part 2 continue the original adventure of edgar hetteens trek through alaska

The running varied from good to worsening for the next few days as clear skies turned to blizzard winds. The day's travel, while memorable, was not as memorable as the evening adventures.

Bessie wrote on March 9, 1960, that "… Our nights are becoming more memorable than our days. Spent the night in a trapper's cabin that hadn't been used for three years except by the martens. There was a lot of dried fish stored there and the animals had made the cabin filthy. We scraped and swept it all out, threw out all the fish and other filth and stayed in it! The smell was indescribable, but it was nice to get in."

Edgar's diary simply stated that "…so untidy was the cabin's interior, we spent two hours cleaning house before having our evening meal."

The smelly cabin was the start of the problems. The next day was a test of machine and the crew's mettle. Head winds of 30 miles per hour caused extreme drifting, tended to clog carburetors and other running parts of the sleds. Plus, the Trailblazer fell into a foot of overflow ice, the bane of Alaskan trail travel. The track froze solid. It would take two hours of chipping ice to get the machine moving again.

Bessie referred to this day as "… a day when all things went wrong!"

The next day a coil went out on Erling Falk's machine and the carburetor was changed. To facilitate the necessary changes, a shelter was set up, but time was lost out of the travel day.

At Galena, after slogging through deep drifts and blowing sand from bared sand bars on the river, the expedition members had a break. They took advantage of a heated shop to check out the machines. All was okay. The snow machines were in good shape.

To make the push to Fairbanks, it was decided to lighten the load. All non-essentials were left behind at this point.

"We hope we have made the right selection in picking out the things that are to be left behind," wrote an uncertain Edgar Hetteen in his diary.

The push was on. Civilization was taking notice of the four person Sno-Traveler expedition. A U. S. Air Force helicopter spotted the Sno-Travelers and landed by them. The pilot and Edgar exchanged a snowmobiling lesson for a trip in the helicopter. Hetteen was flown ahead where he could check the terrain and also take some aerial photos of the expedition as it moved along below.

A Wien Alaska airliner buzzed the group later the same day. The word was out. The "iron dogs" were being taken seriously.

In spite of the impending success, each day was fraught with challenges of its own. On Sunday, March 20, more than two weeks after they started, the expedition was closing in on Fairbanks - slowly. To get through the Manley slough outside Manley Hot Springs, Rudy, flashlight in hand, had to walk ahead of the machines. The slough was narrow and not frozen in the center of the stream due to the warm waters of the natural hot springs.

At Manley Hot Springs Edgar specifically recalls the kindness of the Alaskan settlers.

To make the 60 miles toward Fairbanks that day, the crew pushed themselves harder than normal.

As expedition leader, Edgar recalls the incident.

"We pushed ourselves. You run into problems when you push yourself, but we did it anyway… near a hot springs. It was late and we saw the light of a cabin. We pushed for it. A little while before we reached it, the light went out. You know how a gas lamp is when you turn it off, it goes out slow.

"We were tired when we got to the cabin. I knocked on the door. A man's voice said, 'Who's there?'

"Well, I didn't think it would mean anything if I said it was Edgar, Rudy, Erling and Bessie. I said, 'Just some strangers passing through can we come in?'

"The door opened and a man poked a flashlight in our faces and invited us to come on in. It was the couple who lived there. In no time at all we had a hot meal and slept on their floor. They were just super hosts.

"If someone would knock on my door at that time of night and look like we did," a bemused Hetteen says, "I'd a called the cops and had them locked up."

The couple was Mary and Chuck Clements who insisted the crew stay over the next day. Bessie recalls a hot bath. Edgar recalls fixing a valve.

The repair provides an insight into the skill of the crew.

Recounts Edgar, "When we got there we had burned out a valve on one of the Kohler engines and the engine would barely run. We went through the junk pile and found a piece from an old engine and fabricated a new piece to get us into Fairbanks from Manley Hot Springs."