A little crux up North Suicide, photo courtesy Sophia Tidler. 
Sophia Tidler (l) and Cody Klingman (r), top of North Avalanche, photo courtesy Sophia Tidler. 
South Suicide around 8 a.m., photo courtesy Sophia Tidler
On summer solstice 2019, Sophia Tidler became the first woman to solo the Chugach Linkup. The Linkup, also known as Cosmic Integration in the Chugach is the linking of the 12 peaks over 5000 feet in the Front Range of the Chugach in one outing. We interviewed Sophia at the end of the summer, along with multiple other record-setters from an extraordinary year of linkups. At the end of our interview, when asked if she had any other big adventures planned, she hesitated and said she wasn’t sure if she should say it out loud. When pushed she confessed that her goal was to do the Linkup in the winter. On winter solstice 2019, Sophia began a winter linkup from the Rabbit Lake trailhead; almost 55 hours later she walked out from the north end of the linkup at Arctic Valley road, becoming the first person to complete the linkup outside of the summer months.
GUEST:
Segment 1: Sophia Tidler became the first woman to solo the Chugach Linkup and is now the only known person to complete it in winter.
LINKS:
- Lisa Keller’s October 2019 Outdoor Explorer “Imagine hiking all the tallest summits of the Chugach Front Range in one trip. These people did it this year.”
- Charles Woolforth’s May 2018 Outdoor Explorer “The 12-Peak Challenge and Chugach Trails.”
- Chugach Front Linkup, Joe Stock’s website
BROADCAST: Thursday, March 12th, 2020. 2:00 pm – 3:00 p.m. AKT
REPEAT BROADCAST: Thursday, March 12th, 2020. 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. AKT
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Eric Bork, or you can just call him “Bork” because everybody else does, is the FM Operations Manager for KSKA-FM. He oversees the day-to-day operations of the FM broadcast. He produces and edits episodes of Outdoor Explorer, the Alaska-focused outdoors program. He also maintains the web posts for that show. You may have heard him filling in for Morning Edition or hosting All Things Considered and can still find him operating the soundboard for any of the live broadcast programs.
After escaping the Detroit area when he was 18, Bork made it up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where he earned a degree in Communications/Radio Broadcasting from Northern Michigan University. He spent time managing the college radio station, working for the local NPR affiliate, and then in top 40 radio in Michigan before coming to Alaska to work his first few summers. After then moving to Chicago, it only took five years to convince him to move back to Alaska in 2010. When not involved in great radio programming he’s probably riding a bicycle, thinking about riding bicycles, dreaming about bikes, reading a book, or planning the next place he’ll travel to. Only two continents left to conquer!
