Beaver Point Lodge on Deadman Lake

For the past three years we’ve tried to get a club run into Beaver Point Lodge on Deadman Lake and I’d been thinking that the Deadman Lake part of that title kept folks at bay. Now that we’ve made it there and back I’m kind of glad it was a small group, and it was an excellent trip.

We had four of us signed up for the trip, myself, Tyler, Steve E, and Boyd. Wes and company had expressed interest in the ride but didn’t commit at the last FST meeting. Saturday morning Tyler and I meet Steve and Myles (our host) at the Monderosa.

The timeline was set to meet at 9:00 AM and we did, but then waited until almost 10:00 thinking Boyd was running late. As it turned out Boyd never showed up, he unfortunately had an allergic reaction the night before and went into anaphylactic shock, bummer, but it sounds like he’s gotten better,

Wes informed me later that he did decide to go and tried to make it to the Monderosa in time, he rode the river from Fairbanks and didn’t arrive until we had departed. Sorry we missed you.

So anyway, Myles lead the three of us down the trail for 10 miles where we then jumped on the Tanana River. He has a great Ram Mount for his GPS and a good track file on it and considering it was flat light for about half the ride, I was glad we had a good track to follow and a leader who knew the route. Had I been leading we’d of most likely ended up following a slough or two heading into the flats and the great unknown.

It took us 3 hours to get to the confluence of the Tanana and Tolavnia where we exited the river and rode the four and half miles of trail to the lake. The lodge was of course cold and the first order of business was to get the wood stove going and some heat. It took about an hour or two, but the place heated up pretty good and we all got comfy and a bit lazy.

Tim (our newest board member) has a cabin two lots down the lake and stopped by on his way out. He and his son were going to work on a connector trail from the Tanana to the Commissioners trail. This would give them an overland route from Nenana. So after having lunch I decided to head on out and try to find Tim and this route, heck Tyler was asleep by this anyway and Steve looked way to comfortable to want to do any exploring.

I followed Tim’s tracks back down the Tanana about three and half miles and headed south along this slough their tracks went up, or at least I was hoping it was their track.

Turns out I got lucky and ran into Tim and son a couple miles after I left the river to find them busy cutting downed trees and checking the intended route. So after lending a hand we rode out of the burn area and entered into an area with massive open fields. Tim said the rest of the route from here to the Commissioners trail simple went from one big field to another. Nice…..

I have to mention that getting that last bit of trail open was fun. Right after we left the burn area I took the lead and ran the bearcat down a small hill and grabbed the brake when I slid sideways on a big pile of wind pack snow. I hit the brake to avoid the Spruce I was sliding into and got stuck. When I tried to back out and away from the Spruce all I did was dig a trench about 4 to 5 feet deep into the powder. Didn’t take much to get out once I was able to move away from the trees, but man was that snow deep and sweet.

Tim was running an old long track Jag, so he headed out in the lead and broke open the trail for the next half mile where we ran into the fields. Would have been fun to keep on going and explore those fields more, but it was 7:00 PM and dinner was a calling me.

After we got back to the lodge I discovered that Tyler slept most of the afternoon and Steve found some nice powder along the lake to play in. So it was a good day for all.

We headed back Sunday around noon with bluebird skies and 30 degree above temps, couldn’t ask for a better day to be riding. Please note the Jet Ski in one of the pictures. One of Myles neighbors on the lake tied the Jet Ski onto a fold-a-sled and towed it into Deadman for the summer, an interesting sight, Jet Ski being towed by snowmachine down the river. Probable come in handy if you ran into any open leads, which by the way we didn’t.

Steve, Tyler and I had a Mondo burger before we left the Monderosa and that topped it off as a good ending to a great week end of riding.