Swift: A lifetime
on Mount Ripinsky
By Sharon Resnick
When he’s not grubbing Mount Ripinsky’s trails
or guiding young volunteers up to do even more trail restoration, it’s the “solitude
and fulfilling exercise” that continues to draw Paul Swift up the town’s most
prominent peak. The mountain has been an attraction for Swift since he moved here in 1970.
Though the Army created it in 1906, the trail eventually
fell into disuse and became totally lost. In the early 1970s, resident Margaret Piggott
instigated the revival of the trail when she began her book “Southeast Alaska by Pack
and Paddle.” At that time, only former resident Gil Smith knew where it was, Swift
said. Smith, in his 70s, walked up every evening and marked the old trail, he said.
“Then Dick Folta and I borrowed two brush cutters,
put them on our back and spent all of one summer brushing it out.”
Former
resident Pat Jones rounded up money to create a trail from Seven Mile Haines Highway to
the saddle above it. About the same time, Swift put in a bid to connect the trail from
Ripinsky’s summit to Seven-Mile Saddle. It was a summer’s worth of work for him
and his children, Marlene, 16, David, 14, and Andy, 12.
Former resident Harvey Risley manufactured a cylinder to
hold the summit register signed by many of the hikers who reach the high point of the
mountain.
Annie Boyce, who married Swift in 1999, considers him to
be one of the “original tour promoters” of Haines. Many people from around the
world have climbed Ripinsky and the old summit registers – stored at Sheldon Museum
– make for interesting reading, she said.
Local hikers Ralph Borders, David Swift and Vince Hansen
were the first to sign in this season, she said.
“Ripinsky is open to anyone who can put one foot in
front of the other,” she said. “Even people from the Alps have talked about how
extraordinary it is.”
Use of the trail is growing.
“Though it’s a real wilderness trail, I hardly
go up there anymore that I don’t see someone,” Swift said. He once encountered
about 25 people on July 4th.
Winter weather brings out the snowshoers, telemarking
skiers and snowboarders. “Snowshoes are so user-friendly now that you can go just
about anywhere in any condition,” Boyce said.
When both Swift and Boyce were working, they knew the
trail so well they could put on headlights and go up the mountain after dark when they got
off work.
Though Swift continues to organize the annual Fourth of
July Mount Ripinsky Run, he hasn’t competed in it since 1990. “It took me six
months to get over it that last time,” he said.
Boyce “won” the race in 1993 when three of the
four people she was competing against got lost.
As much as Swift and Boyce enjoy Ripinsky, they are well
aware of its dangers. Weather can change quickly and reduce visibility to zero. That’s
why Swift built and installed a kiosk, with the help of about six other locals, at the
Skyline trailhead. Along with a thermometer and trail maps, there’s also a clear
explanation of why hikers need to be prepared.
Just last
week, Swift and Boyce climbed to Ripinsky’s north summit. Covering 1,000 vertical
feet in an hour is considered a good pace for anyone and it’s one they maintained
during the 3,000- foot change in elevation, he said. But now that he’s 72, Swift
doesn’t go up Ripinsky as fast as he once did. He also uses trekking poles and
carries less weight.
Swift learned to love the outdoors and especially
mountains from his dad, with whom he hiked the Shenandoah Mountains close to their
suburban Maryland home. Mountains have always been part of his life. In 1972, he joined
neighbor and former work partner Bruce Gilbert and others in a climb up Mount Logan, the
highest peak in Canada and the largest mountain mass in the world.
Boyce said that wherever she and Swift travel, they hike,
preferably uphill. Every time they go to Fairbanks, they climb Sheep Mountain near Kluane
Lake. “Hiking is a convenient exercise,” she said.
Swift traded his ice ax for trekking poles about 11 years
ago. “As you get older, it hurts more to fall,” he said.
Though he
now wears the modern, lightweight “plastic” underlayers, Swift continues to
stand by his 40-year-old wool knickers, along with knee socks. They’re much like the
ones he once wore in grade school.
“They’re practical,” he says. “There’s
not all that extra material and weight around your feet and the loose fabric at the knee
allows the good range of motion needed for the high steps. The socks stay tight.”
Swift came to Haines as an employee of the Coast and
Geodetic Survey (now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and also worked
as a civilian at the Army tank farm. Rather than transfer to Anchorage when the tank farm
closed, he started working at newly opened Haines Home Building and remained there for 35
years, supplementing his income by driving a school bus.
He believes it’s important to keep active in order
to remain fit. Eating lots of vegetables and fruits and “soft pedaling on the serving
sizes” are also important, he said, though he admits that all the hiking he does
allows him to indulge in more food than he should probably eat.
“I also recommend a little of Paul Wheeler’s
brew everyday, especially during the spruce tip season,” he said.
But no matter how much you exercise, you tend to get
stiff when you get older, Swift said. Each day for the past three months, he has performed
the Five Tibetan Rites – a series of moves designed for healing, rejuvenation and
longevity, he said. Starting out at three repetitions of each, he’s now able to do
11. He said he can feel the difference.
Besides their three planned hikes each week, Swift is
always busy, Boyce said. House projects include painting one side of their Union Street
house each year, she said. They also walk the mile to and from the Episcopal Church at the
Chilkat Center each Sunday.
In 1985, when his son, David, broke his back in a fall,
Swift started a daily journal to monitor rehabilitation and also began writing down the
daily weather. His long-term observations steered him to being a volunteer weather monitor
for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 10 years ago.
“They try you out the first year and only give you a
plastic rain gauge,” he said. Since then he’s been provided a temperature sensor
with a digital indoor readout, a stainless steel canister for collecting precipitation, a
soil temperature thermometer and a snow depth measuring stick to take his 8 a.m. daily
readings.
Long before he became a weatherman, Swift began taking
care of the dead. It was at the behest of former Presbyterian pastor Bob Cameron 40 years
ago.
“Historically, the Presbyterian Church pastor had
always acted as the undertaker,” Swift said. “Bob didn’t know that when he
came to Haines. He told me that he would like to get a little help with it. I had bad
dreams about it for weeks afterwards.”
Boyce has joined Swift in preparing bodies for burial.
“We wash, dress and place them in the casket,”
she said. It’s all done in a chilled room off the fire hall.
“We set up saw horses. It’s a pretty crude
setting. But it’s done respectfully and it doesn’t cost anything. Some people
give us money, but we just pass that on to our church.”
It’s a job that involves heavy lifting so they’re
looking for someone to pass it on to.
Swift believes that “being able to be satisfied with
what you have,” is what makes for a good life. “I’m happy to hike mountains
here. I don’t have to go to Nepal or anyplace else.”
