Bitter cold, snow halted woman's trek

As warm as she has found the people, the volatile weather and untracked terrain have proven the polar opposite for the 59-year-old Englishwoman.

Since setting off south and east from Cape Prince of Wales late last year to cross America's last great wilderness, there has been battle after battle with snow, rain, wind, brutal cold and emptiness. That Swale Pope hung in as long as she did is a testament to the human spirit.

Left to her own devices, in fact, there's a strong possibility she might still have been huddled in a tent on deserted Henry Island in the middle of the frozen Yukon River trying to devise a way to continue traveling toward Fairbanks on one good leg.

Nome District Attorney Bob Collins put an end to any such crazy thoughts by calling in the airborne rescue specialists of the Alaska National Guard last week when it became clear Swale Pope hadn't moved from her Interior camp for three days. She couldn't.

The big toe of the frostbitten left foot on which she had been limping along had swollen to about the size of a plum. Ever enterprising, Swale Pope made a mukluk out of a dry bag when the swollen foot would no longer fit in a boot, but the extremity hurt so much she didn't want to get out of her sled to slog through deep snow, plus infection appeared to be setting in.

"All the cascading problems," Collins said, "were just getting worse."

"I made a mistake," Swale Pope said. "It happened without my realizing. It's not happening again."

Having been flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center here for treatment, the bubbling Brit was out in a day and hobbling about the city on one good leg in two. Doctors say that with luck she will only lose a part of the big toe and maybe part of another. Swale Pople doesn't seem to be too worried about this, or maybe she's just hardened now.

The most petite and effervescent student of the moment at the Alaska School of Hard Knocks, she's been battling crisis after crisis almost since the day she began the Alaska leg of her round-the-world hike. The weather tried its best to pound her into submissions, and "Hercules," the wheeled, gear- carrying trailer that had become her best friend on the roads across Europe and Asia, turned into an enemy in the roadless snow and frozen tussocks of Alaska.

Alaskans, about whom Swale Pope can't seem to say enough good things, pitched in to help out. Veteran Iditarod Trail hiker Douglas Denis loaned her the covered sled that became her sanctuary along the wind-pounded Bering Sea coast. Others offered her advice on the trail west and south.

Collins, who befriended Swale Pope in Nome, became her communications link -- text-messaging to her satellite phone almost daily as she struggled south for hundreds of miles along the little traveled Iditarod.

It was not easy going.

"In Russia, at least, there were tracks (roads)," she said when she struggled into the village of White Mountain east of Nome. She was more blunt here this week.

"Alaska," Swale Pope said, "it's worse than Siberia."

Until one has broken trail on foot for hour after endless hour through deep snow, it is hard to fully appreciate the simple luxury of roads or snowmobile trails. For much of her Alaska journey, Swale Pope found neither.

By the time she finally succumbed to the adventure-stalling frostbite, tough going had forced her off the Iditarod Trail and east along the Yukon toward Fairbanks. Her original plan had been to follow the Iditarod south down the Bering Sea coast to Unalakleet, jump the Kaltag Portage to the Yukon River, follow the river to Ruby and then turn south across the vast, deserted Interior for Ophir and McGrath -- 300 miles north of Anchorage on the far side of the Alaska Range.

The trail from Ruby to Ophir, however, is rarely traveled. After hearing tales of bottomless snows, Swale Pope abandoned the Iditarod and decided to push on along the more frequently traveled Yukon toward civilization.

She made it to within 130 miles of the road system before the Alaska wilds finally beat her.

"A blizzard just obliterated the trail," Collins said. By then, too, Swale Pole was already struggling with the frostbite.

"The Serum Run (from Nenana to Nome) went past me,'' Swale Pope said. "I walked two days with the frostbite. The next morning, there was four feet of snow."

Swale Pope retreated into the tent-covered sled. She took pictures of the swollen and rotting toes caused by something as simple as lack of attention. Preoccupied with trying to find trail buried by snow on the windswept Yukon, she ignored her wet feet until it was too late.

"I took my mind off the game," she said. "I did not look at my feet. I did make a mistake. It's natural to make mistakes.

"Now, to recover."

Evacuated from the trail by the National Guardsmen she calls "the spirit of Alaska," still under the care of Anchorage doctors, Swale Pope is temporarily down but far from out. Having already come halfway around the world in a hike to promote cancer research to help stop the disease that killed husband, she's not ready to give up.

She's already plotting how to put this mistake in the past and get on with the future.

"You have to be both kind to yourself and hard on yourself," she said. "I'm really fit, aside from my foot, and I'm in the middle of a job."

Doctors think she might be able to resume hiking in four weeks. Swale Pope thinks she can build herself a special boot that will cut that to two or three.

If so, there's still enough time to make it up the frozen river from Henry Island to Fairbanks before breakup, and from Fairbanks on across the rest of America, there are roads.

"Once I get to Fairbanks, it's going to be a dawdle," Swale Pope said.

And to think that most of the people in this country think it far more than that just to walk across a parking lot to the grocery store.

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Daily News Outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.