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Roman Dial

@dialroman

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20,000 miles by foot, ski, pedal, paddle, & ice skate in AK (7,000 miles in Brooks Range). Author of The Adventurer’s Son.

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1989: 250 miles hellbiking the Hayes Range with Jon Underwood and Carl Tobin.

We forgot the map.

We brought just one raft.

Jon’s pedal broke midway through.

We sort of ran low on food.

Maybe, my best trip ever. by @dialroman

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7 months ago

1993 Umnak Island, Aleutian Chain, Alaska.

A seven day walk with a six-year old boy.

When we left Anchorage he called himself Cody. When we came back he was Roman.

That trip changed our lives together forever.

As an adult, he said certain scenes, smells, sounds took him back to a place of incessant wind, wide vistas, crashing surf, tall, tall grass, and a father-and-son bond of love and trust.

Today (February 22, 2025) he’d be 38 years old.

It’s been 11 years since we hugged.

I miss you Rome and still wonder about all the things I could’ve done differently to see you here now. by @dialroman

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2 years ago

1983 Peggy Mayne, Fairbanks.

Three years after we met, two years before we married.

The love of my life.

The Mother of our children.

My favorite trip partner.

The smart one in our house.

And, truly, the keeper of my soul. by @dialroman

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7 months ago

Homer Spit by @dialroman

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a month ago

Random shots of acid seeps in the Ikalukrok Creek watershed, a tributary of the Wulik River, and the Wulik River.

These are shots from a data collection mission in early August where we walked about 50 miles and collected water samples and water parameter measurements.

In all we visited about 20 seeps, most of which emerged in the tundra where the acid and metals killed the plants, making the kill zones look like burns (which they are in a sense—acid burns).

As the crazy warming of the last couple decades has intensified, permafrost has thawed and metal sulfide rocks have been exposed to oxygenated surface waters for the first time in probably a thousand years.

Fools gold is an iron sulfide and very abundant. It’s iron bonded to sulfur and when oxygenated water contacts it acid is formed and the iron is sort of dissolved in the acidic water, allowing the iron to move until the acidic water is neutralized and the iron turns to rust, coating rocks.

One thing of note: before the acidic water is neutralized it runs clear and is full of metals and acid.

Five years ago when I first encountered the phenomenon in Gates of the Arctic, we’d been having trouble finding water that didn’t taste like a rusty nail.

Then finally, and thirsty, we came on a small clear brook in the canyon of orange flowing water..

I took a slurp and….YUK! quickly spat out the metallic acidic taste, horrified that I couldn’t drink Brooks Range water like I had been for decades previously. by @dialroman

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a month ago

Beautiful map made by @saminthegreatland

After a two year hiatus following 7,000+ miles in Alaska’s Arctic, I got back up there for a ten-day walk and paddle science trip in early August documenting the ongoing “borealization” of NW Alaska’s tundra ecosystems.

Borealization means the arrival of boreal species (moose, black-capped chickadees, beaver) and warming environmental conditions (loss of sea ice, discontinuous permafrost, rain on snow, deeper snowpacks) as Arctic species (like caribou, gray-headed chickadees, and Arctic ground squirrels) decline with loss of Arctic environmental conditions (multi year sea ice, near the surface and continuous permafrost, thin winter snowpack).

Thawing permafrost in NW Alaska leads to more and taller shrubs (especially willows), colonization by white spruce, and acid seeps that burn the tundra and whose runoff then rusts rivers and stain stream bottoms with iron.

A team of ecologists, microbiologists and geochemists, we hiked 50 miles then packrafted 70, collecting water samples and conditions along the way and documenting instances of ongoing borealization.

We saw 10 grizzlies, but no moose or caribou, only 4 ground squirrels, and no other mammals. On the Wulik River which drains into the Arctic Ocean 75 miles north of the Noatak River mouth at Kotzebue, we saw more than a dozen black-capped chickadees in tall willows and groves of cottonwoods. The nearest spruce forests at treeline were 35 miles away. by @dialroman

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a month ago

Kivalina about 80 miles north of Kotzebue on the Chukchi Sea in NW AK, like ten or so other Alaskan villages, lost renewable energy funding thanks to a day one Executive Order (EO), “Terminating the Green New Deal”. That EO froze grants for solar farms, wind turbines, hydropower, and transmission upgrades across Alaska.

Instead another EO, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” is replacing those projects with diesel “tank farms”.

From miles away, paddling down the Wulik River, we saw a huge crane that we thought was beefing up riprap to help prevent the Arctic Ocean storms from washing the little village’s barrier island away.

Nope. That crane was loading up a dozen or so 30,000 gallon diesel tanks at the tip of the spit where the lagoon empties into the sea.

That lagoon supports tens, even hundreds, of thousands of migrating salmon and Dolly Varden trout each year.

The tank farm there looks like an oil spill waiting to happen.

Hard to know if this is what the people there want or just another example of what the State or Feds want to impose regardless of the locals’ ideas of self determination. by @dialroman

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2 months ago

Ben Southall chats with legendary explorer, biologist and packrafting pioneer @dialroman about a lifetime spent chasing wild rivers, remote landscapes, and unforgettable journeys. ⁠
⁠
🎧️ Listen to Wild Chats with Ben Southall now on all major podcasting platforms. ⁠
🔗 Linkinbio⁠
⁠
Hosted by:⁠
@bestlifeadventures & @wildearthaustralia⁠ by @dialroman

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3 months ago

Three days on Adak Island, a quirky vacation getaway that Poppy and Peggy, and I all loved.

Poppy loved the rats that tunneled through the tundra like Arctic voles.

Peggy liked the hiking and the beach combing even more.

I liked the fact that those two were happy and the people we met were fun and quirky too.

I wanna go back and we will, someday I hope. by @dialroman

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3 months ago

1986 March. Frozen whiskey. Broken skis. The taste of death.

After sewing polar bear ruffs on our parkas Chuck Comstock and I left Barter Island at -30, headed for Wiseman, 3 weeks away on the S side of the Brooks Range.

Between us we moved 180 lbs in food/fuel/gear, while wearing low-cut ski-shoes inside camp-booties for warmth and slit at the toe to clip to Nordic racing bindings.

1st night, camped on the Arctic Ocean, our headlamps died and Old Bushmills froze. At the mtns base, we thawed the whiskey and drank it in a lakeside cabin on our 7th day while ground blizzard winds scoured the lake of snow.

For 250 miles the skiing was rough: a skin of snow over stones, rock-hard slab, bottomless sugar. Chuck shuffled behind me in Fisher SC Nordic racing skis, tattered gaiters, torn mittens, mismatched poles, his sled tethered to pack with shoestrings.

In camp Chuck nodded off in our vapor-barrier tent while two MSRs roared. He’d doze, fingers bare on the cook-pot lid. Scalding heat woke him to boiling water.

Deep cold roused us each day. Melting the arid Arctic snow took hours, warming us to start 20-hours of packing, moving, setting camp, melting still more snow; 3 hours sleep and shivering rounded out the day.

One pitch black night (no headlamp), in knee-deep sugar at -60, we argued about where to set the tent. Inside with all our gear and food, I caught myself on fire, but put it out, leaving me only scared.

Days later the fear persisted. In the tent Chuck opened fuel to replenish one stove while the other roared. Odd, my tongue-tip tingled.

During our 2nd week both my skis broke behind the heel. Splinted with Chuck’s spare racing ski and ski pole, they functioned as 6.5’ snowshoes.

Dreams of Wiseman broken, we slid along icy braids of overflow headed for the Dalton, me on the soles of my shoes, Chuck’s sled wildly out of control.

Night fell, moon rose, aurora danced. We cruised elated.

The river slipped into a canyon. Postholing in the dark, I stopped, and listened—black hole opened at my feet, sounding the alarm of whitewater! Terrified, I jumped back.

“Chuck, my tongue is tingling again!”

“Well that, Romin Dahl, is the taste of death.” by @dialroman

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6 months ago

1986, first weekend of May. Audun Endestad—champion Fairbanks Nordic skier with leading-man good looks—stood with me at a gravel lot near Denali.

A local mountaineer named Omar asked about our planned ski across the Hayes Range.

“A hundred hours?! I’ll bet a thousand dollars you can’t go highway to highway that fast! It took me 4 days to ski from Mt Deborah, and that’s not even halfway.”

Audun grinned. Two years earlier he’d finished the 50k right behind Bill Koch at the Sarajevo Olympics. Omar had no idea.

“See you Tuesday,” I said. That was Thursday.

Friday near noon we left the Richardson Hwy with racing skis, sleds, and packs. Audun clicked in, started skating up the Black Rapids Glacier. I fell behind. Once I’d caught up, he asked with that Hollywood smile: “You want me to take your sled?” He didn’t have to ask twice. Pulling mine didn’t slow him an iota.

Camp 1 at Susitna Pass I crashed hard. Audun woke me: “Ya, Roman, itz getting late. I think we better get going—either this way—“ pointing up glacier, “—or that way.” All with that grin that gets anybody to do anything.

Skating and double poling down the Susitna on sun-baked snow was exhilarating beneath shining mountains. We switched to touring skis, climbed toward the West Fork, and camped on a high perch—50 miles, 34 hours from the road.

Sunday we cruised to the West Fork, switched to skate skis, scooted under Deborah’s 5000’ south face, crossed a pass onto the Yanert, then skated a dozen miles to the moraine.

By evening we were on fast frozen overflow. We skied all “night”—falling in once on rotten ice. When the ice ran out we dragged sleds over gravel to Audun’s Volvo: 90 miles, 30 hours since camp 2.

Monday at 4PM we knocked on Omar’s door. A woman answered, baby on hip. “He’s in the Park working.”

We looked at each other. 140 miles in 76 hours. We’d won—but like gentlemen, didn’t collect.

Moving fast and light through the Hayes Range was reward enough. With proof in concept for long-distance ski racing through Alaskan ranges, I conceived and organized the inaugural Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic in 1987 and the next in 1988. Others organized the race ‘till its 2024 end. by @dialroman

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6 months ago

1989. Hellbiking. Day 4 of 14 off roads in the Alaska Range on the Black Rapids Glacier pedaling past the south face of McGinnis with a Sherpa Packraft on the rear rack.

For any vintage Patagoniacs, that is a yellow and orange Featherweight Pullover, the only “rain gear” I carried. by @dialroman

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5 months ago