Hello Again. Yesterday I had the opportunity to go snowmobiling 'on the river' and it turned out to be quite the experience. We unloaded the sleds at Deshka Landing which is on the Susitna River a few miles Northwest of Willow AK. Willow is where we go every year to watch the start of the Iditarod. At the parking lot it was -2 degrees at about 0930 in the morning. So off we went, our group of 3 included me, another FedEx pilot named Tim, and young college student named Daniella. You might think it is odd that I went riding with a 20 year old female college student, I certainly thought it was odd, so here's the story behind that one. Daniella's parents own the Yentna Station Roadhouse and she is a fishing guide for her parents business during the summer. Tim is a huge fisherman and has spent lots of time at her parents lodge and therefore knew Daniella. Daniella found out through her parents that Tim and a riding buddy were headed out to the lodge and she asked to tag along so she could say hello to her family. (I say TAG along, however it was everything I could do to keep up with her) Now back to the story. I'm thinking, this is a trail ride running up and down the river, I hold my own in the mtns which are probably more challenging, I have a really fast sled...how hard could this be? Five minutes into the ride we are flying down the river at 60-70 mph there are 1-2 and even 3 foot moguls that just pop up every so often, there's open water 20 ft to my right and I'm already losing sight of Tim and Daniella because they are so far ahead. Fortunately I figured out how to go even faster and managed to keep up. About 35 miles down river we stopped and pulled in the Yentna Station Roadhouse. It is run by Daniella's Parents and any siblings that still live at home. Its a B&B, a Fishing lodge, snowmobile fuel stop and anything else you might need. It can only be accessed by boat, snowmobile or airplane. Daniella and most of her sibilings were born in the back bedroom and have lived their entire lives in 'Bush Alaska', and are all some of the nicest people you will ever meet. We had a soda, warmed up and got fuel and headed up the Yentna River towards the Skwentna Roadhouse about another 35 miles up river. After that we got off the river and did about 20 more miles overland to Shell Lake and the Shell Lake Lodge. The views out of this place were amazing. This place was also a B&B with great little cabins that you get to rent out. Here we had lunch, talked for a while with 3 ladies that were full time residents at Shell Lake, and then turned around to head back. It was now about 3 in the afternoon and about 17 degrees without a cloud in the sky. We retraced the same route on the way back. About 10 miles from Yentna Station we came across a snowmobiler that was practicing for the upcoming Irondog snowmobile race. He had blown his cooling system and needed a tow, and I'm thinking SWEET we will finally have to slow down so I can relax and take it easy. Wrong again, we were towing this guy at 50 mph IN THE DARK. We towed him almost 40 miles all the way back to Deshka Landing, with a quick stop at Yentna Station for fuel and to warm up. We made it back around 1930 in the evening and it was -3 degrees. It was an unbelievable day and I saw all sorts of new stuff and met some really great people. In addition I got a taste of what it would be like to race the Irondog, or more likely for me to participate in the Irondog trail class and ride all the way to Nome. I even set up some fishing plans for Kerry and me this summer. We rode a total of 180 miles and I am pretty sore today, with just one little tiny spot of frostbite right on my adams apple where it was touching my jacket zipper.
The pictures show Mt Foraker and Denali (the one on the right), some scenes from the river, in a few of them you can see the rough trail (yes, we were towing a guy at 30-50 mph on that trail in the dark), and one of the view from Shell Lake Lodge, the blue buckets in the snow are marking out the runway in the ice.
I don't know why they call these places roadhouses as there are no roads. For anyone that follows the Iditarod or the Irondog, these are the first 2 or 3 stops on the trail. Very cool stuff, or at least I thought so, and I definitely plan to get KM out there as well, most likely by boat or plane though!
Thanks for reading, and I hope I didn't bore you all to death. See Ya, Storm
P.S. I went to Costco... -KM :)
Well, nothing too exciting here. Did some iceskating on Friday night at the school. I tried to get some decent photos as there was a HUGE full moon, but the kids were far more interested in screwing around...as the photos show. Then had a ski racing day at Hillberg. Max and Alex elected not to race, Nick raced and did real well, however now he is in the 'expert' division so the competition is getting tough. Today he ended up 7th out of 19. Not bad and we identified several areas that he can cut off some significant time, so we'll see what happens next week. He is very excited about the racing, at least for now. 
