Adventure
The Last of a Dying Breed in Haines, Alaska
I awake, well rested, on the floor of the relatively homey Juneau Airport. I arrived in Alaska late the night before from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and will be flying to Haines in a couple hours to link with Iñaki Odriozola and Garrett Warnick, aka Inyo and Worm, for another one of their adventures. This trip is the culmination of their entire season spent pursuing backcountry freestyle snowboarding via splitboards. The plan is to take a ski-plane out into the backcountry to camp out for a week, or two, or three.
I have my camping gear with me, so, upon arrival, I didn’t call a cab to bring me to a hotel. I stepped outside to enjoy a hand rolled cigarette in the brisk southeast Alaska night air. I sat with the feeling of excitement you only get at the beginning of a trip, when so much is still unknown and the possibilities seem endless. My thoughts settled back on the present task at hand: where would I make camp?
That’s when I was greeted by a man named Virgil. We got to talking, and I told him I’m here to camp on a glacier to snowboard. He explained to me that he’s lived up here, homeless, for the last 10 years. Virgil is a short, wiry man, probably in his early 50s. He gave me no reason to doubt his stories of building numerous rogue log cabins in the surrounding forests to live in over the years. When the authorities would discover his dwelling and give him the boot, he’d mosey along and build another one somewhere else. Currently, Virgil is at the tail end of a yearlong residency at a nearby hotel that he said Uncle Sam got for him. “They give us snacks and all,’’ he said. “I’ll go grab you some.”