Veteran mushers blindsided by storm during Kobuk 440 thearcticsounder.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thearcticsounder.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Stacks of snow still remain in the Interior, but not everyone is chagrined
Print article The swans are in Paxson. I bet they are surprised by the four feet of snow on the ground. Friday night they will get another big surprise if it actually hits the 30 below that is in the forecast. It is hard to believe it is almost mid-April. In Kotzebue, Kobuk 440 mushers got a dose of Alaska reality when a nasty ground blizzard obliterated the trail and visibility. All who spent their recreation time out-of-doors, should by now realize that Alaska has seven months of winter and five months of fall. We had friends from Wisconsin visit last year, and they left believing that Alaska “summer” is a myth. Who in the heck likes summer anyway?
Print article Wind blows over Jeff King s resting dog team between Ambler and Shungnak during the Kobuk 440 Sled Dog Race on April 4, 2021. (Robin Gage photo) After he lost the race trail, Jeff King stopped his dog team and draped his sleeping bag over his head to block the battering wind and blowing snow. He was somewhere between the villages of Ambler and Shungnak in Alaska’s Arctic northwest competing in the Kobuk 440 Sled Dog Race. Conditions ranged from howling to furious. The last few hours took exhaustive effort to move straight into fierce headwind. So when King stopped seeing trail markers, he thought better than to guess about how to correct his course.
In my little corner of the state, we have a lot of snow this year. A whole lot. We ve shoveled off sections of the roof more than once after giant curls of icy snow threatened to take out the windows.
The piles are completely blocking many of my downstairs windows, and the path to the house is more of a tunnel, making future shoveling efforts more like a javelin throw operation with each shovelful of snow that needs to be catapulted over the 6-foot-high snow banks.
So far, the sun that has shone hasn t been warm enough to make a dent in all but the darkest of southern-facing surfaces. I ve been scattering ashes and coffee grounds like crazy, but the piles remain steadfast between me and my dreams of spring activities.