Avalanches give no warning sounds; they destroy almost everything in their path, splintering trees two feet thick, demolishing power lines, everything. When the fallen trees are caught up in the wet snow and the whole mess crashes down the slopes until it comes to rest, it becomes like concrete with metal bars in it for strength. Avalanches are most frequent on slope angles between thirty and forty-five degrees; they’re called slab avalanches and can travel at speeds approaching ninety miles per hour.
This season, the base under all this heavy, unstable snowpack formed around Christmas. After that, it warmed up into the forties and those twenty inches compressed, melted, and condensed into an icy base of about five inches. Then it got cold and the base froze. This base was somewhat like a hockey-rink ice surface, most unstable to the snow above on the moderate slopes. The steepest slopes did not allow the snow to build up; the flatter ones were not steep enough to create an avalanche. Then some loose and dry snow fell, and on top of that a slab of heavy snow, the type we had been getting night after day after night recently.
It seemed as if we had gotten a couple more feet since Julianne had gone to school this morning. Now, around lunchtime, it was storming wickedly. We could not see past three feet in front of the window of the fourplex. Where we live in middle Tennessee, if they see snowflakes in the air just blowing around, they have been known to close school, let the kids go early.
Earlier, the snowflakes floated peacefully to the ground or to rest on slanted spruce boughs. Now winds blew from a maniacal place and were smashing Seward. The ravens on the dead trees at the bottom of the hill would have to seek shelter. The windows that took the strongest bursts of wind popped against their frames. As we “walked” on the ice-covered sidewalks toward the Marina Café for a late breakfast and were blown backward, I told Rita that no doubt school would get out early.
We decided to drive over to Julianne’s school. Maybe we could beat the buses, whose drivers could barely see the road. The winds were blowing so strong and unruly and were filled with snow. A moose walked out of the willows, crossing into some deep cover. We might have hit it if not for our four-wheel drive. I am not sure what wind system this was related to, but parts of Anchorage had been punched with winds over one hundred miles an hour. A part of town called the Lower Hillside had gotten it the worst. Cordova had been slapped too, but nothing too unusual, with winds over eighty-five miles per hour. Our storm was not comparable to these; our mountains protected us yet still we were blasted.
We got to the parking lot. On a clear day, this school has one of the most spectacular backdrops of any school in the world, a section of flat-faced high mountains on the edge of the Harding Icefield. But today neither the mountains nor the school was visible. I did not see any buses lined up either. I spotted the school as the storm let up momentarily, then to its right I thought I saw something colorful in the field next to the school. Several classes were having recess, including Julianne’s. I thought I saw her yellow and blue parka. The children, some in snow up past their waists, were running, sliding down slides, making snow angels, disappearing in the snow. Julianne and three of her girlfriends came over when they saw us and said hello. Avalanche-producing weather, blizzards, and power-packed winds just add to the possibilities for fun when you are in third grade in Alaska.
Before we left the apartment, I had called the Alaska Department of Transportation road system number, 800-478-7675. Each day they update the recording. The road from Seward to Anchorage was closed, the recorded lady said, blocked by avalanches in several places. I felt that this lady was my friend. That is when I knew I had been walled into Seward way too long. State officials urged citizens to stay off the roads and definitely not to go into the backcountry. The year before just off the Seward-to-Anchorage road several snow machiners who were high-marking were killed by avalanches. High-marking is the dangerous practice of riding a snow machine straight up the incline of a mountain, seeing how high up the peak you can get before you have to swoop back down, and it’s named for the tracks you can see from below.
In the Anchorage Daily News, which we could get at times on the Internet when the phone lines were not down, they quoted David Liebershach of the Alaska Division of Emergency Services: “We really want to caution folks. If they don’t have to be out, if there’s any way they can avoid traveling, they really shouldn’t do it.” When anyone cautions Alaskans and they listen, you know it is a serious situation. On one seven-mile stretch just west of Girdwood, over seventy miles from us, seven avalanches were in the road or across it, some ten feet deep. Just twenty-one miles out of Seward, by Kenai Lake, another avalanche blocked the road. This stretch of the Seward Highway is one of the most dangerous avalanche zones in the world. Just this week a bulldozer operator who had been clearing the road in this area was hit by an avalanche, swept off the road, and killed.
That afternoon, Rita and I were bored. But at least now we were feeling alive—we had just been to see Darien. We had ordered a coffee to share; Darien had come up with some milk, though he had been running low. Locals, including one of our school bus drivers, had been bringing him their milk. We depended on Darien to keep a sizable chunk of town from getting grumpy, zooming on caffeine and his restrained wit. While we were there, Skip, the man who owns and runs our little movie theater, came by. Darien asked him if the new movie had made it in. He said no; he was expecting Snow Falling on Cedars, except it should probably be called Snow Falling on Seward. We laughed as if this were hysterically funny. The whole town was getting slaphappy.
We needed something different to do, something other than driving in the deep snow on our few miles of road. We decided to head toward Anchorage. We’d heard people were trapped on the road between two avalanches up ahead. They would run their engines a few minutes every hour to keep warm. The troopers were trying to rescue them with a helicopter. A woman and her two daughters driving in a 1994 Suburban were swept off the road by Cooper Landing, between Seward and Soldotna. Most of the windows were broken and the car was hidden upside down under the killer snow. The mom hung by her seat belt, and her twelve-year-old daughter’s legs were covered in snow, as she was crammed between the seat and the door. Her husband had been following in a car behind but had not seen his family disappear. The mom called 911 on her cell, but it did not connect. She then succeeded in getting through to a friend who lived nearby, and the friend summoned emergency crews to the scene.
No vehicles were heading north but us. For the first few miles there was no steep land on either side of us. Then we reached the beginning of a tight pass, with mountainsides on our right and left. Even knowing we were headed into a barricade of snow, it felt freeing to be going out of our snowbound town. I looked up at the snow on both sides of us. If even the drifts immediately surrounding us fell, it would bury our vehicle. Quite a few trees were on both sides, large, old trees, which meant no avalanche had come through as long as they had been growing. But the news about the avalanches on the Seward Highway had been that they were crashing down from places that had not had avalanches in decades. Looking at the seven or eight feet of snow above us, all the way up to the top of the mountain, I thought about how the middle layer was powder, and how the heavy, wet top portion put pressure on the icy base. What exactly did it take to break the snow loose and begin a trip down the mountain? There would be no warning. I’d heard about how if we were to be covered by snow, there would be no way to open the car doors. How long would the oxygen inside the vehicle last? And of course, it was still snowing, and snowing. How many more flakes had to land before it would all come down on us, before us, behind us, above us. We were in an area where cell phones didn’t work. If an avalanche came down behind us and kept us from getting back, we would be stuck. I was about to tell Rita that we should turn around and go back to Seward, but before I could, Rita asked how far we were going to go. Soon it would be time for Julianne to get home from school. So far, I have never seen Rita afraid of anything.
Whittie
r, not far from us on Prince William Sound, hadn’t had full power for a week. The city manager was quoted in the newspaper saying that people in her town were sleeping with their snow shovels because they didn’t want their shovels to disappear. They had gotten almost five feet of fresh snow this week. The whole of the Kenai Peninsula was trapped, unable to drive to Anchorage. Seward was without a link to the outside, no railroad, no road, no airplanes. Sometimes our telephone lines worked, but more often than not there was brain-frying static. We’d been able to go nowhere but around town for a week. A reporter from Nashville’s newspaper, The Tennessean, did a small piece about us being trapped by the avalanches. Jerry House, a Nashville morning DJ, got the story and began the “rumor” that we were trapped by an avalanche in a sewer in Alaska. Some people actually believed Jerry.
Our friends in the other upstairs apartment, Dawn Starke and Juanita O’Shea, said Seward would be all right as long as the town didn’t run out of beer. Neighbors were socializing, since sometimes you could not talk on the telephone, E-mail anyone, feed your Internet addiction, or fax anybody.
One black night Dawn and I read to each other from “The Police Log.” Several entries were avalanche-related. “4:12 A.M. Several avalanches on Lowell Point Road in areas where they’ve never seen avalanches before. Will not clear until daylight.” That’s the only road to Lowell Point. We hoped there wouldn’t be any medical emergencies out there. “5:31 A.M. Caller advised the mail truck was stuck in an avalanche at mile 38.5 Seward Highway. No injuries reported. Advised there are two avalanches across the road.” “10:36 A.M. Mother moose and calf seen on Adams near First. Children in area.” We’d been seeing a moose out our kitchen window every few days. “11:10 A.M. Winter storm warning. Up to two feet of snow. Travel highly discouraged.”
Driving around Seward after a monster snowstorm. PHOTO BY PETER JENKINS
“11:31 A.M. Man wanted information about how to get a restraining order against his wife because she was getting drunk and breast-feeding their child. Advised to call DFYS.” “8:20 P.M. Report of a man lying on the side of the road, motionless. Ambulance responded but trooper advised to cancel. Subject was extremely intoxicated. Given ride.” “10:15 P.M. A mother, her daughter, and another female juvenile reported there were two blue cars following them. Stated this has been going on for several months.”
“12:25 A.M. Advised of man lying in trunk of a car and not moving. All okay, car being worked on.” “12:36 A.M. Ambulance requested for male, 43, at the prison having a possible heartache.” They probably meant heart attack. “3:10 A.M. Male advised he had given the victory sign to a cabdriver who apparently took it for a different kind of gesture and stopped and yelled at the individual.”
Our apartment at times seemed the size of my underwear drawer. But being snowed in by the heavy white quilt of snow did have a cozy quality. Our apartment was like a cave; Rita and I kept each other warmer than usual. In about nine months there will probably be a mini population explosion in all the places that were closed in by the sliding masses of snow. I loved looking out the window at the snow as it came down and down and down; lying on my back watching the big floating flakes put me to sleep. Every day I called the state 800 number waiting to be freed. Every day the message was the same: “The road conditions on this recording are divided into main highway areas and topics. Listen for the”—I pressed my phone keypad, beep—“current conditions.” The woman at the state Department of Transportation who recorded the messages sounded stressed out to the point of not wanting to say anything. Or was that my stress?
Her message continued, “I’m just letting you know that the Seward Highway is closed at Mile 21 due to a natural avalanche.”
The word natural was crucial because the state was shooting cannons at the mountaintops and dropping bombs from helicopters to create “unnatural” avalanches to hurry the process of clearing the mountains.
One morning we decided to drive out past where we had turned around before. The perky, feisty woman who worked at Darien’s coffee place told us that her husband, who was handling DOT work, was bringing in a helicopter to the area around Mile 21 to drop bombs as they flew over the high mountain ridges, breaking loose avalanches.
We drove to Kenai Lake, where we could go no farther. I heard the helicopter far off, high above, then the bomb went off. The snow broke loose and roared down the mountain. We could hear trees snap like bone-dry twigs, boulders smashing against other boulders. The side of the mountain was being cleared off. Now I understood how the clear pathways through the forests on the sides of Alaskan mountains were made. It was not because trees could not grow there, but because snow had washed the life away and mangled any man-made stuff in its way. They dropped many bombs out of the helicopter; watching it was the most diversion we had had in a week. And it was so good to be traveling more than a few miles again.
The days ran together. A few times a day, I called the 800 number at DOT. Then one day when I called, it said something different: “Menu: Alaska and Dalton Highways, press one. [Beep] Avalanche and emergency information, press two. [Beep] Avalanche conditions along the Seward Highway, uh…” Oh, no—damn it to hell, she’s pausing, the stress of telling us we’re still prisoners by the white, frozen walls is finally getting to her. “We are glad to report the Seward Highway is open from Anchorage all the way to Seward.” If she had been standing anywhere near me, I would have hugged her.
What a difference it made just knowing we could leave. Not that we had anywhere to go this moment. But it didn’t matter—we were free again.
13
Bingo Anger
A large dog, part Saint Bernard, part husky, lay in the middle of the main road into Talkeetna. Was it dead? It was curled into a perfect ball, its nose covered with its fluffed-out tail. Dead dogs are not usually observed in such alive-looking positions. Had it frozen solid? I thought I saw the gray-white of exhaled breath coming from underneath the fur of its tail. A snow machine—don’t call them snowmobiles in Alaska—came toward the dog and me from the direction of Talkeetna, the town I am headed for. The guy running it, dressed in oil-stained Carhartts, stopped, got off, and started talking to the dog, who was not only alive but lifted its nose up from the cozy warmth of fur.
The guy has a beard about the same color as the dog’s fur; his beard falls to the middle of his chest. They appear to know each other, the dog and the man. He gets the dog to stand up, but when he turns to slow down a Jeep coming up too fast behind him, the dog lies back down, turns over on its back, and begins to shimmy around on the road, where some pavement is visible. It is snowing—huge, dry flakes. It was 4 P.M. and almost dark, with a gray light around everything.
This Talkeetna traffic-flow volunteer kneels down, again, and pleads with the dog. The dog returns to rubbing his backbone on the street. The bearded guy then bends over his snow machine and unhooks his snowshoes from the backseat. He kneels down and lifts the big dog onto the front of the seat where he’d been riding, the dog straddling the snow machine. Its legs are long enough to bounce on the road if he doesn’t hold them up. The dog has obviously ridden like this before; he actually puts all four paws on the metal tracks made for the rider’s feet. The guy plops down behind the dog and props his snowshoes between them. He pulls a power U-turn right in front of me—for a second I think they will hit me as they skid—then heads back into Talkeetna (pop. 330), driving really fast.
On any winter weekend except this one, that dog could have slept in the road and the local folks would just have driven around it. But for the next few days several fresh people will be in town. No place I have ever been recognizes someone new in town as quickly as they do in Alaska. The communities are so few, so spread out, so hard to reach. At least you can drive to funky Talkeetna.
Talkeetna is located in the part of Alaska where the sun rises and sets all year, not like above the Arctic Circle in Barrow where it sets and stays gone for several months. I parked in front of a rough-hewn place called The Ro
adhouse. Inside were several tables full of women, mostly middle-aged women. Everyone in the place looked up at me; was I a local, a bachelor, a what?
I overheard the three women at the table next to me saying that they would be playing bingo tonight, the night before the bachelor auction. They didn’t look like bingo players, not that I know any. One had short, dark hair; she looked like an aging hippie from the seventies. One looked carefully put together, more like a suburban housewife, not a common look in Alaska. Her hair looked professionally colored, maybe to hide a few early gray hairs. The other, a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, asked me if I was going to play bingo. I said I never had; she said I didn’t know what I was missing. I mentioned that I might give it a try. She directed me to the VFW hall a few blocks west of downtown. She seemed aggressive, for Alaska. Many Alaskans just want to be left alone, not an easy thing for a reporter.
Five more women walked in and sat down. Obviously, some fresh women would be in town with money to burn, to bid on some of the men at the nineteenth annual Bachelors Auction. Or they might be here to enter the Wilderness Woman’s Contest. Supposedly some of the toughest and most attractive women in Alaska take part. This weekend was Winterfest, one of the two big Talkeetna festivals. (The other is the Moose Dropping Festival.)
These women were here in town mainly to see what was displayed in the “Male Order Catalog,” a hand-stapled, twenty-two-page, black-and-white, home-computer-produced pass-out done by the Talkeetna Bachelors Society, Inc. Not one man displayed inside is wearing a suit or a tie; thirteen had shoulder-length hair. Surely there were a few more ponytail types. Three of them are shown wearing fur hats, giving them the mountain-man look. Twenty-four of the thirty-four have beards. A few of the beards are so dense, so untamed, that a snake could survive inside.