Addison Powell is second from the left. Caption from the book: “Five men pose by the float copper nugget, Chititu Creek, Nizina District, Alaska.” Photo taken in 1903 by the Miles Brothers.
Addison M. Powell was an adventurer, prospector, hunter, and a guide for Captain William R. Abercrombie’s 1898 Copper River Exploring Expedition, one of three military expeditions organized to explore the interior of the new territory of Alaska. His book Trailing and Camping in Alaska, subtitled Ten Years Spent Exploring, Hunting and Prospecting in Alaska – 1898 to 1909, was republished in its entirety by Northern Light Media in September, 2018. An edited excerpt, photos from the book:
Valdez
We landed, May 29, 1898, in the little tent town of Valdez, which is about three thousand miles north and west of San Francisco. At this time my only possessions were a year’s supply of provisions and twenty-five cents in money. The great Valdez glacier appeared to be at the edge of the little tent town, but really it was five miles away. The mountains appeared scarcely a mile from us, and from twelve to fifteen hundred feet high, yet they were from three to five miles distant and from three to five thousand feet in altitude.
About four thousand people had landed there, three thousand or more of them had crossed the glacier, and many had recrossed during the last month to return home disgusted. The hungry glacier had been the death of some of them and its cracks were gaping for more. We felt that we were up against the toughest proposition of our lives and those who had been there a month knew that we were.
Valdez as we left it.
Those soldiers had been detailed to explore the route from Valdez to the Yukon. They were conspicuous in their efforts, and of- ten returned from exploring trips without food and with very little clothing. Every out-going steamer was loaded down with the quitters, who, as prospectors, were helpless incompetents. To avoid being ridiculed, they pretended to be returning for horses, larger outfits or more assistance from home.
Hundreds daily trailed into town, so foot-sore, after traveling over that twenty-eight miles of solid ice, that their crippling walk caused them to be referred to as “The Glacier Striders.” Those who came over during the melting of the snow had lost their outfits, either while boating the Klutena rapids, or before they had arrived at Klutena Lake. The snow that covered the crevasses had become too rotten to be safe, and those who crossed told of jumping cracks with spring-poles. If they had slipped they would have been put in cold storage forever, hundreds of feet below.
A Glacier Crevasse
The glacier was a succession of sharp ridges, with deeply washed erosions on each side, which made them nearly impassable. Men who crossed over claimed that all of Alaska’s gold would not tempt them to do so again. They had felt secure while crossing in winter, but had not suspected the dangers that are presented in summer.
While some people were camped beside the trail on the glacier, near the foot of the mountain, they heard the approach of an avalanche. Most of them escaped, but eight were dug out from beneath that snow-slide and two were dead.
There was a little Llewellyn puppy dug from that snowslide. He came out with his head and tail up, and has had them up most of the time since. He lived to acknowledge me as his friend and master, for he became my trail companion for years. He is retired now on a life pension in California, and when we meet he acts as if he thought we were the two best dogs that ever ascended the Copper River.
“Little Dog Pete”
Excerpted from:
Trailing and Camping in Alaska, Ten Years Spent Exploring, Hunting and Prospecting in Alaska – 1898 to 1909, by Addison M. Powell.
Originally published in 1909 by Newold Publishing Company, New York, New York. Republished September, 2018 by Northern Light Media. 300 pages, 30 b/w photos, edited by Helen Hegener, $24.95 (plus $5.00 shipping). Click here to order via PayPal.
![Colony kids in a tent camp. Photograph by Willis T. Geisman for the A.R.R.C. [ASL-PCA-303, Mary Nan Gamble Collection, Alaska State Library]](http://matanuskacolony.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/fera-colony-kids-in-a-tent-camp-anch-mus-fera-303.jpg)
Excerpted from “A Mighty Nice Place,” The History of the 1935 Matanuska Colony Project, by Helen Hegener. Published in November, 2016 by Northern Light Media. 276 pages, 120 photos, 6″ x 9″ b/w format. Print book: $24.95 plus $5.00 shipping. 
In 1967, a 50-mile sprint sled dog race was run from Knik to Big Lake, in two 25-mile heats over a two-day period, with the race route including nine miles of the original Iditarod trail.
In his 1911 book, a two-volume history of arctic exploration titled Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, the reknowned Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen quotes from the fourteenth century Arabian chronicles of Ibn Batuta, a businessman trading near what is now Kazan in Russia. The Arabian dwelled with appreciation on the sight of sled dogs, noting that “Ibn Batuta (1302-1377) has no name for this people, any more than Abu’lfeda; but he calls their country ”the Land of Darkness’ and has an interesting description of the journey thither. He himself, he says, wished to go there from Bulgar, but gave it up, as little benefit was to be expected of it. That land lies 40 days’ journey from Biilgar, and the journey is only made in small cars drawn by dogs. For this desert has a frozen surface, upon which neither men nor horses can get foot- hold, but dogs can, as they have claws. This journey is only undertaken by rich merchants, each taking with him about a hundred carriages [sledges?], provided with sufficient food, drink and wood; for in that country there is found neither trees nor stones nor soil. As a guide through this land they have a dog which has already made the journey several times, and it is so highly prized that they pay as much as a thousand dinars [gold pieces] for one. This dog is harnessed with three others by the neck to a car [sledge?], so that it goes as the leader and the others follow it. When it stops, the others do the same.”
From 2007 to 2012 I travelled across Alaska to visit veteran mushers from the 1973 race who would share their memories of what has since become known as “The Last Great Race on Earth.” The bulk of my book is comprised of the verbatim words of these intrepid men who drove their teams on that first journey to Nome in 1973, captured through recorded and videotaped interviews and many notes and follow-up letters and emails. I am grateful to those who detailed their long-ago adventures, and I am equally grateful for the warm memories I brought away from our shared time together, when I would sit and listen, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, as the years fell away and musher after musher relived that great adventure in March of 1973.
The historic All Alaska Sweepstakes is the oldest organized distance sled dog race in the world, with records kept by the Nome Kennel Club dating back to the first race in 1908. The race, which was held from 1908 to 1917, and commemorated with 75th and 100th anniversary races in 1983 and 2008, is the subject of 
The route from Nome, on the south side of the Seward Peninsula, to the small community of Candle on the north side and return, is 408 miles, following the telegraph lines which linked camps, villages and gold mining settlements on the Peninsula. This route’s established communication lines allowed those betting on the outcome to track the race more easily from the comfort of saloons like the famed Board of Trade in Nome, where the Nome Kennel Club had been founded.
The photo-rich, full color book covers the race from the preliminary festivities such as the crowning of the Sweepstakes Queen, Janice Doherty, and the mushers’ bib drawing, to the historically-themed finisher’s banquet and the awards, not only of the beautiful championship trophy, but also the Alec “Scotty” Allan Humanitarian Award, and the Percy Blatchford “Spirit of the Race” award. Descriptive commentaries by Race Marshal and Lead Judge Al Crane; leaderboard designer and champion musher Jodi Bailey; and dedicated race fan Marcia Claesson, who shared how the race was tracked by mushing enthusiasts from around the world, add depth and perspective to the exciting narrative of this iconic race.
Alaska & the Klondike, Early Writings and Historic Photographs, compiled and edited by Helen Hegener, and published in 2018 by Northern Light Media, is an anthology of selected writings from a dozen northland classics by early explorers and travelers in the territories of Alaska and Canada’s Yukon at the turn of the 20th century.
Northern Light Media 