Whether it be the northern or southern route, there is a special award for the musher reaching the Yukon River first.  The Millennium Hotel, race headquarters in Anchorage, sponsors the First to the Yukon Award.  After the dogs are fed and bedded down, the musher is treated to a delicious seven course meal prepared and served by the Millennium Executive Chef.  In the rustic checkpoint building, a formal dinner table is set complete with fresh flowers, crystal, fine china and silver candle sticks.  The chef prepares the meal on a two burner camp stove.  The dinner served last year in Ruby included chicken and mushroom terrine, potato bisque with shrimp ravioli for appetizers followed by the main course of halibut and a beef fillet stuffed with king crab, asparagus and blue cheese.  Raspberry crepes were served for dessert.  Just like eating in a fine restaurant, an after dinner mint is served – in 2008 the mint was 5,000 freshly minted one dollar bills presented in a gold pan.  Handler helped me find this description of the 2008 First Musher to the Yukon Meal on the Iditarod Website in the sponsor section.

Being a sled dog who eats only the best dog food, I’ve never tried any of the dishes served last year in Ruby.  Have you?  I don’t even know what terrine or bisque is.  Do you?  Would you like to try shrimp ravioli?  I think it would be fun to plan the menu for a festive dinner like this.  Why don’t you give it a try.  Keep checking the sponsor’s section of the Iditarod website to see what the menu will be for the First to the Yukon dinner in Anvik this year.

Over the years, Anvik has been known by different names – American Station, Anvic, Anvick, Anvig and Anwig.  These names more than likely came from Russian Explorers.  Way back in 1887, an Episcopal Mission/school and church was built near where the Anvik River flows into the Yukon.  Anvik’s first post office was built around 1900.  Sad to say that there were two flu epidemics back in 1918 and 1927.  Many children were orphaned and were taken in to live at the Anvik Mission.  At that time, the population of Anvik was around 700.  Today, there are 94 people, mostly Athabascan that live in the village.  Twenty-five students attend the K-12 Blackwell School.  Like other bush villages, there are no roads leading to Anvik but the Yukon River is a major water highway.  People and supplies travel by boat or bush plane to the village.

Living in Anvik, you’d experience 150 sunny days each year and a 100 days of precipitation.  Eighteen inches of rain falls on the village along with seventy-six inches of snow during the year.  Summer temperatures are pretty cool – the July high is 67 degrees.  The average January temperature in -7 degrees.  While that doesn’t sound as cold as some of the previous checkpoints, the Yukon River can be blasted by wind so on any given day, they windchill can be severe.

The trail from Shageluk to Anvik is a well used village to village snowmachine route.  Most of the trail runs over lakes, swamps, sloughs and a little tundra.  The trail is considered easy but there are a few steep climbs up banks of sloughs and some narrow trail in the heavy timber along the Yukon River.  Upon reaching the Yukon river, Anvik sits on the far side behind a high bluff.  At the crossing, the river is a mile wide.  Teams travel down the main street of Anvik to the community center where the checkpoint is located.  All of this information is courtesy of Don Bower’s  Trail Notes.  He also says that hospitality in Anvik is excellent but it’s only 18 miles north to Grayling so many teams continue on through.

Well, there you have it – information about the First to the Yukon Award, the history and climate of Anvik and the trail leading from Shageluk to the might Yukon.  Next Handler will tell us about the checkpoint of Grayling.  After hearing about all that great food prepared by the Millennium Chef, I’m getting hungry.  I can’t wait to see what’s for supper tonight!  Stay tuned and remember in everything do your best everyday and have a plan.

Born to Run,
Sanka

 

Shageluk (SHAG-a-luck) is a village on the Innoko River. The name Shageluk is an Indian term and means village of the dog people – how cool is that. The area is very scenic with hills and small spruce trees. The Community Center acts as the checkpoint for Iditarod but the teams park by the school. When the race comes through, there are people, dogs, sleds, booties and straw everywhere. Usually the school kids establish a camp out on the trail – sort of a welcome center, complete with brightly colored signs they’ve created to greet the mushers as they pass by. Even though the mushers are tired and very busy taking care of their dogs, they always seem to have just a little extra energy to talk with the kids, sign their autograph books and answer their endless questions. Not only is there a lot of excitement when the Iditarod teams come through the village, there are also many visitors. Friends and relatives come to visit and watch the race. As the village doctor, Musher always arranged her visit to Shageluk so she was there when the race went through. That’s where she met Martin Buser, DeeDee Jonrowe, Susan Butcher and countless other mushers.

Of the 129 people living in the village, most are Alaska Native Athabascan Indians. Thirty five children attend the K-12 school. Temperatures range between 42 and 80 during the summer and then dip to -62 to zero degrees in the winter. Average precipitation is 67 inches including an average of 110 inches of snow each year! There are no roads into Shageluk. Locals use ATVs, snow machines and dog teams to get around. The Innoko River is used for transportation – boats in the summer and snow machines in the winter. The river is usually frozen from November to May. Small planes come to the village daily as long as weather permits. The small planes don’t have advanced navigational systems therefore visibility has to be a minimum of five miles for the bush planes to fly. This is referred to as the visual flight rule.

People who live in Shageluk rely mostly on subsistence activities for food – they pick berries; grow vegetables; trap beaver; fish for salmon and hunt bear, moose and ducks. There is a nice village store. Before the store opened, people ordered what they couldn’t grow, catch, hunt or make and it was delivered by small plane or boat. Ask a villager what their most important possessions are and the reply will be snow machine, boat, rifle and TV. To keep busy, the kids of Shageluk hunt, fish, watch TV, watch movies, play video games and they LOVE basketball. They travel by plane or snow machine to play games in other villages. The city provides water to the school and the washeteria. Homes have electricity even though they don’t have plumbing. Residents use pit privies and haul water from the washeteria where they also go for laundry and bathing.

While a bush doctor, Musher lived in Bethel. She visited each of her villages two times per year. During the rest of the year, there was a health aide at the clinic to see patients. Everyday via radio medical traffic, the doctor talked with the health aide to discuss the condition of patients seen that day. If anyone was seriously ill, and urgently needed to be seen by a doctor, the patient would be flown to Bethel about 150 miles away.

The trail between Iditarod and Shageluk crosses MANY ridges, some steep and some gentle. None of the ridges are really distinctive so to the mushers the trail seems to go on endlessly. There is an old burn area that the teams pass through before crossing two streams, the Little Yentna and Big Yentna. Don Bowers makes a note in his Trail Description that it’s easy to mistake the Little Yetna for the Big Yentna. That’s a bummer to think you’re 20 miles further down the trail than you actually are. Mushers have to take an 8 hour mandatory rest once they reach the Yukon River. Shageluk is the first checkpoint where mushers can take their Yukon River rest. The trail connecting Iditarod and Shageluk was used during the gold rush but not a lot. So when it came time to locate the Iditarod Trail for the race to run the southern route, trail breakers sought the help of Shageluk Elders who had used the trail a half century earlier. Without their experience and knowledge, the historical Iditarod trail could have been lost forever.

Well, there you have it – my musher’s account of life in Shageluk, medical treatment in the bush and a short description of the trail. None of Musher’s pictures were digital so thanks to my friend, Kim Slade the 2007 teacher on the Trail, for sharing her digital images. Next Handler will tell us about Anvik and Grayling. Stay tuned and remember in everything do your best everyday and always have a plan.

Born to Run,

Sanka