There is little doubt that winter is on its way. There is snow in the higher elevations. There is frost in the swamps.
However, the blueberries are still on the bush and they are still solid enough to pick. None of the ponds have iced over along the Denali Highway. The pintails, widgeon and shovelers have departed south, but mallards, scoters and a few teal are still hanging in there. There has not even been a spit of snow at the Maclaren Summit, and the lowest temperature at the Maclaren River bridge has been 28 degrees.
It must have been a year such as this that fooled the Maclaren party — which seemingly vanished while exploring the upper Susitna River in the early 1900s — into thinking the Maclaren country is benign.
History is vague and conflicting on the subject of Maclaren River exploration. I have researched as well as I am able and was fortunate to have met a couple of early pioneers who gave me word-of-mouth information.
Most accounts agree that Peter Monahan and Maclaren left Valdez early one summer, perhaps in 1901, with the objective of prospecting the upper Susitna River. Maclaren's full name is lost in the fog of history. I spoke with Monahan's granddaughter before she died, and she didn't know it. Her best memory was that Maclaren disappeared on the Maclaren River, never to be seen again.
The party arrived at the confluence of the Maclaren and Susitna rivers in midsummer. Monahan and at least one other headed up the Su toward Valdez Creek. Monahan is credited with the Valdez Creek gold discovery in 1903, although most early information indicates a few prospectors were already on site by the time Monahan showed up.
The telling question would be why the Maclaren/Monahan party set out for the Upper Su in the first place, if they had no prior knowledge of the country. Maclaren, by most accounts the organizer of the prospecting party, split off from Monahan and headed up the unknown Maclaren River.
Hard knowledge ends at this point. We do know that the prospectors planned to regroup at the confluence of the two rivers sometime in September. One account has them doing that and heading back to Valdez. We know that Monahan returned to the area the following season and spent the remainder of his life in the Valdez Creek mining district.
Another more intriguing story has Maclaren departing into the Alaska Range foothills of the upper Maclaren. The story is that Monahan sat at the junction of the two rivers as long as he dared before skedaddling back to Valdez with winter on his tail. Maclaren never showed. Supposedly, Monahan returned the following season and searched for Maclaren and the others without success.
There is support for this hypothesis. In either 1917 or 1918 — years are vague in old minds — Oscar Vogel and Slim Moore were beaver trapping along the Maclaren. During a conversation in the 1970s, Slim told me that he fell through the roof of an old cabin on the upper Maclaren — snow was over the roof, which was rotten. Slim found an old double-barrel shotgun in the cabin, and he and Oscar proceeded to pound the barrel end flat to make an ice chisel to replace one they had lost through the ice a day earlier.
The conjecture is that this was a cabin built by the Maclaren party to winter over. If that was the case, it was a poor choice. An easy autumn, such as the one we are experiencing this season, would have caribou and moose at the doorstep. Swans and ducks would be in abundance, the berries would be plentiful and on the bush. There would still be whitefish in the creeks. Maclaren would not be aware that he had best stock up — the plenty would soon depart.
Maclaren was recognized as a seasoned prospector, although "seasoned" in early Alaska meant he had a couple of years prospecting and traveling behind him. Reality is that he was pretty much a greenhorn.
I made a trip to the remains of the Upper River cabin in 1974. It had long collapsed by then and was just a moss-covered square. I excavated enough of it to find it rather hurriedly constructed, the corners not even pinned. I used a metal detector around the area, but found nothing.
Two or three guys could have wintered here and made it, or spent the last winter of their lives here. We can only guess from our murky vantage point of 100 years later.
As the last of the caribou hunters travel the Denali this year with their permits in hand, most don't think much of the late fall. After all, the weather in Anchorage and Fairbanks is similar.
But look around. The ptarmigan are white; their plumage is controlled by the length of the day, not cold. The diving ducks have moved to the larger lakes, which are the last to freeze. They know — they are sourdough. Winter will soon be in control along the Denali Highway.
John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family near Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.