Snowmachines

Running into a “pothole” on “the road” may cause you and your snowmachine to disappear forever

A scenic drive with the kids may be in a snowmachine sled

During the winter months we are able to reach even more places by way of snowmachine than we can during the summer months by boat.  Throughout the state of Alaska there are hundreds of remote homestead cabins, mines, and  fishing and hunting lodges that are inaccessible by rivers along the road system.  Hence during the winter months we are able to use snowmachines to go over land between rivers and reach even more remote locations.    While flying over cabins en-route to a village, we save waypoints on the GPS and then use snowmachines to find these single dwellings during the winter months.  Even with the aid of GPS, it might take as much as 2 days of travel to locate a cabin that we originally found while flying.  Another advantage of snowmachines is shorter distances along rivers because when we can cut off turns in the rivers by going over land.  During summer months by boat it takes more miles to get anywhere.  Snowmachines are preferred over airplanes in the sub zero temperatures, because we can generally carry more gear in a sled behind and we can also travel in cloudy and snowy conditions.  This greatly increases our chances of actually making it to a village in questionable weather conditions, where as by airplane we need clear sky because most small villages don’t have published Instrument Approach Procedures to land.  As you can see there is lots of scenery to be enjoyed, but there can be difficulties such as breakdowns, crashes, and injuries.  We all gained lots of experience the first two winters here by using snowmachines to haul all of our firewood.  In the bush, people take advantage of the opportunity to freight all kinds of items to remote locations.  Anything from food or fuel to booze or Bibles.  You name, it, they haul it.

After a good nights sleep at 70 degrees inside the trailer, it makes an all day trip at -23 much easier, knowing there is a warm place to come back to