Palmer man reminisces about long-ago days of mushing

PALMER - They are tales fit for Jack London, with half-wolf dogs and long, snowy trails. And even 70 years later, Palmer resident Austin Simonds has no trouble recalling the details.

Sitting in his Palmer apartment with a briefcase full of black-and-white photographs, Simonds told the story of how he first came to Alaska.

Just out of high school in the early 1930s, Simonds left his home state of Michigan for Seattle in hopes of eventually finding his way to the Last Frontier. In the winter of 1931, his opportunity arrived. His uncle was operating a placer gold mine near Haines and wanted Simonds to help him get supplies into the camp.

Young and strong, Simonds didn't hesitate to take his uncle up on the offer. After reading book after book about the Last Frontier, Simonds had adventures in mind.

"The idea I had was I was going to come to Alaska and marry a beautiful Indian princess and go hunting and trapping," the 88-year-old man recalled with a chuckle. Not everything worked out like it does in the books, but Simonds has no doubt that those early years in Alaska were some of the most amazing of his life.

Simonds spent two winters hauling in supplies to his uncle's camp via dog sled. While he had always liked dogs, the 18-year-old had never mushed before coming to Alaska. His uncle's four dogs were big husky-wolf hybrids and Newfoundlands.

"They weren't like the dogs today," Simonds said. He said today's mushing teams are made for running fast and far, while the dogs he used in his day were built for pulling.

And that is what he needed. With literally thousands of pounds of flour, sugar, oatmeal, beans and other supplies to get 150 miles from Haines to near Squaw Creek, where the camp was located, Simonds needed all the dog power he could find.

Where the trail was flat, the four dogs could pull more than 1,000 pounds in two sleds. Where the trail grew steep, Simonds would unlatch the back sled and have the dogs pull one, then the other up the hill.

Simonds built base camps from where he would ferry the supplies further up the trail, usually traveling 12 to 15 miles at a time. He would store the supplies in a temporary cache while bringing more up the trail. In the end, Simonds estimates he covered thousands of miles of trail during his two winters.

While "freighting" the supplies into camp, he and the other men in the group slept in wall tents in the snow and hunted rabbits and ptarmigan for dinner.

"That was the only source of fresh meat," Simonds said.

When the supplies had been taken to his uncle's camp, Simonds returned to Haines and lived in a cabin at Mile 33 of the trail. He spent his time bringing mail and supplies from Haines to his not-so-near neighbors. Sprinkled throughout his adventures are the names of old-time characters like "Princess Alice," and "Whiskey Shorty."

Simonds made extra money through bounties on eagles and coyotes. Ammunition for his .30-06 was just a few cents a round, and the federal government paid 50 cents for each eagle and $5 for coyotes.

Simonds was happy to shoot the coyotes. He kept frozen salmon stacked like cord wood outside his cabin to feed the dogs.

"The coyotes would come in the night and start chewing on my fish," Simonds recalled.

True to his dream, Simonds even managed to do a bit of gold mining and trapping, although mainly just for ermine and muskrats.

After two years, Simonds eventually returned to his home state to go to college. It would be 20 years before he would come to call Alaska home again. In the early 1950s, he moved permanently to Anchorage to manage a car dealership his family owned. Not long after coming back to Alaska, Simonds revisited his old stomping grounds.

"I'll never forget the first time I drove from Anchorage to Haines," Simonds recalled. After those winters of traveling across the land via dog sled, it was a whole new experience to just drive right into town.

"But it was just like going home," Simonds said.