News and Updates

It’s hard to believe July is nearly behind us! The summer stretched out past the horizon during time spent at the roadhouse in May and June. Yet suddenly we are a month past solstice and even though the midnight sun still lights up most the night, the season is shifting quickly. On Monday, Fairbanks experienced a few minutes of nautical twilight for the first time since May 16th – the stars are returning, and we are moving headlong towards fall

What a winter! This year’s solstice season has full of superlatives – The coldest December since 1980 and 2nd longest stretch of sub-zero temperatures since 1904 – the year the first Roadhouse was constructed at the mouth of the Tolovana River! Between long stretches of deep cold, we received several heavy snowfall events, unusual for the interior and leaving us with an unusually deep snowpack for this point in the season. All this put a damper on outdoor winter plans

A heartfelt thanks to everyone who reached out with contacts. After following up on several great leads, some important pieces are (finally!) falling into place. A potential 501(c)(3) sponsor has been identified with a partnership proposal now in the works, and plans are afoot for a bank revetment project in the spring. The hope is that this Hail-Mary will buy us a little more time to move the roadhouse away from the river – a much larger and more complicated

After a mild break-up and relatively low water this summer, I was feeling confident about the state of the river bank and the timeline I had laid out for moving the roadhouse out of danger. On a work-trip towards the end of August, we had only lost a few feet of bank in front of the roadhouse, and none at all in front of the handler cabin – the closest outbuilding to the river. But during the last planned trip