Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled

Between 1904 and his death in 1920, Hudson Stuck served as Episcopal Archdeacon of the Yukon, a territory of roughly 250,000 square miles that he covered by dog sled in winter and by riverboat in summer. This 1914 narrative gathers about eight years of those winter journeys: the mechanics of running a team, the roadhouses and mining camps, the Koyukuk and Chandalar country, and the Native villages where he spent much of his working life. Stuck writes as a man who logged the miles himself, precise about weather and gear, blunt about hardship. As a record of interior Alaska before the bush plane arrived, few accounts are this detailed. Stuck, who a year earlier co-led the first ascent to Denali’s true summit, also argued steadily for the Alaska Native people he traveled among.