About Tiso – Outdoor Equipment – Outdoor Equipment

Guy Grieve gave up a desk job to spend a year in the Alaskan Wilderness. In an exclusive piece for Tiso, he gives us an insight into his journey.

I gained a good deal of experience during my time in the great boreal woods of the interior of Alaska, and have had a chance to test a range of different equipment and materials in tough conditions over a sustained period. I was not trying to climb a mountain or sail solo. I was an inept city boy who arrived in the woods with an artificial idea of what it would take to not only build a long term shelter but to live through an Alaskan winter. I had many things to learn and most of my lessons were painful. Thankfully I came through in good shape and believe that I have taken that first step on the road to learning how to handle myself in the bush. Yet I am no master woodsman and can think of many Athabascan grannies who would put me to shame in that wild place. My knowledge is limited strictly to sub arctic regions as I was living and working 90 miles South of the arctic circle.

Despite the cold in central Alaska, during my time there I most often found myself wearing a relatively light amount of clothing. This was due to my need to carry out hard, physical work –building the cabin, cutting wood, collecting ice to melt for water and hunting. It is crucial in these extreme temperatures that you do not allow yourself to build up a sweat, as this can often lead to hypothermia. This I was able to achieve by wearing many layers of clothing and removing a layer whenever my body heat started to build up. The aim is to never allow sweat to dampen clothing, as it will freeze and render the kit useless when you slow down and begin to generate less heat. An old timer once memorably told me: ‘Son, moisture is the nemesis of the North!’

When I look at my clothing I am struck by the combination of old and new at work. I have tried to take the best of both tried and tested and new and revolutionary, and it has worked. I also looked hard at what local people wear out here and it has been fascinating to see that fur above all else is the preferred material for head and hands. For headwear, light hats made of beaver or sable fur sewed onto material with wool liners have been used for hundreds of years and they work exceptionally well. During the periods of dry cold (-40s to –60s) I wore Mukluks. A superb bit of footwear made of canvass uppers and a moosehide sole lined with felt. Mukluks work because their flexibility (think of your slippers) ensured that my feet kept moving allowing circulation to keep digits warm. However for conditions where I might encounter water (ie. beaver trapping or travelling through overflow) I cannot speak more highly of the US Army vapour or ‘bunny’ boots. These hideous clumsy clown-like rubber boots gave me great security. One simply inflates the boots each day by blowing through a valve thus generating a superb level of insulation and the space of the boot also allows good foot movement. I once filled a boot with water whilst moving through deep overflow in February, it was -30 and I was nervous. Yet the boot held the water in like a wetsuit and when I got home I was okay.

I had to overcome the difficulties presented not just by living in these extreme conditions but also by working, fishing and hunting to keep myself going. In the depths of winter I would cut, process and burn around three big trees a week and as I was determined to always use standing dead spruce I often had to drag the wood a long way back to camp. I also had to work hard to maintain my trails so that they were navigable for the dog team, and this entailed snow-shoeing for miles each day. Hunting also took up a lot of my time, and I had to be careful to ensure that the getting didn’t use up more calories than I gained in the eating. Despite the adversity, however, thanks to a combination of kit provided by Tiso and the Yukon, I never suffered from frost-bite or hypothermia. Had I done so I would have got no sympathy from the people there, who believe it to be shaming to suffer from these – as they see it – entirely preventable complaints. People there take pride in keeping warm, and allowing yourself to get cold or lose digits is seen as stupid – not brave or tough.

Nothing is sadder then the look of panic on an adventurer’s face as he realises that he does not have the kit for the job – particularly if that face is a familiar one reflected in a mirror!

Over and above all my kit and bits and pieces, the most important factor that has got me through this – more than any fancy clothing or piece of hardware – has been humility and patience. I arrived in Alaska with an absolute readiness to approach everything slowly, and without any dumb pride. I was very careful in most things, and the two times when I failed to adhere to this principle suffered badly. On the first occasion I almost lost a toe (of which I was particularly fond!) and on the second I almost lost my life. Yet, on balance, my humble approach to this mighty landscape has allowed me to travel with safety on that wonderful road that soon becomes a track, then a game path, then nothing but wilderness. A place not of fear or machismo but of simple childlike joy and wonder.

Who knows where this experience will take me? I know it has made me virtually unemployable, but life does not reveal itself to us all at once. This journey of mine has proved, I hope, that it is possible to put two fingers up to the myriad cynics and fear peddlers who each day justify their existence by shooting down the dreams and hopes of others. Those that tell us that life is about resigning oneself to the daily grind are wrong, for resignation is nothing more than desperation confirmed. There must remain in all our lives the opportunity to make things happen that are dictated solely by intimate demands: be it racing pigeons, playing the euphonium or simply finding a river in the hills that feels as if you were the first to discover it. And sometimes – not in every case but sometimes – it pays to leave it all behind and start again, if that is what it takes to find happiness. Often the route map to joy is within – hidden away somewhere behind the common sense department.

I thank Tiso for taking me seriously and for showing the courage to help me realise a completely irrational, impractical and dangerous dream. To support me, even though I had no backup of any sort, and would arrive on my own in one of the world’s last great wildernesses, was truly brave. Thankfully an amazing family of indigenous Alaskans were equally moved to help me on this odd journey of mine and in the process they have taught me many things. My journey that has already completely reoriented my life for the better, and I want to express my heartfelt thanks to all those in Scotland and Alaska who helped me along the way. The greatest thanks of course are due to my family, who have patiently allowed me to fulfil my dream, and without whom I am nothing.