Sourdoughs Shrug as Tenderfoots Shiver : Alaska’s Big Chill Evokes Winters Past

ANCHORAGE —  It has been the kind of winter here in the Far North that really separates the chechakos from the sourdoughs.

Chechakos, in the local parlance, are the newcomers, the tenderfoots, the weather wimps, primarily those from the big cities like Anchorage, who fail to realize that Alaskan winters have been exceptionally mild over the last decade or so.

Sourdoughs are the grizzled veterans, those who have endured many a stretch as bad as the current deep freeze that has gripped much of the coldest state in wind chills approaching 100 degrees below zero at times over the last few weeks.

Not to minimize the dangers in such mind-numbing conditions. Roads and schools have been closed in many places for the first time in years. Cars and trucks have ground to a halt because motor oil so cold turns to jelly. Pipes are bursting faster than a politician’s promises, and a few remote villages have lost power and telephone service or have been cut off from air deliveries of food, fuel and mail.

Transport Crash Probed

And authorities have begun investigating the fatal crash Sunday near Fairbanks of a Canadian military transport plane to determine whether the cold or a mechanical problem was to blame.

But in the far corners of this immense state, the old-timers seem to be taking the deep freeze with a shrug as well as a shiver, as just another hardship to be coped with, and one that will reaffirm what a gritty lot most Alaskans are.

“We adapt and we roll with the punches,” said Fran Tate, proprietor of Pepe’s Mexican restaurant in Barrow, where the wind chill on Monday was 75 degrees below zero. “We’re a tough breed.”

There is no denying it is cold. After all, this is the Arctic. How cold is it?

So cold that when Jack Whitman, a state fish and game biologist, went out to hunt grouse behind his house near McGrath last Friday, the firing pin of his shotgun froze. The temperature was 75 degrees below zero.

So cold that Ben Magnuson, who runs the Pick-n-Pak general store in McGrath, started up his Ford Aerostar van on Jan. 15 and has left it running ever since, for fear that he would never get it going again if he turned off the ignition.

Town Mayor Stranded

So cold that Don Honea, the mayor of remote Ruby, has been stranded more than two weeks in Fairbanks, unable to traverse by air or land the 250 miles that separate the two cities.

Harold Esmailka, Ruby’s vice mayor, said by telephone that most of the 248 people in the tiny village are just fine, even though the post office caught fire last week and a string of minus-50-degrees-or-worse days has virtually cut them off from the rest of the world.

“We’re all born and raised here, and we’re OK,” Esmailka said. “People have plenty of staples and meat and other food supplies. It’s not an emergency.”

State officials put National Guard troops and transport units on alert to deliver emergency assistance to rural hamlets in case of food or fuel shortages, but officials said that at present, they did not know of any life-threatening situation.

Though a Siberian air mass still hung over the state, temperatures Monday had moderated in some places. In Anchorage, usually warmed by ocean breezes, the mercury nudged its way up to 1 degree below zero, a considerable improvement over weekend temperatures that fell below minus 30. Still, winds exceeding 30 m.p.h. gusted across the port city Monday, making it feel like it was still 45 degrees below zero.

The coldest spot in the state was at Tanana, 150 miles west of Fairbanks, where the temperature hit a low of 64 below zero (139 degrees colder than the 75 degrees recorded at midday in Los Angeles).

At McGrath, 250 miles northwest of Anchorage, KSKO radio station manager Will Peterson said the cold had pretty much shut down the town, but many of the 500 residents thought things were looking up Monday when temperatures rose from weekend lows that hit minus 75 degrees. “It’s a sucker kind of thing,” Peterson said. “You learn to say, ‘wow, its only minus 60.’ ”

Frank Hooper, who runs the Hub Air plane service out of McGrath, has had to ground his three single-engine Cessnas for nearly three weeks because of the cold.

“We haven’t had these long cold spells for the last 10 years, but 15, 20 years ago, it was fairly normal,” Hooper said. “What you learn to do when you get a cold spell is you just button her up and keep your fire going and wait ‘til she passes.

“As the old saying goes, spring is just around the corner--three months away.”