Northern Light Media

The Great Alone

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Helen Hegener

Lance Mackey is one of the greatest dog drivers of all time. Four-time Yukon Quest Champion. Four-time Iditarod Champion. Winner of the Humanitarian Award for excellence in sled dog care for both races, winner of numerous awards over the years in dozens of races. Twice nominated for ESPN’s prestigious Excellence in Sports Performance Award. A true dogman. The Dogfather.

Greg Kohs is an accomplished filmmaker. Winner of ten Emmy Awards®, he has produced films and commercials for clients such as Google, Apple, Nike, Mastercard, Disney, and others. His feature films include the award-winning Song Sung Blue, described by the late Roger Ebert as “Superb.” His films have been described as “strong stories with visually beautiful and honest imagery,” and “about people who pursue their own passions in life.”

Lance’s father, Dick Mackey, wins the 1978 Iditarod

The combination of Lance Mackey’s life story and Greg Kohs’ filmmaking talents has resulted in a spectacular film, The Great Alone, which seizes the audience right from the opening scene. It’s a brilliant moment: A gray-haired man works out on a treadmill while an excited radio announcer describes the finish of a sled dog race. Those familiar with the history will recognize 1978 Iditarod Champion Dick Mackey listening to the closest-ever finish in Nome, when he beat Rick Swenson by one second and then collapsed on top of his sled in exhaustion. The film moves to old footage of the moment, and standing beside Dick are his sons, 7-year-old Lance and 6-year-old Jason, wide-eyed and taking it all in.

Lance Mackey and his father

Without so much as a mention of Lance’s own historic achievements, the film begins telling the story of the two young boys. They lived a hardscrabble Alaskan childhood; when their parents separated their tough-as-nails mom made sure dogs remained a part of their life, and sled dog races assured they would grow up to be mushers like their dad. That part of the film is hard to watch, as Kohs lays bare the heartache and anguish of a broken family; the hurt, pain, and unanswered questions.

The years go by, the young boys grow up. Lance becomes a commercial fisherman in the Bering Sea, and he admits of cowering behind the wheelhouse after a fearsome storm in fear for his life, certain he’s going to die and swearing never again if he makes it back to port. But then he collects $5,500 for a month’s work and smiles… The money and the lifestyle take him in what he only describes as a bad direction.

More years pass, Lance marries his high school sweetheart and they build a cabin on the Kenai Peninsula. The wedding photos of the couple, and the cabin they built with only a handsaw and backwoods ingenuity, are priceless. Lance begins collecting dogs.

The story moves back into familiar territory again. Lance starts entering and winning races, and eventually he enters the Big One, the Iditarod. Halfway to Nome he calls his mom to tell her things are going wonderfully! And then, three-quarters of the way to Nome he calls her again; something is wrong. Once again the film becomes difficult to watch, as Lance talks candidly about the cancer. When he tells of the moment when he realized that he might not make it out of surgery, that he could be saying goodbye to his family for the last time, the emotional tension is palpable. There’s simply no way to watch it without a lump in your throat.

Lance, his mother Kathy, and brother Jason, 2007

Lance survives, of course, and the underlying thread of the film, the 2013 Iditarod, continues, checkpoint by checkpoint. Lance’s life story continues as well, and he wins the 2007 Iditarod. It’s another emotionally-charged moment as his brother Jason grabs him in a great bearhug and Lance tells him “Life just changed!” He tells his mother “Dreams DO come true!” and when his father, arriving late, steps onstage at the mini-convention center it’s a moment we know Lance has waited his whole life for. His father is proud of him.

Lance’s 2007 win was tempered by many of his mushing peers saying it was a fluke, he got lucky, it would never happen again, and that sets up a wonderful moment in the film when Lance talks about their negative attitudes and then resolutely states, “Watch this!”

The Great Alone premiered in Anchorage on March 4. It’s scheduled to show in Fairbanks on March 8. For future news and updates about the film follow the Facebook page or Lance Mackey’s Comeback Kennel website.

Posted in DVD & Video, Sled Dog Races | Tagged Alaska, Dick Mackey, Greg Kohs, Iditarod, Jason Mackey, Lance Mackey, mushing, mushing history, Nome, Northern Light Media, sled dog race, sled dog racing, The Great Alone | 7 Comments

1973 Iditarod, The First Race

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Helen Hegener

“W. A. Dikeman and Charles Peterson reported by Iditarod Nugget as “First Mushers Over the Iditarod Trail: Taking 45 Days from Seward to Otter, they meet several others on the trail including Harry Johnson and Bob Griffis.” (Iditarod Nugget, December 28, 1910)

1973 map of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, from the Anchorage Daily News

The first chapter of the newest book from Northern Light Media, The First Iditarod: Mushers’ Tales from the 1973 Race, by Helen Hegener, shares the history of the Iditarod Trail:

“Before there was an Iditarod Trail there were shorter routes and trails used by the Native peoples of the land; the Dena’ina and Deg Hit’an Athabaskan Indians of south-central Alaska, and the Inupiaq and Yup’ik Eskimos farther north. They were not mushing trails, however. The early peoples viewed dogs as useful for tracking game and sometimes hauling travois-like sleds, but mushing teams of dogs as we know it came later, during the gold rush of the late 1800s, when the prospectors and miners needed a reliable mode of transportation and freight hauling.”

The book details how gold was discovered in Nome, Fairbanks, and near Ruby, recounts the first official scouting of the trail in the winter of 1908 by a four-person crew headed by Colonel Walter L. Goodwin, and then reports a strike was made at Iditarod:

“On Christmas day, 1908, two prospectors, William A. Dikeman and John Beaton, both veterans of the Klondike gold rush, discovered gold near the Iditarod River. The last great gold rush was on, and between 1910 and 1912, 10,000 gold seekers came to Alaska’s ‘Inland Empire,’ taking $30 million worth of gold from the ground.”

The book continues:

“In 1910 the Alaska Road Commission once again sent Colonel Walter L. Goodwin to follow the Iditarod Trail, this time brushing and mapping the route with ten men and 42 dogs in six dog teams. Starting from Nome on November 9, 1910, they surveyed and recorded the trail, and located potential sites for roadhouses, keeping a log of the distances covered with cyclometers attached to the sides of their dogsleds. Goodwin and his men reached Seward on February 25, 1911, having blazed the Seward to Nome Mail Trail, as it was then known.”

The book shares the history of mail carriers on the Iditarod Trail, the First Annual Iditarod Sweepstakes Race in 1910, the glory days of the trail when hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold traveled over it, the 1925 Serum Run to Nome on the northern section of the trail, the trail’s fall into disuse, the reclaiming of the trail by Joe Redington Sr. and the U.S. Army, and how Joe and Vi Redington helped the Iditarod Trail became a part of the National Historic Trails system.

The First Iditarod: Mushers’ Tales from the 1973 Race, by Helen Hegener.

Published in March, 2015 by Northern Light Media. 154 pages. ISBN-13 978-0-9843977-6-1 Format 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, text only, no photos. $20.00 plus $5.00 shipping and handling to U.S. addresses only. Additional postage required for foreign orders.

Postal orders can be mailed to Northern Light Media, Post Office Box 298023, Wasilla, Alaska 99629. Thank you!

Posted in Alaska History, Books | Tagged Alaska, Helen Hegener, Iditarod, Iditarod Trail, mushing history, Nome, Northern Light Media, Serum Run | 1 Comment

The Beautiful Matanuska Valley

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Helen Hegener

The Beautiful Matanuska Valley is a tribute to a very special part of the Last Frontier, a unique valley surrounded by towering mountains, bordered on its southern edge by the tidewaters of Knik Arm, a branch of Cook Inlet, crossed by sparkling streams and great rivers and dotted with thousands of crystal clear lakes. This valley is also the home of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, one of Alaska’s fastest-growing towns, and some of the richest historical sites in the state.

The book includes chapters on Palmer, Wasilla, and other communities within the Valley, both still-existing and long-gone. Stories and photos of Knik, Sutton, Matanuska, Big Lake, Chickaloon and others tell the story of the founding, settling, and development of the area, while details about the Valley’s geography, geology, transportation, agriculture, mining, recreation, tourism, and history – highlighted by hundreds of full-color photographs – showcase the many wonders of the beautiful Matanuska Valley.

Shown in all four seasons, with significant landmarks, attractions, historic sites and other points of interest, this book is a terrific gift and a delightful keepsake for anyone who lives in, travels through, or loves southcentral Alaska’s beautiful Matanuska Valley!

Waterfront at Knik, circa 1914, photo by P. S. Hunt

The Beautiful Matanuska Valley

140 pages, full color, 8.5″ x 11″ paperback, published in 2013, maps, resources, index and photo index. 424.95 plus $5.00 shipping.

$24.95

Posted in Books | Tagged Alaska, Helen Hegener, Iditarod, Knik, Matanuska, Northern Light Media, Palmer, Wasilla | 1 Comment

2015 Yukon Quest

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Helen Hegener

This gallery contains 24 photos.

More Galleries | Tagged Alaska, Brent Sass, Central, Helen Hegener, mushing video, Northern Light Media, sled dog race, sled dog racing, sled dogs, Yukon Quest | Leave a comment

The First Iditarod

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Helen Hegener

“Musher after musher agrees that no one – racers or officials – knew what to expect.” ~Bill Sherwonit in Iditarod: The Great Race to Nome (Alaska Northwest Books, 1991)

First Iditarod 2nd Ed This book is the result of several years of researching, interviewing, and writing, beginning with an idea which took shape in 2007. But one could really say it began long before that, because my first interest in the Iditarod came in late 1972, when, as a sprint-racing fan, I began hearing thin reports of some mushers in Wasilla meeting to discuss an unprecedented 1,000 mile race across Alaska. The very idea was astonishing, unbelievable, incomprehensible. Who in the world would race their sled dogs one thousand miles? Was it even possible? Would the dogs survive? Would the mushers?

Over the years an aura has developed around that first race, and most fans know the lore and the rudiments of the story, how it was Joe Redington Sr.’s pie-in-the-sky dream, how he wrangled others into sharing the dream with him and doing the groundwork necessary to make it happen. The history of how the race began can be found in almost every book about the event, because it’s a darned good story, colorful and compelling and full of true-life characters and exciting adventures. But the mushers’ unique individual stories are little-known.

Several years ago I set about tracking down and visiting the remaining mushers from the 1973 race who would share their stories, their memories of what it was like to be one of the original pioneers setting out on what has since become known as “The Last Great Race on Earth.” I have not included all of the still-living mushers’ stories here; as many of them have written their own books, and many others did not reply to my inquiries. I have also not included much about subsequent races; for that story I would refer readers to the excellent recently-published book titled Iditarod: The First Ten Years, by a group known as The Old Iditarod Gang, comprised of those who lived that history. They have achieved a herculean effort and produced a seven-pound marvel of a book. Find a copy.

Much of my book is comprised of the verbatim words of mushers who made that first journey to Nome in 1973, captured through recorded and videotaped interviews conducted over a span of several years. I am very grateful to the men who shared their long-ago adventures with me, and I am grateful as well for the delightful memories I brought away from our time together.

As I transcribed my recordings for this book, I was once again caught up in each musher’s very contagious sense of wonderment and awe as he described and discussed what he and all of the other mushers had accomplished so long ago. More than once a voice would falter and break, and a long pause would follow. There was a very reverent quality to the way they each shared their memories of that first race.

It was one for the ages.

“And they still don’t know what happened, because no one’s ever asked us.” ~Ford Reeves, who teamed up with Mike Schreiber to run the 1973 Iditarod

The First Iditarod, The 1973 Race from Anchorage to Nome, by Helen Hegener, a revised edition of the 2015 book, published by Northern Light Media. 199 pages. Format 6″ x 9,″ b/w illustrations, bibliography, resources, indexed. $24.00 plus $5.00 shipping and handling. Foreign orders please use Amazon. Click here to order via PayPal.

Postal orders can be mailed to Northern Light Media, Post Office Box 870515, Wasilla, Alaska 99687-0515.

Thank you!

Posted in Alaska History, Books, Sled Dog Races | Tagged 1973 Iditarod, Alaska, Helen Hegener, Iditarod, Iditarod Trail, mushing, mushing history, Northern Light Media, sled dog race, sled dog racing, sled dogs | 1 Comment

On Cover Designs

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Helen Hegener

At some point in writing each of my books I’ll take a break from the writing and play with the cover design. This isn’t just an exercise in graphic arts, the process of putting the book cover together often helps pull the entire project together, sometimes giving it a focus and a direction which may have been missing before.

This certainly happened with my book about the 1935 Matanuska Colony Project. I’d been so focused on getting the history right and double-checking all of the conflicting references I’d found in my research that I had lost touch with the true heart of the story, which was the 200 families who took the U.S. government up on their offer to come to a new land and begin a new life. Looking through the photos of men holding their children close and mothers growing gardens for their families behind canvas tents, I felt a new reverence for what they’d gone through, what they’d sacrificed. Working on that cover helped me regain a sense of what a tremendous undertaking this was, and how much of the Project was blazing new ground in ways no one could have imagined.

Also considered

About halfway through my newest book, about the 1973 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, I began tinkering with ideas for the cover. I knew I wanted warm colors, golds and browns, to evoke a sense of history. And I wanted a single black-and-white photo, again to convey the history and the subject visually. A book’s content should be immediately evident when someone picks up a book and looks at the cover, as their interest can be won or lost in that critical moment.

My first cover attempt, right, utilized a photo I’d taken at the Northern Lights 300 sled dog race a couple of years ago. The musher is my friend Sebastian Schnuelle, we used the same image on many graphics for the race, and I never intended for the photo to be much more than a placeholder and a reminder of the direction I wanted to go with the cover.

By the time the book was ready to publish I’d played with the concept a little more, and changed the photo to a very similar one I’d taken several years ago at the Copper Basin 300, of a musher crossing Meier’s Lake (left). It seemed perfect, and I considered the cover finished and went back to finishing the book.

Fast-forward ahead to the finished book. I was reviewing the proofs, ready to release the book to the public, when I realized I was just not as happy with the cover as I’d been several weeks before. The concept was good, but the photo was off. It only took me an hour to find the right image, a photo of a dogteam moving through snow which captures the essence of the first race perfectly. For many of the 1973 mushers the race became a slow slog through deep snow, walking ahead of their teams on snowshoes, and this grainy, blurry, washed-out image was exactly the right one.

The First Iditarod: Mushers’ Tales from the First Race, by Helen Hegener. Published in March, 2015 by Northern Light Media. 152 pages. ISBN-13 978-0-9843977-6-1 Format 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, text only, no historic images or photographs. $20.00 plus $5.00 shipping and handling to U.S. addresses only. Additional postage required for foreign orders.

Postal orders can be mailed to Northern Light Media, Post Office Box 298023, Wasilla, Alaska 99629. Thank you!

Posted in Books | Tagged Helen Hegener, Iditarod, mushing history, mushing video, Northern Light Media, sled dog racing, sled dogs | Leave a comment

Iditarod Adventures

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Helen Hegener

Iditarod Adventures: Tales from Mushers Along the Trail, by Lew Freedman, illustrations by Jon Van Zyle (Alaska Northwest Books, 2015).

In this splendid collection of profiles and ‘tales of the trail,’ written by the mushers themselves, twenty-three top Iditarod and Yukon Quest mushers explain why they have chosen this rugged lifestyle, sharing stories and experiences they have endured along the trails.

Through bone-chilling cold, across countless frozen rivers and lakes, over mountain ranges and across the icy Bering Sea, their most exciting – and sometimes frightening – moments are shared with clarity and honesty in this book. Also featured are profiles of several key race officials, administrators, volunteers, and a few classic Iditarod characters.

“From Unalakleet it normally takes like six hours to Koyuk. I think it took me nine and a half and I already had a long run into Shaktoolik before. It was a monster long run. When I got to Koyuk Lance was already there. The only other thing moving behind me was John Baker. Nobody else wanted to start out. I’m in second place and that was pretty cool. But that’s when my racing instinct wasn’t there enough. I thought I could win it because Lance was still there. Actually, Lance came out and talked to me. With the experience he had he probably knew I wasn’t trying hard to catch him. Lance stayed another three and a half hours, I think, but I ended up staying there for twelve hours.” ~Sebastian Schnuelle

Posted in Books | Tagged Iditarod, Iditarod Adventures, Iditarod Trail, Lew Freedman, Northern Light Media, Sebastian Schnuelle, sled dog racing, Yukon Quest | 1 Comment

The 1973 Iditarod

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Helen Hegener

The First Iditarod: Mushers’ Tales from the 1973 Race, by Helen Hegener. Published in March, 2015 by Northern Light Media. 156 pages. ISBN-13 978-0-9843977-6-1 Format 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, text only, no photos. $20.00 plus $5.00 shipping and handling to U.S. addresses only. Additional postage required for foreign orders.

Postal orders can be mailed to Northern Light Media, Post Office Box 298023, Wasilla, Alaska 99629. Thank you!

Posted in Alaska History, Books | Tagged 1973 Iditarod, Bill Sherwonit, George Attla, Helen Hegener, Herbie Nayokpuk, Iditarod, Joe Redington, mushing history, Northern Light Media, Old Iditarod Gang, sled dog race | Leave a comment

Yukon Quest Checkpoint 101

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Helen Hegener

Driving up the western flank of the White Mountains one passes the colorful Yukon Quest checkpoint of 101, so named because it is, in fact, 101 miles from Fairbanks on the 161-mile long Steese Highway. Starting out as only a dog drop for the race, the site was granted full checkpoint status a few years ago.

The checkpoint sits at the base of the climb to Eagle Summit, about which Hudson Stuck wrote in 1916: “The Eagle Summit is one of the most difficult summits in Alaska. The wind blows so fiercely that sometimes for days together its passage is almost impossible. … The snow smothers up everything on the lee side of the hill, and the end of every storm presents a new surface and an altered route. … there is no easier pass and no way around.”

My friends and I stopped at the 101 checkpoint on this year’s Yukon Quest, and I snapped a few photos [All photos by Helen Hegener/Northern Light Media]:

Entry corner and wood stove

The kitchen and cooking area of the main cabin.

Back corner of the kitchen area

Bunkroom, to the left

Bunkroom, to the right

Communications shack from the main cabin

Longtime checkpoint manager Peter Kamper, photographer Albert Marquez at the table..

Posted in Sled Dog Races | Tagged 101 checkpoint, Albert Marquez, Eagle Summit, Peter Kamper, Steese Highway, Yukon Quest | Leave a comment

Leonhard Seppala’s Cabin

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Helen Hegener

Leonard Seppala with his lead dog Togo

The legendary Alaskan dog musher Leonhard Seppala, who won the All Alaska Sweepstakes three times and played a key role in delivering the life-saving serum to Nome in 1925, lived in many places, from Norway to Nome, Maine, and Seattle, and, for a time in the 1930’s and ’40’s, in a log cabin on a hillside in Chatanika, northeast of Fairbanks.

Fascinated by this bit of information, my friend Albert Marquez and I spent a long time searching and researching the location of this cabin, and Albert communicated with the noted artist and writer Ray Bonnell, who writes a history column for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

In his splendid book, Sketches of Alaska, Ray Bonnell describes the cabin near the Fairbanks Exploration Company’s Chatanika Gold Camp:

Leonhard Seppala’s cabin at Chatanika

“According to ‘Historic Resources in the Fairbanks North Star Borough,’ the Seppalas built a small 16-by-16-foot log cabin in the early 1930s just east of the newly established FE Company camp at Chatanika. They expanded the cabin over time. Photos from the 1940s show the cabin with a shed addition to the rear, along with a white picket fence and a huge flower garden. Later another small cabin was tacked onto the addition’s east end.”

Ray was kind enough to share the location with Albert, and on our way to the Yukon Quest checkpoints of Central and Circle we stopped to take a look and get some photos of the F.E. Gold Camp and Seppala’s cabin. As Ray noted in his article, there have been additions made to the original small cabin, but there is no mistaking the structure, which sits on a rise above the old road, with beautiful old birch and spruce trees in front of it.

F.E. Co. Gold Camp at Chatanika

The Historic Fairbanks Exploration Company Gold Camp, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is about 23.5 miles out of town on the Old Steese Highway. It was built between 1923-25 as the original bunkhouse and dining hall for the men who worked on Chatanika’s old Gold Dredge 3.

The gold dredge is still there, and so are lots of mining equipment. It has been estimated that $70 million dollars was removed by the FE Gold Co. there between 1926 and 1957. At that time, the camp was larger than Fairbanks with over 10,000 residents.

Another cabin near the F.E. Co. Gold Camp.

A Wikipedia listing details the gold camp today: “The Chatanika Gold Camp is a historic gold mining camp at Mile 27 3/4 of the Steese Highway in Chatanika, Alaska. The camp is set on about 49 acres (20 ha) over looking Cleary Creek, and consists of thirteen buildings as well as a scattering of old mining tools and equipment. The largest of the buildings are two bunkhouses, finished in corrugated metal. The camp was built in 1925 by the Fairbanks Exploration Company (FEC), which also dug the nearby Davidson Ditch to supply water for the operation of the gold dredges. The Chatanika Camp was the largest of the FEC’s mining camps in the Fairbanks area. Five of the surviving buildings date to the initial construction period. The camp was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.”

Seppala’s cabin again

Also at the Wikipedia site is an article about the Davidson Ditch, a 90 mile conduit built in the 1920s to supply water to gold mining dredges in central Alaska. It was the first large-scale pipeline construction project in Alaska, designed to divert water from the Chatanika River at a point below the junction of Faith and McManus Creeks to hydraulic sluicing/stripping operations at Cleary and Goldstream, just north of Fairbanks. Ray Bonnell wrote a very interesting article about the pipeline.

A gold dredge near the F.E. Co. Gold Camp

Within the lengthy Wikipedia history of its construction is this note about the famous musher: “In the first year after the ditch’s opening in May 1928, it was beset by problems. Numerous leaks and breakages occurred, often causing work stoppages at the dredges and mining operations that relied on its water. Eventually, FE Co. managers instituted a 24-hour watch of Davidson Ditch. Watchmen were employed to patrol its length, perpetually examining it for leaks and problems. In the winter, it was patrolled by dog team. Famed musher Leonhard Seppala was employed in this capacity by FE Co. and was named the chief watchman of the ditch. Seppala had telephone lines laid between watch cabins stationed every 15 to 20 miles along the route. These allowed for quick repairs in the event of damage or for quick reaction if the water level became too high.”

Seppala’s cabin was located just east of the F.E. Gold Camp, along the old Chatanika Highway. It is privately owned.

Leonhard Seppala mushing dogs near Chatanika, circa 1947: