Will came home for Christmas break and we began to get ready to go to the cabin. First order of business - how to get there. Our cabin is twenty miles from the nearest road so we can't just drive. If we fly in we could pick any day to go, weather permitting, which leaves our schedule flexible. But someone, probably Will, would have to snowmachine the twenty miles to the muskeg near the cabin to groom the snow for a landing strip. After he packs the snow down with the snow machine we would have to wait a day for it to set up. We probably would need at least three flights to get us and all our gear in. We probably would have to leave a lot of stuff home.
We could also pick any day to go if we snow machine the 20 miles up the Susitna. But we only have two machines in town. The others are at the cabin. That means someone, usually me, will have to ride on the back of the sled. The sled is designed for that with a nice little platform between the runners to stand on and a good sturdy handle to grab hold of. But someone on the back of the sled adds extra weight to the sled which will already be too heavy with all the gear we will be bringing. We could take two sleds, one for each machine, and divide the load but the sleds would still be heavy. Heavy sleds become a problem at certain junctures along the trail where railroad bridges cross the creeks flowing into the Susitna. You have to get onto the tracks to go over the bridges or risk going down into the creek. Normally the creek will have enough ice covered with snow to make this doable. It's getting up out of the creek that's the problem. We could easily get stuck and have to unhook the sled so the machine could get out, then carry the boxes and bundles up the creek bank, then push and pull the sled up, rehook the sled, reload the gear, and do that each time we came to a bridge, about six times at least. In the end we will all be sweltering in our winter gear, not a good situation in minus 2 degrees. So we use the railroad bridges instead. Dan and Will have the procedure of getting onto the tracks down to a science. Without particularly slowing down you have to aim the machine at the rails in such a way as to get both skis on the tracks with out one getting hung up on a rail. At the same time the passenger, yours truly, has to hop off the moving sled at just the right moment, not to soon, not too late. The whole maneuver has to happen in such a way that the sled doesn't get caught by the rails, setting up a situation where the snow machine is now idling in the middle of the train tracks while you are trying to lift the heavy front end of the sled over the rails. More than a few machines have lost this battle with an oncoming train.
There is also the river bank to make the trip interesting. I learned about "hiking out" on a sailboat in Northport Harbor and never could have imagined that I would one day practice that same dynamic on a snowmachine sled along the Susitna River in Alaska. At certain stretches along the route to the cabin the snow machine trail narrows to follow the edge of the river bank. If there is not enough of well packed snow the sled tends to want to slide down the bank. There is little danger of it going into the river since it is securely hooked to the machine which keeps moving forward but it causes extra drag for the machine, not good, and it leaves me hanging on for dear life with my heart in my mouth, not unlike those scary sails in Northport Harbor. I could easily end up in the river if I don't hold on. So I hike out putting all my weight on the inside runner leaning the sled away from the river bank until the trail broadens and I'm back to easy riding. While this all leaves me feeling very accomplished it still can get old.
At our age Dan and I gravitate to easy. So we pick the last option. We will take the train.The Alaska Railroad passenger train runs north from Anchorage to Fairbanks on Saturdays and south on Sundays.
It will pick us up in Talkeetna and drop us off any where along the tracks we want to go. We will have to give up the convenience of going when we want but we will have the added advantage of being able to load anything we want in the baggage car so we will be spared the uncomfortable decision of leaving things behind. We can relax and watch the countryside go by. We can sit and chat with friends and neighbors who are doing what we are doing, wish everyone Merry Christmas, get up to date on all the local news with our long time friend the train conductor . We can be warm. And I can have that momentary secret delight in the awed expressions of winter tourists on their way north to see the aurora who can't believe we are getting off in the middle of nowhere with nothing but wilderness as far as the eye can see.