dietitians. There are, however, some irrefutable physiological facts. Here are a few that I find fascinating and that I hitch the pony of my N-of-1 self-experimentation to: Ketosis is not so much a diet as it is a metabolic state. Either you are in it or you’re not. There is no such thing as an essential* carbohydrate. Fasting is as natural and as restorative to humankind as breathing. Wild-caught Alaskan fish and game is some of the most nutrient dense and healthy food in the world. Exercise is crucial for health and well-being; ancestral exercise is optimal -- as much aerobic as possible (able to get enough air while doing it that you can hold a conversation), periodically lift heavy things, and periodically employ high intensity intervals training sessions. Persistent and chronic stress will kill you prematurely; hormetic stress will make you live longer and more optimal. Rest and recovery are as important as regular exercise. Metabolic flexibility is as remarkable as it is liberating.

 It is fair to say that what works for me may not work for anyone else, but anyone who wishes to live a long, healthy life should consider ditching sugar, refined grains, hyper-processed “food” (everything from the middle isles of the store), and industrial seed oils. With that aside, the spectrum for discovering what dietary protocol works best for any individual is vast. 

One key principle for me is that the food I eat is satisfying, which is to say that it does not feel like a “diet” or that I am depriving myself in order to be healthier. Every bite of food that I consume these days is immensely gratifying. In the moment of consumption, I don’t care if the food I am ingesting is helping restore my hormones into balance, that I am replenishing my liver and muscle glycogen through gluconeogenesis, or that I am balancing my Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio. All I care about is that it’s delicious, and nothing is as tasty to my pallet as Alaskan fish and game.

Another important consideration for me is that the food that I eat is ecologically sustainable. Alaskans should take immense pride in the fact that we still have mostly intact ecosystems that support some of the world’s most nutritious fish, fowl and game. To eat only local food would be more challenging in other states or provinces that have traded their renewable resources for short-term profits. 

For my own N-of-1 sake, I am excited to see if there are any noticeable improvements in my health over the next month. I also want to deepen my intuition for how much food I actually need to put away every season, as well as connect with and learn from other people around Alaska and beyond who are undergoing the challenge to enrich our connection to the land, sea, and water that supports this nutrition and our well-being. 

In order to keep this one month challenge reasonable, I plan to eat a very simple, high fat diet and I will likely only eat one big meal a day, or two at the most. It took some time and willpower, but I have kicked my sugar/carbohydrate addiction and have become a fat-burner/metabolically flexible. This metabolic state allows me to fast for 24 or more hours with ease and with plenty of stable energy. Anyone can become metabolically flexible. By all accounts, including my own, once this transition has occurred, it feels like you have a new super power. 

Our Alaskan wild salmon are the envy of the world; our moose and caribou outshine even the finest grass-fed/grass-finished pastured beef; our soil is rich and our water unspoiled. These are sacred. The local food challenge is a way to remember.  

In later updates and posts I will share my meal plans, my macronutrient ratios and more. 

*An essential nutrient is a nutrient required for normal body functioning that can not be synthesized by the body. Categories of essential nutrient include vitamins, dietary minerals, essential fatty acids and essential amino acids.

Grewingk Landslide and Tsunami

This article originally appeared in the Homer Tribune.

Imagine hovering in a helicopter above Grewingk Glacier Lake, in Kachemak Bay, fifty years ago. From this safe vantage, you watch as 80 Empire State Buildings worth of material, slowly dislodge from the steep slope above the lake, and then let go all at once. Cleaved from the surface, you see the unfathomable volume of material gain momentum. By the time the deafening roar reaches your ears, the 110 million cubic yards of rock has thundered into the lake, sending a wave hundreds of feet into the air. Craning your neck, you watch this fast moving bulge of water slosh over the outwash plain, uprooting alders and mature trees, carrying everything in its path all the way to Kachemak Bay, more than four miles distant.

You just witnessed a suite of natures most destructive and incredible phenomena—a landslide generated tsunami.

This may seem like a crescendo scene from an apocalyptic Hollywood movie, but last October marked the fifty-year anniversary of the Grewingk landslide and tsunami.

No helicopter hovered in the air and thankfully no one was in the valley that day. However, many in Homer and nearby Halibut Cove heard the crash and later witnessed glacier ice in Kachemak Bay. Homer residents were able that fall to salvage trees for firewood that washed ashore onto the Homer Spit.

This event has captured the attention of two local geologists, who worry another landslide and tsunami could occur in the same area with similar, or worse, devastation.

“The rock all along the mountainside is highly fractured and faulted, as is the rock generally in the Kenai Mountains,” geologist Ed Berg said about the slope above Grewingk Lake. “Major rockfalls or landslides could probably occur anywhere along the steep slope of the mountainside.”

Seldovia resident and tsunami hazards expert Bretwood Higman added, “The combination of steep slopes and weak rock is the perfect recipe for a big landslide. Additionally, the 1967 landslide shows this area has the potential for very large landslides, and this potential may be all the greater now, since the glacier has retreated a lot in the past fifty years.”

Throughout coastal Alaska, landslides, some of which have caused massive tsunamis, are occurring with increased frequency. Steep mountain valleys, fjords, and bays that have, for many thousands of years, been full of glaciers have seen rapid retreat over the last fifty years. This has led to slope instability in many areas. Glaciologists and geologists call this process, glacial debuttressing.

“The slopes above Grewingk Lake are notable because they are much steeper than most slopes in the area, and they're not more strong,” noted Higman. “They probably are so steep because they were supported by the Grewingk Glacier until recently, and because the glacier has been actively undercutting them. The combination of steep slopes and weak rock is the perfect recipe for a big landslide.”

In June, Berg, Higman and the American Packrafting Association organized a human-powered research expedition to Grewingk Glacier Lake, hiking over the trail with a flotilla of packrafts and some low-budget tools.

One of the goals of the group was to better understand the depth of the lake. This information is key to understanding the potential for another tsunami. 

For the trip, Berg engineered a simple 1x4 contraption, which he affixed to the stern of his packraft. From this device he mounted a borrowed sonar fish-finder to measure and record the lake bottom depth profile. Others in the party used less sophisticated instruments to measure lake depth from the platforms of their packrafts, like a handheld sonar depth gauge or weighted lengths of string.

The deepest spot the team discovered—490 feet—was near the glacier face and the average depth below the potential landslide slope averaged 360 feet. “We were surprised that the lake is so deep,” said Berg. For a landslide tsunami, deeper water means greater hazard. The entire volume of the landslide could end up beneath the water‘s surface—creating a much bigger wave. Deeper water absorbs more of the landslides energy, converting it into a bigger, more powerful wave.

But how likely is such a landslide? Berg and Higman both agree that further study is necessary, including a detailed survey of the ridge above the lake. “In particular,” Higman says, “I'd look for roots that are stretched across cracks, or signs of blocks that have shifted down as cracks opened below them. If such signs are apparent up there, that would be a "red alert" situation, suggesting dramatic action like closing trails.”

Higman would also like to see computer modeling of landslide tsunamis to assess areas within the valley, which are most at risk for visitors to the area. Furthermore, computer models could resolve the potential for marine tsunamis in Kachemak Bay. “The marine tsunami risk is likely very minimal,” says Higman “but may be relevant since even a small marine tsunami could be very damaging to the Homer Harbor.”

Thus far, Berg and Higman have been aided with small equipment loans and organizational support from the American Packrafting Association but the two are working without funding or institutional backing.

“We would like to see some monitoring program put in place,” says Berg “that could provide timely warning of a future collapse and tsunami.”

“University researchers could be great, especially if they worked with us locals,” said Higman. Adding, “I'd like to see some funding to support someone to take the next steps, including assessment of the hazard, public outreach, investigating monitoring, [and] coordinating different research efforts.”

Statistically speaking, there is no good reason not to visit Kachemak Bay State Park’s magnificent treasure, the Grewingk Glacier. It’s not advisable to camp on or near the lakeshore but the likelihood of a cataclysmic event occurring during a day hike through the park is quite low. No one can predict when or even if there will be another landslide and tsunami. As our climate continues to warm, the research and study of these interconnected phenomena is wildly important—as important, perhaps, as visiting an Alaskan glacier.

-Bjørn Olson

100% Renewable Alaska

This article was originally published by Alaskans Know Climate Change and the Anchorage Press. 

An elegant proposal to transform Alaska’s Rail-belt to 100% renewable energy.

Just after sunrise, the icy hoar frost clinging to the willow branches in the Tanana River Valley begin to shudder. At first, the wind comes in a light zephyr. Branches lazily sway; a few ice crystals lose hold and fall from their perch, catching the rosy dawn light, making the morning air sparkle. Within an hour’s time, a powerful gale is blowing. The air fills with fine, crystalline powder and snowdrifts form on the leeward side of every bump and rise. The wind will not stop for weeks. All the critters in the valley will forget that there was ever a time when the world didn’t scream and hurt.

Wind is an Alaskan natural resource that, for the most part, we let slip through our fingers. Daily, billions of kilowatts worth of energy whoosh and rush through our valleys, down our fjords and off our mountain peaks—untapped, and unrealized.

What if we could harness that power? What if every Alaskan home had so much cheap energy that we could heat our homes with electricity, charge our cars and trucks with electricity, light our streets, power our schools, public buildings, and illuminate brilliant minds set on making Alaska a better place for future generations? What if our power came from wind that doesn’t become more or less expensive because of the whimsy of distant market forces? Cheap, consistent, reliable wind is what Alaska has in abundance. What if we tapped into it?

Tucked into a hill, up the Eagle River Valley, in an unfinished, three story home, a 66 year old retired engineer, and life-long Alaskan, has developed a plan to save Alaska, fight climate change, and solve our energy problems—for the next several hundred years. For months, Kerry Williams has sat in front of his computer screen crunching numbers, using his sophisticated CAD software, creating Google Earth maps, and researching a bold and visionary concept. For months, Kerry has been slapping his forehead. His idea, on the face of it, is so simple it hurts.

“I’m always assigning myself difficult but entertaining problems to solve in my spare time, as a hobby.” Kerry says. “When I retired fifteen years ago, I decided that the problem that most needed solving was how to get Alaska’s post-oil economy stabilized.” No small task. But for someone with 4 standard deviations above the normal IQ and an active member of several international high IQ organizations, for Kerry, this is just another day in the life; another challenge to be met.

Alaska is rife with alternative energy potential—wind, solar, geo-thermal, tidal, and biomass are all here, in abundance. However, one challenge to integrating renewable energy into the grid is what to do about the inherent variability of renewables? What do you do when the wind stops and the clouds obscure the sun? How do you store that energy in times of abundance? A battery. You need a really big battery, and this is where Kerry’s idea picks up. This is where Kerry believes he has found a solution so simple it is elegant.

“I was recently looking closely at the possibility of developing and exporting some very concentrated renewable energy resources in central and northern Alaska.” Kerry tells me. “Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) requires some method of evening out the energy for transmission and integration into the grid. There are three methods of doing that,” he says.

“The original conventional method is to overbuild the generation, and shut off or dump excess power. Even conventional energy resources don’t have 100% availability (called the capacity factor), which is why excess generation capacity is always required,” he says. “Another method of leveling the power output of variable resources, such as wind, is to link together widely separated sources. That way, when the wind stops blowing at one wind farm, the others keep feeding the grid. The wind doesn’t stop blowing everywhere at once.”

A team of dedicated alternative energy experts—including Kerry and his partner Ceal Smith— have been studying this issue for the last several years and have come up with the Alaskan Roadmap to 100% renewable energy for the entire state. For Alaska’s rail-belt, widely separated sources of alternative energy, on the face of it, should not be a problem. Wind farms on Fire Island and in the Tanana River Valley, Cook Inlet tidal, Kenai Peninsula solar, etc., etc. However, it is the final method of leveling the Variable Renewable Energy that has most captured Kerry.

“The third method is to provide energy storage for VRE. Batteries are the first solution, but molten salts and other methods are being developed and deployed now also. Most storage solutions are quite expensive when trying to level the thousands of megawatts of output I’ve been looking at balancing,” he says. “Researching the issue, I found a good Levelized Cost of Storage analysis, which identified pumped hydro as the cheapest large-scale storage method. I was modeling potential pumped hydro sites nearer the most concentrated potential natural energy resources when an article about Eklutna’s salmon restoration clicked and it occurred to me that pumped hydro could fix the issue [salmon restoration] and at the same time lower our electric bills.”

Besides having plentiful alternative energy potential, Alaska has other unique assets: gobs of freshwater and high elevation mountains. “My proposed Eklutna Complex is nothing more than a gigantic rechargeable battery. It takes in variable randomly generated energy, and dispenses energy to match demand. In terms of mWh capacity,” Kerry says, “the second phase would make it the largest in the world. In terms of total output capacity, a fourth phase could bring it to the largest capacity in the world also, all without harm to Eklutna Lake’s elevation or it’s renewed salmon run or it’s recreational values.”

Sounds too good to be true? How does it work?

This plan proposes to build a 6000 acre-feet freshwater reservoir below East Twin Peak, on the south bank of the Knik River. The massive Knik Glacier and its river is capable of providing large volumes of water and because of the glaciers massive size and geographical location, it is not in danger of going extinct because of global warming anytime soon.

The next thing to focus our most talented engineering minds on is the study of Kerry’s proposed high elevation impounds, e.g. dams, above Eklutna Lake and then building them. Kerry has identified five ideal, high elevation valleys, which are perfect locations for enough high altitude water energy storage to light, heat, and drive the entire railbelt for months. By pumping water up to these reservoirs, through tunnels in the mountains, when there is surplus energy, this project would be an energy savings account—a literal rainy day fund.

Talking with Kerry, several things jump out to me. As a fellow life-long Alaskan, I have come to take it for granted that Alaskans are quite often modern day Renaissance women and men—handy and capable in numerous and often widely divergent skill-sets. The ability to swap a transmission out of a Ford F-150, design and build a home, develop a website, weld a bicycle frame back together, hunt, fish, and grow a garden, and play Bach on a classical guitar, for example, is just who we are. We also do not know how to take no for an answer. When there is a problem in front of us, Alaskan’s get to work and fix the goddamn thing—whatever it is.

Throughout his working years, Kerry has accumulated a robust construction background including large projects, like TAPS, some oil field, flood control projects, harbors, energy project research, design and consulting in solar, wind, electric transportation, and geothermal projects and has been Chief engineer on an electric vehicle project.

But something unique about Alaskans is that when we are asked, “What do you do?” we often don’t highlight how we make money. What we do is what inspires us and how we want others to think of us. For Kerry, many years of hiking, biking, skiing, hang-gliding, photographing, paragliding, fishing, and many other activities within Chugach State Park have given him a great appreciation for the place, a sense of identity and a strong desire to care for and enhance the natural attributes to the best of his ability. Kerry currently lives within walking distance of the Park and has a deep reverence for the natural environment of his backyard and the state as a whole. Kerry is an environmentalist.

In 2009, then Governor, Sarah Palin, understood the threat climate change was having on our state. Alaska is warming twice as fast of the rest of the nation and four times faster in winter because our civilization produces an additional 40 billion tons of greenhouse gases every year.  This increase in greenhouse gases is also disproportionately acidifying our seas.  Roughly 30% of those greenhouse gases come from our global energy demands—coal, oil and natural gas power plants. Governor Palin set a mandate* that Alaska would, by 2025, provide half of its energy needs from renewables. If we get to work, Kerry’s plan could shatter this goal.

When I ask him what comes next, he says, “I haven’t a clue. But I hope if it has legs that I will at least get to sit on the most appropriate commission(s) or engineering and design team(s) to help guide it. The legislature needs to act to enable the project.”

It is clear, after spending time with Kerry, asking lots of questions, looking at his Google Earth mock-up, and trying to stump him with my inquiries, that it is time for his project to leave the nest. What this proposal needs now is an army of smart people to rip it apart, find the flaws, improve on it—what this project needs now is peer review and investment.

What would rate payers pay per kilowatt-hour, I asked him? Without flinching, he has an answer and I realize, again, I am in the presence of someone way, way smarter than me. “After we’re at 100%” he has calculated, “and have paid off the bonds, it should drop to around $0.08 kWh, except for homeowners and businesses who cover their roofs with solar panels. They would pay considerably less, or even profit if they generate more than they use.” That’s less than a penny! Right now, MEA customers pay about $0.20 kWh, and Golden Valley members pay $0.21.

“I’ve already talked with a few of the stakeholders whom I would expect to have the most relevant expertise and pointed criticisms, and so far they’ve been encouraging,” he tells me. “Rick Sinnot, whose study and article about Eklutna Salmon* was the trigger; Marc Lamoreaux, Eklutna Village environmental director; Debra Lnne, Tanana Chief Conference natural resources director—about their potential wind resources to ‘charge’ the Eklutna Complex—and her Tanana Chiefs Conference colleague who owns a lease on the potential lease site; also, Ed Zapel, Senior Hydraulic Engineer for HDR, who understood my project instantly. They all seemed quite interested. I still need to talk with AEA personnel and CIRI wind personnel,” he tells me.

As far as I know, there has never been a study within Alaska, which looks at the potential for large, man-made reservoirs to produce methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. In temperate regions, where reservoirs are built in valleys, which contain a lot of biomass, methane is produced. Whether or not man-made, large volume water impounds within Alaska would produce this greenhouse gas is yet to be seen. But Kerry’s proposal has almost zero chance for methane production; the reservoirs are all within recently glaciated, high alpine zone, with low biomass.

Another massive issue typically associated with large hydro projects is their potential devastating impacts on salmon and other fish species.  In this instance it will be, in matter of fact, just the opposite. “It was the issue which started my investigation into turning Eklutna hydro into a pumped hydro energy storage complex,” Kerry tells me. “Because excessive water from Eklutna Lake is being used for hydroelectric power, the lake has not naturally drained for years. (That, and an older dam lower on Eklutna River, which was recently removed.) Doing the first stage of a conversion—swapping the turbine generators for reversible flow turbine/pumps—would enable us to keep Eklutna Lake filled and allow salmon to return. It would enhance the entire State Park by returning that lake to it’s historical level, and would lower our utility rates by about a penny per kWh instantly by replacing the very expensive gas fueled peaker plant operations. Excessive peaker plant operation is the cited reason for denying expanded wind farm and solar energy for rail-belt utilities.”

Environmentalists are often called C.A.V.E. people—Citizens Against Virtually Everything. My retort to that is, “Show me a project that works with the natural world rather than despoils it for short-term profit.” This is a mega-project that all Alaskans, regardless of political affiliation, can get behind.

For as long as I can remember, we have been offered a phony dichotomy: we can choose—the thinking goes—between either a healthy environment,or jobs and a robust economy. This notion is poppycock!

Kerry’s proposal would, in his words, “…provide two to four times as much as we need to power everything from Fairbanks or Tanana, Anchorage, to Homer.” This mega-project would provide countless construction jobs and long-term maintenance jobs. Furthermore, Alaska would become an incredibly attractive place for business to invest. Imagine Internet companies buying our cheap renewable energy and using glacier air to cool their massive servers. But I digress.

It is time to come together as Alaskans to fight climate change, defend our way of life and embolden the industries of the future. Kerry Williams and his pumped hydro project is a part of that future and, like the wild of Alaska, it is calling us to action. 

-Bjørn Olson

Watch a short video with Kerry Williams discussing the Eklutna Pumped Hydro project.

For more information about this project please visit Alaskans Know Climate Change. 

Icy Bay Mega-Tsunami

This article originally ran in Alaska Magazine. 

On October 17, 2015 a mountain at the head of Taan Fjord, an arm of Icy Bay, Alaska broke in half and crumpled under its own weight. Some 200 million metric tons of material came crashing down in what must have been a deafening roar. Some of the rock slid onto the snout of a tidewater glacier but most slid into the head of Taan Fjord – displacing a massive volume of water. This landslide-generated tsunami had a maximum height of over 600 feet. The wave traveled down the fjord, dislocating sediment and scouring forest for over ten miles.

JUNE 2016: From the foredeck of the MV Seawolf, an aluminum six-pack charter boat, I turn to see Scott Chadwick, the burly Yakutat boat captain, look nervously from his depth sounder to the slowly approaching shore. Chocolate syrup water in the silty glacial fjord obscures hidden rocks. My eyes are peeled; ready to yell stop at the first sign. The bow grinds against the shoreline and gently makes contact. Perfect. The look of apprehension on the captain’s face is gone and I, along with four earth-scientists, disembark. 

On land, the five of us create a gear-chain and hand scientific equipment and my camera gear up the steep and unstable edge of the shore. Directly across the bay is the massive, cleaved-in-half mountain. The boulders and gravel under my feet had traveled over a kilometer from somewhere within that mountain and were deposited here in a feat of unimaginable violence. “Sometimes geology isn’t slow,” Bretwood Higman, one of the scientists observes.

My task is to document what the “crime investigators” learn about the Icy Bay landslide-generated mega-tsunami - to tell their story of geologic and hydrologic discovery.

After shooting video from the shore we wave goodbye to Scott, who will spend the day fishing, while we walk up the valley to find the high watermark of the tsunami.

The National Science Foundation has funded this series of investigative expeditions. Scientific inquiry is why we are here. “It’s like a perfect experiment,” Colin Stark, one of the geologists says. “Find the remotest place in north America where a massive landslide and tsunami occurred, without loss of life or destruction to infrastructure. Run a host of experiments and make observations. Learn from that, and apply it to building some sense of what will happen when a similar event occurs, which will inevitably happen in a much more populated area.”

Landslide tsunamis have happened in Alaska before. Most notably was the 1958 Lituya Bay landslide and tsunami, which created a wave 1720 feet high – the highest wave ever recorded. What is unique about the Icy Bay landslide and tsunami is that scientists are able to study it so soon and with a suite of state of the art equipment.

Alaska’s rapidly warming climate – twice that of the global average - is related to this catastrophe. Icy Bay was as recently as the early 1960s filled with glaciers to the mouth of the bay with ice as thick as 1000 feet. This rapid de-glaciation and de-buttressing of the hill slopes is at least part of the reason for the instability, which led to the landslide. Other areas of Alaska and Norway are experiencing similar phenomena much nearer to tourist destinations and communities.

“This is happening in environments that the Park Service manages,” Eric Bilderback, a National Park Service geologist says. “We should take this opportunity to learn where nobody was hurt so we can maybe be proactive about the things where people could be hurt.”

After gaining 600 feet of elevation in our mile-long hike, I take off my backpack and drink a long slug of water. The day is warm and we’ve all sweat under our loads.  We are standing at the trim-line where the rush of water scoured the brush and left only bare rock. The team looks for evidence of broken branches or out of place sediment above the line – trying to locate the absolute highest run-up. They finally make the call – 187 meters, or 613 feet.

I turn around and face the fjord. The charter boat, anchored in the middle, is now a tiny dot below us. Directly behind the boat is the cleaved mountain. I try to imagine the force, the violence, and I come up short. Geology may not always be slow; thankfully it usually is.

Watch the film, Icy Bay Mega-Tsunami.

Nome to Fairbanks - Fat-Bike Expedition

On March 14, 2018, Kim and I fly to Nome, Alaska, with the intention of riding our bicycles to Fairbanks, on the greatest equipment the world has yet seen. The fat-bike is a marvel of modern industry and design. Man’s greatest invention—the bicycle—has been fussed over, considered, and modified into a thing of beauty and unrivaled efficiency.

Winter cycling expeditions can be really hard. Soft snow trails, strong and sometimes relentless wind, discomfort, and injury are all potentially on the menu and to be anticipated. In the late 1990s, winter cycling expeditions had the potential to be even more difficult—fat-bikes didn’t yet exist. Even with big tyres, these trips are often impossible; without big tyres, impossible was more frequent.  

In the 1980s, 1990s, and well into the 2000s, a handful of diehard winter cyclists were begging for bicycles with bigger, wider, and fatter wheels and tyres. Shade-tree inventors like Mark Gronewald and Ray Molina were pushing the boundaries but the options were few. Finally, however, one bigger bike company took a chance, made the leap of faith, and kicked off the fat-bike design arms race.

Since 2005, interest in this sub-culture cycling pursuit has grown exponentially. What used to be a sport wherein everyone who did it knew the name and or reputation of almost most everyone else, has mushroomed into a global phenomenon. Alaska has exported an idea and an activity to the world, and there is no going back. 

And, since 2005, the cycling industry has been in overdrive, designing and tweaking the equipment.

To the engineers and designers, who have lost sleep, listened to input, and spent long hours in the saddle wondering how to improve the fat-bike, thank you. To the OG’s who spent their inheritances and re-mortgaged homes on the original fat-bike dream, thank you.

Twenty years ago, I took my first winter cycling trip on the Iditarod Trail with Roger and Arleen Cowles. My mind was blown. We were on the equipment of the day and we didn’t achieve the massive objective we’d set out for. We made it to Unalakleet and called it.

Tomorrow, I fly with my favorite adventure partner, Kim McNett, to Nome, again. We intend to hang around for a few days and take in the finish of the Last Great Race, visit friends, and camp on beaches dripping with gold and history.

On this trip, I plan to shoot video. I want to ask anyone we meet, how global warming has affected their ability to travel. For ten thousand years, winter has been the time for travel and human migration; winter has been the time to visit distant family and to reconnect. On our watch, this tradition is disappearing, unless we get serious and start fighting like hell against global warming.

The stories I hope to capture will I hope help others understand the dire straights we are in. The stories I hope to capture will I hope spur us to action. “Summer,” an Inuit proverb tells us, “is the season of inferior sledding.”

On this expedition we will be carrying our InReach tracking device. You are invited to follow our progress and read our updates by clicking this link: https://share.garmin.com/BjornandKim

Our messages will be sent to Kim’s Facebook page as well as Ground Truth Trekking’s Facebook page.

Our bikes have been tuned; our bags packed; our batteries full of charge; and there is nothing left for it. We are as ready as we’ll ever be. Wish us well.

"It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” –Gandalf

A big shout-out to our gear sponsors, Salsa Cycles and Mountain Laurel Designs. 

Also, a big shoutout to the authors of Drawdown for giving me reason to hope. 

Reflections on 2017

Reflecting on 2017, one word comes to mind: unbelievable. It’s unbelievable that I should be so fortunate; to have friends and family of whom I draw so much from and am eternally inspired by. These people within my sphere seem incapable of thoughtless compromise and live under their own enchantments. My vibrant, supportive, and engaged community is filled with unbelievable brilliance, creativity, and steely-eyed determination to fight the good fights. 

It is unbelievable that I was, again, able to experience so many new, wild, and remote areas of untamed Alaskan wilderness. Traveling through Arctic Alaska last summer was one of the most rewarding and eye opening expeditions of my life. The shorter ventures by bike, packraft, and kayak were all, also, unbelievable.

The flood of support, input, and collaboration regarding the Alaskan climate change education campaign has been unbelievable. Three years ago, I made a New Year vow to become a better climate change communicator and not miss opportunities to learn and share. That vow still stands. Perhaps it runs.

In 2017, we have had to march and protest against systemic and swelling racism. Unbelievable! We had to march, organize, strategize, and mobilize to protect and stand up for science. Unbelievable! We have had to march and stand up for the rights of women. Unbelievable! We have a racist, anti-intellectual, sexual predator for a president who endorses pedophiles. Unbelievable!

Late in 2017, the UN released a report claiming that America—despite being one of the wealthiest countries—is the most economically unequal society in the world. My country spends more on national defense than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, India, France and Japan combined and has been at war for 16 years! Unbelievable!

2017 was the warmest year on record without an El Nino. Each of the 10 hottest years on record has occurred since 1998. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus as to why rapid global warming is occurring, 2017 set a record for fossil fuel consumption. Unbelievable!

One of the hardest things for me to reconcile about 2017 has been the disparity between the micro and macro. On the micro level—meaning my community—the fight for justice and right-headedness was in overdrive. On the macro level, autocratic, small-mindedness, with strong overtones of fascism, clutched our national politics.

This observation brings to mind Margaret Mead, who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” This, I believe.

Happy New Year, everyone. May your optimism wear big boots and be louder than ever.

Below, is smattering of photos from 2017. 

Alayne and Daniel cross the Lisburne Hills - Arctic Alaska.

Noah rides a wheelie near Resurrection River - Seward, Alaska. 

Winter bike camp - Caribou Hills.

Alayne and Kim find a walrus skull - Arctic Alaska. 

Homer Cycling Club's Big Fat Bike Festival - Homer, Alaska.

Sammy learns to ride a fat-bike - Homer.

Kim, Alayne, and Daniel packraft in front of the Corwin Bluffs - Arctic Alaska. 

December moonrise - Homer.

Kim rides the frozen Tustumena Lake. 

Bjørn finds a mammoth tusk - Arctic Alaska.

Kali dancers perform during the whale festival - Point Lay, Alaska.

Kali dancers - Point Lay, Alaska.

Spotted seal pup - Arctic Alaska.

Caribou on the Kasegaluk Lagoon - Arctic Alaska.

Swimming caribou - Arctic Alaska.

A retired umiak - Wainwright, Alaska. 

A sod hut - Arctic Alaska. 

Bjørn and Kim finish their expedition to Utqiagvik, Alaska. 

Traditional qayak building with Maligiaq - Homer, Alaska. 

Bjørn's traditional Greenlandic qayaq - Homer. 

Finished qayaqs - Homer. 

Bjørn surfing his traditional qayaq - Homer. 

Kim returns from a paddle with her traditional qayaq - Homer. 

Alaskans Know Climate Change tote bags.

Protesting Northern Edge. 

Kim dip-netting sockeye salmon - China Poot, Alaska.  

Preserving summers bounty. 

Munitions training before Arctic fat-bike expedition. 

Katmai and Lituya harvesting berries - Seldovia, Alaska. 

Billy fishing for halibut - Kachemak Bay, Alaska. 

Doug fillets halibut - Kachemak Bay, Alaska. 

Homer residents protest against racism. 

The Kachemak Bay Adventure Trail. 

Salsa Mukluk fat-bike in front of whale bones - Point Hope, Alaska. 

Lael prepares to launch on the Kachemak Bay Adventure Trail.

Packrafting to Aurora Lagoon along the Kachemak Bay Adventure Trail. 

Maligiaq prepares for the most difficult roll - the Straight Jacket Roll - Resurrection Bay, Alaska. 

Alaskans Know Climate Change tabling - Homer. 

Beach biking toward the Lisburne Hills - Arctic Alaska. 

Big Fat Bike Festival obstacle course - Homer. 

Maligiaq returns to Seward - Resurrection Bay, Alaska. 

Margaret and Bjørn pause for sunset - Caribou Hills, Alaska. 

Sunset in the Caribou Hills. 

George rides through a deep creek - Seward, Alaska. 

March for Science, Earth Day, and Alaskans Know Climate Change event - Homer. 

Roof of Alaska

The word Arctic, for me, is a magical word. As someone who lives in an Arctic state, I have spent relatively little time above latitude 66º. What time I have spent in the far north has further emboldened my romance. The land of no summer sunsets, bowhead whales, walrus’, shorebird colonies that darken the skies and ancient cultures surviving and thriving in the lands of their ancestors easily distract my mind. A quixotic vision compels me north this summer, but with a healthy dose of realistic expectation, and even more caution.

This summer, myself along with Kim McNett and Daniel Countiss will fly to the northwestern Alaskan community of Point Hope and begin a long, fat-bike and packraft trip. Our aim is to traverse more than 800 miles of Arctic terrain to Kaktovik in the northeastern region of the state. We will pass through the villages of Point Lay, Wainwright, Utqiagvik (Barrow) then continue east to Deadhorse; and, if everything goes incredibly well, we’ll continue on to Kaktovik. For the first ten-days, we will be joined by our friend Alayne Tetor.  

For months, we have poured over satellite data, photosets, and maps; and have reached out to any and everyone we know that has experience or who lives in the region. We have repackaged and stuffed seven-weeks worth of food into flat-rate priority mail boxes, to be sent to village post offices when needed, and assembled all the odds and ends one needs to survive while traveling unsupported in the wilderness. We’ve overhauled all the little parts and pieces of our bikes and stripped them down to single speed and single intention machines. Our bags are packed.

Before any big trip, but particularly before a previously unattempted big trip, I hear the questions from friends and family: how long will it take, how many miles do you expect to travel each day, etc. My response is, we have seven weeks worth of food. We can make assumptions and guesses based off the information we have, but until we are actually there we’ll have no real or clear idea about our efficiency on this road-less and trail-less route. This uncertainty gives me butterflies. The giants of our imagination may turn out to be benign windmills or we may come home with our tails between our legs. Regardless, we are going…to find out.

Beyond the straightforward adventure, we will also be attempting to contribute to the scientific community by documenting and measuring coastal erosion. Similar to geocaching, we will be attempting to locate the dozens of “shore stations,” which have been created by Shore Zone, with our GPS. Once we locate them, we will re-measure, photo-re-occupy, make field notes, and nature drawings. Some of the coastline we propose to pass through is losing more than 20 feet a year to erosion from the warming seas – a symptom of climate change.

Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson once said, “There are two kinds of Arctic problems, the imaginary and the real. Of the two, the imaginary are the most real.” From where we are standing, all Arctic problems are imaginary and therefore very real.

With any luck, we’ll be able to send updates from the villages we pass through. We will be carrying our InReach tracking device, which will send daily “pings” from our current location. To follow our progress click here: https://share.delorme.com/BjornandKim

We will also send occasional, short updates from our InReach, which will be received by Ground Truth Trekking’s Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groundtruthtrekking/

An enormous thank you is due to the brands and organizations that have helped us realize this expedition: Ground Truth Trekking, Cook Inletkeeper, Kachemak Bay Conservation Society, Salsa Cycles, Alpacka Rafts, Mountain Laurel Designs, and the Time Lords Cycling Group. 

Landslide Generated Tsunami in Icy Bay

In October of 2015 a massive landslide occurred in a remote area of coastal Alaska. Seismologists, who usually pick-up and decipher earthquakes, noted a unique low-frequency wave pattern on their instruments – the pattern looked like a landslide, and a big one. They sent the information along to a tsunami expert and within days it was determined that the event had occurred in Taan Fjord – an arm of Icy Bay.

Over the winter experts from around the world began reaching out to each other and eventually it was decided to put together an expedition funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. The goal was to get as many disciplines from the related fields of study into the field and uncover the mysteries of this fantastic event as soon as possible, before erosion, glacial retreat and other processes sullied the evidence.

I joined the team, as videographer and documentarian, with sedimentologists, tsunami modelers, surveyors, landslide specialists, engineers, and other earth researchers. Like the good burglar Bilbo Bagbins I was the lucky 14th member.

Better understanding of geo-hazards, landslides, and tsunamis leads to better public policy, city planning, engineering and other human-related developments. In this time of rapid de-glaciation and climate change it is very likely we’ll be seeing more of these types of landslides in coastal Alaska and other glacial regions around the world.

Many of the researchers on this expedition have studied earthquake-generated tsunamis in Indonesia, Japan and other places where loss of life and property was profound. To study a landslide generated tsunami in a remote fjord is not without challenges but it also provides a fantastic natural laboratory, where no loss of human life occurred.

Over the next few years, data generated from this expedition and another in August of this year will be crunched and models will be created. This tsunami was the largest (600 feet) anyone has yet to study so soon after the event and the instruments used are state of the art. It seems likely that what was uncovered from this expedition will be useful around the world for many decades to come. 

Photo credit: Bjørn Olson, Ground Truth Trekking, and the National Park Service

Fat-Bike to the Arctic - 360º Article

Wind-crusted snow obliterated our faint trail and my 12cm wide fat-bike tires ground to a halt again. I dismounted the bike, brushed the hoar ice off the fur rough that shrouded my face and breathed in the cold, late March sun. My gaze scanned ahead and behind, then paused to marvel at the seemingly drunken path my bicycle tires had carved into the snow.

 The rosy-orange sunlight was still above the mountainous horizon but my girlfriend Kim and I were exhausted from our strenuous day of pedaling and pushing our bikes over the fickle snow trail. It was time, we agreed, to push off the faint path through the cold, crunchy snow, work our way to the closest stand of willows and make camp.

 We had been cycling north from Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, for three weeks. Our expedition began in late February on a 2 meter wide, wilderness snow trail, that we hoped would lead us 1,700km, to the arctic community of Kotzebue, on an untested route. Our success depended on good snow and weather but winter snow trails can be as ephemeral as smoke and clouds. After 1,300km we began to wonder if our luck was about to run out.

 Kim and I live in Homer, a small, coastal, fishing and summer tourist community in South Central Alaska. Our lifestyle is simple. We live in a small cabin by the seashore, we work and we save, and we do human-powered trips through Alaska.

 Alaska is my native home and since my teenage years I have had a passion for exploring her hidden secrets and deepening my understanding of this “last frontier”.

 Most archeologists place the first inhabitants of Alaska sometime around 8,000BCE. The first peoples migrated over the Bering Land Bridge from Asia – some settled these cold northern lands while others continued south and east to colonize the rest of the hemisphere.

 Not until the 1700s did Westerners first make their presence known. Again, it was from the west that they came – Russians driven by the lure of easy money in the form of sea otter pelts. By 1867 the otter were nearly extinct, much of coastal Alaska had been forcibly subdued and Christianized, and laissez faire capitalism had been introduced.  Alaska had experienced its first big economic boom and bust.

 Much to the chagrin of the rest of the nation, U.S. Interior Secretary, William Seward, under President Lincoln, proposed to buy Alaska from the Russians for $7million – roughly equivalent to one U.S. dollar per acre. “Seward’s Ice Box” and “Seward’s Folly” were the derisive terms of the day - that is until gold was discovered and a new crop of acquisitive pioneers marched north to the future.  

 Fossil fuels are Alaska’s current primary economic driver and the latest boom in our sad saga of peaks and valleys which tend to enrich a few while leaving devastated communities and despoiled landscapes behind.  

 Alaska is on the front lines of climate change and nowhere is this more apparent than in rural Alaska where people still depend on snow and ice to travel in winter months to harvest the wild game that sustains them.  

 Beyond adventure, Kim and I wanted to travel south to north across Alaska and into the arctic to experience these changes. Ground Truth Trekking is a small nonprofit we work for which is based on the idea that by traveling at human speed through vast landscapes we can enrich our understanding of some of these complex issues, then share our insights with others.

 Preparing for long winter expeditions requires months of training, planning and foresight. Kim and I have many long, winter fat-bike trips under our belts but our proposed ‘Fat-Bike to the Arctic’ expedition was our most ambitious. We took all our years of experience and laid them on the line. But experience, physical health, and preparedness can easily be subdued by early thaws, persistent storms and other meteorological phenomena that are becoming harder and harder to predict.

The evening we pushed our bikes through the wind-crusted snow to the stand of willows we each unloaded our camping kit and together we set up our floor-less, pyramid shelter. Each evening of our expedition Kim and I switched chores. That night was my turn to cut firewood while Kim assembled our lightweight titanium wood stove inside the shelter.

 The wood stove was our only means of cooking but we’d finally traveled far enough north that the warmth it provided was truly necessary. For the entire first week of our expedition Kim and I pedaled and pushed our bikes in unseasonably warm temperatures. The snow melted and long stretches of open water threatened to prematurely end our expedition.

 Our route followed the famous Iditarod Sled Dog Race Trail for 1,200km, to the frozen Bering Sea, then broke off and continued north over land and sea above the arctic circle to the north western community of Kotzebue.

 A warm and snowless winter continued right up to the week before the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, which threatened cancelation or a re-start further north in Fairbanks. At the eleventh hour race officials decided that despite the lack of snow the route would suffice.  

 On the far side of the Alaska Range, Kim and I took a layover to let the dog teams catch up and pass us.  A gravel runway and a small Bureau of Land Management cabin is the entire infrastructure that makes up the abandoned community of Rohn. During the race, however, the dormant cabin and lonely airstrip comes alive as a race checkpoint – full of veterinarians, dog handlers, race marshals and media. Kim and I were quickly enlisted to help with chores and handling weary dog teams as they entered the checkpoint.

 As the bruised, broken and wide-eyed mushers began to pull into Rohn, Kim and I finally got a glimpse of what the trail must have been like for the mushers and their dogs. For us, on bikes, the descent from The Alaska Range had been bliss. The trail from the summit of the pass had been on snowless dirt and rock, with little off angle patches of ice and hastily assembled bridges that crossed open stretches of water. For the mushers it had been hell. Controlling 12 to 14 powerful sled dogs on long, tight descents is difficult with plenty of snow. Without snow it was a recipe for disaster. In the end, over 15% of the teams would scratch out of the race from this checkpoint.

 Our first cold snap came while we traversed the long and lonely stretch of trail between the Kuskokwim and Yukon Rivers. This region is affectionately known as the Inland Empire but to our eyes it was a hungry and sparse land that we hoped to quickly cover before the wind and snow erased our trail.

 The Athabascan village of Ruby and a resupply of food awaited us on the shores of the Yukon River but when we rolled into the village the place seemed abandoned. Despite the brilliantly sunlit evening no one was out. After making several circuits around town, two well-dressed women on a paddle-track snow-machine, the ubiquitous vehicle of roadless Alaska, stopped to greet us. They informed us that a local elder had recently passed away and that everyone was attending a potlatch * in his honor at the school. They insisted that we attend. With empty stomachs we graciously accepted.

 Inside the school gymnasium we were made to feel comfortable as heaping plates of food were handed to us. Over the next hour many people came to sit next to us on the bleachers. They wanted to inquire about our adventure but they also wanted us to know that the man they were honoring was a man of the trail. A man who’d known the pangs of hunger and in turns how to share his bounty with fellow travelers. “He would have been the first to welcome you and the first to see that you were in need of company and nourishment,” they all said.  

 After our second week out we finally reached the Bearing Sea and the frozen Norton Sound. This was Kim’s first experience with sea ice but both of us were equally elated and awestruck as we smoothly biked over a vast sea of frozen water.

 As we rode over the sea ice in predawn light one morning my emotions caught me off guard and I broke down. The pink and orange sunrise was spectacular beyond description and I was filled with the first intuition that our trip may actually be successful. I felt my mother’s presence who we’d delayed the trip a year for while we cared for her with a terminal brain tumor. Under my goggles, cold tears streamed down my cheeks. I felt an overwhelming sense of love, life and appreciation for this place and my parent’s wise decision to bring me into the world in a land as spectacular and mysterious as Alaska.

 Space is often hard to judge in low-lying, arctic landscapes where the white of the snow below matches the hue of the sky above and very few landmarks provide contrast for your eyes. In the distance we could see the wind turbines of Kotzebue but as the hours passed and the kilometers rolled under our tires the gently whirling landmarks appeared to grow no larger or closer. 

 Near the end of the day we entered the outskirts of the community and it was Kim’s turn to be moved to tears. After years of meditation and 36 days on the move we’d finally reached our goal.

 For thousands of year’s winter has been the time of travel and migration. We are eternally grateful to have sneaked through and caught a glimpse of this vast landscape and its people before the uncertainty of winter replaces the tradition of frozen adventure.

 * Potlatch: traditional Alaskan Native ceremonial feast. In modern times all attendees bring a food dish to share with the assembly.