At twenty-one, a young man still in college, Dan Holder had an opportunity for adventure when his older stepbrother Kyn asked him to join an expedition. Along with Kyn's wife Ella and Kyn's sister Nance, they traveled in a small boat over 1,200 miles down the Yukon River through Canada's Yukon Territory and into Alaska. That was in 1966, well after the gold rush of 1898 when the river had been heavily traveled by gold seekers aboard small rafts, hand-sawed rowboats, some with sails, and large stern-wheelers. In 1966, the Yukon was basically a wilderness river with a few widely separated small towns along its shore, a number of deserted cabins left by trappers and prospectors, and deserted trading posts. Birds and bears were plentiful. There were no guided tours at that time. The many branching channels of the Yukon Flats downriver from Dawson were a serious challenge. Now as an author, he shares with his readers that experience and the historical background that puts it in perspective.
The author also shares the experience of going back to Alaska with Kyn in 1971 on a fifty-five-foot fishing boat. In Seattle, they rerigged the boat from a seiner to a salmon troller. They followed the gold rush route north to brave the challenges of fishing offshore on the Mt. Fairweather fishing grounds. He shares the excitement of nearly being swept onto the rocks by huge waves in a treacherous inlet and riding out hurricane force winds and thirty to forty-foot waves offshore. After leaving the boat, he hiked alone over the infamous Chilkoot trail reaching the snow-covered summit of the Chilkoot Pass near midnight in the Artic twilight on the longest day of the year, not knowing if the trail would be passable.
In 2002, the author and his wife Sybille retraced some of the early Alaska fishing voyage on a cruise ship. It was a very different kind of a trip, but it brought back old memories and generated a few exciting new ones.
If you enjoy firsthand adventure and if you are intrigued by the atmosphere and the history of the Pacific Northwest, then you should really enjoy this book.
