If you happen to have a map of the Iditarod Trail handy, check this out.  In Trail Notes, Don Bowers, Jr. says that the original Iditarod Trail never ran on the Yukon River except to cross at Kaltag.  The original mail and gold rush supply trail went directly from Iditarod to Kaltag across the marshy Innoko River Valley.  I asked Handler why Iditarod teams don’t follow the same trail today.  It’s because the ITC wants the trail to be at least 1,000 miles long.  The direct route between Iditarod and Kaltag would fall far short of that distance.  The area along the direct route is also extremely desolate so it’s nice for the racers to travel the northern or southern route that passes through populated villages.

Kaltag is an Athabascan village that sits on an old portage trail that went west from the Yukon through the mountains to Unalakleet (YOU-na-la-kleet).  Sadly, disease and death have played a great role in Kaltag’s history.  Originally, Kaltag was an area used as a cemetery for surrounding villages.  Athabascans had spring, summer fall and winter hunting and fishing camps in the area and moved according to where the game or their food source was.  Then in 1839 a small pox epidemic killed many of the natives and traders in the area.  In 1880 a trading post opened and then a few years later gold was discovered.  But then in 1900, a measles epidemic and food shortage wiped out nearly one-third of the area’s population.  It was then that the survivors from 3 nearby seasonal villages decided to move together and form a new village.  Kaltag was named for a Yukon Indian, Kaltaga.  Between 1919 and 1940, the Galena lead mines were prosperous.  Kaltag, 100 miles down river, grew as a transportation hub.  Over time as the mighty Yukon flooded and changed its course, land eroded and the old cemetery slid into the river in 1937.

Today the population of Kaltag is 207.  Forty-five students attend school in grades Pre-kindergarten thru 12.  Subsistence is an important part of the economy.  Folks hunt and fish for salmon, whitefish, waterfowl, moose and bear and pick berries from the abundant area crops.  Some people in the village have cash jobs with the school, tribe and local government.  Others work as fire fighters or in the commercial fishing industry.    Most of the village houses have both running water and sewer.  There are no roads connecting Kaltag to other villages but people travel locally by ATV, snowmachine or boat.  Kaltag has year-round air service and barges deliver heavy cargo three times a year.  Temperature extremes in Kaltag have been recorded from 55 degrees below zero up to 90 degrees.  Otherwise, highs in July will be in the 70’s and lows for January will range from 10 degrees to below zero.  Annual precipitation is 16 inches with just over 6 feet of snow.  The river is open from mid-May to mid-October.

Besides being the meeting point of the northern and southern Iditarod routes and serving as a checkpoint every year, Kaltag is known for its Stick Dance Festival.  Every two years, this week long festival of potlatches is organized by relatives of people who have recently passed away.  Handler and I went to Wikipedia and found that a Potlatch is a gathering with feasting, speeches, music, singing, acting, dancing, gifting and spiritual ceremonies. Sounds like quite a celebration!  Visitors from many neighboring villages come as the living express their appreciation to those who helped in their time of mourning.

Once there was a dog named Yukon who was described as a forlorn looking mutt.  Skagway Bill was his master.  Bill and Yukon landed in Skagway late in the fall of 1897 eager to find gold in the Yukon River basin.  To get to the gold, prospectors had to follow White Pass up through the Coastal Mountains.  In the winter of 1897, deep snow made the White Pass Trail hard to follow.  One day Skagway Bill and a few other men set out to mark the trail with tall flags.  Yukon remained in the village waiting for his master to return.  A huge blizzard blew over White Pass.  After 3 days and nights of intense snow and howling winds, the blizzard ended but Skagway Bill and the other trail markers did not return.  With Yukon in the lead, a search party set out to find the snow bound men.  Just a few miles from the summit, Yukon stopped dead in his tracks. With his nose pointing into the air and ears standing straight up, he sniffed the air and listened.  Then he let out a strange whine and began digging furiously.  The rest of the search party joined his efforts with shovels.  The rescuers dug and yelled for the buried men.  After a while they heard a faint response from deep in the snow.  Finally, they found all the missing men who had been buried for three days under five feet of snow.  Yukon was thrilled to see his master.  When everybody returned safely to Skagway, Yukon was welcomed as the hero of the rescue effort.  I read this story in a book called Gold Rush Dogs by Murphy and Haigh.  It’s one of my favorite books because of the great pictures.

Well, there you have it – Kaltag then and now, the Stick Dance Festival, and a story about a hero dog named Yukon.  Now we’re virtually headed to Unalakleet on the Bering Sea.  Stay tuned and remember – in everything do your best every day and have a plan.

Born to Run,
Sanka

 

Mushers say that being on this section of trail is like falling off the edge of the earth.  If you wanted total peace and quiet this would be the place to go provided you could hold up against the wind and severely cold temperatures.   Don reports one musher saying, “It’s like you’ve gone to the edge of the planet, fallen off and discovered that the Place Down Below really has frozen over.”  To add to the loneliness, the wolf packs howl all night to welcome and bid farewell to their domestic cousins.

Ralph Conaster is the only person living at Eagle Island.  The checkpoint used to be in his spacious cabin until it burned down a few years ago.  Ralph went back to living in his tiny old cabin which is not large enough for Iditarod to use as a checkpoint.  With no community buildings, Eagle Island is a tent checkpoint that’s located near Iditarod veteran, Ken Chase’s, summer fishing cabin.  The checkpoint is set up in a Quonset shaped tent called a Dodge Lodge.  It’s heated and has straw on the floor for sleepy mushers and volunteers to nap on.  The humans at Eagle Island checkpoint get the chance to experience the insulating or “R” value of straw.  We dogs know all about that!  Finger Lake and Cripple are two of the other “tent cities” that spring up on the Iditarod Trail as checkpoints.

Being that I’m a lead dog, Don mentioned a few things in his notes that really caught my attention.  Because there is little shelter between Grayling and Eagle Island, mushers need to have coats for their dogs, especially the lead dogs.  We leaders will experience the full force of the wind while breaking it for the swing, team and wheel dogs behind us.  He also warns about drifted sections of the trail, rough or snow-free ice and the possibility of overflow.  It’s best to stay right on the trail as the tricky Yukon can have sections of open water and thin ice.  It’s a good thing Iditarod has Trail Breakers to scout and set the trail for the teams!

With all this talk about the Yukon River, I did some research between runs with my team to learn a few things about the great river.  As it turns out, Yukonna in Athabascan means “great river” as does the Gwich’in word Yukunah.  Yupik Eskimos called it Kwiguk, meaning large stream.  A little more than half of the river flows through the U.S. while the other half is in Canada.  The head waters of the Yukon are in northern British Columbia.  It flows in a westerly arc across the Yukon Territory and then into the state of Alaska where it empties into Norton Sound of the Bering Sea.  The river is 2,300 miles long and is the fifth largest river in North America.  It’s longer than the Colorado, Columbia or the Rio Grande rivers.  During the last Ice Age, 10,000 years age, the Yukon River Valley was ice free.

Just like for Iditarod, the river has served as a transportation route throughout history.  For nomadic hunters from Asia, it was the gateway to the rest of North America.  The Eskimos and the Athabascans used it as a trade route.  In the mid 1800’s, Russian-American and Hudson’s Bay fur traders extended their Voyageur routes into the Interior by canoe and keelboat on the Yukon.  In the late 1890’s the gold rush saw grand sternwheelers like the Sarah, the Suzie and the Hannah navigating the river.  The huge powerful boats carried stampeders and supplies to the boom towns.  By the 1930’s, after the completion of the Alaska Railroad and the arrival of cargo aircraft, most sternwheelers were retired.  Smaller boats, barges and snowmachines remain plentiful today.

For the most part, the river is a slow-moving braided stream that is shallow except during spring runoff.  While narrow in some spots, it is a mile wide in other places.  For three months out of the year, the river can be navigated from is mouth all the way to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory.  The Yukon Territory took its name from the mighty Yukon River.  Surprisingly, there are only four vehicle bridges across the entire length of the river along with a couple of pedestrian only bridges.  In some places, car ferries operate during seasons of open water but in winter, cars cross on the frozen ice.

Well, there you have it, a cold forlorn description of Eagle Island and some facts about the mighty Yukon.  You can find out more about the river by checking the internet sites I used – Wikipedia and the Canadian Encyclopedia.  There’s another good resource by Harry Ritter called Alaska’s History.  Handler refers to that little book frequently.  In seventy long miles, teams will reach Kaltag and leave the Yukon behind.  Next Handler will tell us about Kaltag and a famous dog named Yukon.  Stay tuned and remember in everything do your best every day and have a plan.

Born to Run,
Sanka