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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Remembering Easter on the Chilkat Pass

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This past Easter weekend was lovely! The weather was kind, my house in Ely was warm, family and beloved pets were there, and delicious food was abundant. As Sunday drew to a close I was ready to “shut down” and have a good night’s rest, thankful for all that I have. As I drifted to sleep I was remembering a time when things were not as comfortable.

It was March of 1980, I was 21 years-old, had married Nick, and we were living in a small turquoise camper in Cherry. We had saved up money from working little jobs and were hellbent on our goal to drive to Alaska. That August we packed up and headed north in a 1968 Delta 88 Oldsmobile that had well over 100,000 miles on the odometer! We wanted adventure and the aged journal I kept back then confirms that adventure is what we got.

The trip across Canada and up the Alcan Highway, with its deep mud ruts had plenty of adventure and so did the next eight months we spent living in a sod roof cabin in Delta Junction, our friend’s home in Seward, and wintering in a small cabin in Fairbanks.  That same winter I got a puppy and named her Fairbanks. She and I passed the cold, dark days of winter feeding the barrel stove, cooking and reading. As spring and welcomed daylight approached, we decided we were going to leave Alaska.  Nick had made arrangements to attend the B. Allan Mackie School of Log Building near Prince George, British Columbia, for a two-week session.  So we packed and shipped several large boxes of goods back home to Minnesota.  We strategically packed the remaining staple items into the Olds.

I was excited to be leaving Alaska because I was very homesick. My brother was getting married in June and my dog Fairbanks was expecting puppies.

The plan was to drive east to Delta Junction, head through the Yukon Territory to Haines Junction, then cross the mountains to Haines on the coast where we would board the ferry. From there we would travel, getting on and off the ferry, exploring the towns of Skagway, Petersburg, Juneau and Ketchikan. At Prince Rupert, B.C., in Canada we would take the Trans-Canada Highway to the school near Prince George.

For us travel was not expensive. We cooked our meals on a Coleman stove, often utilizing a pop-up metal oven for baking muffins or oatmeal cookies, although Nick preferred the raw batter. We slept in the car. Fairbanks and I took the front seat and Nick the back. Actually, Nick often slept outside, bundled up, because he was tall and needed to stretch.

We left Fairbanks, Alaska, on Thursday, April 16 at 10 p.m. Seems we always left on these adventures in the bloody dark of night. Why not get up early and leave? We were young and spontaneous. We had no credit cards and very limited cash. Something awful could have happened. But it didn’t.

We arrived at the cabin in Delta around midnight. It was an eighth-mile hike down a wooded trail with a flashlight to actually reach the cabin.  We stayed there a day, visiting friends we knew we wouldn’t see in awhile.  Saturday we packed up and left for our adventure south!  The journal reveals we did this at 6:30 a.m. (I am surprised.) Good thing, because we did not realize what a long, long day we had ahead of us.

As the Olds headed toward customs at the Alaska/Yukon border I bopped along with those pink, sponge rollers in my hair because there was no electricity for a curling iron at the Delta cabin, where we’d come from. I was knitting a sweater in the car to pass the time. We got close to the border at Beaver Creek when Nick told me to put my knitting down as he thought I looked suspicious performing this activity. I must have hidden the pink rollers too, knowing they would further incriminate us. We ended up getting searched at the border but all was in order.

Further south we stopped at Kluane Lake in the Yukon Territory, pulled out the Coleman and heated up homemade stew. It was barren, windy and isolated, with only an occasional car traveling one way or the other. Mid-April is not tourist season in the Yukon. We were wearing winter coats and those green wool pants like our grandfathers wore.

Around 8:40 p.m., in the dark, we arrived at Haines Junction. We spoke to a man there who told us weather was getting bad up through the mountains and Chilkat Pass where we were headed.

He said Customs hadn’t closed the road yet so we continued, knowing it was still a three-hour drive to Haines.

I can remember it was so black as we climbed towards the pass. The trees became more sparse and the determined snow started getting heavier. The barren road seemed to go on forever and we did not meet one single car.  Drifts were beginning to form across the narrowing road as the wind had picked up. I noticed tall orange plow markers along the edges as we drove along. Nick told me the snow can get so deep that the markers had to be that high so the plow knew where to go. We were moving fast enough so the weight of the Olds was able to jam through the deepening drifts. Nick, usually calm, began verbalizing his worry.  “If the car gets stuck and buried, how will we climb out, how will the plow know we are here?” he said. It was harrowing, the darkness, the isolation, the howling wind. 

This went on until finally we spotted dim headlights in front of us through the whirling snow. “A car!” we yelled, then stopped to exchange reports with the driver. For us it would be more of the same but not too long until the treeline.

Pressing ahead we finally started to see some small trees, then more trees as we were descending down toward the coast and out of harm’s way. Exhausted, we crossed back through United States Customs at 11:45 p.m. We learned they had closed the road in Haines Junction due to the blizzard, right after we had left.

We slept at a wayside rest. Nick went outside under a tarp and Fairbanks and I took the front seat. It was cold; I was worked up and did not sleep well. In the morning, April 19, Easter, I awoke to the car gently rocking back and forth. Just a small earthquake! We drank some water, collected ourselves, then with Nick at the wheel and me at my knitting, we headed to the ferry and continued our journey.

Many Easters have come and gone since then. Nick and I peacefully divorced years ago and see each other from time to time. I will always appreciate the fact he got me out of Hoyt Lakes and we had the Alaskan adventures I never would have experienced otherwise. I learned how to scratch-cook real fine, chink a log cabin, knit, use sponge rollers, and build a good fire, to name a few. These days I use a curling iron, turn up a thermostat for heat, and am grateful to have a warm, dry place to lay my head.