Category Archives: Journal Entry

The 1980 Nelchina Gold Rush

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a pick and shovel

Norman’s mother in California saw the story on the news.

Monday, February 25, 1980—the US Geological Survey people are going to announce the location of a gold discovery in the Nelchina basin tomorrow morning—the gold rush is on! We found out the gold is near the Nelchina Glacier. Dan’s brother, Denny had done some scouting in Anchorage and gained some other information that was helpful to us. The plan we had, Dan was going to fly us out and land us with his ski plane on the glacier.

Tuesday, February 26, 1980—Mike and I loaded our gear in the plane and we had some claim stakes. Dan stayed and helped with the measuring while Mike and I walked about 13 miles on snowshoes. That night, Dan flew in. It was getting quite dark and maybe -20°. Dan had Henry along and Henry was throwing out our duffle bags and sleeping bags and more stakes. When this stuff landed in the snow, it would get buried, so Mike and I hurried to where the drop area was and pulled everything on top of the snow that we could find. The star reflection on the snow gave us enough light that we could find them once they were up on top of the snow. There was one bundle of stakes we couldn’t find, but we did find our sleeping bags and grub. We dug another snow cave, this one smaller, for two people. Mike fixed supper that night. We didn’t have too bad a night, it was cool, but it was alright.

Wednesday, February 27, 1980—Dan flew in the next morning, and we staked six, forty acre claims. Then National Geographic and NBC News from Los Angeles California took pictures of us from their helicopter. My mother in California saw our pictures on the TV news. There was one helicopter (we didn’t see this happen, but were told later) tried to land and one skid went through the snow crust and damaged the helicopter. Then there was a light snowfall, but Dan was able to beat the darkness and fly us out to the Nelchina Lodge.

Saturday, March 1, 1980—worked on year end bookwork. Got gear ready to go back to Nelchina Glacier. David Harding from NPR Radio in Anchorage interviewed all of us here at Nelchina Lodge about the gold rush.

Sunday, March 2, 1980—got up very early and Dan flew Henry and me to the Nelchina Glacier and we re-staked these claims and staked six more. It was a long day on snowshoes. At one time, I was walking ahead pulling a hundred foot steel tape. Henry was behind me and as I’m snowshoeing along, I suddenly hear the sound of running water. This is not good! I hollered at Henry and I very carefully walked backwards on my snowshoes. The Nelchina River runs out of the glacier winter and summer and I had walked right over where it was flowing. I had no idea how far it was to water, but I wasn’t going to stay and find out!

Monday, March 3, 1980—we filled out the papers to file on the 12 claims. Dan, Mike and I went to Glennallen to file the claims.

Four men, two dogs and a snow cave

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a man's feet on skiis

Dan and I didn’t like the idea of going out in the fog.

Thursday, February 21, 1980—we cut and hauled two loads of wood for Blake, then worked on getting camping gear organized for this cross-country ski/camping trip.

Friday, February 22, 1980—it was -20°. We all gathered our gear at Nelchina Lodge, loaded up and left to go to Eureka Lodge. We unloaded our gear and left there about mid-morning on skis. The skis I had were borrowed and they didn’t work well on my boots. After a few miles, the guys could see I wasn’t going to be able to keep up that way, so Jim had a pair of emergency snowshoes. He gave them to me to use. I could do a lot better on snowshoes than I could on those skis.

We got out to Albert Dome and we used anything we could to move snow and dig a cave in the side of this dome up near the top. We had snowshoes and everything working at it. One of the things that I used was one of Sylvia’s favorite skillets—and I broke the handle off of it. It took quite some time and it was dark by the time we got the hole dug.

This hole was back in a big drift. We dug it so it was bigger than a 12’x16’ tarp that I had brought along to use as a ground tarp. Then we dug a little hole off of that, a little extra room for cooking. Dan, he suggested thinning the roof in one area in order to let in light through the snow, so the guys did that. Jim had a thermometer and kept track of the temperature in there. It would get warm enough from cooking that the warm air would go over to where they had made this shallowing in the roof of the snow cave and the water would drip down there.

Dan had brought his dog along and Mike had brought his. Mike’s dog was trained to pull a sled and she did really well. We had a place for the dogs to sleep up in the higher part of the snow cave. The snow cave dipped down and then went up so it preserved the heat inside. The heat didn’t leak out into the outside air. We blocked the cave entrance too, to discourage heat loss. It was really nice, the temperature hung around 30° in there. We all had a good time. We slept late and we ate well.

Saturday, February 23, 1980—the guys, I believe it was Mike and Jim were fixing breakfast. We ate a huge breakfast of bacon and eggs—big enough that it took a big skillet to fry it for one person. We had a stack of pancakes and every one of us wanted the fat from their bacon poured over the pancakes, we wanted every drop of it. (Fat, when you’re out in circumstances like this, is heat—it turns to heat when you eat it.) Anyway, we all had a big breakfast and then went out and decided to go exploring.

There was a lot of fog. It was kind of “iffy”. Dan and I didn’t like the idea of going out in the fog. We kept within sight of the snow cave; there isn’t much to identify it once you get too far away from it. We saw Jim and Mike take off on their skis, counting on the trail not drifting over before they came back. Then the fog lifted and Dan and I went too. We all went to Crooked Creek. I snowshoed and they skied. Along towards late afternoon while we were heading back, a white out came along—and a ground blizzard, but we found our way back to the snow cave.

Sunday, February 24, 1980—it was so nice in that cave, we just hated to leave. The weather had turned nice. We had told people at the highway that we would be coming out on the 24th. We started snowshoeing the eight miles back to Eureka.

Those guys were ahead of me and when we were oh, about a half to three quarters of a mile away, and I just happened to look over and here was a small group of ptarmigan in amongst some real small spruce trees. The guys were skiing faster because they were getting close to Eureka and didn’t look off to the side so they missed seeing them. Between them and the lodge, there was a person. It looked to be Patti Billman—and it sure was. She was walking out to meet us. She had big news:

There had been a gold strike on the Nelchina Glacier. We were all excited about that and when we got into the lodge, there was a guy in the lodge that Dan knew really well. (We all knew this fella too) He walked up to Dan and he said, “Boy, where have you been?” So Dan told him where we had been. “Well”, he said, “You should have been at the gold strike at Nelchina Glacier.” Dan slapped this guy on his belly and said, “You couldn’t go where we’ve been.” Anyway, Eureka was full of people. We left and went to Nelchina to the lodge there.

Masks were frozen to our faces

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Thermometer showing temp over 40 below zero

We stopped every couple miles to look at one another’s face, checking for frostbite.

Thursday, January 10, 1980—we got up for an early start—it was -30°. I had bad feelings about this trip. I thought it was way too cold to go, but Tim really wanted to go. He wanted to get those metal bunks and bring them back to the lodge here. Hooked on to the trailer, loaded up the snowmobiles and sleds and went to Lake Louise. Unloaded the snow machines and checked the temperature there at the lodge and it was -45°. We got the machines started and went down the lake—it’s maybe 20 miles or so to his mother’s cabin on Tyone Lake.

We stopped every couple of miles to look at one another’s face, checking for frostbite. We had masks over our faces, but frost would still get through. We got to Tim’s mother’s cabin and my machine wasn’t running right, seemed like there was still something wrong with the carburetor. When we got there, there was a little bit of daylight left so we went out looking for wood to use as fuel, but there was nothing but scrub, black spruce—it’s very small. We found all the dead trees we could find from 6 to 8 feet tall. Got those up to the cabin and cut it up into stove wood and started to build a fire in the stove. This is a tiny, tin stove. Lo and behold, the stove is two thirds full of ashes. We dug the ashes out so there was some room and got a fire started.

We didn’t have very much light in there and we took turns sitting in front of the fire to thaw the masks off of our faces. We both have beards and our masks were frozen to our faces. By the time we got our masks off, it was warming up a little in there. We put a kettle on the stove and thawed out some beans for supper—tried to make a pot of coffee too. We ate the beans and cut up wood for the night, we were glad for that.

We banked up the cabin with snow the best we could. Still, it was so cold in there that even later in the evening, we could sit back four feet and blow at the stove and see our breath. There is no insulation, it’s just boards. In an effort to try and stay warm after we ate, we crawled in our sleeping bags. It was cold all night and we had a hard time getting any sleep.

Friday, January 11, 1980—(found out later that it had stayed -38° to -40° all night and we think that farther down at the lower elevation where we had been, it was probably even colder.) The snow machines were really cold the next morning. We fixed a good, big breakfast and I went out and took the carburetor off of my machine and brought it inside. That’s a cold job with bare hands. I took the carburetor all apart and there was some ice in it—got it dry and put it back on. Then we loaded up our gear and those bunks and started out. I got a few white spots on my face from the frost, but we got back up to Lake Louise and to the lodge where we had our vehicles parked. We got things loaded up and got warm in the lodge and went back to Nelchina.

New Years Eve, 47 below

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Wolverine Lodge

Summer picture of the old Wolverine Lodge.

Sunday, December 31, 1979—it’s -30° this morning, stayed cold all day. Worked on the sled for log hauling (re-built the hitch, this time). Hauling logs in the tundra and deep snow is really hard on the sled.

It was -40° at 6:00 p.m. Went to Lake Louise to a party at Wolverine Lodge. The whole neighborhood is leaving in one group tonight. We hung around Wolverine Lodge for a while. It was -47° at 11:40 p.m. when we headed for Glennallen about 36 miles away. We saw small herds of caribou both coming and going. About half way down the Lake Louise Road towards the Glenn Highway, it was midnight and we all stopped our cars, got out, and wished each other Happy New Year.

Then we went on to Glennallen to a roadhouse party and danced until 3:00 a.m. Then Dan Billman and Chris Ronning and I ran a hundred yard foot race in the parking lot. It was so cold that we didn’t dare breathe—we ran the hundred yards without taking a breath. (You don’t want to breathe under those circumstances when you are exerting yourself like that for fear of frosting your lungs.) We went back in the lodge and talked the cook into making breakfast for us. After breakfast, we went back to Nelchina. Chris Ronning came to the cabin about 5:00 a.m. the next morning. It was still -40° then.

Missing family at Christmas

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snow on cabin roof

snow on roof

Monday, December 24, 1979—warmed up to -25° to -30° today. Did some sewing, worked on the lodge’s chain saw. My snowmobile still isn’t right. The carburetor on the lodge’s snowmobile froze up today so we didn’t get any logs out. Went to the lodge after supper, exchanged gifts and they gave me a beautiful beaver hat. (They had Libby Riddles make this hat for me.) I also got a bottle of whiskey and a package of Copenhagen.

Tuesday, December 25, 1979—went over to Bob and Margaret Schmidt’s house party in the evening. Sylvia called, got to talk to Beverly, Nadia, Paul and Laura. It was really good to talk to the family, I miss them a lot. Betty at the lodge had a large Christmas Dinner.

They walked 8 miles at -35° to Gunsight Lodge

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Gunsight Mountain in Winter

Gunsight Mountain in Winter

Wednesday, December 12, 1979—did some chores around the cabin and got the truck started. The lodge here at Nelchina wanted me to go down to Gunsight Mountain Lodge and get gas for them.

While I was there at Gunsight, I listened to an amazing story told by a man named John and his wife. They had just walked over eight miles of the trail from Alfred Creek at -35° below zero to get here. The snow was very deep and they had no snowshoes. They had originally tried to drive out with a small Cat from the gold mine on Alfred Creek, but they couldn’t get over the mountain and down the pass. The employer had left them there with too little food, promising to fly food in to them. This didn’t happen and they ran out of food. It was such a hard walk, that he couldn’t carry his wife. She became exhausted and he kept telling her that it’s just a little farther, just a little farther… He coached her to stay with him and they eventually made it to Gunsight Lodge. Of course they had heat there and the lodge owner gave them food and a place to stay. It got down to -40° that evening. (Life in the bush demands fortitude.)

Overflow on lake ice

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white ptarmigan

A winter ptarmigan

Tuesday, December 11, 1979—got up at 3:45 a.m. and got to Cal’s at 5:00 a.m. He has invited me to ride in his snow track with him and his son Ernie on his trapline. It was such a day that trappers don’t like. We didn’t get any fur. I did get two ptarmigans and when I shot these ptarmigans, I walked over to pick them up and lo and behold there is overflow on the ice! The snow is about a foot deep and the overflow wasn’t obvious when I started for the ptarmigan. I got out on it and broke through a thin crust of ice and not knowing how deep the water was, I didn’t want it to go over my Sorel boots and get my feet wet. It’s very cold so I laid down on top of the snow which held my body in that manner and then I rolled off the area of the overflow—I did take the ptarmigans and rifle with me.

We saw quite a few other ptarmigans but we didn’t shoot any more. Saw some caribou and lots of moose, but we didn’t see any bulls. There may have been moose that had lost their horns and at a distance, it’s hard to tell a bull from a cow and be positive about it—for me anyway. I really enjoyed the trip. It was fun and I thanked Cal for taking me along. His trapline is 73 miles out, and the temperature was -25° to -35° depending on the elevation of where we were at the time.

Feet stuck to the freezing floor

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cold feet

My feet would stick to the freezing floor

Tuesday, November 27, 1979—got up late, changed the plugs on the snowmobile. Tim and I went out to check the traps. Nothing there, no luck. I wiped out the windshield on the snow machine—rolled it over. Didn’t get hurt. Bob Schmidt, Leo Ogilby, Lee Dudley and Mike Phillips were at the lodge. Fixed beef heart stew and noodles for supper.

Wednesday, November 28, 1979—I sure have a sore back today. Moved some more things from the little green house to the cabin. It snowed all night. It’s nice to be in the cabin. At the green house, where I was staying before, when I would get up in the mornings and walk over to the stove to build a fire, my feet would stick (freezing from the cold) to the floor. Here in the cabin, the floor is insulated and stays warm so my feet don’t stick to the floor. After breakfast, I packed snow around the cabin and packed a trail to the wood area with the snowmobile. Worked on the clutch of the Ski-Doo. It’s been giving me some trouble. Borrowed Dan Billman’s draw knife. Mike gave me a mink carcass to use as scent and bait for the trapline. Then I put up a drying rack in the cabin. Lots of neighbors are at the lodge this evening.

Hung the snowmobile up on a spruce

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1970s Skidoo

Norman flew over the windshield

Tuesday, November 13, 1979—serviced the snowmobile track and found the track adjusting bolt is lost. I have no replacement, so I drove over a 110 miles to Wasilla to get it and a spare belt and some material for the cabin and trapping license. Roads were icy and foggy. Got home late.

Wednesday, November 14, 1979—got up early and worked on the snowmobile, got trap gear ready, cut up some wood and Henry and I checked part of the trapline. Didn’t find anything in any of the traps. Helped Tim haul logs with my snowmobile and sled. It was a beautiful sunset. It’s dark enough here now that we need lights on the snowmobile after 4:00 p.m.

Thursday, November 15, 1979—while pulling a heavy load of wood out, I came to a turn and couldn’t get around it quickly enough. I hung the snowmobile up on a spruce and I went out over the windshield and piled over in the snow. Didn’t get hurt. Things like that happen every once in a while. We went down to Cal’s this evening to weigh out some gold. He’d gotten a black wolf already, and a nice wolverine, a mink and a marten so far on his trapline. He’s doing very well. Checked my trapline and I had two rabbits in snares and one had been eaten by something. I set a snare for a lynx and then when I got back to Nelchina, worked on the cabin floor and started the door—been living without a door.

Friday, November 16, 1979—it started snowing and is still snowing lightly. We got about 8 inches, but the temperature is quite warm. I got wet getting a load of wood. Ate, then went out on the trapline, but no fur is moving in this weather. Picked up some sets that weren’t producing and saw a cow moose and calf.

Saturday, November 17, 1979—last night was Jackie’s birthday and Tim, Mike, Jim and Blake came over here for a while. Then we went over to the lodge for a small party. I tended the bar. Dan Billman was there. He had brought me back four dozen traps that he had gotten for me when he went into Anchorage.

Norman returns to Alaska, Sylvia stays in Minnesota

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Alaska Highway sign at Dawson Creek

Entering the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek.

Friday, November 2, 1979—Sylvia doesn’t want to go to Alaska for the winter so she will stay in Minneapolis with Nadia’s family.

Saturday, November 3, 1979—deer season opened as I left for Alaska. I got up the road about a hundred miles and the tongue on the trailer broke at Thief River Falls. Every place was closed except one implement dealer. He had no one there to weld it, but he let me do the welding. I drove back to the farm in Cass County and slept for 12 hours.

Sunday November 4, 1979—got up well rested and got a better trailer tongue, (better metal and stronger). I left at noon, drove 435 miles (some ice on the road), got to Brandon Manitoba and slept in the truck on the seat.

Monday November 5, 1979—started out before daylight and had a flat tire on the trailer about noon. Saw a flock of swans and one of honkers near Defoe Saskatchewan. The tongue in that trailer gave more trouble. (I had loaned that trailer out one time, and this person that borrowed it had pulled a heavy load over a curb in town and tweaked the axel. It was never quite right after that.) I jury-rigged up the tongue and got going again, made it to Lloydminster a little after 9:00 p.m. (Minnesota time). Got a room in a motel there and got a good rest.

Tuesday November 6, 1979—got up at 6:30 and went downtown, gassed up and serviced the truck, headed for Edmonton. Lots of fog and light snow. Bought a few groceries in Edmonton and I had two more ruined tires on the trailer. I’ve got to stop and switch out a lot of spare tires and wheels. Every time one of them goes bad, it takes time to stop, jack it up and get another wheel and tire on. Bought more tires and had them mounted as spares for this doggone trailer. The trees are all white from an ice storm here around Edmonton. I reached Dawson Creek at 8:35 p.m. and got a room. It’s too cold to sleep in the cab of the truck and I can sleep better in a bed, so that’s what I did.

Wednesday November 7, 1979—I left at 7:30, saw a cow and a calf moose just outside Fort Nelson. There’s lots of dust on the road here. I always think of the air cleaner on the pickup when I have to drive in dusty places. I’ll have to watch the air filter in case it needs to be changed. Reached Watson Lake at 12:15 a.m. November 8th.

Thursday, November 8, 1979—left Watson at 7:05 a.m. Saw a moose right away on the highway. It’s quite warm here, and more dust. It makes my sinus run and throat sore. Stopped at High Country Safaris (Ed Dolhan) for an hour—more dust there. Visited with them and then went on toward the Alaska border. I was out about 60 miles past Ed’s and I stopped and slept for a while, then went on to customs. From there I went to Tok and slept a little and ate.

Friday, November 9, 1979—about 4:00 a.m. I left Tok and got to Nelchina just before the sun came up. It’s great to be here. As I was driving down the road, I felt like I was going home. I really like Alaska. Unloaded the pickup and then went to a birthday party for Dan Billman. Met lots of new people, had a good time and got home late. The folks in the neighborhood all gather for this sort of thing and everyone always has a good time.

Saturday, November 10, 1979—left late and hauled in some wood with the snowmobile for me and for the shop at the Nelchina station. Then Henry and I went out making a trapline. Saw signs of fur—moose and caribou. Went to bed early.