03. Alaska Not Boring

September 18, 1993

Why this job is not boring.

The saga of life in Alaska continues. I flew to the park last week and continued the routine of each flight being different. We flew to Eagle and found the area covered with fog. Just when the pilot told me that our fuel supply might get us back to Fairbanks, he saw a "hole in the clouds" dove through it and landed at Eagle. Two days later they called me at the Eagle visitor center and told me that "things are deteriorating fast in Fairbanks" if I wanted to get home this week; I had better get out to the airport fast. To say that the first half of the return trip was "high and bumpy" is not adequate. Oxygen at that altitude would have been nice. Then the pilot says, "Maybe we better get down. We need to be under this stuff to land." The last half was flown "low and smooth", ....under the clouds, ....at less than 1,000 feet, ....down two different river valleys so “we would know were we were”. Diana had come out to pick me up and said that the pilot told her, "Well we made it again!”

Eagle is an interesting Alaskan village with one restaurant, two small groceries and one small motel. Check-In at the motel is at the Trading Post/restaurant. News spreads fast along the bush telegraph. As I walked into the Trading Post, having come straight from the landing strip (known locally as "the airport"), I was greeted with, "You must be the new Superintendent of Yukon-Charley. You are in room 4." I stood there for a minute until the owner said, "Oh, you need a receipt." He wrote out on a generic, green, restaurant receipt, "Eagle Motel, $100" ($50/night). I must have looked a little skeptical as he informed me, "Don't worry. They are used to these receipts from the folks up here."

I stood there a bit longer and he advised me, "We don't bother with keys; but, there is a deadbolt on the john.....for courtesy." I advised that I was carrying several thousand dollars worth of equipment with me, some of which would be left in the room unattended at times. He replied, "Nobody is going to steal anything when the escape route is 200 miles of extremely rough dirt road." He did not need to point out that this was to reach pavement, and then another 200 miles to the nearest “town,” (Fairbanks). The only time the room is cleaned, or the bed made, is between occupants. So I hope I don't have to spend two or three weeks at a time. Or, I may just camp out somewhere for a night and then check back in to get a clean room. By-the-way, the "john" consists of a commode and a sink. The shower is down a flight of steps, across a large parking lot, behind the trading post.

I can understand the reluctance of Superintendents to go back to management in the "lower 48". Problems here come so fast, and in such variety, that it is impossible to get bored. Just when you think that you have at least categorized the issues, a new twist comes along. And paraphrasing Harry Truman, "everything stops on the superintendent's desk".

Last month, I mentioned the hazardous waste site at Coal Creek. This month we had a crew down there doing some testing to determine the extent and level of the pollution. They found the area to be "pretty hot", there is even some "free" mercury in the area. I was informed, "we (you) will have to fence off the whole thing until a decision can be reached and money found to deal with it."

"Decision?, I asked. "Yep, It could even mean shipping the polluted soil to the lower 48 for disposition". A slight logistical problem since the only route to Coal Creek is via air or the Yukon River. This is something that will have to be taken care of above my pay grade! So, asked, "Is that it then?"

"No. But, the good news is that there is quite a bit of "petroleum" contamination in the area."

"Good News!!"

Turned out it was......relatively speaking. This can be dealt with on-site through "dirt farming". Sure enough, we will use a roto-tiller and some bacteria to "farm" the soil and remove the pollutants. Well, this is kind of different for a park ranger, but no problem, we can handle that. OK, there is the budget! What am I going to cut? But, problem solved and forget about Coal Creek.

Until, I got back to the office in Fairbanks. The Chief of Resource Management called, "You know the Gold Dredge we have on Coal Creek", she asked.

"Yes?", cautiously, because I have learned that this type question is usually the first shoe dropping. The Dredge is a "boat?" that is 3 stories high and about 50x100 feet square. The dredge started at the Yukon River and worked its way up coal creek. Basically, it takes in soil at one end, separates out gold, and ejects the soil behind it. These dredges made their own pond to float on and just “walked” to where ever the crew wanted to blast away soil in their “moil” for gold. Is now 5 miles upslope from the Yukon River.

I relaxed as she told me, "We tested around it and found nothing".

Then the other shoe fell, "Then, we got to poking around inside and found 2,000 gallons of diesel in one of the bilge tanks".

No problem, I thought, we will just pump it into barrels, load it in the truck, haul it to the camp, and use it in our generator. Then I remembered my trip in there last week. We had finished a tour of the hazardous material site and I wanted to see the work on a historic building, called Slaven’s Roadhouse. It sits at the mouth of Coal Creek. The Chief of Maintenance and I took the truck (our only vehicle at Coal Creek) and started for Slavens.

We were fording the creek for the last time (fourth) when I felt a huge bump. "Just a hole!" Jared informed. Then, I looked out my window and saw the front wheel laying in the creek. I was very impressed with the Chief. He had told me numerous times that the truck needed replacing. How had he arranged for a wheel to fall off in the middle of the creek---with rains predicted (for the next two days) which could wash the vehicle into the Yukon River. What a perfect demonstration of need!

It took a half day and several flights of equipment between Eagle and Coal Creek ( 60 miles and 1 hour each way) to just get the thing out of the creek and up onto the bank. So no hauling of the diesel until next summer.

Naturally, it has to be an antique model of jeep so we have to start searching junk yards for surplus parts. Once we find them we will have to try and convince our accounting division (at Reston, Va.) that we need to purchased used equipment from a junk dealer!. We may have to get a new truck, but then we will have to build a raft and float it down the Yukon to get it to Coal Creek.

The Chief of Cultural Resources was not to be outdone by Natural Resources and hazardous materials, nor Maintenance with the wheel falling off the jeep. One of his rangers, and a USAF pilot, had been assigned to the back country to observe noise levels of jets doing a training exercise. They were near the crash site of a WW II B-24 and had found a bone.

I had read the account and knew that the plane was still there, rather what is left of it. Two bodies were found in the crash, two had bailed out and were never found, and one airman had bailed out and survived. Took the survivor 81 days in mid-winter to walk into Alaska's legendary lore. Since the USAF pilot was part of the situation, Cary had decided to contact the military before he made his report to me. Damn!

This chief had four pieces of disturbing information. First, several local hunters had seen the bone and said it had to be human because nothing like that bone had come from any of the animals in the area. Second, I would be receiving a phone call from the USAF at Eilson AFB. Third, he had accessioned the bone into our museum collection.Fourth, the military had told him that they considered it one of their own and wanted it.

"Why, in the hell did you accession the damn thing?" I demanded. It is almost impossible to de-accession an item once it has made it into the NPS collection system.

He decided to avoid answering by offering a solution. But, we could issue it to them on a permanent loan".

I informed him, that I really doubt that we should go to the military and say, "We will loan this bone to you but we still own it!"

He disagreed saying, "It's part of our collection and legally ours!" I told him I did not give a damn about legalities. "If the bone was human and the military wanted it, give it to them before a helicopter load of Army Rangers descended on Yukon-Charley to retrieve one of their own."

I told him I had a couple of other problems to deal with and would get back to him. But, he called me first! The Army called and they were extremely upset. At the time of the crash the plane "belonged" to the U.S. Army Air Force, there was no United States Air Force. It should be turned over to them and definitely not to the USAF. Then they asked about the location of the bone, He said it was on his desk being used as a "paper weight". Luckily, this chief has accepted a transfer and will soon be out of my reach. When asked about its condition, he told them it was in good shape and complete. Well, except for the area that something had gnawed through to get the marrow out (I gathered from the Army's reaction that they are used to the idea of killing, but not of being eaten).

I called the Chief and told him to get the damn bone off his desk, put it in a nice box with tissue paper, and I would bring it back to Fairbanks with me. I would give it to whichever military outfit showed up first and let them fight each other rather than the lightly armed Park Rangers.

I had it laying on my desk, not as a paperweight, when a couple of biologists from Gates of the Arctic National Park, having heard of the controversy, dropped by and offered to eliminate the possibility of it being from an animal. About an hour later, they told me that all of this fuss was over the canon bone (footbone) of an animal from the family which includes sheep, moose and caribou. I have to admit that my mind did continue with the idea of a footbone and kicking some butt. However, I realized that at least this issue was finally defused.

The Chief Ranger, decided that it was time to show me that he had interesting problems also. He advised me that we had an airboat on the Kandik River and a hovercraft on the Charley River. The airboat is clearly illegal except that Alaska owns navigable waters. This, however, has been interpreted as the river bed up to "mean" highwater; which “probably” is the line of permanent vegetation. A paralegal in region says that the "commerce clause" of Title 16 gives us authority to enforce regs within parks. But, we are not sure that the navigable waters are considered to be "within the park". And, we are not sure who owns the water flowing through the park. The hovercraft presents all of these issues plus...we don't know what it is. Since it rides on a column of air, it does not fit the Code of Federal Regulation's definition of a boat. It does not fly high enough (1 inch) to be considered an aircraft and the definition of an all-terrain vehicle does not fit. We are still working on this one.

I have selected a new administrative officer who should be here in about a month. GSA informed me that I will have an office on Nov. 1st. The acting administrative officer says we will finish the fiscal year in the black and I won't be sent to Kansas this year. I have managed to grab two surplus military vehicles (did not even have to use the bone as leverage). So, I guess things are progressing along relatively well at work.

Diana and I drove down to Anchorage via Denali National Park. Mt. McKinley can be seen for most of the trip and is more impressive than Mt. Ranier. We ran into an old friend (Jim Brady-Chief Ranger for the Park Service) in the Visitor Center at Denali. He was in Alaska on vacation. It was great to see and visit with him. Anchorage is a typical big city and we were ready to depart at the end of the week. We returned to North Pole along the Glen Highway and saw several of the Alaska mountain chains and glaciers. The scenery was typical (magnificent) for Alaska. A highlight of the trip was to stop in a rest area and find blueberries and low-bush cranberries all over the place.

We have about settled in here at the house, gone through both weeks of autumn, and are preparing for winter. I spent 10 hours installing one of the "takes 1 hour" type garage door openers. It is 34 degrees and we have had snow flurries for the last two days (snowing now). Diana ordered us 30 pounds of fresh halibut. It is hard to believe how good this fish is and I am not sure but what it is better than salmon. Since it cost $2.99 a pound, you can see that not everything in Alaska is expensive. For this price, it was cut into roasts, steaks fillets, and wrapped. The park staff gave me a supply of moose and caribou so it looks like we are prepared with our "winter meat".

So once again, I have written a long account of tales from the far north and had better close this Epistle from Paul.