Two Rivers to Chatanika Lodge

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.

The seven of us, Five members and two soon to be members, left the school parking lot around 10:15 and followed Stoney, our fearless leader for the day. The route took us through the Two Rivers wood cutting area and down across the Little Chena and off towards the trail to Iowa Dome. This first section of the ride was great, fresh snow and no traffic. I was glad to see that the miners hadn’t plowed the road, they did however put up some real road signage, so Hillbilly Hwy has an official road sign on it now, go figure.

Once we got past Cleary Summit and hit the Fairbanks-Circle trail things perked up a bit. The trail was pretty windblown between Fairbanks Creek Road and Cleary near the upper elevations and poor old Larry had a couple of Ooops where 4 of us rolled his sled back over to get his track facing downward . All told we had three stuck sleds for the day, but heck that’s part of the fun.

It was an 82 mile round trip run and took about 3 hours to get to lodge for a break and food. Thanks Shelly and Russ for the good food and service. After eating we decided to return by another route and broke open the power line trail that runs from Fairbanks Creek Road to Fish Creek. A few folks hadn’t been to the old dredge before and it was a good photo opportunity as shown in the pictures.

Other than a lot of great riding and only a couple of Ooops getting stuck, it was simply a fun and enjoyable day to be riding the trails.

I will say that Stoney did a great job as ride leader and should lead more of these. I know he has lots of trails hidden in that brain if his and we just need to encourage him to share more.

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