Of course I need to start this post with Denali. Denali is the highest mountain in North America, at 6,190 metres. Its name originates from the Koyokon word for “tall” or “high”, and is often referred to as the Great One. From the late 1800s onwards, the name Mount McKinley started being used in the newspapers, and finally in 1917 this name was formally adopted. Despite the fact that in 1975 the state of Alaska changed the name of the…
… the sled dogs, that is. There is no doubt that the highlights of my trip are all centred on the dogs; visiting them before the start of the Iditarod; watching them leap into action when it was their turn; being at a checkpoint when they arrived; witnessing the love and care given to them by their musher; and even having our own team when we ran dogs ourselves. Before the ceremonial start of the race in Anchorage, the mushers…
As with all my other trips, I have done extensive reading in preparation for my trip to Alaska. As the departure date approached, and the pile of books grew, I can reflect how the whole body of reading has developed my knowledge and understanding of what Alaska is about – its history, it’s people, its wonders and its challenges. So, I have decided to share my list, including a brief overview, plus my favourite quotes from some of the books….
I’m nearing the end of the research for my trip – and just as well as I leave in just a few days! So, it was great that another trip buddy ventured up some information on the trees we might encounter in Alaska. (Thanks, John!) This is not an area which would have normally beckoned me to write about. But as I started reading, I became intrigued about some of the snippets of information I was coming across. I still…
I realised that there was one more large animal of Alaska which I needed to include! Caribou are a medium-sized member of the deer family and stand about 3.5 feet tall at the shoulder. Females (cows) can weigh up to 300 pounds, while large males (bulls) are about twice that size. Most caribou are medium-brown or grey, but coloration varies widely from nearly black to almost white. Their winter coat is somewhat lighter than their summer coat. Caribou are the…
Welcome to the second post of Big Beasts of Alaska! Thank you, Claire, for your research! Characteristics and living habits I was wanting to start this post by describing musk oxen as large, stocky shaggy-haired animals. But then I read that bulls grow to an average of 5 ft tall, and cows to an average of only 4 ft tall. So, they are not the huge animals which the photos imply after all. (Even though they weigh anywhere from 220…
When I started preparing for this post I developed a plan on how I thought it might flow. Then I read this article written by Mike Gaffney and Ray Barnhardt at the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and my plan went out the window. It was not so much that I had been going down the wrong track. It was more that I realised that there was a much more interesting way to approach the topic. In their…
Welcome to the first post in my Big Beasts of Alaska series. An expedition buddy, who is extremely knowledgeable about flora and fauna, and who is also on this Iditarod trip, kindly offered to contribute to my website, by researching and writing about some of the animals we are likely to encounter on our trip. (Thanks, Claire!) Claire is starting with moose, which is the state land mammal of Alaska. Moose derives from the Algonquin Indian word moz, meaning ‘Twig-eater’…
Archaeologists believe that humans crossed from Siberia to America via the Bering Land Bridge at various times between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago. These groups lived a subsistence lifestyle by hunting and trapping the Ice Age animals which populated the area; woolly mammoths, musk oxen, giant bison, saber-tooth cats. Later groups included the ancestors of two prominent current day cultures- the Athabascan Indians and the Eskimos – who waged wars against each other for generations before European contact. These conflicts…
In 1925 an outbreak of Diptheria in Nome threatened the lives of the residents while at the same time gripping the nation with the ensuing race against time to get antitoxin to the town. To find out more about this extraordinary story, including the misconceptions about the roles of the sled dogs, Balto and Togo, I read the book. “The Cruelest Miles” by Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury. Some believe that the Iditarod Dog Sled Race is a reconstruction of…