The Johnston's of North Pole

Last local ride to Chatanika Lodge, a 75 mile day and enjoyable. Temps were 45 above on the return ride and I rode without my coat on all afternoon. Have to love it.

This was the best ride all season. 11 members showed up for breakfast and it was more than I had figured on. Dean (you all do remember our past president Mr. Allen) even showed up. Almost thought it was ghost at first .

Interactive map of the route we took

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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.