WrightwoodCalif.com Forum
Public Forums => Wrightwood History => Topic started by: GRAHAM_RANCH on Dec 22, 08, 02:55:17 AM
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The latest snow activity, and the increasing amount of town visitors using the ski area of Big Pines, brings about the latest history spotlight-We go back to 110 years ago.
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Crossing Valdez (From the Messer Collection)
It was 1898 and Alaska's Gold Rush was in full swing...but to get where the pickin' were good, the prospectors first had to cross the Valdez Glacier.
Crossing the glacier for a season of prospecting, each man were required to haul supplies that were loaded aboard wooden sleds. The supplies included heavy tarpaulin tents, heavy sleeping bags, a sheet metal Yukon stove for warmth and cooking, oil skins, lots of cold weather clothing, cooking utensils, axes, whipsaws for small boat building, and even oil stoves to survive trekking across the glacier itself. The food supplies consisted mainly of hard tack, beans, bacon, flour, rice, and if the miner was lucky, powdered eggs, potatoes, and dried fruit. The individual supplies weighed between 1500 to 2000 pounds! Once the supplies were properly packed, the next chore was trying to find a safe way to traverse a dangerous glacier.
Although the Valdez Glacier slope was not extremely steep, crossing it through ice, fresh fallen snow or even thick and slick melting snow, wasn't going to be an easy task. Fifteen hundred pounds in two hundred pound loads required at least seven trips back and forth to the end of the glacier, which almost seventy miles. Over these many miles, half of the men pulled a 200 pound sled! This was only the 'start' of the crossing. Once the foot of the glacier was reached, this strenuous task had to be repeated for another three hundred and sixty miles while gaining almost a mile in elevation! With storms factored in, a man carrying a light load might have been able to make the summit in two days. However, in this case, it took many of the parties six weeks to two months to lug their supplies across the formidable Valdez Glacier!
One prospector that was involved with the gold rush shared his thoughts on the crossing, "It was something like work. " That man was named R.F. McClellan, he was the driving force behind the creation of Big Pines; where today, Wrightwood's visitors go to play, ski and snowboard when snow hits.