KENNEL UPDATE EAGLE FLOOD

June 21, 2009...Summer is in full swing and the heat is working on the last of the ice chunks that are left on land. We have been working on trail for weeks and finally have been able to connect with the river. It is a long way from our original trail and will take a lot of work but we think we will be able to get the 6 wheeler to the river in about a week. In the meantime we keep bringing in supplies by backpack and it has been fun trying to decide what goes first, any treats or the needed staples. Right now, the river is high so this new routing will work fine but once the river drops then we have to get trail out along the river edge to the main body of water. It is doable but lots of work cutting trees out of the way and then filling in 3 and 4...sometimes 5 foot holes where the ice gouged out craters. Looks worse than a mine field.

Eagle continues with its cleanup. Some residents are working hard trying to get homes up and/or repaired before winter. Others are still kind of shell shocked and appear lost. Most people are like us just getting on with life and making the best of a very rotten situation.

The dogs are having fun exploring new territory. Lilgirl has made her home the dogsled that is sitting in the arctic entry waiting to be repaired. She will be heartbroke when it gets moved.

The garden is growing and we are beginning to pick radishes and lettuce.

One of our clients has put a video on YouTube of the summit of what we call Minnie Everest. It is one of our more extreme trips. We can also set up tours that are less extreme for someone who wants to enjoy the wilderness but not get so physical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAqWKDkDJBI

Our winter tours have not been affected by the disaster here in the Eagle Area! By winter our home trail system will be back in and we will be back to normal.

To those of you who have not been here you will not really see
the changes but those who have will realize the enormity of what has taken
place here.

June 11...Summer has come in with a bang, very hot but winter still has a grip on some areas. Our creek is solid ice, here by the cabin, so we have been unable to get the pump going to pump up water and must haul it in by the bucket load. So far we have been able to get some water into the garden but it sure needs a good solid watering.

3/4 of our trail system is not useable, a lot of it still under ice, other areas that had ice are mud bogs and debrie fields that we hope will dry so we can do some clearing. Areas that did not have ice, or bogs wound up getting 2 ft trenches washed along the trail. Really a nice big mess.

We were hoping to be able to use part of the fishwheel but when we walked down there a couple of days ago it was apparent that it would be more work to try and remove the debrie and cut a trail to pull out parts and pieces than it would be to just start new. There are still things I hope to find, the wench and some of the ropes but they may be buried too deeply in debrie.

The ice plowed up the shore edge, moving trees inland. Most of the trees were limbed, often debarked with all of that winding up at the leading edge of the ice push. So while the shoreline is partially clear, inland becomes more and more of a solid mess. Right now we don't have to deal with avoiding the mud as we just walk across the fallen trees, limbs and bark.

The dogs are having a good summer. The mess does not seem to bother them at all as they play and run around the ice.

June 4, 2009 has the ice melting quickly as the temps reached 80 degrees yesterday and should today. Our old trail system still has ice but I was able to log jump my way thru the bog to reach the river. It appears the ice has pressed the ground down enough to where our trail system will stay a bog. Trees are laid down in the same direction, you could not have laid them that way better. The limbs have been wripped off and shredded. I dare...double dog dare anyone to come visit us by walking thru the trail system. I spent 2 hours crossing it and recrossing it yesterday in failed attempts to find some dry or unflooded ground. So for the next while we are stuck with the 3 hour round trip backpacking hike to and from the river.

Finally found the remains of the fishwheel where it lay. Looks like it fought hard and a few parts remain to where we might get to reuse some of them. Strangly enough all the barrels that were tied to trees are nearby and uncrushed. These items are still surrounded by large ice pans and are moved what appears to be 100 feet inland.

The 50 hp motor was removed from the ice where it had found a protected spot and was able to be started. The 25 hp Go-Devil was not so lucky. It took a direct hit. The boats are trash and we will have to remove them to a dumping ground.

SUCCESS:
Friday May 29, 9 pm had us exhausted but like kids in a candy store as we
dug into the 100 lbs of supplies we backpacked in on the 1 ½ hour hike.
But let me back up…

There are a couple of things that did not get mentioned earlier about
things here and that is that the lower woods are silent, no animal or bird sounds. That is so strange and everything is coated with silt from the river up to 20 feet in
the trees, so as you walk thru the woods you are kicking up a fine mist of
dust.

Lil Girl, Jake, Lobo, Puma, Jimbay and Titan were amazing as they spent 16
hours pulling our 19 ft Grumman canoe thru the woods. Once they figured
out what to do, they were great. At first they were so eager to pull that
it created problems but once they realized it was just little bits at a
time, they would sit patiently and wait for one of us to tell them to go.
Wayne was out ahead of us clearing and cutting more trail as we did not
have a true visual image of how wide the canoe was and we did not
anticipate that 19 feet of canoe does not wiggle thru small curves in a
tight trail well. I was with the canoe pulling to help get the dogs
started and prying back and forth when needed to help the canoe stay in
the path.

Once we knew that all of our recons upriver failed to find a launch site,
we knew we had to head downriver. A friend sent us an aerial map that
helped us plot our way to what is called 6-Mile Bend. Still it took us 3
days of recon and cutting to get a workable trail in, or so we thought,
and then 2 days to get there with the canoe.

On Friday, we hiked out early and slid the canoe into the water, put on
the motor and headed upriver for our first views of things from the
water’s edge. It was worse than I had feared. For some reason all the
open ground bothers me. The loss of the forest, the hundred years old,
huge trees gone, snapped off and then the ground bulldozed down to sand.
Boulder Island was not only clear-cut but also many, many feet of land
chewed away leaving only a small sand bar.

We picked up our neighbor, who still is unable to access the river with
his canoe, and went on into Eagle. It was easy to see the devastation
from the river long before we neared Eagle. We got to the boat ramp and
began hunting for items. Rick’s truck was there crushed under the ice.
Our 30 ft boat crumpled. It took time to find the smaller boat as it still
sits under 2 huge bergs but it is split into. Our dog box was 100 yards
from where it was sitting and lay smashed. Our 50 hp motor was pushed
from the bow of the smaller boat into the bottom of the boat and appears
to be intact…what we can see of it so we are hopeful that it can be
revived from the floodwaters. The 25 hp Go-Devil is still under a massive
berg and we can only hope that it came to rest in a hole and is not
destroyed but that is unlikely as it has a 4 ft long thin shaft from the
motor to the prop.

One of the bright spots of my day was to see the kid’s motorcycle laying
in between 3 pieces of ice that demolished the boat trailer, crumpled the
30 ft boat, and flattened the other boat, apparently unhurt…except for
being under water for days. We can’t be totally sure on it until we are
able to roll it some. It is still trapped between the ice.

We proceeded into Eagle, looking at the destruction and talking with
people. They have a lot of hope. Many are hoping to have homes built or
repaired by winter. Spirits were low and high. People are trying to
focus on the good and not dwell on their losses. It is going to be a very
long road for most everyone but we have all started.

For us we now have to work at getting a new trail system in, as the ice
melts so that we do not have to keep backpacking in supplies and hope to
get a new fish wheel built by mid-August to catch some chums for the dogs.

Don't worry about the business as nothing was damaged that would affect our winter tours.

MAY 5TH This is a NOAA report: A SIGNIFICANT ICE JAM CONTINUES TO HOLD ON THE YUKON RIVER AT
EAGLE. THE ICE JAM HAS DAMMED UP THE RIVER WHICH RESULTED IN THE
WORST FLOODING IN RECORDED HISTORY. THE OLD VILLAGE OF EAGLE AND
PORTIONS OF TOWN HAVE BEEN ENTIRELY DESTROYED. THE YUKON RIVER IS
ALSO RISING FROM EAGLE TO CIRCLE CITY AND ADDITIONAL ICE JAMS ARE
EXPECTED TO FORM.

THE ICE JAM IN EAGLE BEGAN SHIFTING MONDAY EVENING AND WATER LEVELS
STARTED TO FLUCTUATE DRAMATICALLY. RISING WATER PUSHED ICE OVER THE
RETAINING WALL AND SLAMMED HOUSE SIZE CHUNKS INTO BUILDINGS ALONG
FRONT STREET. AN ADDITIONAL RISE IN WATER LEVELS EARLY TUESDAY
MORNING LIFTED SOME BUILDINGS ALONG FRONT STREET OFF OF THEIR
FOUNDATIONS AND SENT THEM DOWN THE YUKON RIVER. OTHER BUILDINGS NEAR
THE RIVER HAVE BEEN SIGNIFICANTLY DAMAGED AND ARE UNSALVAGEABLE. THE
ROAD TO THE AIRPORT IS UNDERWATER AND WATER AND ICE HAVE RISEN TO
ONE END OF THE CITY RUNWAY. POWERLINES TO THE OLD AND NEW VILLAGE
HAVE BEEN KNOCKED DOWN AND LEFT PORTIONS OF THE AREA WITHOUT
ELECTRICITY. AS OF 7 AM WATER LEVELS APPEAR TO HAVE STABILIZED AND
MAY BE SLOWLY FALLING. LOCAL RESIDENTS ESTIMATE THAT THE WATER HAS
RISEN TO MORE THAN 10 FEET HIGHER THAN THE FLOOD OF RECORD. WATER
LEVELS WILL CONTINUE TO FLUCTUATE IN EAGLE UNTIL THE ICE JAM HAS
COMPLETELY FLUSHED DOWNRIVER.

April 24, 2009 Winter is still holding on as the Yukon River ice refuses to give way. Spring has come in very slowly but it is coming. Our winter tour season ended well and we are now into what we call our break up period as we watch the snow melt and the river ice turn loose from the banks and begin tumbling out to the Bering Sea. This is the time that we begin scheduling our tours for next year. Please get with us if you are interested in working with us next winter. IF YOU DO NOT HEAR FROM US IT IS BECAUSE WE ARE AT OUR REMOTE HOMESITE AND STARBAND MAY HAVE GONE OUT. IF THAT HAPPENS PLEASE SEND YOUR E-MAIL AGAIN AND WE WILL CONTACT YOU AS SOON AS WE GET THINGS WORKING WHICH COULD BE AFTER THE RIVER BREAKS AND WE MAKE THE FIRST TRIP INTO TOWN. With as late as it looks like breakup will be...we may not get a boat into the river until some time in June.

HERSCHAL ISLAND EXPEDITION... The team left on Monday with high spirts and high hopes. Their first day was an easy one but the second day was where the hard part has started. They must maintain 20 miles a day if they are to make their first food drop in time. If they cannot make this drop within 14 days they will have to abort the expedition. Deep, heavy snows have wiped out all the trail that was previously put in and they are having to reopen trail, often in waist deep snow. This is indeed a challenge for Wayne, Matt and Per.

This is not a company tour but is an adventure trip that has long been dreamed about and finally put together. We are all keeping our fingers crossed that it is indeed their dream and a very successful one.

Run your own sled dog team of Alaskan Huskies through the Alaska, Yukon Wilderness. We specialize in extreme, hard-core wilderness travel using highly trained Alaskan huskies. This area of Alaska is one of the most remote locations left on earth.  Because a true wilderness experience becomes tainted with a large group or "party," we limit our tours to one or two clients plus your guide.  (Except on special request for a larger group, by you.)  You can customize your tour to your own personal physical abilities and expectations which can include day trips and simple overnight adventures in a tent camp or an original miner/trapline cabin dating back to the early part of the century or you can experience a full-blown expedition as long as you want, mushing into country inhabited only by God's creations, including caribou and wolves. 

Along with the experience of riding the runners behind the dogs, you can spend time hiking, skiing, ski joring, snow boarding, aurora watching, (on clear nights the northern lights often grace the sky), or just kicking back in a relaxed, remote location.

While you are here you will be exposed to a variety of hazards and risks, which are inherent in each trip and cannot be eliminated without destroying the unique character of what you want to experience. Rescue and medical facilities are not easily available. Take note the closest doctor or hospital is over 350 air miles from your dog tour starting point at our cabin.  Your physical conditioning is essential for your safety.  Medical help could be days away!

Your dog sled adventure begins in the small town of Eagle where we will make our way 6 miles down the Yukon River to the home cabin, as there are no roads to our homestead, located deep in the interior/boreal forest, and continue on to our fall dog training camp situated high on the tundra of American Summit above tree line and beyond.  If the timing is right you can run your dog team among thousands of migrating caribou--with wild-life viewing possibilities ranging from exotic Alaskan Sable to Lynx, Moose, Wolves and other Alaskan Interior Wild-Life.

Due to the nature of this total wilderness environment the country does not allow for luxury accommodations.  However our tours range from log cabins to hard-core tent camps set up in mountain ranges accessible only by dog team.  We specialize in primitive expedition type travel by dog team.  Typical clientele are athletic type sports enthusiasts looking for a challenging adventure to test themselves in a harsh environment which includes an element of risk.

If you are into a fun type sledding experience, that does not require an extreme level of physical fitness, we have trails and very rustic cabins in remote areas that also include everything the expedition type tours offer with-out the inherent risk and physical requirements.  All tours are custom designed to your specifications for each selected client.

GUIDES:  Wayne Hall, Scarlett Hall and Matt Emslie

VIEW AN 8 MINUTE VIDEO: Sierra Club member Mickey Murch made this video in Feb 2007 while on a Sierra Club Tour with us. The clip is called Metabolic Transportation and is on vimeo. To watch the video, once the page pulls up, click the starting arrow on the window.

http://www.vimeo.com/151967

VIEW A YOUTUBE VIDEO OF A 2009 EXTREME TRIP!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAqWKDkDJBI

View a video of some advanced mushing with direction from guide, Matt Emslie: Sometimes mushing can get difficult and exhilarating as this video of Louise directing her team and working her sled around a narrow ledge of ice on an exploratory trip into the headwaters of Eagle Creek. Once the page opens up, click on the starting arrow on the window.

http://www.vimeo.com/185789

MEDIA ARTICLES:

New York Times Travel Magazine "The Great White Way" by Alix Browne in the November 20, 2005 issue.

http://travel.nytimes.com//185789

USA TODAY Travel>>Destinations "Dog Sledding Keeps Gliding Along, Snow or No Snow" by Laura Bly February 14, 2008

http://www.usatoday.com

Australian Financial Review, The Sophisticated Traveler Jan 2006

http://afr.com

MUSHING The Magazine of Dog-Powered Adventure July/Augush 2008 "Bush Alaska Expeditions" by Anita C. Strindberg

http://mushing.com  

CONTACT: For more information and/or questions e-mail us at bushalaskaex@starband.net or bush_alaska_expeditions@hotmail.com ask for our brochure or write us at:  Bush Alaska Expeditions, P O Box 161, Eagle, AK 99738.  No incoming phone calls due to the remote location but there is Internet access via satellite. Phone calls can be arranged via computer and satellite.   

OCT-NOV-DEC each year finds us at our American Summit Base Camp.  Our internet access is limited to once every 7 to 10 days.  Please contact us with any questions but also be aware that during that period you may not receive a reply for a period of time depending on weather and travel conditions.