VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - In 1983, Bob Liberman climbed a remote mountain range 90 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
He and three friends hired a bush pilot who dropped the group off on a gravel bar at the Koyokuk River. Over 12 days and 100 miles, trees gave way to a barren landscape, and one of the men was nearly swept away after falling into an icy river. Two grizzly bears watched them warily, and the tiny plane that returned to get them barely made it up into the clouds.
Liberman couldn’t wait to do it again.
Wilderness treks by the Virginia Beach insurance representative made not one but three headlines in The Virginian-Pilot and now defunct Ledger-Star in the 1980s. Thirty years later, he’s a little older, a little grayer. What else has changed?
Pretty much nothing.
At 66, Liberman is still hiking and climbing, still seeking out the most remote spots in North America. He’s taken about 220 trips in his lifetime and says it’s a passion, almost an addiction.
“It’s not because I’m antisocial,” Liberman joked. “I think it’s because the country is so pristine, you can get the feeling you’re the first one there.”
Liberman started backpacking in 1978 and before long assembled a group of guys willing to go the distance for a spectacular site. A bottle of Jack Daniels secure in their backpacks, they always swore that even if they got married, the trips would go on, Liberman said.
Then they started getting married - and dropping out. But not Liberman. In fact, his wife, J.J., began stepping in when Liberman needed a travel buddy. She even kept going after she slipped on a patch of snow in the Blue Ridge Mountains and broke her leg.
Liberman had to carry her and their packs in short hops to get help. He said she still refuses to complain on trips years later, knowing one of Liberman’s backpacking rules is “no whining.”
These days, often with J.J., Liberman hikes to favorite spots in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Wind River Range in Wyoming. In between, he takes longer treks, like one a few years ago to the Revelation Mountains in southwestern Alaska. He read about them in a book in 1984; the author said the spot isn’t visible from any place that’s inhabited.
Perfect, Liberman thought.
He and two friends spent 10 days in the Revelations and five at the Turquoise Lake, a blue-as-the-Caribbean pool surrounded by craggy, snowy peaks. After they got back, Liberman found Turquoise Lake listed in a travel article on the world’s most extreme expeditions.
It gave him a chuckle.
Virginia Beach’s flat terrain is hardly a destination for a mountain-lover like Liberman, but he said it’s home. To keep in shape for the mountains, he works out at Mount Trashmore. Two hundred or 250 mornings a year, he straps on a 50-pound backpack and walks up, down and around the hill. It’s not much of a climb, he said, “but it’s the highest point around.”
He gets a kick out of taking backpackers on their first treks. After he took the son of his friend - an avid boater - into the Blue Ridge mountains for a weekend, the son changed his college major to outdoor education and became a park ranger in Utah.
“I’m not sure he’s been on a boat since,” Liberman said with a laugh.
Next up, Liberman has his eye on a far northern stretch of Canada, where a road recently was completed in Labrador. With a dreamy look, he said the Canadian government lends backpackers who go there a satellite phone with one button to press in case of an emergency.
There’s no other way to get help - it’s that remote.
“Maybe next year,” he said.
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Information from: The Virginian-Pilot, https://pilotonline.com
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