Standing on a beach in late May 2018, surrounded by her team members and gear, Laura Stelson thought, “What have I gotten myself into?”
An archaeologist who started working for Katmai National Park & Preservetwo years earlier, Stelson was about to lead a four-week expedition, retracing historic routes by a National Geographic explorer in the 1910s. The modern-day expedition’s goal was to find and manage evidence of the trips a hundred years ago as well as the populations that had lived in the area before it was forever changed by a massive volcanic explosion. Stelson’s expedition would cover at least 200 hiking miles, using eight different base camps along the way.