Frozen Feet at -45 Below Zero: A Proustian Reminiscence
Note: I recognize that this is a little out of the ordinary for my typical blog posts, but I thought that some of you might be interested in this tale of poor choices, cold feet, and adventure near the Arctic Circle. I don’t usually write stories because I prefer writing essays, but this is a narrative that I am reminded of every winter. Instead of the crumbs of a madeleine cake touching off a cascade of memories, my Proustian reminiscence begins with my cold right foot. Every year, as the weather gets colder, my right foot reminds me of this experience and I am grateful for the lessons I learned on this trip.
In January of 1988, I found myself huddled with my father in a makeshift shelter under a frozen willow tree bent over from the weight of the snow in its branches. We had abandoned our snowmachines several miles back and had snowshoed through the deep, granular snow down into the Fossil Creek drainage. We were seeking shelter from the incessant wind that had been blowing at us all day. We were just a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, deep in the White Mountains of interior Alaska. I was 15 years old, and I was very, very cold.
It was -45 degrees with a 20-25 mph wind, and we had been out in those conditions all day, trying to break a trail to the Windy Gap cabin in the White Mountain National Recreation Area. Hypothermia had set in a couple of hours earlier and I had passed the point of shivering. I couldn’t feel my hands, my right foot had severe frostbite, and I had given up any hope of getting warm ever again. I was huddled there, under that willow tree with my father and we were both trying to keep each other awake so that we would at least survive another hour until Dick Bouts came back on his snowmachine to carry us to the Windy Gap cabin where my younger brother Andy, hopefully, had a fire and warm sleeping bags waiting for us.
We had started at 10:00 am that same morning, just as the sun broke the horizon and we had battled the elements all day, exhausting both our bodies and spirits. About an hour into our journey my snowmachine had bogged down in a patch of overflow on Wickersham Creek and, foolishly, I had stepped off the snowmachine to pull it onto more solid ice. I sunk in up to my knee and filled my right bunny boot with slush and water. Bunny boots were originally invented by the U.S. military for Arctic warfare, and they were great at insulating as long as your feet started out warm. Even when your feet were wet, they would still insulate and my foot, although wet, was still semi-warm. The problem was that I hated wet feet (and still do) and the sloshing and squishing of the water in my boot drove me crazy. By 1:00 pm we reached the Colorado Creek cabin where we were planning on eating lunch and warming up before pushing on to the Windy Gap cabin for the night.
The Colorado Creek cabin is located next to a small kettle pond in a wide-open, windswept stretch of tundra. The cold weather had coated everything inside and outside the cabin in a fine layer of delicate, sparkling hoarfrost. The plan was to light the wood stove which would allow me to dry out my boot and socks before proceeding to Windy Gap. My brother and I went into the cold cabin and began to eat our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, frozen stiff and solid, while my Dad and Dick Bouts went out to find wood to light the woodstove. In eager anticipation, I took off my wet bunny boot and socks and tried to warm up my cold foot by wrapping it in my parka, which I had also taken off in the cold cabin.
Shortly after I had removed my boot my Dad and Dick returned with the news that there was no wood to be found. To make things worse, the heavy snow over Christmas had been blown into massive drifts that buried all of the small black spruce that we would usually cut for firewood in years with less snow. So, there I was with my wet, cold foot out in the below zero cabin, my wet sock frozen stiff, and a bunny boot that had also cooled off and was now glazed with ice on the inside. The next chance to dry out my boot and warm up my foot was 26 snowbound miles away at the Windy Gap cabin.
I hadn’t brought a dry pair of socks, and so I had no choice but to pull on my frozen sock and slide my cold foot into my frozen boot. Bunny boots have a remarkable ability to insulate, which means that if your foot starts out warm it will stay warm, and if your foot starts out cold it will stay cold. We drove our snowmachines over the unbroken trail, following the half-buried spruce tripods across the wide-open tundra. In December the sun sets at 2 pm, and as it got dark, we struggled to find the trail and got stuck more and more frequently in the deep snow. Getting unstuck required digging, pulling, and gunning the engines to get the heavy snowmachines back on the packed trail. We were running out of fuel and energy, and we were sweaty and chilled from the physical exertion of digging out our machines.
Our progress was stopped by deep snow and low gas almost 7 miles from the Windy Gap cabin. I remember the numbness that was creeping up my leg and the sense of dread in the pit of my stomach as we sat at the top of the ridge that dropped into the Fossil Creek drainage. We had covered 42 miles of trail to this point and still had 7 miles of unbroken trail ahead. We debated the pros and cons of going back or forging ahead and decided that our best bet lay in pushing on with one snowmachine to the Windy Gap cabin to conserve gas. We decided that my dad and I would take the lead and would pack down the trail with snowshoes down to Fossil Creek (almost 2 miles), and Dick Bouts would follow our trail on his old BLM Skidoo Tundra with Andy.
My dad and I trudged through the deep snow and worked up more of a sweat as we pushed through the deep snow. Once we got down to Fossil Creek, the overflow had created a smooth, new sheen of ice that Dick and Andy could follow without our help…but overflow can be quite unpredictable and what appears like a solid surface can turn out to be waist-deep slush. A snowmachine can go fast enough to float over the slush and any open water but walking on overflow can be quite treacherous. A slushy spot in the overflow is how I had originally filled my boot with water, so my Dad and I decided that it wouldn’t be safe for us to walk down the creek to the cabin.
We decided that Dick and Andy would proceed to the Windy Gap cabin on the snowmachine. Dick would drop off Andy at the cabin and he would get a fire started in the old barrel stove, and Dick would then ferry my dad and me to the cabin, one by one. So, that’s how we found ourselves huddled beneath that small willow bower on a frigid January evening in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. I remember sitting there with my dad, the cold moonlight casting long shadows over the deep snow, straining our ears listening for the distant whine of the old Tundra coming back along the creek bed for us. It was -45 below zero, we were chilled, tired, and hypothermic. Staying awake was a challenge. I don’t remember much beyond this…neither does my dad.
Somehow, we got to the cabin and I remember lying on an old moth-eaten mattress next to the fire crying as my frozen foot slowly began to unthaw. The sensation of warmth flowing back into frozen limbs is incredibly painful as the warm blood bursts the frozen, damaged blood vessels. It’s an excruciating experience and results in significant tissue damage that causes the frostbitten appendage to turn black. I eventually fell asleep, or passed out…I can’t remember which, but I awoke the next morning in Windy Gap cabin with a coating of ice over my sleeping bag and a right foot that was almost three times its normal size.
Our initial plan had been to head back to the Elliot Highway that morning and get back to town, but it quickly became apparent that my swollen foot was not going to fit in my boot. We ended up staying at Windy Gap for 4 days. We lived off old cans of Dinty Moore beef stew left from the winter before and by rationing our snacks. We spent the days stoking the fire to keep the -40 temperatures at bay, playing cards with an incomplete deck left by someone else, reading and rereading old Outdoor Life magazines, and telling each other stories and jokes. In the dark, clear cold of January we could look out to see the most spectacular array of stars, that would occasionally be obscured by curtains and ribbons of green and purple aurora borealis. The howl of wolves echoed through the valley and left an indelible impression on me. Their nightly chorus of wolves didn’t scare me; in fact, it was comforting to know that there were other living creatures out in the cold, and I was reassured by their nightly songs.
After our fourth day at Windy Gap, the swelling in my foot had gone down enough to allow me to squeeze my foot into my boot. The weather had also warmed up to a balmy -10 degrees below zero, so we packed up and ferried gear and people to the snowmachines we had left at the top of the Fossil Creek drainage. We unthawed our snowmachines and returned to our cars, parked near the Tolovana River on the Elliot Highway.
I still remember this trip every winter as the days get shorter and the snow begins to fall. When the temperature dips and the low-angle light casts long shadows across the wintry landscape I feel it in my right foot. My right foot has never fully recovered from the tissue damage and my foot is always cold. I’ve grown used to the numb ache and cold toes, even though I wear two pairs of socks on my right foot in the winter. It’s become a seasonal reminder that takes me back to that frozen evening on Fossil Creek when I realized that I was alone and alive.