Sleeping standing on their heads? That’s just one of the things the Tomlinson men hadn’t anticipated when they headed north. Link to another story “Ft. Nelson, Chester Russell’s Passage” At the beginning of World War II, officials in Washington and Ottawa developed a propensity for dispatching men deep into the subarctic north to accomplish all …
Tag Archives: Canadian Rockies
True Masters of the Air
True masters of the air, bush pilots, flew in the subarctic north, and to do that they needed unique skills. Link to another story “Gillam Weather and a Legendary Bush Pilot” First, bush pilots needed to be true masters of the ground as well as the air. Suffering mechanical problems, needing to ground his plane, …
Nine Children
Nine children ranging from 1 year old to 20 along with both parents made it to Anchorage, Alaska from Mobile, Alabama in a 65 Chevy van along with a homemade utility trailer. David Feldhaus started his comment on my Steamboat Mountain story with those words. His family made that trip in 1969. The comment …
Angel of Cassiar
Angel of Cassiar they called her. A remote gold mining district in northern British Columbia, Cassiar attracted a party of 200 prospectors up from Nevada to try their luck. Nellie Cashman came with them, opened a boarding house, and set about prospecting just like the men. Strikes, Gold Strikes, in the Far North Unlike …
Steamboat Mountain
Steamboat mountain quite suddenly took the relatively flat British Columbia terrain and swept it into the sky. Soldiers had dealt with muskeg and rivers and forests of pine and spruce. Now Steamboat Mountain, towering three thousand feet above the surrounding valleys, introduced them to the Muskwa mountain range and the Northern Rockies. Did the terrain …
Stone Sheep
Stone Sheep, the sight of one—or two or three—perched on a ledge on a high rock cliff above the Alaska Highway will bring your vehicle to the side of the road and your camera to your eye just as surely as the sight of a grizzly. They turn craggy heads with great curved horns. Their …
Glaciers
Glaciers. As you travel north, the first one you see tells you that you have well and truly reached the subarctic region. You can scratch that off your bucket list. The Valdez Glacier It is summer, but a vast sheet of ice covers all but the peaks of the mountains towering in front of you. …
Bison
Bison? When an old bull bison with a ridiculous short beard and a head twice as big as his backside ignores you, you, by God, stay ignored. And, if he ignores you, his entire herd ignores you. Even if you bear down on them driving a massive tractor trailer truck, you had better be …
Blazing the Path of the Alcan
Blazing the 1800-mile path of the Alaska Highway, soldier topographers led the way into the subarctic wilds of Northern Canada and Alaska in 1942. The first road builders rushed into frigid British Columbia in March. The soldiers of the 29th and the 648th Topographic Battalions had come in February. Instead of maps, the topographers had …
Green Wood and Chester’s Solution
Green wood does not want to burn. Chester Russell and the soldiers of the 35th found no shortage of firewood as they gouged Alaska Highway out of the woods and over the mountains of British Columbia. But their rush north left no time to cut and stack wood, let alone let it dry and season. …