Updated:
April 13, 2010

SnowSTAR-2010

Here is the latest dispatch from Matthew.

April 1, 2010:

April 1: We are camped about 7 miles from Allakaket. To our knowledge, we are the first people over the Tanana-Allakaket trail in 4 years. We have covered 124 miles since Tanana. The trail, once a major mail route, is now hardly used at all. It was marked four years ago by a group of mushers and snowmobilers who have a strong sense of history and a desire to keep the historic trails from vanishing: whether that will happen remains to be seen. Along the way, we saw a wide array of trail markers. Some were the original markers (a tripod, axe cut) from around 1910 (Figure 1). In many ways the trail has hardly changed since 1924 (Figure 2) when the USGS expedition led by Philip Smith and J. B. Mertie passed over the trail on their way to the North Slope to map the geology.

Figure 1: The axe-cut remains of a tripod that marked the original trial between Tanana and Allakaket, probably dating back to circa 1910.

Figure 2: The Tanana-Allakaket trail, 1924. It looks exactly the same today (J.B. Metie, USGS)

Here is a linear narrative of the trip:

March 30^th (Tuesday): We left Tanana in the company of Charlie Campbell (Figure 3), a long term resident of Tanana, a musher and outdoor guide. He was one of the main forces behind remarking the old trail. Charlie took us about 40 miles north from Tanana out into wild country. The first 10 miles was on an old road that led to the now decommissioned White Alice communication site. These were located all over Alaska on mountain tops and provided communications before satellites. We moved through nice black spruce forests, then headed down Ptarmigan Creek. This took us to the Tozi Flats. These are windswept, and in a low snow year like this a trifle bumpy (Figure 4). The only recourse is to slow down and bump along.

Figure 3: Charlie Campbell of Tanana, a friend and guide on the first day on our way to Allakaket. He is holding a modern trail marker he put up 4 years ago, and the sign to his left says “Big Wind-Wide Open-No Whimpering. Charlie painted the sign.

Figure 4: The Tozi Flats-not much snow and a little bumpy.

This area was the scene of many forest fires, some quite recent. If you look close you can see (Figure 3) that the original sign marking a windy stretch that has been burnt. The fires have done some damage to the trail markers as well.

Due to the low snow, the small creeks crossing the flats proved hard to cross. Normally they are filled with drift snow, but this year they are not. We tend to refer to these crossings as “tank traps”. It can sometimes take hours to get through if a machine gets stuck. Getting down into the trap is easy….getting back out…..that’s the trick.

We spent the night at a trapper’s cabin at Dag Creek (Figure 5) in large spruce forests. Lots of trail tales were swapped during the night. Like many trapper’s cabins, in order to minimize the amount of effort to build cabin, they are short. This one was only about 4 feet high at the side walls, but had enough room to stand up in the center of the cabin.

Figure 5: The Dag Creek trapper's cabin.

In the morning (March 31^st) , Charlie showed us the way onward before turning back for home. His guidance continued, however, through the GPS waypoints he had given us which led us exactly down the trail, making sure we were on track at the places where navigation would have been difficult otherwise.

The trail continued to be bumpy, and the lack of snow made some river and creek crossings a little harder than they would have been with more snow to make better ramps or shallower ditches. But the scenery was varied and beautiful, the mountains and hills rising above the flats and trees, occasional thin clouds overhead and plenty of sunshine glinting off the snow. When we left the cabin in the morning it was about 0°F, but midday temperatures were balmy…perhaps even above freezing….making sampling the snow tricky.

Our second snow sampling site, in a spruce forest on a hillside, had the most snow yet, giving us some hope of finding more winter as we headed north. One drawback to more snow was the potential for catching a ski under snowdrifts. John, in the lead coming down a hill, found out the hard way (Figure 6). Fortunately, a little digging by us and the power of our machines meant we didn’t lose much time.

Figure 6: Oops.

In the evening, coming down to Todatonten Lake, we went through another burn, threading through the brittle dead spruce. A small creek promised a nice avenue to the lake until we encountered a big tree fallen across the creek, far to thick to saw with our 12” carpenter’s saws. . Up the bank and through the burn, we made our way to a series of lakes and then to Todatonten and fast, smooth, beautiful driving to another cabin. We camped as the sun set (Figure 7), looking forward to traveling in the morning on snowmachine tracks from Allakaket.

Figure 7: Lake Todatonten with Indian Mountain in the distance, the peaceful end of a long day on the trail.

April 1^st: In the morning, Matthew worked on data while Jon and Henry took a nap after breakfast, followed by a snooze. Then Jon and John fixed one of Matthew’s sleds as the sun warmed the day. The snowmachine trail made travel easier for the most part, at least as far as route-finding went. The packed trail, however, worked like a monorail in places, so that when the machines slipped off one side or the other, we were in deep snow until we could muscle the machines back up onto the trail. Till the next time we slipped off.

As we dropped down to the Kanuti River, we elected to go on a side trip to see the Kanuti Canyon. The going was a bit rough, without a trail, across side hills, through a brush-choked streambed. The Canyon, however, was well worth the effort—steep rocky sides, a gently curving river at the bottom, looking very inviting for a summer boat trip.

Back on the trail, we found another snow site, with a clearing adjacent to black spruce. Here the snow was still deeper, in places over 70 centimeters, in contrast to 30 cm back on the Tanana. As the sun went down, we found our way to the Koyukuk River, having crossed the Arctic Circle. We are camped on a side slough, looking forward to reaching Allakaket tomorrow.

Some Ruminations on A Past Way of Life

All over Alaska trails like the Tanana to Allakaket trail connected remote and rural towns prior to the advent of reliable aircraft. The real heroes/hardmen who traveled and maintained these trails were the mail carriers, mushers who carried letters, goods, and sometimes food from village to village (Figure 8). All through the winter, in storm and cold, usually traveling solo, breaking the trail, packing the snow down, they kept the young Territory of Alaska linked into a real unit. A few of the mushers, like Chester Noongwook (Gamble to Savoonga) and Charlie Biederman’s (Dawson to Eagle to Circle), have been recognized for their deeds, but so many of them have vanished onto the mists of time, there heroic travels done in solitude, there epic trips unrecorded. Their era ended as the airplane began to carry the mail and people from town to town. We definitely got a good sense of this vanished world (Figure 8 and 9) on the long trail to Allakaket.

Figure 8: About 8 dog teams harnessed and ready to take freight from Tanana to Allakaket, 1924. (USGS photo)

Figure 9: Freighting on the Alatna north of Allakaket, our next destination (1924 USGS photo).