Chetwynd Chainsaw Carving

 The competition is held on the second weekend of June.  Each year 12 carvers (4 International, 4 US, and 4 Canadian) are selected by our board of directors, and are invited to bring their best work to see how it will stand up against the world's best.  The Carvers are provided with a 40-50 inch diameter by 8 foot tall western red cedar and 35 hours to complete a sculpture of their own design.

First place 2026

Second place 2026

First place 2014

Second place 2024

Dawson City

 Dawson City is a historic Gold Rush town on the Yukon River, famous for its colorful wooden buildings, dirt streets, and rich Klondike Gold Rush history. Once known as the “Paris of the North,” Dawson preserves the spirit of the prospectors who flocked here in the late 1890s seeking their fortune.

We reached to East end of the road at the Top of the World.

There is a free ferry ride across the river. It is famous 

for the hours long wait times to board. 

We were lucky, only waited 15 minutes

Jack London's cabin. 

Half the logs in this replica were from London's 

original cabin 

1897 Clapp & Jones steam fire engine

1899 Waterous steam fire engine

We went to Gertie's for an enjoyable show.

Vas receiving special attention. 

Chicken Alaska

 We are headed across the Top of the World highway to Dawson City. First stop is Chicken to explore the town,  its gold dredge and sample delicious cinnamon rolls at the Chicken Creek Cafe where we stayed overnight. 

The chicken sculpture was created by high school 

students from recycled lockers

Other chicken themed destinations  

A beast of a machine

This machine the size of a small building slowly crawled across an Alaskan river valley, its metal buckets plunging into the ground one after another. This is a floating mining machine built to move mountains of gravel in the search for tiny pieces of gold. The dredge floated in a pond of water and moved forward using huge winches and cables. 

The dredges moved at a snails pace. One dredge moved 4.5 miles in 31 years

Our guide is explaining to Amy how pipes were driven

into the ground to melt the permafrost ahead of the dredge.

The generating room

The continuous chain of steel buckets scooped up gravel

 from the riverbed. Bucket after bucket, the material was 

lifted aboard the dredge and dumped into a rotating trommel, 

a large cylindrical screen. 

There were three quarters of an inch holes followed 

by inch holes. Any thing larger was dumped out the 

back of the dredge 

The smaller material was washed out of the trommel 

into the sluice boxes in this secure area. 

Every two weeks a special crew came 

and removed the gold. 

 These levers controlled all the mechanics of the dredge

Below the control room

When it became unprofitable to mine the gold,

the crew just walked away leaving everything in place

The model gives you an idea of 

how they looked in operation

Poker Flat Research Range

The University of Alaska has conducted auroral research since the 1920s. When sounding rockets were developed to study the upper atmosphere, the university decided to build a dedicated launch range. The UAF Geophysical Institute leased 5,132 acres from the State of Alaska, and the facilities at what became Poker Flat Research Range were completed in 1969.  Poker Flat has four launch pads, including two designed for severe weather, and can handle rockets weighing up to 35,000 pounds. The range includes an administrative facility, a concrete blockhouse used as mission control, rocket assembly buildings, a two-story science observatory, and a payload assembly building. Three S-band antennas collect telemetry, while a C-band radar tracks rocket payloads during flight.  More than 1,700 launches have been conducted at Poker Flat, making it an important site for studying Earth’s atmosphere and its interaction with the space environment.

Our guide, kyle

Recovered pay loads. There is a reward if you find any part of

the rocket. All you have to do is report its location. The reward

for the one on the left was $1600.

This is were the rockets are assembled here.

Photo from the internet

Looking the other way

The launch facilities 

The blockhouse

Keyle told us that there are frequent delays that require

adjustment or repair.

It could take a week or more for a launch to take place. 

The launch panel

Seen in the blockhouse

 S-band antennas and the C-band radar 

Photo from the internet

One is not allowed to take photos in the launch building. 

For winter launches the building is heated and the 

rocket is incased in styrofoam. It is mounted horizontally

on a long arm. When ready to launch, the launch building

is moved away and the rocket raised to the proper angle for launch.

The styrofoam is blown off during launch.