• Topkok cabin
delivered wood. After Phase Two was completed the three volunteers left the firewood all stocked up.
As the weather on that stretch of the trail can get serious very quickly, the cabin has sheltered mushers and travelers in some epic storms. A notable one was in the last week of April 2000 during the Nome-Council Sled Dog Race. Mushers returning to Nome found themselves in a 100-mph storm in the Blowhole, the part of the trail between the cabin and Safety. According to Roger Thompson, who stopped in at the cabin while returning from a caribou hunt, there were 25 people in the 12x16-foot shelter. “We were there for four nights with over 100 mile an hour winds,” said Aaron Burmeister. Lucy Nordlum and Darrin Nelson of Kotzebue were two of the mushers. “Conner Thomas was stuck there for a couple days with us and he attempted to make it back to town once and his snow machine got flipped over by the wind and he took three hours to crawl back to camp. He tried again later and was able to make it to Nome. But nobody could get from Nome out there. That was a once in 100-year storm,” he said. “Jim Rowe tried flying out there to make a drop of dog food and meat for us. The top of that storm was 800 feet and he could not fly lower. He ended up flying to White Mountain and people from there brought the dog food down a couple of days later.”
Burmeister described building snow caves for the dogs when they arrived at the cabin. But by the next morning there was no snow left. It had blown away. The dogs were on exposed sand and the willows were being ripped out by the wind. Snow machines parked out front by hunters who arrived were blown end over end down the beach. On the fourth day the shore ice blew out. “That cabin with all those people in it was bouncing off the ground,” said Burmeister.
“We had 25 people in there for three days,” said Roger Thompson, recalling the storm. He’d been hunting with Jim Wilson, his son Isaac, and Art Peters. “We had half a dozen caribou and all the dog mushers were on a quick race to Council so they were travelling light. They didn’t have any extra food. One guy was up 24 hours cooking. He had the pot going around the clock. ‘Just help yourself,’ he’d say.”
“Finally, I got hold of the Search and Rescue and they said, ‘You guys need anything?’”
Thompson answered, “Yeah, if you guys could send the Blackhawk down here we’re just about out of salt and paper towels.”
“Search and Rescue came through looking for this one guy who was frozen up in a hole over on Topkok River. They found him. He had a little frostbite but not bad.” Asked if he’d used the shelter any other time Thompson said he had. “Oh yeah, it’s a convenient place to hole up. I was stuck three days there once without a cabin.”
“It was a great trip and well worth spending the time out there for that cabin and its purpose,” said Tyler Johnson. “It was definitely in dire need of attention. We just hope that anybody who stops there and stays there, takes care of it.”