A thriving community keeps mushing traditions alive in southwest Alaska

 

Alexie’s name was spoken up and down the Kuskokwim that weekend and throughout the sled dog racing community across Alaska. The young musher — only 19 years old — from Kwethluk, a town of just under 900 people upriver from Bethel, was the pride of the Kusko.

His win was a symbol of the region’s thriving dog-mushing culture. It’s a lifestyle maintained by men and women who prefer canine companionship over gas-guzzling snowmachines, and who hitch up their teams for the races along the river. Who catch salmon for the dogs, cook it outdoors and still need to think about the next $2,500 order for a month’s supply of dog food. Who scoop poop every day because their fathers did. Who listen for the rhythm of paws hitting snow and the slicing of sled runners beneath them, traveling the river that links their communities and provides connection and sustenance, the way rivers do.

For centuries, Yup’ik people called the Kuskokwim River Kusquqvak. Here and throughout Alaska, including my home at the mouth of the Unalakleet River, people mushed across the winter landscape to hunt, trap, travel, trade and deliver mail. Today, running sled dogs is also a sport, complete with professional mushers like Iditarod champions Brent Sass, Joar Leifseth Ulsom and Bethel’s homegrown Pete Kaiser, all of whom have also competed in the prestigious Kuskokwim 300. It’s the longest race in the region, a 300-mile trek that starts and ends in Bethel. 

 

 

The Kusquqvak is also the venue for shorter contests organized in Bethel and the surrounding communities, races with crowd- and musher-favored mass starts, simple rules with no age requirements and no entry fees, which attract competitors from the roughly 30 dog teams in the area. For the Kusquqvagmiu, the people from the Kuskokwim, the river is home — the place where the mushing tradition of our ancestors remains stronger than anywhere else in Alaska. 

A musher on the Kuskokwim has more chances to compete in sprint or mid-distance races than a musher anywhere else in the state. That means a real shot at bringing home a racing check in an expensive sport. “You not only can pay for your dog food, but you can pay for a light bill or something,” Beverly Hoffman, a longtime musher, told me. Prizes were as high as $25,000 and totaled $350,000 this season, thanks to fundraising efforts by area racing associations.

Hoffman ran dogs for 40 years in Bethel, testing herself against Kuskokwim River trail conditions and immersing herself in the mushing community she helped build. She co-founded the Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race organization and the Kuskokwim 300 in 1980. For more than 25 years, she and her husband operated a mushing cooperative that negotiated prices for quality dog food, a service now supplied by the Kuskokwim Racing Committee. Hoffman also made ganglines for pulling sleds, sold harnesses, and provided local mushers with other equipment necessary to keep a dog kennel operating smoothly.

“If there’s no wind and I’m going to do a short run, I have to bring her, because if I don’t, she’ll remember it.”

“My dad was a dog musher,” she said. “He had a team of half-wolves when he was a teenager and had a trap line … so, of course, I grew up hearing some of those stories.” Today, Hoffman is one of many volunteers who support mushing on the Kuskokwim, some of whom take on behind-the-scenes tasks like prepping boxes of food, coffee and other supplies for remote race checkpoints. Hoffman also visits classrooms to talk with kids about the region’s history, working to ensure the stories from the trail continue. 

Thanks to that mushing community, the beacon on the Kusquqvak continues to shine. At a 50-mile race in Bethel in the beginning of January, Coraline Williams, a musher’s 4-year-old daughter, waited at the finish line wearing a purple snowsuit and round cherry-red glasses. Hoffman and other folks gathered there, too, anticipating the arrival of the next musher. Coraline’s family pointed to her with proud smiles. “She just can’t wait to race,” one of them said. —Laureli Ivanoff

 

“(Dog mushing) was a key part of life here, you know, trapping and mail, before airplanes. We’re carrying that history forward, so that it won’t be lost.”

Katie Basile is a documentary photographer and filmmaker with a focus on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska. She grew up in Bethel, Alaska, and continues to live there today with her partner and two young sons.

Laureli Ivanoff is an Inupiaq writer and journalist based in Uŋalaqłiq (Unalakleet), on the west coast of what’s now called Alaska. 

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