The club’s run to Beaver Point Lodge was another good overnight trip. This year we took the Telegraph Trail out of Nenana on Saturday to the lodge and returned on Sunday via the Commissioner Trail. Both trails were well marked and packed if a bit windblown.

Not this year. We left Altrol’s parking lot around 9:00, thank you Dave Bridges for letting us use your lot to park and headed to the Ice Bridge, all went good to Clear Creek Buttes with one or two little side trips trying to decide which way we wanted to go.

A few weeks back we rode the Gilmore Trail down to the Chena Flood Projects and back and had to do a lot of ducking through some major brush along the way. So Larry put together a trail brushing crew and we brushed back a fair amount of the trail yesterday.

Seven sleds showed up with nine workers, Larry borrowed some brushing hand tools and I brought along the Kat Kitchen. We rode the trail about 7 miles to an old abandoned mining cabin and set up our base camp in the nice flat area in front. After the kitchen was leveled and ready for use we broke up into two groups, one group went back up the hill and I went with John down the trail towards all the overflow. Oh joy.

As always the Iron Dog is a week of riding and working for me. Took the week of the 17th March off of work and spent every day riding, setting the track, marking the trail and working on the North Pole Fuel Point. This year was fairly un-eventfully as far as setting the trail went. No one fell through the ice or got stuck really and that was a nice change.

I also had lots of volunteer help, more than I’ve had in the past and that made it a lot more enjoyable, not having to run the track from Chena Pump Landing to the finish alone as much as I’ve done in past years.

It’s Monday and I’m already whipped. Started the weekend riding with Destiny’s bow (Cody) and his dad (Rod) to try and get them a caribou for their freezer. So Rod says I know this area we can get into zone 2 of the Caribou registration hunt. Remember, I already filled mine and Trish’s tags in zone 1, so we have meat in the freezer. But always being up to explore some new territory and willing to help out I figured I’d go along for the ride.

Rod said this will be a nice easy ride and a great open trap line trail, hum, should of known it wasn’t going to be all fun and games. We got to the parking spot and off loaded the sleds, it was a brisk -14 below but we were heading up in elevation and it should warm up, which it did. The first 17 miles were a cake walk down the dirt road that hadn’t been plowed for a bit, which is good and there was enough snow on the ground that we didn’t mess up the skags, at least on most of the road.

Flat light and a great ride in the Tanana Flats. Started out with 18 sleds for the run into the Flats and up to Clear Creek Butts with Paul leading. Although this ride had scheduled Larry as our leader, Paul lead and kept us all from getting lost on the trails.

This was one of the most versatile trail rides I’ve been on in a long time. Eight of us started out from the pull out at 4 mile Gilmore Trail Road around 10:15 in the morning. Plan was to see if we could make it to Chena Lake’s without 1) getting lost or 2) having to turn back due to overflow in the valley.

What a great day it was for a run to Chatanika Lodge and a nice lunch. Although the temps in town were -18 to -20 below zero, it was a cozy -3 below at Two Rivers Elementary School when we all meet up at 10:00 AM.

Beautiful day for a ride with the temps in the upper teens to lower 20’s, couldn’t ask for anything better, well maybe a bit more snow would of been nice, especially in the upper elevations were what snow we did get was pretty windblown.

A 17 minute video of different segments of the ride.

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