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1972 Our Yukon River Trip
No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth—and I’m one.
The Spell of the Yukon
Robert Service
ln the Fall of 1972 my parents were preparing to return to their second year of teaching at Holy Cross, Alaska. I was eleven years old.
That summer Dad bought a 18 ft jon boat with a 35hp Johnson outboard in Fairbanks. Over 10 days we motored through 700 miles of the interior's biggest waterways as we traveled from Fairbanks to Holy Cross.
Mom and Dad had spent the summer in Fairbanks. Dad had a summer job mapping the geology of the proposed Trans Alaska Pipeline route. Mom was at University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF) taking summer classes to earn continuing education credits for her teaching certification.
I spent the summer hanging out with Jim and Jeanine. As toddlers, we three played together while our parents were finishing college. We spent our days roaming around Campus, or the tourist trap Alaska Land.
We would ride our bikes up to Campus for swimming lessons at the Patty Gym. On Saturdays after swimming Jim and I would walk down the hall to the shooting range and work on our NRA marksmanship patches and pins. For 2 bucks we were given a 22 caliber bolt action rifle with 20 rim fire bullets and several targets to record our shots in various positions.
Dad got the boat in July and after several trips on the Chena and Tanana Rivers to break in the motor, we were soon ready to leave in early August.
We left from the Chena River's Peger Road boat launch at the Alaska Land Park on a beautiful fall day. It's a short trip down the Chena to the Tanana River. On the way we passed the sternwheel boats the Discovery and Discovery II, working replicas of the paddle boats that plied the Yukon during the Gold Rush.
About 50 miles below Fairbanks, we passed under the Alaska Railroad bridge at Nenana where we stopped for fuel. While Dad refueled mom and I explored Front Street. As we left town we passed under the Parks Highway, Tanana River Bridge, that had been completed the year before. The Parks is a 330 mile highway linking Anchorage and Fairbanks.
We spent our first night at the abandoned village of Old Minto on the Tanana River. I had some time before dark to investigate some of the nearby abandoned structures.
Breakfast consisted of hot coffee or tea with smoked salmon strips, moose jerky and oatmeal.
Abandoned village of Old Minto
Later that morning we stopped at Manly Hot Springs to bath in the hot springs before continuing to the village of Tanana at the confluence of the Yukon and Tanana rivers.
We fueled at Tanana, our last opportunity for fuel till we reached Ruby, 120 miles downriver. While Dad looked for the guy to pay for fuel, Mom and I found the community store and bought a box of Pilot Bread crackers, a staple found in any Alaskan village.
The Yukon in the summer is the main transportation route for barges bringing fuel, propane, non-perishable foods, and freight to the villages. During the winter, dog teams and snowmachines would share the trails on the frozen river between the villages.
We stopped for a simple lunch of Pilot Bread crackers with a smoke salmon spread made from the salmon strips and a hot beverage. As we continued downriver that afternoon and into the early evening, we began looking for a suitable camping spot.
The following morning as we continued downriver to Ruby, we passed several more abandoned villages. The cemetary of one was being exposed by the erosion from the river. The contents of the exposed graves were tumbling down the embankment and into the river, lost forever.
All along the river were cabins and fish camps. At the fish camps, fish wheels could be seen scooping up the last of the runs of salmon. In the late summer the villagers were still smoking and canning king or silver salmon for their consumption, and drying dog salmon for dog feed to be used over the winter.
Salmon Drying
This was a transitional period in Alaska. Dog teams were still used for winter travel between villages, to check their trap lines, or hunting. It was hard work keeping a 15 dogs for a team. You needed to catch enough fish all summer to feed the dogs, or supplement it with a moose, or fresh fish during the winter. Burbot and a whitefish were plentiful and were caught by jigging a colorful hook through a hole in the ice. Snowmachines were becoming inexpensive and were gradually replacing the dog teams.
A dog sled and cache
In Ruby we filled our gas cans and resumed our journey. We topped off our tanks in Galena and Koyukuk and continued downriver keeping an eye out for a camping spot. Boat traffic was unusually higher then we had previously experienced, instead of 3 to 5 boats a day, it was an almost constant stream of boat heading up and downriver .
Trappers Cabin
In between the villages of Koyukuk and Nulato is a liquor store and mercantile that is still commonly referred to as Last Chance. My first impression of Last Chance is burned indelibly in my memories, it was all very surreal.
The sun was low on the horizon, that long twilight period of the late summer when we came around a bend in the river. There, on the river's edge was a huge neon Rainier Beer sign followed by series of as large or smaller neon, Hamm's, Olympia, Black Label, Schlitz and Budweiser signs guiding you to the liquor store landing.
We soon realized all the boats we were seeing that afternoon, were boats going to or returning from the liquor store. Dad continued a half hour downriver from the store in hopes of finding a quiet spot to camp.
In the quickly fading daylight we found a camping spot on the opposite bank of the river. We continued to hear boats on the river way past dark.
A campsite
That night it rained all night. We elected early to sleep in and see if the weather improved. It didn't, so we just settled in and kept the fire going. I caught a fresh late run silver salmon that afternoon, which we cooked over an open fire for dinner. A break from the freezer dried meals we were eating for dinners.
The following morning we had to bail the rain water out of the boat before it could be refloated off a beach. We continued on to Nulato where dad spent the rest of the day visiting with friends he had meet in 1958 while working as a geologist on a oil exploration project in the Nulato Hills.
A campsite on the Yukon River
We encounter moose browsing on willow growing at the rivers edge and black bear swimming across the river. The geese, swans and sandhill cranes were beginning their fall migration to warmer climates.
A village on the Yukon River
There were a few occasions we became grounded on a shallow sandbar hidden in the murky waters of the Yukon. Usually it only required the three of us getting out of the boat, refloating it and pushing it into deeper waters. There was one occasion that required a bit more muscle, shoving and pushing to break it free.
Our destination was still several days downriver. We would stop to refuel at Kaltag, Anvik and Graying before finally reaching Holy Cross.
That winter we had many stories to tell of our adventures.
Holy Cross, Alaska
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