Trails can be seductively dangerous

Never mind that the trail seems to lead somewhere other than where you want to go. No matter that the route looks suspiciously avalanche prone. Little thought that an investment of energy now in breaking a new trail onto better ground might pay dividends when you come this way again and again over the course of the snow season.

No, the packed trail is such a powerful thing it has the force to override judgment.

Better to follow a trail in the wrong direction than to risk getting the snowmachine stuck again in deep, bottomless snow. Better to ignore the avalanche danger than labor, and it is labor, to break a new trail out on skis. Easier to follow the trail someone has already pounded in -- no matter how off-route they might be -- than wallow out a better trail on snowshoes that float across the surface of the snowy expanses only in myth.

These are the siren songs of the trails that course the great, white silence.

Someone with a murderous heart could snowmobile pack a trail to the edge of a cliff and kill or maim who knows how many followers -- other snowmachiners, skiers, fat-tire mountain bikers, dogsledders, and maybe even, in the dark of night, a snowshoer.

The draw of the trail is that strong.

On the glaciers leading up toward the summit of McKinley, climbers have been known to follow the call of the trail into crevasse fields, which is why Denali National Park rangers now like to get on the mountain early. The entire climbing season is safer if they can stomp out a good trail up the heavily travelled West Buttress toward the summit because almost everyone who comes behind will follow that trail with precious little consideration to where it leads.

The packed-in trail is seductive. And the better the trail, the greater the seduction.

Breathes there a Susitna Valley snowmobiler who hasn't at some time gotten him or herself more than a little confused -- if not downright lost -- following a trail too good to abandon?

Have not you all had this thought once or twice or more:

"You know, I think we should have turned south (or north or west or east) miles back there somewhere, but doggone, this is an awfully good trail."

The late Bill Firmin used to curse the wanderers of all stripes who showed up at his cabin not far off the Iditarod Trail at Flathorn Lake, but it was not without reason that they jogged on in there. Firmin maintained a smooth and well-groomed trail. It reached out like a beacon in the dark to draw the unwary.

It is strange to think that anyone can get lost following a trail, but it happens with regularity.

All trails lead somewhere, but some end in nowhere. Often the end is someone's remote cabin, or the turnaround point for the snowmachine that only packed the trail in better, making it even more attractive, on the way back out.

There are worse things.

Some trails lead to injury and death.

Alaska snowmobilers riding on glaciers -- a risky proposition even in the best of circumstances -- have sometimes paid a steep price for following the call of the trail.

Herb Bond and Rich Runser were following a trail across the Nelchina Glacier south of the Eureka Roadhouse about 10 years ago when their sleds flew into a crevasse. It was only by luck they avoided death. Instead of plummeting to the bottom, they landed on a ledge in the crevasse. Bond smashed his elbow and cracked ribs. Runser broke his back. He barely survived and has been in a wheelchair ever since.

It is not the first time a trail steered a glacial snowmobiler into a crevasse, and it is almost certain not to be the last. And the dangers of the trail are not restricted to snowmobilers.

Angela Paez, 34, came to Alaska in the fall of 1997 to work and search for the wilderness. The latter took her to Girdwood and the Crow Pass Trail, a notoriously avalanche prone route in the Chugach Mountains. She was following the trail of another skier there, unaware of the danger of avalanches from above, when she was hit by a snowslide.

It carried her over a small cliff and buried her in a sitting position. The avalanche was not big as avalanche's go, but it was big enough to smother and kill.

We tend to think of trails as inherently friendly routes into or through that wilderness which is what most of Alaska remains. This is the case even more so in winter when the well-packed paths ease the burden of breaking trail, when seasonal snow routes point the way across vast expanses accessed in the summer only with great difficulty.

And yet there are dragons lurking along the winter trails.

The night was beautiful with twinkling stars and a near-full moon when the Flattop Trail lured 32-year-old Brian Mulvehill into the Front Range of the Chugach in 2006. Everybody hikes Flattop. Hardly anyone ever thinks about the danger, though there are signs posted to warn of avalanche.

It was an avalanche that caught Mulvehill as he snowshoed up the trail near Blueberry Hill. An electrician from Michigan two years in the state, he was described by friends as an avid outdoorsman who loved to fish, hunt and hike. He was lured to his death by a trail.

Their draw is fierce.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.