We sat down and ordered a hamburger. Who knows what we’d be eating out at their place? There is something about eating a hamburger and homemade soup at what feels like the last outpost on a frozen planet that makes it the best food you’ve ever eaten. Though part of the enjoyment may have been related to the relief at arriving in Coldfoot. Like bears eating all they could hold, having no way of knowing how much energy they’ll need to hibernate, Rita, Julianne, and I ate as if it were our last meal.
Eric said he needed to go up Wiseman (pop. 21), about ten miles farther up the Haul Road. He wondered if we wanted to go or if we’d traveled far enough for one day. He said he’d received a message from someone here that Bernie there needed one of his sled dogs sewn up; apparently it had been in a fight with one of his other dogs. Eric said Bernie and his wife, Uta, were originally from Germany, and that they had been living here, surviving off the land, for fifteen years. Eric mentioned that Bernie sewed fur hats made of marten, wolverine, and mink. Vicky said that although she loved Bernie and Uta she is adamantly opposed to trapping. Eric said that after that run-in Bernie’d had with the winter bear, an old, starving grizzly, he might make a few hats out of it. It had attacked his dog team, and he’d had to kill it.
“Oh, yeah, and then after that,” Eric said, suddenly remembering, “I need to go to the state trooper’s place and spay two of their dogs.” Now there was some positive news. Going by the state trooper’s house, that’s got to be a good sign.
We all went to Bernie’s. Eric rode with us after we took the two reviving sled dogs out of the back of our vehicle. We’d already had two rocks chip the windshield; the crack had already begun. It is considered almost a miracle to drive any distance on the Haul Road and not crack your windshield.
The sun was now behind the mountains to our west, out where the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, a designated wilderness of 7,523,888 acres, was located. As Eric had told us, there was almost no privately owned land for hundreds of square miles in all directions. To the southeast was Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, that’s 8,630,000 acres. To our northeast was the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is 19,285,923 acres. There was also plenty of Native-owned land around.
Eric had bought his land, about fifteen acres, from the University of Alaska without ever having seen it. The first time he saw it, he hiked in during the spring, a dangerous time when hungry grizzlies are emerging from their dens. He had no idea how demanding a trip it would be; he did not carry a gun and said he’d never been so afraid in his life, it seemed a bear was behind every tree. Now he said he can actually sense where the bears are when he’s roaming his land.
Everything that they would bring to their land had to be carried in, mostly on a trailer pulled by a snow machine. Eric or someone in the family had to haul in every nail, every board, every window, every quart of fuel, every pound of flooring, every everything to the shores of Lake Chandalar where they lived. Most people Outside have no idea how the nails and windows and doors and bricks got to their home, much less brought it all there themselves.
SURGERY
“Whatever I do,” Eric said, after politely listening to Julianne tell him about the avalanches that had trapped us in Seward this winter, “we have to go by Trooper Bedingfield’s house. They have been wanting to get their dogs spayed for a few months.”
“How do you spay someone’s dogs? Surely not at their house?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m the rare vet that makes house calls out here in the wilderness. I’ll spay the dogs right on the kitchen table, or anywhere they want. I owe him; he came close to saving our lives early this winter, he and his sons.”
“What do you mean—what happened?” Rita asked.
“This winter began very early. I’ve seen it snow here in August, but in late October and November, we got dumped on. We got over four feet in two days, on top of over a foot we already had. We’ve got snow in places up to your waist. We don’t usually get that much snow up here.”
“I like deep snow,” Julianne said.
“I do too, Julianne, but this snow made it almost impossible to go anywhere. We hadn’t brought our fuel out [to the homestead] in fifty-five-gallon drums yet. That runs our generator so we can have lights and power. We hadn’t brought out our food, either.”
“I wouldn’t think there could ever be too much snow for traveling on snow machines,” I said, confused, not suspicious, not really.
“The snow here is usually powder, it’s so cold. Unless it’s mixed with water from rivers or creeks that overflow on top of the ice. That’s called overflow, and it can be deadly, almost like concrete. But in the deep powder the snow machine will sink and stop, and then you have to stomp down a trail ahead on snowshoes or lift it back on the trail. Can you imagine how long it would take to go sixty miles?”
So far Eric had never sounded anxious, just calm. What would it take to get him to raise his voice or get upset, hit something, or give up? There was so much for him and his family to do. He had to be responsible in order to live in the wilderness, have all these children, and build a vet practice that covered more square miles than that of any other vet in the United States, maybe the world.
“The state trooper whose house we’re going to tonight spent four days breaking a trail from Coldfoot with two of his sons. One would break trail until he was exhausted, then the other would. We were headed to them from our side. We finally met. If their family hadn’t made that effort to reach us, I’m not sure, but it could have been bad, maybe really bad, especially if we’d been dumped on with another foot of snow. This winter has had one of the heaviest snowfalls in many years.”
“Has there been much snow since you all left? What’s the condition of the trail now?” I asked.
“I don’t know; this young guy that helps us and stays with us will be bringing out a snow machine sometime later this afternoon—he should be here by now. He’ll tell us. Sixty-one miles from here, through the mountains, a lot of different weather can happen. It could be sun here and blizzard forty miles down the winter trail. We’ll just have to start and see what happens.” Eric fell silent, and I sensed that he didn’t want me to ask any more questions about the snow and the trail.
We drove on to Bernie’s in a world of terrifying or soothing quiet, depending on your reaction to this piece of the planet. We’d seen few animal tracks in the over 250 miles from Fairbanks, except for moose tracks around the willows at the creek and river bottoms. Wiseman was an eclectic collection of tiny log cabins, most with at least a few outbuildings. None of the outbuildings was far from the deep snow. Wood smoke rose out of the few that had people living in them in the winter. Human trails were packed down into passageways to the dog yard, the woodshed, the generator shack, the storage shed. Bernie and Uta were happy to see all of us; visitors in winter are a splendid treat for them. After we ate, Eric would sew up the sled dog’s head. He was not paid; someday there would be an act of kindness from them, a place to stay in a blizzard for a son or a big hot meal. Maybe he did it just because the few who braved this place needed each other, and they all knew it and protected their relationships.
Their tiny cabin, the part Bernie and Uta inhabited in winter when it could be so cold, was made of peeled logs by homesteaders decades before. There were a couple small windows, a hanging houseplant, a built-in bed, a table, and a tiny sleeping room off this main room for them and their three-year-old daughter. In Alaska many houses are tiny; who needs so much interior space when you have the world’s most exhilarating, extraordinary, inspiring, dangerous, pristine, eye-popping exterior space outside. Besides, who can afford to heat it all. For the most part, Alaskans don’t live their lives inside. They don’t need big-screen TVs and surround-sound to watch the Discovery Channel or National Geographic Explorer to bring them the peace and balance of nature. They don’t need to escape the creeping intrusion into their personal space. They’ve got all they could ever need waiting just outside their door, or in the case
of Anchorage, a thirty-minute drive away. Bernie first came to Alaska from his home in Germany as a fifteen-year-old on a hunting expedition with his father. Surely he came from a wealthy family, certainly the professional class. He loved Alaska so much he came back to work as a packer, then assistant guide. Then like many before and since, Alaska had him in her grasp. Uta and her adorable blond, red-cheeked daughter served us moose-meat spaghetti, an Alaskan-size bowl of it with woodstove-baked garlic bread.
Afterward Bernie went outside where it was close to thirty below zero and got his injured sled dog. The skin on top of its head required twelve stitches. Bernie, his body a tough string of sinew and muscle, his face lined by surviving in this climate and prematurely aged, cleaned off a table in his workroom, attached to the living portion of the cabin. A Coleman lantern provided some light, and Eric put on a Petzl headlamp. He administered some local anesthesia, as Bernie held the calm dog. A large grizzly pelt hung from the wall, stiff, not tanned. It was the winter bear that had attacked his dog team. A winter bear is usually an old bear who is unable to get fat anymore, its teeth worn down to nothing. The dog was fine; we drank some tea and said our good-byes, then drove back to Coldfoot to Trooper Bedingfield’s place.
Their house was owned by the state and built right next to the plane hangar next to the airstrip. The Endicott Mountains rose up to the west; Coldfoot was nestled in a narrow valley. A tall chain-link fence surrounded the house; so many lights were on inside that the snow-covered yard was brightly lit. Because of the reflection off the snow, the light was amazingly bright. The tall fence was left over from the state trooper family before them, who’d had small children and been concerned about bears snatching them from their play or the kids wandering off into the forever wilderness around them in every direction. Inside this little house lived five people, almost one-half the population of Coldfoot.
Eric knocked on the door, a rare occurrence surely. Immediately we could hear the quick yap of small dogs. A beautiful woman opened the door, a surprise out here in the rugged bush; she seemed quite friendly. Eric introduced us to Lynnette, Curt Bedingfield’s wife and postmistress at the Coldfoot “post office,” possibly the recipient of the least mail of any post office in the United States. Although Lynnette had been born in California, she had moved to Alaska when she was eight months old. The house was impeccably neat. Grow lights were shining on her year-round lettuce plants, and since it was March and time to think about spring, row after row of baby cabbage and carrots and flowers were also emerging from potting soil. Their home was attractively decorated and gave a whole new meaning to the idea of light therapy. Their living room and kitchen, which opened to each other, would make a perfect place for the surgery Eric would soon perform on their dogs.
Trooper Bedingfield came out from the back bedroom still in uniform. His head was basically shaved; he was trim, quick-stepping, and seemed genuinely pleased to see Eric and Vicky, and even Rita, Julianne, and me. In the winter around here, visitors must be a luscious gift, unless you’re human-hating hermits, which they obviously were not. I thought that it was a positive sign that the trooper and his wife seemed to really like Eric and Vicky. Watching them interact made me feel more secure. At least the trooper would know we were here and what we were doing—I made sure to tell them. Their eighteen-year-old son, Jeremy, was sitting on the sofa. Their younger sons, Isaac, seventeen, and Simeon, fourteen, were on a school trip. Their school, which served Cold-foot and Wiseman, had about fifteen people in it from K to 12.
“Thanks for coming by, Eric,” Lynnette said.
“After what Curt and your sons did for us, it’s the least I could do,” Eric responded, and Vicky nodded.
What Curt had done, and it turns out Curt goes way above and way beyond the call of duty for the people in his gigantic territory, was possibly save their lives. Trooper Bedingfield’s territory is 73,000 square miles, roughly 350 miles wide by 210 miles deep. His territory is bigger than New York State, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire combined. Curt’s responsible for an area almost twenty thousand square miles larger than Michigan, except Michigan has over 9 million people; his area of responsibility has about forty-five hundred. The majority are Natives living in some of the most isolated places on the continent: Arctic Village, Venetie, Bettles, Deadhorse, Anatubik, Kuletucvik. He patrols most of it in one of two planes, a PA218 Super Cub or a Cessna 185. Eric told me that Curt is an amazing pilot, and he must be.
There are so few ways out here for people in desperate need to reach out for help. Curt would not have heard about Eric’s dire need if Tyler, their helper-caretaker, had not been trying to get back to the homestead from Coldfoot. It was early winter; they already had a foot and a half of snow. Then in two days fifty-three inches fell from the gray-white skies. It took a week and a half to open the runway by the trooper’s house; during that week and a half there were no emergency flights or any flights at all, period, out of Coldfoot.
Someone from the truck stop had called Curt and told him that Tyler, twenty-four, the long-haired, wide-eyed caretaker, could only make it about six miles out of Coldfoot. Several times he had turned back, exhausted and increasingly concerned for Eric and the family, and for himself. Tyler had been trying to break trail by himself for over two weeks. Moving through over five feet of snow, up to your neck, on a snow machine is almost impossible. You run into it, it’s powdery, free-flying, but you bog down, then disappear and tip over. Then you have to move your several-hundred-pound machine; you climb off and sink into the snow yourself. If sand could be as light as this snow, then imagine going sixty miles through five feet of sand. After a trail is beaten down, it’s still really tough. There are always portions blown over by wicked winds coming out of the mountains.
If Tyler had been at the house with the rest of them when all the snow fell, no one would have known that Eric and all his children were running out of food and fuel and dog food and everything. Run out of fuel, eventually you can’t cut wood. They don’t cut that much wood in advance, and you burn through so much so quickly to keep yourself alive in the Chandalar Valley. Weather authorities at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) believe it has been one hundred below zero here. Curt said during this past winter in Coldfoot, a “warmer” place, it had been to sixty-seven below zero. Running out of food, when there is nothing around in winter to hunt, would have been desperate. You wouldn’t want to think about what you might bring yourself to eat.
Curt got the family survival gear together, their two snow machines, and marshaled his two youngest sons, Isaac, who was dreaming of being a Navy SEAL, and Simeon. Both were born and raised Alaskans, about the best rescue squad anyone could have. Tyler worked with them too. For his sons, Curt told me, going out for a few days or a week or however long the trail-breaking rescue might take was about the best treat they could get. These were not young men who want to lie around.
It took them four long, brutal, fun, hilarious, exhausting, dangerous days to break the trail to the point Eric had reached on the other end. Once Curt, an expert on a snow machine, ran into what he thought was a stretch of virgin snow and disappeared into a riverbank. Only a foot of the snow machine’s rear end was left sticking out. His sons thought this was funny, and he was fine. It took the four of them two days to get to the south fork of the Koyukuk River. One of them had to walk forward on snowshoes, sometimes sinking to over chest deep. Curt is six feet tall and was forty-one then. He is built like a middleweight weight lifter. Snowshoeing in deep snow will wear down the average person quickly. Just lifting the snowshoes covered with snow, the snow not wanting to let go, tires you terribly. But there was nothing average about the effort the Bedingfields and Tyler made. First one would snowshoe ahead, then another would run the snow machine like a maniac full blast following the tracks, into a trail you can’t find. In the winter there are only vague ideas where it might be because of the opening in the trees. Across open fields of swamp or tundra, the only way to guess yo
ur way through the five to six feet of powder was to try to remember where the trail went, how close to the spruce woods, how far from the cliff, where it crossed the creek, how it took off down a steep bank, when it made sharp turns. Through sixty-plus miles of unmarked trail, how could anyone, even Curt, who is used to flying over “featureless,” unmarked places, remember much of anything?
The boys loved it, gunning the snow machine down a short “takeoff” ramp of new trail laid down by snowshoeing until the snow inhaled them like a cumulus cloud, and they’d finally fall over on their side. At Boulder Creek they lost the buried trail for over an hour. Someone like Rita and me lost in these conditions—which come on without warning, since Eric had no TV, no radio, no way to get advance weather warnings—would almost surely perish.
On the fourth day, Curt and his sons met Eric just twelve miles from his cabin. Eric was snowshoeing; his snow machine was buried somewhere for the hundredth or five-hundredth time. The best Eric and one son could do was two miles a day. He had to leave either Pete or Mike back at the cabin to keep the home fires and generator going. At that rate, realistically there would have been no getting out, and in the next few weeks more snow would come.
Curt said the journey they’d made to open the winter trail was “extremely hard” and that if you didn’t pace yourself, you wouldn’t make it far. That’s the equivalent of Muhammad Ali saying George Foreman could punch. Hard-core Alaskans rank their experiences in hard-core Alaska the way any extraordinary person ranks what they do, in a wide range of normal. I hoped we would not be called on to do any deep-snow, way-below-zero rescues.