So far its been a pretty good year, the Iron Dog is going to setup the finish line in downtown Fairbanks and it should be a blast. Going down the Noyes Slough from the Chena River near University Ave will be interesting. All the rumors flying around town have really stirred up folks thinking that the racers are going to be blasting down it at 100 MPH. But I believe we have the solution and it’ll be a great and safe race through town with “pilot sleds” leading the racers under a yellow flag through the slough at a maximum speed of 25 MPH.

Our weather this year has been strange to say the least. Started out with some good snow fall, then the temps dropped down to the minus 50 and colder (had -58 below here at the house), which Isn’t to bad actually, froze up the rivers and set a nice base. But oh nature can be fickeled and the following week the temps got to 50 above. Whow, whats up with that, a 90 to 100 degree temp change in a week, not good. So half of our snow melted and then the temps went back to normal, a comfy zero during the day to -20 at night, this I can live with.

Getting antsy to ride, I took, Tyler, my 10 year grandson, on a ride to Chena Lakes from the house, this had to be the worst ride of my life. Hard packed ice all the way down the trails. The best part was riding down the slough, but even that was nerve racking looking for open holes after the warmer temps. But we made it and I decided not to do that ride again until we get another foot or two of snow.

Yesterday we drove to Chatanika, had breakfast and meet up with 7 other FST members. The scheduled ride was suppose to be from 42 mile Steese Hwy to Cache Mountain Cabin. Humm, warm temps a week ago, a little snow fall, then 40 MPH winds yesterday and Thursday, didn’t look good. During breakfast we decided to forgo starting at 42 mile and just ride out of the lodge, down the main trail to 4 corners, head north east from there and into the White Mountain Rec area. This was a good choice. The trail from the lodge was decent and as we got farther along the trail it got even better, all the way to the White Mountain Trail System (WMTS). The WMTS wasn’t so good, all the trails were as hard as a rock and what new snow did fall was wind blown and gone. So I believe we made a good call on that one.

We rode to Moose Creek Cabin and decided to take a lunch break there. At this point one of our younger members decided to play in the snow, AKA hard packed ice, and cracked up his sled. And cracked it was, I’ll leave the details for another day, but lets just say that we didn’t finish the loop we had planned since his sled required a tow back to Chatanika. Let’s see now, of the past 3 FST rides I’ve been on this season, so far we’ve had to tow a Polaris out on 2 of those,…. :geek: OK, so yeah, I’m Cat a rider if my sled breaks down on the trail I know I’ll never heard the end of it, but until that happens I get to pick you Pullaris riders.

But it was a great ride and everyone, with the exception I’m sure of the guy having to rebuild his sled, had a good day. Oh yeah, he did get to ride Tyler’s Cat back to Chatanika.

So the FST web site rebuild is 99% done, only 99% because I keep finding little things I either don’t like (cosmetically that is) or some issues that need to be resolved like the download function for GPS waypoints. But it is 99% done and that’s 99% more than a month ago.

So what have I been doing all this time, besides rebuilding web sites and servers, well I had a good moose season this year. Jake’s stepson and friend went into moose camp with us this year and we tagged two bulls, so not bad. I did get a wall tent and this was a big upgrade from the old tent I use to use. It was interesting to say the least setting up. I set up the wall tent up in the yard before we left for moose camp and it was pretty straight forward. Of course it’s always easy when you’re working in a nice comfortable environment, whole different puppy when you’re in the woods. Yard = flat, level, clear, easy. Woods = slope, brushy, trees, not easy :big_grin: Kind of like the difference between working on your truck in the garage versus working on your truck stuck on the side of the road at 10 above zero, you get the picture.

And it sure looked better in the yard with the walls all straight and tight, not like the one above. But no matter, it was still a better place to stay in then a small dome tent. We had heat and could even stand up to change and take off our gear. So after the 2 boys left, Jake and I decide to go out again and see if we could fill the cow tag we had, and no, we didn’t, but oh well, we still got moose in the freezer. Week 3 in moose camp and it snows and now I’m real glad we had the wall tent and heater. Nothing like walking out side all day in the cold wet snow and knowing you have a nice warm tent with good sleeping bags and cots for the night….

The good side, yeah it’s snowing, time to put the hunting gear up and start getting sleds ready. Had our first run November 1st, out of the Cleary Summit area and had planned to do some exploring, ended up at Chatanika Lodge (not planned) and doing a bit more exploring then we had planned. The grandson was about six sleds back, he took a wrong turn, everyone else behind him followed, so I’m waiting with 5 others at the correct turn and nobody shows. After 45 minutes I figure it’s time to find them, hum, track on the trail to Chatanika Lodge. So now I’m running 70 MPH and I still couldn’t catch them, so the 5 of us go to Chatanika Lodge. Long story short, all’s well that ends well.

November 8th and were back on the trails and it was an excellent day and a great ride. Rode from the wood cutting area by Two River School to Colorado Creek cabin, didn’t make it all the way to the cabin, but who cares, had a blast riding in some decent snow … enough said.

So Turkey day comes along and we had family and friends over and enjoyed the holiday, ate lots of good food and got to take this picture of my darling wife (she’ll be mad at me for posting this one), love ya honey..

Next ride up, Chatanika Loop, so Shane was suppose to lead and I had planned to just enjoy tagging along watching the trees goes by and not worrying about a thing except keeping an eye on Tyler and making sure he doesn’t run into any trees, hahahah, if I’d only known.

As I said, I wasn’t suppose to lead this ride, but low and behold, Shane bows out and I get elected to lead. OK, so what if I don’t know the trails that well, can’t be that hard to follow, besides I talked to Ronnie at the lodge and he insured me it was an easy ride and wouldn’t, couldn’t get lost. Oh how little he knows of my leading habits.

Were doing good, following the trails to the Pipeline, up along the pipeline trail and then we get to the turn off that takes us to Old Murphy Dome Road. No problem, except we took one little wrong turn and ended up at Pedro’s Monument on the Steese hwy, about 6 miles from where we were suppose to be and no way to get up the hill along the highway. A little back tracking and were good, then we run into 3 other guys riding and their lost as well, so I don’t feel bad at all about making that wrong turn 😉

Oh and let’s not forget Tyler and trees, no he didn’t hit any trees, the young’un reared ended my sled instead and smashed the front of his, so he’s getting better at missing trees, now to get him stopping sooner :surprised: or at least before he hits my sled.

Last weekend we had the Treasurer Hunt run and it was a blast. Paul and I hid 5 caches out in the Tanana Flats and folks came out with their GPS’s to find them. What a kick we had, lots of fresh untouched snow in all these nice wide fields of untouched wilderness. Everyone found their caches and I put on about 80 miles on my sled just playing in the snow. Who could ask for anything better, oh, yeah and I did get to log another GeoCache find. Wasn’t looking for it, but I always keep some GoeCache locations on my GPS and what should turn up but a cache not ¾ of mile from where were, so time to find it, tag it and move on.

What a weekend this was. The wife and I drove to Cantwell Friday night minus the grandson who was getting a cold. Of course if you asked him he was more than well enough to go, but mom said no and he was major disappointed, can blame him as this was the last ride we had planned for the season. Poor guy, next season can’t come soon enough as far as he’s concerned.

The roads were in excellent shape all the way from Fairbanks to Cantwell, much better than I had expected. Spring road conditions are always a crap shoot, never know if their going to be icy and slick, snow covered or dry, guess we just got lucky.

So we had a nice but not to quiet night in our room at the Backwoods Lodge. Seems our next door neighbors were some out of town contractors who decided that Friday night was the night to stay up and drink and get loud, well their mission was a success to our misfortune. But we did get some sleep after they passed out and quieted down; hope they didn’t mind all the noise I made when I got up at 5:30 AM.

Any who, we headed to the Cantwell Lodge at 9:00 AM and had some coffee and meet Paul, his son, his son’s friend, Norman and Don. By 9:30 no one else showed up and we headed out to Summit to unload and ride. About 10:10 Tony showed up and I was surprised to see him, he usually doesn’t join us on these Cantwell trips but I was glad he made it.

I did haul the Kat Kitchen again and it was a benefit to have a long, but it’s going to need some more modifications to the hitch. More on that in a bit, but for now here’s what we rode into.

Not bad for the middle of April if you ask me. The sun was up and it got to a balmy 45 above. The conditions were excellent. Lots of fresh snow a good base and not many others around to see. So we off loaded and heading into towards Denali Nat’l Park. As you can see the wife was having a good time.

After a bit we got into those rolling hills and looked for a nice place to have lunch. As I said it was warming up so we tried to find a place with some shade and found about the best tree we could see.

Of course after a little snack the boys had to see who could out climb who so a little hill climbing was in order, the 2nd photo below is the avalanche they were riding next to. I didn’t go up, I have tendency to stay off hills that just had an avalanche not 100 feet to the right. But Paul did say he used his inclement and the slope degree they were climbing was safe based on the degree of angle. Well with that knowledge, nope still not going up.

But hey I came here to ride and enjoy this beautiful land I live in, so here are some pictures to show you why we do it.

So as I said early, the Kat Kitchen needs some work on the hitch. OK, so why you ask, well let’s see, as the day warmed up the snow got a bit mushy and I had to use a little throttle to get up some of the hills and just as I was climbing one those hills I hit a little ditch. The back of my sled and the front of the Kat Kitchen tongue decided to have a meeting of the forces, result, I need another rear light and the Kat Kitchen needs a new cover for the grill and grill. If it was only the grill that got busted, well OK we have a spare, but those dog gone tails lights are getting expensive to replace.

By 2:00 PM we decided the temps were getting to warm and the snow to mushy so we headed back to the rigs and loaded up about 5:00 PM. When we got back to room I noticed that my darling wife was getting sunburn. Yup, lots of sun reflecting off all that snow and no Coppertone. Darn.

Sunday morning was a repeat of Saturday, except we got more sleep Saturday night as our rowdy neighbors had moved on.

We did lose Tony, Norm and Don Sunday as they went back home, so it was s smaller group but just as nice. I wanted to explore the area north-west of Summit so we sort of moseyed in that direction and all was good until we lost Paul. I know he was just with us a couple minutes ago. Hum, so we started looking for him and we found him on his back (praying I think) and converting to tree hugging.

Paul was OK and actually smiling. I think he was just glad to be alive, but hey so was I on a day like this…….

So ended another season of riding in Alaska, now if that darn snow would just hurry up and get back here then I’d be smiling like my wife and Paul below.

April is Arctic Man month and most folks head out to Summit the beginning of the week to make sure they get there with plenty of time to ride and play. Since I’m not a big fan of drinking and partying or at least I haven’t been for a while, I posted an unplanned ride in the Whites on the FST web site to see if anyone else was interested. Turns out I’m not the only one who stayed home during AM week and with the rumors about 9 to 12 inches of fresh snow it was worth a look. So 9 of us meet up at Chatanika Lodge for breakfast and some planning.

Of course 2 of those were John M and Jim who aren’t riding this season do to physical ailments, but 7 of us decided to ride out from the lodge and head towards the Pipeline and see if the snowfall we got this last week was still there and as deep as I had heard.

It didn’t start out to good, the first couple of miles we had snow on both sides of the trail, but as we got farther along in the valleys I was beginning to wonder why I was riding my sled and not my ATV. The trail turned into a white line, kind of like the divider line on the highway, a nice pretty strip of color (in our case white) with blacktop on both sides (brown for us).

Fortunately as soon as we hit the Pipeline the snow conditions improved. Not the best I’d seen but better then the valley we just came out of.

Once we started heading up towards the ridges the snow got great. Lots of powder on top of a good base, so the rumors were true, let the good time roll.

The farther along we rode the better it got.

So it turned out to be a good ride and great day for my last local ride of the season. Not bad considering it was April 12th and a low snow year. Next trip is down to Cantwell with the wife and Grandson.

What a beautiful day for my final ride of the season. Yup, I said final ride for the season, I know there is lots of snow on the ground still, but it”s melting fast and the rivers and creeks are starting to show open leads.

We started this morning with a great breakfast at Chatanika Lodge (not a surprise there) and then headed up to 42 mile Steese Hwy, off loaded and headed out. This was not a scheduled FST club, but a “were not going to Arctic Man, lets go to the White Mountains” and so we did. When we left Chatanika Lodge the temp was around 25 above, the sun was up and already generating some heat, so we knew it would be a warm day, and we weren’t disappointed.

We rode up the hill from the 42 mile parking lot to the information sign about 5 miles in. From here we ”pow wowed” as to just were to go. Our general direction was towards Cache Creek Cabin and Windy Gap, but we didn’t make it . About 4 miles before the Cache Creek Cabin you connect with the trail that goes towards the Elliot Hwy, of course you go north to Mckay Creek, follow it for a bit to the turn off and then head back south, almost parallel to Mckay till you get to Crowberry Cabin, or maybe I should say what’s left of Crowberry Cabin, about 2 burnt sticks and a big hole. Not a place I’d make plans to stay at, but the hole would make for a good bonfire pit. Now big holes aren’t a problem for this group, one just goes around, all except those that one makes. By time we got to Crowberry we had had 2 sleds buried in the powder, you know, that fluffy white stuff sitting about 2 inches below the hard crust you’ve been riding. Anyway, to make a long story short, we dig them out and kept on going.

After a short break for a quick snack or two we decided to head towards Lee Cabin, and as things go on a carefree and gorgeous day like it was, we changed our minds, again. We got to Moose Creek and stopped to visit the folks staying there. Never meet them before and didn’t get their names, but they were nice folks and didn’t mind the company. After about 15-20 minutes of socializing, who should show up but Rick and his lady. They were just heading back to their place on Haystack, so a few more minutes of hi and how are you’s, and off we went. But now, Lee’s Cabin was out, the Wickersham Creek Trail Shelter was in. We did have a couple more submarine submissions at this point and one atmospheric rider ejection into the ice grips of overflow. And guess who did that wonderfully trick, you got it, me.

I, in all my wonder figured the best way to cross the over flow was to just it hard and fast, NOT…. This worked for about 10 feet, then out of the slush I popped and right on to some nice smooth and slick ice. That in itself would of been OK, but when my sled went sideways, crossed the icy overflow at 40 MPH (remember, sideways) and sank back into the slush on the other side and the hit that nice hard pack, my sled said bye-bye and off I went, not a simple “sled falls on side, get up and go again”, but a full frontal attack as it were. If I didn’t know better I’d swear that my seat had a spring loaded ejection system build in. Because fly I did and left a nice little imprint of my body in the bank, at least till it melts….

Well anyway, back to the ”riding”, another mile or two and we made it to Wickersham, took another break and then headed back. All in all a great day to be outside soaking up the sun, wish I’d brought my cutoff jeans. But therein is the problem, the sun and warmth also have this adverse effect on the snow and trail, sort of like Alice in Wonderland, I’m melting….. and so, assuming that the weather reports of 50 above most of the week are correct, I’d say this boy is done till next winter.