Snow Machining the Iditarod Trail: Moving from Galena to Unalakleet

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Loaded and ready to head to Unalakleet

After ten years in Galena, building a life, growing friendships, and learning new skills, it was time to return to the coast and Unalakleet.  I had kept my promise to my mother-in-law and had not moved her daughter far away (we were only a little over a 100-air-miles to the east), but even with it only being an hour flight in our little plane, we were unable to spend the time with her we all desired.

            A job had opened up, Gram was now 88, and we were heading back home to live.  We just had ten years of stuff to take care of.

            As Phil Koontz once complained while tripping over an old 4-cylinder Ford engine laying on the floor of his shop, “I’ve got a lot of junk, it’s all good junk, but it’s still a lot of junk.”

            Spring was starting to show up with longer days and warmer sunlight. Though the nights were cold, the section of the Iditarod Trail between Galena and Unalakleet would soon turn to mush and no longer be passable.  I loaded up as much of our heavy junk onto our 8-foot cargo sled as it would hold, fueled up our old Skidoo, and went to bed.

            The next morning was cold, old-fashioned interior Alaska spring cold.  I layered on the clothes: thermal underwear, t-shirt, jeans, sweatshirt, wool socks, Carhart arctic bibs, Carhart arctic jacket, seal skin hat, Steger Mukluks, heavy lined leather work gloves, and started humming Johnny Horton’s “When it’s springtime in Alaska.”

            Three pulls and the 15-year-old machine roared to life, popping a blue cloud of 2-stroke exhaust that drifted low across the cold ground.  By the time I had broken the skis free, tightened the load, and straddled the seat, the motor had calmed to a smooth idle.

            I picked my way down the road, avoiding the bare gravel patches, but by the time I came to the first stop sign at the end of our road, my fingers were already going numb.  The 169 miles to Unalakleet would prove impossibly long with frozen fingers.  I quickly returned home and traded my gloves for a more appropriate pair of seal skin mittens.

            Down on the Yukon River after struggling to find enough snow-covered road to drive on was like entering an expressway.  Before me lay miles of flat, hard, packed trail.

            I hit the throttle and began looking for the main track that would lead me down river. By spring the river is covered with snow machine tracks heading in every direction leading to traplines, wood yards, camps, other villages, and just in circular joy rides.  Though I had traveled by boat plenty of times, had logged multiple hours flying it, in my ten years in the interior, I had never driven the route on snow machine.  For some reason, it never crossed my mind to ask someone who had driven it before to go with me.  How hard could it be?  Just head west.

            The earliness of the morning made it so I didn’t see another soul, but I did pass a couple of broken-down machines that looked much newer than our old rig that I was driving.  I motored on passing Koyukuk without even realizing it was there until seeing it in the side mirror.  I had gone around an island and missed it somehow.  Spruce scented wood smoke lingering over the town was the only sign of life.  The reflection grew smaller.

            Only stopping to tighten my load and reposition the tarp protecting it, I was making good time.  It was still early enough when I pulled off of the river onto the patchy roads of Nulato that no one seemed to be stirring in the dark houses.  I drove past the school to read Nulato Wolves on the side and reaffirm where I was.

            Back down on the ice and just below the village were signs of spring.  A creek ran freely over the river ice opening a lead down into the main river.  I navigated easily around it and sped up to highway speed heading for Kaltag.  It was now late morning, and the sun was finally supplying warmth.  I stopped the machine, the engine still ringing in my ears for a couple of minutes before silence enveloped me.  A cup of hot coffee from the thermos Myra packed, a couple cookies, and a desire to just sit for a while in the absence of sound.

            Liquid in, liquid out, introducing coffee to my system had kicked my body’s water cycle into gear, but I was making awesome time.  I was maybe a half hour out of Kaltag (the unofficial halfway point on my journey) and if my pace continued, I could expect to be in Unalakleet in a couple of hours.  It didn’t really matter how many times I heeded my body’s call to input or output, I would be in Unalakleet in plenty of time to drop off the snow machine and sled, and pick up the plane that was waiting there for me to fly home with good weather and plenty of light.

            It was finally late enough in the day that I saw actual people when I pulled into Kaltag.  I stopped by the small Co-op store and got directions to the fuel pump and ran into a former student.  We caught up enjoying the leisurely pace of village time.  Up the hill and to the fuel pumps, I poured premixed gas from my jerry jugs into the machine and then back filled the jugs with 2-stroke oil and new gas.

            “How is the trail to Unalakleet?” I asked the man working the gas shack in Kaltag.

            “Great, I plan on going that way myself in the next couple of days.  Trail is still fine,” he encouraged.  “Go up to the airport and follow the runway and you can’t miss the trail.”

            I did miss the trail.  I went up the wrong side of the runway, but he was right, once I got to it, I really couldn’t miss it.  Thousands of people had traversed it before I got to it: mushers, Iron Doggers, Iditabikers, Iditawalkers, Iditahoppers (okay, that last one was made up, but there are a lot of crazy people trying to make the Iditarod Trail as difficult a journey as possible). 

            The trail at Kaltag leads up the hill and through the pass between the Yukon River and the Unalakleet River drainage reaching to about 2000 feet above sea level before dropping back down into the valley where Unalakleet is at about twenty feet above sea level.  I began heading up, got to a small clearing in the trees and pulled out a sandwich and the satellite phone Myra sent with me. 

            I called ahead to Unalakleet where family was expecting me, “Hey Marty, I’m just past Kaltag and figuring I should only have a couple hours to Unalakleet.”

            “How is the trail?” he asked.

            “The river was like pavement, should be a quick ride once I get over the top of the hill and heading down into the valley.”

            “I’ll tell Myra you called and where you are.  Be safe,” he encouraged.

            Usually a fast eater, I slowly enjoyed the sandwich, pulled out some chips and leisurely ate while looking around at the terrain I would be driving into.  The trail climbed up the hill and then turned into a stand of black and white spruce.  I had plenty of time, the sun was just starting to really climb into the sky, there were no clouds to be seen, and if the trail behind was any indicator of the trail ahead, I would cruise into Unalakleet with plenty of light to fly back in.

            I fired the machine up, and that is when the black diamond mogul course began.  The spruce had held drifts, and with all of the traffic that had gone through before me, the hotrod machines of the Iron Dog had pushed two and three foot hills in the middle of the trail.  Up, down, slam went the sled.  Up, down, slam went the sled.  The fast-moving interstate of the Yukon had turned into what felt like the one vehicle 5 mph rush hour of the Kaltag portage.  Up through the trees and moguls and then back down the other side of moguls.  Time stopped existing except for when I drove across a bridge as wide as my snow machine skis over a eight foot deep ditch with a running creek at the bottom… time inched by on that occasion.

            Hours passed, spruce gave way to large cottonwoods and much better trail only to lead back into spruce and constant waves of snow.  A stop at Tripod Shelter Cabin to use the facilities (an outhouse with one of the nicest views and well worth the trip).  Another stop at Old Woman Shelter Cabin, and cruising through the trees.  And that is how I came upon Chirosky River (a little over 20 river miles from Unalakleet), open and running.  The trail led down to the river bank and disappeared into the water.  I shut down the machine and walked down to the edge, looked down to see the rocks on the bottom.

            “Huh.”

            I walked back up the trail to see if I had missed a turn off that would lead me to another portage.  I hadn’t.  I went back down to the bank and walked up stream.  The opening got worse that way.  I walked down stream and was greeted by a bank on the opposite side too steep for the heavy-laden machine to climb.

            “Huh.”

            Twenty miles from Unalakleet and it looked like I was going to have to turn around and go back through all the moguls I had just driven.  I turned the machine around and drove up the trail and found a spot to turn back around.  There was a six-foot-wide stretch of water between me and the steep portage on the other side of Chirosky.  I mashed the throttle and heard the engine scream as I raced back to the river bank.

            In theory, a snow machine that is well balanced, at speed, can travel miles across open water, hydroplaning across the surface.  My 15-year-old rig was pulling a freight sled with the heaviest junk I could find in my shed back in Galena, roaring toward open water, twenty miles from help after driving hours without seeing anyone else on the trail, but as my skis contacted river, I was not thinking about that.  Water splashed my face, I rocketed toward the bank, and then the nose of the machine pointed skyward and up the bank, I crested the portage, and shot onto the trail and back into a stand of black spruce.

            I shut down the machine, opened my back pack, pulled out a sandwich, and sat quietly eating.  I found the chip bag.  I ate a cookie…I guess that is the thing to do if you aren’t a smoker.  Then, I quietly thanked God that I was mostly dry and the machine was sitting in the trail and not at the bottom of the river.

            Somewhere along the way the warmth of the day had prompted me to put away my seal skin hat in exchange for the ball cap I had packed to fly back in.  My coat came off and was draped over the back rest of the machine.  The trees gave way to patches of snow-covered tundra, and when the trail dropped onto the river in the midst of twenty Unalakleet ice fisherman catching Arctic Char, it was a pretty anticlimactic arrival.  Being used to the cold of the interior made me stand out as people sat around in fur lined parkies and heavy seal skin mitts.  I guess I must have looked a little strange with wind burnt cheeks and a ball cap.

            Unalakleet has always welcomed me like I was raised there and confused looks turned to smiles when we figured out who each other was.  Greetings, directions, and trail condition information was traded and I discovered that the two hours the run between Kaltag and Unalakleet was supposed to take me had turned out to be six.  Unalakleet was a couple miles downriver yet, but I was back to highway driving.

            In town I found friends, learned where I would be living next year, dropped my stuff off to storage, and parked the machine. 

            Half of the journey was done for the day, time was short, and I still needed to get the plane ready for the flight back to Galena.  I couldn’t waste time, but this has gone long, and that part of the story can wait for another day.