Part 3: Iditarod Trailbreakers: Ruby to Nome.      "Life is a journey.  When we stop, things don't go right."-Pope Francis               It was the morning of the sixth day and the weather was clear and cold.  The leaders were coming and it was time to go.      Much of the trail between Cripple and Ruby is on old mining roads.  After losing the trail briefly around the abandoned mining town of Poorman, we regained our route eventually passing an old steel bridge spanning the Sulatna River.  ..read more

Part 2: Iditarod Trailbreak 2024: Biglake to Cripple “I did, I did, I did the Iditarod trail...”- Hobo Jim     2024 Iditarod trail breakers:  From left Kody Dubie, Jerney Simkowski, Steve Harrison, Cameron Grayson, Jalen Katchatag.       “Say ahhh,” he said.   I opened up as instructed and tried not to watch as he lowered his dental extracting forceps into my face.   That’s right I was having a tooth removed; Fun.  What started as a minor toothache the week prior had jumped to the next level right before hitting the trail...shit ..read more

 “All the way to Nome!” -Bill Starr (former Anchorage Assemblyman)      “Hey there Spencer”.  The phone call caught me by surprise.  After some small talk he dropped the question:      “So what are you doing on February 29th through the 12th?” My heart skipped a beat.   I knew exactly where this conversation was going and I was super excited. “Eric has to drop out, he’s having surgery.  Do you want to go to Nome with us?”      After initially fumbling over my words, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.  We went over ..read more

 Of Honker Doubles and Retirement “Often when you think you are at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else”-Fred Rogers. Full moon over the Tordrillo  mountain range. Ten Canadian geese breezed by me just out of range.  “Darn”.  I was hunkered behind a large cottonwood drift-log hoping for some action.  The morning had been a calamity of missteps summed up by the phrase wrong place, wrong time.  It was as if the geese were toying with me by flying just out of range or (my favorite) flying directly over the spot I had just left.&nb ..read more

Jump Shooting for Moose on the Yukon (photo by Bryan Kirby)      The canoe wobbled a little as I stepped in; I was the middle man of three in a 17 foot Coleman canoe which meant that I got to sit on the center crossbar.  Dave was in the back and was alternating canoe strokes with bull moose grunt calls.  Bryan was in the front.       It had been a long day of travel on the Yukon River.  We had pushed off of the bank at the Yukon River bridge on the Haul Road at 7:00 AM that morning.  An hour stop in Galena had us at 12 hours of rive ..read more

 Lucky      “This could be bad ” I thought. All six tires of Dad’s wheeler were completely submerged in mud.  I had broken the winch rope twice and now I couldn’t find the metal hook.  This was the seventh time I’d completely buried the Polaris Big Boss on my way to hunt caribou.  I realized that I was not very close to the area I wanted to hunt. “Maybe I should retreat”.      Then I saw it; At the base of the small birch tree that was my anchor point I spotted something yellow.  Barely visible, I reached down and grabbed a small sectio ..read more

                                                         Salmon Love Harrison Bay      The gift was an unusual one by anyone’s standards.  Our setnet season was wrapping-up and several of our customers were picking up coolers of fresh-caught Cook Inlet salmon.  We have been direct-marketing our salmon for the last twenty years and manage to sell our entire catch to locals out of our driveway.    ..read more

       The Dance “Hey hey, what’s this I see?  I thought this was a party.  Let’s Dance!”-Ren McCormack, “Footloose”     It was only 40 minutes long and was strategically placed at the end of the school day.  There were no rides-home to be arranged, no food messes to clean-up and no admission fee. It was a stroke of pure genius.  Welcome to the junior high dance!       Let there be no mistaking;  Despite the stripped-down nature of it all, the dance contained all of the essential elements ..read more

Chasing Boston       The benevolent tone of my phone’s alarm was no consolation at 4:45 AM.  I was in downtown Sacramento and was about to join a mob.        I gathered my things and quietly left.  I was hoping Mom and Dad would be able to sleep-in.  They had agreed to travel with me and support my efforts.  After grabbing coffee and a banana, I followed two others out the door, into the darkness and down the block. A half a mile from the hotel, we found 200 shiny school busses neatly lined up waiting to transport us down the road to ..read more

                                                           Eureka! “This is good, stop here.”  Bryan came to a stop and in one swift motion I was out the door, rifle in hand stepping, looking.  The low brush was only partially covered in snow and the hiking was easy.  I crossed a creek covered with tightly frozen overflow of grey and brown.          I had seen the group pass behind a sm ..read more