Build My Own FeedBD athlete Drew Stoecklein heads off on summit-to-sea expedition in Alaska's Brooks Range
When you email Black Diamond athlete Drew Stoecklein right now this is the auto-response you get back:
Hi,
I’m on a month long expedition in the Arctic Circle. I will not be able to respond to e-mails or phone calls until late June early July.
All the best,
Drew Stoecklein
Below is the report, maps and photos Drew sent us before he began his journey. Looks like it’s going to be an amazing adventure!
This week a team of adventurers and I are setting out on a source-to-sea expedition in Alaska’s Brooks Mountain Range. We will attempt to follow a snowflakes journey: starting high in the sky, landing on top of a peak then melting down to into a stream, flowing into a river, and follow its journey all the way to the ocean.
On Monday we drove non-stop 3,000 miles from Ketchum, Idaho to Coldfoot, Alaska. From here we will hire a bush plane and fly into the headwaters of the Noatak River. Once we have landed at the headwaters we will climb up to a basecamp high in the mountains. The obstacles in getting up to this basecamp will be thawing tundra, hungry animals, avalanches, and an extremely variable arctic snowpack.
After we have established a basecamp we will search for the goods that we traveled so far to get. The difficulty of fully accomplishing our mission is that there is no way to check the depth of the snowpack in the Brooks Range. It is hard saying how good the skiing is going to be? The only way to figure it out is by going out there and experiencing it in person. Our hopes are to get some skiing on remote peaks with epic corned faces, huge chutes, and steep terrain. After ten days of exploring, and skiing we will make our trek back to the headwaters of the Noatak.
When we arrive back at the headwaters we will blow up our rafts, pack away the skiing gear and get out the oars and fishing poles. From here we will raft down the icy river 425 miles all the way to Kotzebue. 
The journey downriver to the ocean should take us 20 to 30 days to complete. During our travels downriver we should encounter an abundance of wild life, mosquitoes the size of crows, hundreds of grizzly bears, wolves, musk ox, caribou, and many more interesting creatures. In addition to viewing the wildlife we will be traveling through a few Eskimo villages on the way where we hope to learn about their unique culture. At the end of the river we will have to cross two miles of ocean to get to the airport in Kotzebue.
Once we have arrived in the town of Kotzebue, we will ship all of our gear and ourselves back to Fairbanks. As if the journey had not been long enough at this point, we still have to drive 3000 miles back home. In the end it should be an incredible 30+day trip in one of the wildest wilderness areas in the world.
United States / English 
