Introduction

Dying for Gold

Early Goldstream
in Photos and Sound

In Search of Mushers

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Six Thousand Colored Neckties, 700 Sport Coats and a Cabin in Goldstream Valley

Blue Parka Man

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In Search of Mushers
By Nathan Stille

When I asked my friend T.J. Franklin, a former resident of Goldstream Valley, about the prevalence of dog mushing in the area, he told me that there were indeed many mushers. When I told him that I planned to drive around in the hills to find them, he said, “Be careful that you don’t get shot.” I could tell that he was at least half-serious. With Franklin’s warning vaguely echoing in the back of my head, I set off the next day down Farmer’s Loop Road, which took me a few miles north of Fairbanks.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and the snow trails on both sides of the road were teaming with snowmobiles and people trudging in snowshoes. My car passed a musher’s truck on the highway, instantly recognizable by the dogsled on top and the rack of small compartments built in the bed of the truck to hold the dogs. This was a good omen.

After driving seven miles down the road, I sighted my destination: Dog Mushers’ Hall. It is a small building that serves as a hangout and race venue for area mushers, including those from Goldstream Valley. I hoped to meet someone who could help me in my search.

As I parked my car among trucks and teams of dogs, a loudspeaker announcing race results startled me. The place was bustling with small children and harried-looking mothers.

Inside, I spoke to a friendly woman named Shannon Erhart. She told me that there were no Goldstream Valley mushers there today, as the Junior North-American Races were in full swing. Children from all across the United States and Canada were racing their dogs on the trails around Mushers’ Hall, and having a very good time.

Disappointed that my search was fruitless so far, I was somewhat cheered by a few names of Goldstream Valley mushers that Erhart was able to provide for me.
Twenty minutes perusing the phone book yielded no listings for the mushers, so I resolved to find a musher in his natural habitat.

Turning my car back up Farmer’s Loop road, I made a right on Ballaine Road and headed for Goldstream Valley, about five miles north of Fairbanks’ city limits.
As I traveled over the low hills and down to the valley, I was amazed at the snow that had accumulated here, at least a foot more than Fairbanks, where the temperature is often many degrees warmer.
I passed several side roads with names like “Yellow Snow Lane” and “Malamute Street.” This was definitely musher country.

On the left side of the street, I saw Ivory Jack’s bar and restaurant. In front were parked a blue truck and a red musher’s truck. After parking my car, I opened the heavy wooden door and went inside.

Three middle-aged men with heavy beards sat at the end of the bar drinking and talking beneath a haze of blue cigarette smoke. I took a seat two stools down from them, ordered a beer, and listened to their conversation while trying to look as if I was reading a newspaper someone had left behind.

One man with thick glasses began telling the others about a willow-branch fence that he was constructing for his dog yard.

A little too excitedly, I interrupted their conversation. “Hey are any of you mushers? Could I interview you?”
.
The men looked over at me warily, and man with the glasses said, “Who wants to know.”

Somewhat taken aback by his cold tone, I told him that I was a college student taking a journalism class.

The waitress, who had been exchanging barbs with the men and refilling their glasses, said, “Mike is a musher, but he’s shy.”

Mike at first declined to talk. He sat drinking, rolling cigarettes and then smoking them. I waited patiently for the alcohol that he was drinking to take effect. His friends soon left to go to a party.

We had a couple of beers, and he told me that I could interview him.
Mike only gave me his first name. He told me that he had been mushing in Goldstream Valley for over 20 years, arriving in Alaska from Kansas, where he had harvested wheat.

I told him that I was also from Kansas, and this seemed to break the ice.
I asked him about the state of mushing in Goldstream Valley today. He said over the 23 years he’s been here, mushing has only grown in the valley.
“The trails that I cut 15 years ago are always busy,” he said. “There’s a lot of mushers and even more dogs,”
Mike paused to roll another cigarette, and I wrote a few notes in my notepad. This seemed to bother him, so I put the notepad under the bar, where I was able to scribble unobserved.

Mike told me that he keeps 120 dogs. I was amazed. I asked him if he sells them, and he said, “No, I just keep them.” Feeding 120 dogs seemed like quite an expense for a hobby.

I asked him if he fed them salmon, as many mushers do. He said, “No, what I do is go around to all the butchers and get scraps, then I mix the scraps with rice and a couple of bags of cheap dog food. It costs about 30 dollars a day. All my money goes to my dogs, or to this,” he said, pointing to his beer.

He told me that in the 20-odd years that he had been a resident of Goldstream Valley, he had seen many changes. The biggest change, he said, has been snowmobiles on the trails. “It’s not the problem that it was a while ago.” He said that most mushers in the area have snowmobiles that they use to break trails, and that the dogs are used to them.

Mike said most snowmachiners pull over and are polite. He said that sometimes there are “Assholes that speed on the trails I built.” With a serious tone, he said that he would not hesitate to use his pistol to shoot a snowmobile that ran into his team. “If they kill one of my dogs, you can damn well bet I’m going to kill their sled.”
Angrily, he recounted a story of a North Pole musher who ran into a dog team and musher and then left them “for dead.”

“That guy would be shot if he did that to me” he added.

Mike finished his beer and teetered as he stood and asked me if I was a “narc or a cop or something.” I said that I wasn’t. I explained that I was just a student.

He asked me if I wanted to “go throw some axes.” Mike had decided to join his friends at a party, and he was inviting me. Unsure of my safety where axes, alcohol and possibly drugs were combined, I politely declined.

As I left, I asked him if he would have shot at me if I had knocked on his door. He said “Maybe.” I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

As I drove home, I could not help hoping that all the other mushers of Goldstream Valley were like Mike--individualistic, rough and maybe a tad bit insane.

But after asking around, I discovered that most other mushers, even in Goldstream Valley, are normal people who will offer you a cup of coffee if you knock on their door and not the business end of a shotgun.