Outdoors/Adventure

It’s beginning to look a lot like a real winter, so be careful

The winter of 2019-20 is shaping up to be the first real winter in a long while. The snow depth here looks like 1971. The temperature is similar to the winters of the 1980s. And wind? Fifteen years ago and more it was relatively common to have the Richardson Highway north of Paxson closed due to blowing snow and slides. Here we go again.

The Richardson Highway was closed Thursday due to slides. It was still impassable early Friday morning due to more slides and drifting snow. A friend and I attempted to travel from Delta Junction to Paxson on Thursday afternoon and had to turn back because of the conditions. Visibility near Trims Camp — Mile 218 — was zero-zero with one lane open down the center of the highway.

Our plan had been to open the trail between Paxson and the Maclaren on the Denali Highway. A few days ago the trail had been excellent. Twenty inches of snow plus 40 knots of wind changed things quite quickly.

The snow depth along the Denali is making for some potentially dangerous recreational conditions. The past several years of relatively low snow has led to complacency among many of those who use the area. Six feet of snow on the ground has changed all of that.

The east end of the Denali Highway is above timberline immediately out of Paxson. The willows, which have protected the roadway from major drifting the past few years, are long buried.

Powder snow at minus-20 moves immediately with the slightest of wind. I can recall spending two days behind a rock at Mile 17 in a blinding wind storm. Unable to move because of the winds and blowing snow, I remained pinned behind my boulder stomping my feet and shaking my hands to keep from frostbite. The wind finally quit and I walked into Paxson in minus-50-degree temperatures. That experience taught me respect.

Folks I talked with at Trims Maintenance Camp on Thursday had been stuck in a snowdrift just north of Paxson for nine hours. They had the foresight to have a full gas tank, thus were able to keep their vehicle running to stay warm.

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Preparation and caution are the keys to safe travel along the Alaska Range this season. If you are traveling the highway, either along the Parks or the Richardson through the Alaska Range passes, take a look at the current road report. The state of Alaska has a website that is regularly updated, or you can call 511. If you can’t remember the website, just Google “road conditions” and the highway name and you’ll get current conditions.

[Get real-time road and traffic conditions with the new Alaska 511 system]

I have learned not to trust the other weather sites. The NOAA weather station at Paxson is located on the airstrip in a location almost completely protected from the north wind. It is remotely operated, so there is no one in the area to add reality to the weather report. Thursday morning, with winds gusting in the 40s, the wind speed was reported as 12 mph. If it is blowing 15 at Paxson, the Tangle Lakes area will be impassable.

The west end of the Denali Highway has considerably more traffic. There are a few people living along the road, and Alpine Creek Lodge at Mile 68 is open for business. A fair amount of traffic regularly travels between Cantwell and Alpine.

There are roadside services on the Cantwell end of the Parks Highway — as opposed to virtually none on the east end of the Highway. There is also scattered timber along most of the west end of the Denali. Broken terrain between miles 134 and 68 helps protect the road from the 60-plus mph winds that can regularly sweep the open vistas on the Paxson end.

The word is this: Watch the weather closely. If conditions seem sketchy, don’t go. The best way to proceed safely is to put caution first. It is better to wait for a day or reschedule the trip for another weekend rather than spend a couple days recovering from a barely circumvented disaster.

John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives in Paxson with his family. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and a two-time winner of the Yukon Quest.

John Schandelmeier

Outdoor opinion columnist 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.

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