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I must be getting old - sketchy situations are starting to bother me - and sketchy people are annoying the fuck out of me. I met Kurvin at a Mountaineering Club of Alaska meeting. Kurvin seemed kinda of odd, but I just figured he was a dirty hippie. He teaches Computer Science at the University of Alaska. Kurvin was going to Wrangell- St. Elias National Park for a few weeks, so I decided to tag along.
There are two roads in the Wrangells. Both of them were built to access mining operations in the early 1900's. We were headed to McCarthy, Alaska. The McCarthy highway is regarded as the worst road in Alaska. It's 64 miles of unmaintained dirt road built on an old railroad bed.
McCarthy came about after the richest copper deposit in the world was discovered in the nearby hills. The copper was mined from 1911-1938. There were two remaining entrances into the mine, and the Park service was going to gate them in a matter of weeks. Kurvin somehow managed to talk me into going into the mine to explore it before the park service got to it. He said it was a quick 5-hour hike to an airshaft on the other side of the mountain. Driving to the park provided a glimpse of the adventure to come. Kurvin somehow managed to go 70+ most of time on the old rutted road. His old VW Siccoro was badly in need of new tires and shocks, and slamming on the brakes at 70mph to avoid potholes didn't help the cars fragile condition. Luckily he had a complete bootleg collection of 'BTO' tapes to make the time fly. We started out the next morning at 9am. A nice 5000-foot climb led to the top a ridge. A gnarly 2000 foot scree descent into a bowl and a 2 hour climb up a dicey broken cliff band brought us to the entrance around 9pm. Alaska knows scree. The hike didn't amuse me. 5 Hours my ass. Not only was Kurvin blowing smoke up my ass, he was really starting to annoy me. His constant whining about the lack of women in his life was like bitching about not meeting any loose women at the Baptist church. Kurvin wasn't exactly a catch either - 36, broke, balding, and annoying as fuck.
The mine entrance involved crawling on ice for 20 minutes, one breakdown section ("Be careful, don't hit any of those timbers, you'll bring the roof down"), tiptoe here ("There's an old case of dynamite over there"). Oh there are only two more pits to cross and we're there. The pits were about 15 feet across and so deep you couldn't see the bottoms. By this point it was 11 pm and this 'safe' mine was about as safe as screwing a $20 crack whore without a rubber. We finally made it to the platform we were to sleep on, ate dinner, and bedded down in the mine. The next day was a fun filled day of breakdowns, rotten platforms, pits, and Kurvin. The fuck-nut had to take a picture of every god damn thing we came across, even though he'd been in the mine 5 times before, and already had a picture of it. And his fucking camera was broken, so it took 5 minutes for every shot. That and he kept looking for mineral 'specimens'. And this guy wonders why he can't get laid. He couldn't get laid in a Tijuana whore house if he was wearing a suit made out of $100 bills. We made it back to the place we were sleeping and crashed out. Only one more day with this guy. We got up the next day and checked out some places on the mine Kurvin had been before. More pictures. More specimens. Escape. Nothing like the sun after 3 days in a mine. I motored back to the car. Along the way I meet some cute older girls hiking up the mountain. I told Kurvin he should go talk to them - not cute enough for him - Jesus Christ - What are you? Gay?
I got back to the car and bailed. I told Kurvin I wasn't in good enough shape for 'his trips' and I was going to part ways. I asked him if I could keep my stuff in his car until I found a ride back to Anchorage. No go, he had to have the keys to his cars with him, and he surely couldn't leave the car unlocked, or God forbid leave the keys at the ranger station across the street. As I was cleaning my stuff out of his car, he started to bug me about the rest of the gas money, and his light sticks - He gave me some light sticks to bring into the mine and they were somewhere in my pack. I told him we would worry about the light sticks later. 'But, but those cost me over $5.' 'Tough shit Kurvin' - Arguing with someone who has a .44 magnum strapped to his side is never a good idea, but this piece of shit wasn't worth going to jail for. I found a campsite nearby and set up my tent. Luckily the sick fuck was gone. I finally managed to bum a ride back to Anchorage from some Swiss about a week later.
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