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| Loaded and ready to head to Unalakleet |
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.
