Alaska Uncovered Podcast
Welcome to the Alaska Uncovered Podcast with your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming. Jennie brings you accurate, helpful and entertaining information about Alaska Travel and Life in Alaska. Guests include Alaska travel experts and Alaska business owners, guides and interesting Alaskans. Jennie is a born and raised Seattleite, a former Alaskan and spends several weeks in Alaska each year. She’s an experienced guide and the Founder of the Alaska and Washington travel website, Top Left Adventures. Jennie is joined by occasional co-host, Jay Flaming, her husband for more than 20 years. Jennie and Jay met working in tourism in Skagway, Alaska and also lived in Juneau and Fairbanks together. Jay lived in Fairbanks for 8 years before meeting Jennie in Skagway and grew up in Yellowstone National Park.
Alaska Uncovered Podcast
Gold mining as a teenager in the 1970s in Nome with Mike Martinson (Alaska Stories Series)
Jennie’s colleague Mike Martinson joins Jennie to share about his teenage and young adult years gold mining in Nome.
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Music credits: Largo Montebello, by Domenico Mannelli, CC.
Welcome to the Alaska Uncovered Podcast with me, your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming, my occasional co-host and full-time husband, Jay, and I bring you accurate, helpful, and entertaining information about Alaska Travel and life in Alaska. Before we jump in, we want to take a moment to thank our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible.
You can join them at the link in the show notes. Enjoy the show. I.
Are you fascinated by remote locations such as Nome? If you are, you wanna tune into this episode where we're going to hear lots of stories about Nome, Alaska. My guest today is Mike Martinson. Mike is born and raised for the first part of his life in the Pacific Northwest and moved to Nome for the first time when he was 14 years old.
Later he worked in the mining industry. And later he became a teacher and was a music teacher, in various places in Alaska, including Anchorage for many years. And today he and I work together as tour directors in the summer. And when he's not working you will find him playing the tuba in the Anchorage Symphony, which he's done since 1987.
Or playing in various gigs around Anchorage. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here. Well, thank you, Jennie. It's nice to be here. How you got to Alaska the first time the first time. You bet.
That was, uh, 1974. My, my dad was a logger down here in, in Washington state. He and his brother had a company and they heard about this mining operation outside of Nome, quite a ways, the north of Nome. And they, they were asked to run it. So one of them would, would, uh. Go up to a Nome in, in the summer only, and the other would stay down here and, and log.
Um, they took turns. They, they started that in the early sixties and they ended in around 68, 69, somewhere in there. Um. But a couple years later, my dad heard that, that same mine was for sale, so he bought it for next to nothing. 'cause it was, it was just abandoned and he started mining up there.
So in 1973, I was just 14, I was asked to come up and, and mine for gold. And I did that for six summers, paved my way through college mining for gold. That's pretty awesome. And then can, just to follow up on that after you paid your way through college, then what happened next? After college, I, I was a certified music teacher and looking at the, at.
Where the, the best pay was. I returned to Alaska. It was a, yeah. At, at that time, Alaska was just extremely wealthy. I'm talking 1983. It was year. Yep. It was new oil money. Teachers were the highest paid in the country by far. It's certainly no longer the case. Yeah. And so I applied for a job and went to met La Kala, Alaska in 1983, and I've been up there ever since.
That's awesome. So can you tell everybody where Metlakatla is? 'cause I'm guessing most people dunno. No, it's the most southern town in Alaska is, it's out of Ketchikan. Mm-hmm. Ketchikan is just 15 miles away. It's on, on a little island called Net Island.
I was there for two years. That's awesome. And then did you go to Anchorage from there or was there somewhere else you were along the way? No, I, I, I, uh, stopped off in Seward for three years. Okay. In Seward for three years, and then Anchorage School District ever since for, love it. 29 years I believe. Yeah.
Yeah. That's a, that is a long history and a fantastic one. We are here today talking about, no. Mike, could you tell everyone, I mean, I think most people who've heard of Nom are familiar with it because of the Iditarod, but of course there's a lot more going on in Nome than just that. So can you talk a little bit about what people do in No, like professionally, what people do for fun?
What makes it kind of a special and unique location in Alaska? You bet it, it is unique. It's very much a hub to all of the, the many, many villages around Nome, the smaller villages. But Nome itself is not very large. It's under 4,000 people, but it's, it's, uh, in the summertime, gold mining is everywhere.
That's the, still the primary industry, and that's why of course we were up there every summer. It's, uh, but it's, yeah. A lot of villagers though, come into Nome. On, uh, for a week, two weeks, they're, they're always there. Some new people just to do shopping and getting ready to go back out to their village.
So a lot of folks in the summer aren't residents of No. That people are staying there are not residents, they're in and out. It's very much a hub like that. Yeah, that makes sense. So when you were gold mining, you know, as a teenager, young adult, were you. Were, I know the mine was outside of town, so were you living in town and going out there every day or were you staying out there?
Yeah. No, no. Nome was our headquarters. That's where we, we start, we stayed to get ready for mining. So typically we'd, we'd spend a couple weeks just. And welding things, building parts, getting ready for the mine. Once we're out there, of course it's isolated and you can't really run back to town for something.
We're 136 miles north of Nome. Yeah. But it's very rough road. The first trip out to the mine took 18 hours. First trip that I took, we, we got stuck in the mud, 20 times. It was just. It was amazing. Oh, most, most trips don't take that long but we have to, we haul out the tons of fuel in 55 gallon drums, um, just parts and pumps and you name it.
So we spend quite a bit of time getting ready to go to the mine, and then finally we head on out there. And we don't really return for a few months. Some people might go back and forth a little bit, but hardly ever. It's, uh, it's hard to get to. Yeah. Yeah. So, one thing that immediately comes to my mind when I think about these really remote locations is eating.
So did you have to bring all your food out for the whole summer or did you get resupplied? Yeah, no, we, we would, um, we'd, my, my dad would order food from Seattle and, you know, it'd come up in a barge like everything else does and no. Yep, yep. There are no roads to, no, by the way, you can't drive there.
Yes. Yeah. Fly or, or take a boat. So we'd order food months ahead of time. It's all canned, of course. And it would come up in crates and, cases of fruit and ca you name it, it's all there. And that's the food we would rely on when we get out there. And we'd usually, um, get a moose as well. And that was there several things happened in our moose, moose hunting ventures, but, uh, but moose and the canned food, that, that's what we ate.
Yes. Yeah. So do you have a favorite and least favorite canned food based on years of eating it? Yeah well we, there was a year that we did not get a moose and we were eating spam for quite a while and, Ooh. That's, that's okay. I I can I'm not very picky. The first two or three, four days maybe.
Yeah. But, uh, it's been on for a while, so we, we actually had a we did something that, that didn't turn out too well. We, my, I. We, one of my relatives, I, I'm out there with my couple brothers, a cousin, an uncle. Mm-hmm. About about seven or eight of us or so, and my dad, they saw a ham, a great big 30 pound ham in the grocery store in Nome that, you know, weeks earlier, Uhhuh, everything is frozen by the, you know, meat would be frozen.
Yes. They thought, boy, we don't have a moose. We have a moose every year. But this year, no moose. Wouldn't it be nice to get that ham? So we thought we, we also had this, a couple pilots would drop our mail every couple weeks or so. Yeah, they'd come in, zoom in and drop a bag, and it as just a favor when they're in the area.
So we thought, wouldn't it be nice to get them to drop that ham if we could just get word to them somehow? Well, we had no communication, no way of talking to people in Nome, but my brother was going to town for some reason. I don't recall why. And, uh, my dad asked him, Hey, if you see the pilot, his name is Stinky.
He's a, that very well-known pilot up there. He passed away now, but if you happen to see him, see if you can ask him to, to drop that ham, that frozen ham in into camp. Yeah. Since he didn't have moose meat. Right. And we had no way of knowing. Did the message get through? Was he gonna, we had no idea, but.
Maybe two or three weeks or so of eating spam here came stinky airplane. I thought, okay, he's got mail. I wonder if he has ham. The ham with it. Yeah. And so we got out of camp. 'cause if he did have the ham, I mean, that could kill somebody dropping it off. Right. You didn't want the ham to fall on your head while you were in your tent or something?
That would be Oh, no, no. Yeah. And we had cabins, but still it's just dangerous. So we got out of camp, we kind of ran 50 feet, a hundred feet out maybe. 200 feet, even out of camp here came his airplane. He kind of dive bombs down and, and here came out, saw the mailbag come out. It always had a like a orange surveyor's tape streamer on it.
And here came this big. Bulk thing coming out of the airplane. So we ran into camp thought where here there's the mailbag. Picked it up, no problem. I always, always enjoyed getting the mail. And we looked for the ham. Where is it? And we looked. We looked and it landed on top of the cabin. We looked on the roofs, we looked in.
The river was only three feet deep there. It may have. We just, we couldn't find the darn thing. And we searched. And searched, and finally somebody went to the outhouse. Oh. And it was a million to one shot. It went broke through the back wall of the outhouse and right down the hole. Didn't even touch the seat, just there it was.
The part I, part I remember most was my, my dad and my uncle, his brother squeezing into that outhouse together and looking down the hole, and they looked at each other. They looked down the hole again, and they knew, I don't think they said a word, they knew what they were thinking. It's the ham was wrapped and it's frozen, right?
Yes, technically it's, it's really still good. Yeah. But they're looking at it down there and they, they just, they couldn't do it. So that ham is still there? It's still there. Well, it has to be. Yeah. Never took it out. I, well, I was gonna ask if it started smelling, but the outhouse already smells, so maybe you didn't notice it.
Yeah. There's plenty of smells, but it wasn't the, not the ham's fault, that's for sure. Oh, man. That must have been really very disappointing. Oh, extremely disappointing. And I remember, you know, we talked about it, boy it's right there. Damn tastes. So, but, but after seeing it there, you just how could you bite that?
Yeah, you just I get it. It's like, this is probably fine, but it's also super not fine. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh man. So did you, like at the end of the summer, did you tell Stinky that he had made this perfect shot into your household? Yeah, I, I've wondered that. I, I have no idea. I dunno the answer.
You know, I can't say he did it on purpose. That would be. And maybe he did try it on purpose. Yeah. But how, how could he, you know, that's a one in a million shot, right? Yeah. You could never do that. If you were trying to aim like that, that would just never work out. That's right.
'Cause my husband Jay, who is frequent, well not frequently, sometimes the co-host of this podcast, he was a field archeologist in the Arctic, in Alaska for several years. Food is always a challenge, when you're trying to figure out. They also ate a lot of spam, lot of spam, a lot of pilot bread, wheat, pilot bread every day.
You bet. Yeah, lots of stuff. Definitely. Peanut butter and jelly with pilot bread last forever. Yes. Yeah, it really would. For those of you listening, pilot Bread is kind of like a cracker it's one of those things that's fine until you've had it for like weeks on end, and then it's a little like, oh, pilot.
Yeah. Yeah. But it lasts, it lasts a lot longer than, than standard bread, of course, doesn't. So you're a tour guide, so you've got a bajillion stories and you lived in Nome. So tell us some other fun stories about, about Nome. . I dunno if it's fun or not but I, I'm thinking of the outhouse made me think of another one.
In, in Nome. At that time there were no outhouses. It was they moved up the steps to honey buckets. Ah, okay. And because you're not aware of those, it, it's, uh. Now they're not using them all over Nome anymore in 77, they put in some 1977, put in some sewage and, and water pipes into Nome. It's very, very difficult up there because of permafrost to yeah, make water and sewage and all that happened.
So they did a honey bucket thing for many years and that just, that's a five gallon bucket. Underneath a toilet seat. And so the bathrooms are now inside the house. There's no plumbing you know, sewage, plumbing at least. Yeah. And, uh, and the, but the bathroom had to be on an outside wall. Because the honey bucket. This five gallon bucket would have a hatch on the outside wall. Ah, ah, clever. So once, once it fills up the honey bucket, man you, that's what we called him. That this truck would come along and take your honey bucket through the hatch. They'd pull it out and they would climb this ladder.
It was an old water truck and they dump it in this truck. Mm-hmm. And then they climbed back down and I had a high pressure hose. They'd just spray it out right there on the street. Sewage flying everywhere. So you gave, give that, that truck lots of clearance. Yes. But that, that was, its, that was the only and water was delivered to everyone too, either in, into 55 gallon drums.
And you'd do so ladle, we did that for a little while. Or if you had a nice house, you had an indoor water tank. Had to be inside. Of course. Yep. And they would just fill it up and gravity feed would give you a shower and, and a sink. But I, I had an incident with those, the honey bucket when I, I don't know if I was 14 or 50.
I was young and, and foolish. Mm. And, uh, of course it's daylight all night long in the, in June, it's, it's, it's really unique for, for people who are not from there to see that. Yep. So I was, I was out fishing. And the pink salmon were in the, we call it the jetty in this area right off of Nome.
They're coming up the Nome River to spawn. And so I was out there catching fish left and right. I don't know how many, I had 15, 20 fish salmon, and I didn't realize how late it was. It was probably one or 2:00 AM I know It was extremely late. Mm-hmm. And my stepmother really did not like to be.
Awakened woken up. So I came back to the house. I thought, okay, I gotta sneak these fish into the freezer. Mm-hmm. I cleaned them all out and, and, but the door was locked. Oh my gosh. What do I do? I can't knock. I'm getting so much trouble. Yes. Young. 14-year-old. And so I had this genius idea, ol the honey bucket hatch.
I was, you know, I was probably 130 pounds. I could easily wiggle my way through that thing, Uhhuh. So I took the honey bucket out, put it out, put it to the side, and I thought, I'm gonna quietly sneak in through the toilet. See? Mm-hmm. Then come out and get the, get the fish and put the honey bucket back and so on.
So I was just being as quiet as I could. But she was in a, she was a very light sleeper. Okay. And, and I remember looking up and seeing that toilet. The, the lid was down the standard toilet seat. Yes. And I lid up with my head just to peek around to see if the coast was clear, Uhhuh. I didn't see anybody.
I'm, I'm not sure why. 'cause I pushed it all the way up with my head ready to climb out. Mm-hmm. And there she was with a cast iron skillet, ready to smack whoever. She didn't hit me, but she thought she was scared to death, thought she was being burglarized by somebody She didn't know I was still, oh my gosh.
So she realized it was you before she beamed you with the skillet? Yeah, that is correct. Oh, good. She did not, she did not. But my, my attempt to, to be quiet, but I failed miserably was a, it was, yeah. I should have knocked. Yeah. And, and once you're halfway through, I had to climb in through the toilet at that point.
At no point in climbing back out. Right. You're kind of committed at that point. Yeah. Very committed. But I don't know if, oh boy, people were broken into houses through the honey bucket hatch or not, but, right. Well, good thing. Yeah. And I guess if someone locked the. Door into the honey bucket, then that would also be a problem.
Then you'd be trapped in there. Yeah. Oh man. I dunno if there is a lock on any of that, people. Kinda stay clear of the honey buckets on their own, I think. Yeah. And I feel like, I think you're right. I could see a 14 or 15-year-old doing that, but I feel like you'd have to be really committed to your burglary thing to enter through the toilet.
Yeah. And you'd have to be very skinny too, 'cause breakfast. Yes. Like a full adult might have a hard time with that. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. But they're, no, they, Nome is, is so unique when I, um. The, I think it was my second year, I was probably 15. I was, uh, given the task of taking my uncle to Nome and he, he'd never been on an airplane.
This is my a different brother of my dad's. Okay. Older brother. Okay. Never been on an airplane. I was 15 and, and had been flying a little bit, so I, I took him up to Nome and he got there. He was just fascinated. He's also from the Pacific Northwest. Yeah. He was fascinated that it was daylight. Here it's midnight and 1:00 AM or something.
And he, it's perfectly daylight. Yeah. No one is below the arctic circle, by the way. So the sun does go down on June 21st, but just for a minute or two. Yeah so he was walking the streets of Nome. He just got there and everyone's out crowded. It was probably 1:00 AM or so, and he was walking outside this bar.
And he tells the story that, that, uh, just as he walked by, this guy ran out of the bar and ran into him, fell down, and this fellow was shirtless and holding his, his gut where he was bleeding from. Oh. And he got up and ran again. Ran away. Oh geez. What was that about? And within he said 30 seconds.
Another guy came running out of the bar, ran into him, fell down, same thing. Got up. And ran after the first guy. The second guy had a knife. He was trying to, oh, get the first, and that's, that's sort of a story, the type of story you hear a lot. You heard a lot back then. At least it was a, yeah, they've called it a wild west town.
It's just, yeah. It's pretty rowdy and, you know, boardwalk and both Boardwalk on front Street down the main drag. It's a wild place, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. Oh that's so fun. Okay. Any other fun stories you wanna lay on us, Mike? I don't know if you, you have time. I, they're, they're not that fun, but some that just fascinate me is a, yeah.
I'll tell you about Wolverines if you'd like. Oh, yeah. Wolverines. Every year we'd that, we'd go to the camp we'd finally get there. We'd see the main cabin would have holes in the wall. Like two or three holes about the size of a basketball, maybe a little bit smaller, and these are holes that Wolverines would just help themself to get inside.
They, they chew through the wall, physically chew through the wall to get inside the cabin. They only did it in one cabin. That's the cabin where we'd keep food. Oh yeah. So their of smell that is just through the roof and the food. I'm talking it's sealed. The cans. Right. That's all that was in there. That they know where the food is.
So they would chew through the wall and get inside the cabin and. And the, the, the main cabin was we've had a diesel stove. A couple little bunk. Little twin beds. Yeah. And we store food in these cupboards, these wooden three quarter inch plywood cupboards. And they would chew right through that and they would open the cans if the can had meat in it.
So they never touched, never touched a can of beans. Okay. Or just stew or, something with meat and this is it. This is in the middle of winter. It could be 40, 50 and even 60 below out there sometimes. Yeah. And they're still smelling that now. My dad had a fix. He said he was gonna take the labels off the cans so they wouldn't know which is which.
But he, no, he did say that, but, but he, uh, he had a stick though. The thing is they chew through this cupboard and that cover and that, so he said, you know what? I'm just gonna open all the cupboards. Don't chew through them. And one of them got in behind the covers. They were like halfway out, chewed into one out the other, into one out, you know, oh man.
No winning but in Alaska, um, known everywhere in Alaska, if you have a cabin, you leave food in it. That's the. Everyone does that. We leave fuel for our stove just in case somebody is traveling by a hunter and their snow machine breaks down or, or what, whatever reason. Yep. There's food and warmth in that cabin.
Yeah. You would never take the food out with you. It's just, yeah, it's not done. But, um, you know that, I'm glad that you mentioned that, Mike. 'cause I feel like that's one of those Alaska like really unique things about. Alaska is that there's this sort of idea, especially in, I mean not necessarily in like downtown Anchorage, but like when you're out somewhere where someone, you know, it's like if you have a resource, a cabin say, and.
If somebody comes by and needs something, then it's totally okay for them to come in and warm up and eat something. Yeah. You know, like you lease stuff there for people and I think that's really a cool and interesting cultural thing about Alaska. Sure, sure. There, there are no I wouldn't say no.
Cabins have locks, but I've, I've never seen one not out there anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Especially. Out there. Did you ever have anyone come and stay in your cabin in an emergency or no? Um, not that I know of. We did have, people aren't out there in the winter typically. I mean, they could be, and that's why you leave food.
But we would have visitors sometimes in the summertime. And the way the claims work up there it's not our land. You can, anybody can go on and they can camp there if they want to. We have mining rights to the ground. Mm-hmm. So if a person takes a shovel and digs into the ground, then um, then that's, that's a serious no-no.
Right. But, uh, but we'd have visitors and we, we just welcome 'em. We, uh, you know, they're might be traveling by, they're usually mining. They're looking for a spot to mine. Mm-hmm. So we'd tell 'em where our claims are so they'd know no. To avoid those. And, um, they're out there looking for gold.
Not, not often. Like in the summer, we might have one or two. That's it, right? Yes. Definitely not a, not a high traffic area for sure. Oh, no, that, that's, yeah, that's, you have to put it mildly. Yeah. Um, but, but gold is everywhere up there. It's, it is truly, it's everywhere. The problem is permafrost is the, yeah.
Is the problem and you can't get to it 'cause the ground is frozen so hard and, and the gold is 12 feet or so, 15 feet down below this frozen ice, dirt. Yep. That, that is the problem. My dad had a saying. He said he has many, many millions of dollars in the. Lots of millions. Trouble is it's in the riverbank and they can't get it out but oh, that's a minor thing to say.
Yeah. It's, but it's very, very true. Yeah. If all the claims you, you can stake claims all over the place. There's tons of gold down there. Yep. Get to it. Getting down to it is another story. Yep. Absolutely. That's very difficult. And were you. With your gold mining for your family, were you doing like, how were you doing placer mining or like, can you tell everybody just a little bit about what that experience was like?
. Most gold in Alaska is plaster mining. And that just means the gold is not embedded in rock. It's loose. Yeah. You know, there's a nugget laying on the ground kind of thing.
And that, that's what plaster mining is. So there are a number of ways of do it, of doing it. All of them involve a slce box. Lots of of water. Tons of water. So since gold is extremely heavy, it's one of the heaviest metals out there. We run wa running water over gravel and a on a sloped incline or decline, I should say, with little, uh, bumps.
That's what a sluice box amounts to. So the gravel washes off, but the gold sticks down because it's so, it gets behind a little barrier and stays there. That's how gold pan sort of works as well. Yep. So we just have, so the way our, we would mine, is we typically have a a s slce box that might be 30 feet long or so about three feet wide and lots of heavy equipment.
We had a crane and we would, we'd dump gravel into a, it was an old, uh. Dump truck bed and water spraying everywhere. And it would go down this slce box, and then we'd have a bulldozer, um, usually a D eight, push the gravel from the bottom of this slce box and push other gravel to the top where the crane could pick it up and dump it in this loose box.
In the sixties, my dad ran a gold dredge. The gold dredge is still there, but it's, it's, oh wow. The mess. It's, you know, it the previous owners before he bought it, left it in the river, and breakup is a big thing up there. So it's when the ice from the river it starts to thaw out in the spring.
Yep. And these, these massive, many ton chunks of ice come down, flowing down the river and they break everything in the way. Yeah. So if you leave a boat frozen in the river or something, in this case a dredge, it just the ice just. Rips it up. It's, uh, very dangerous. So you wanna make sure you put, take everything out of the river before, before things freeze up in October.
Yeah. And is the, is it the Yukon River that you were on or is it a different river? Yeah. No, it's, it's, um, called the Cougar Rock. Okay. It's, it's a much smaller river than, well, Yukon's Enormous. Yeah. But Cougar Rock with a K it's a, you know, if you were to look at a map and go straight north of Nome, it's about halfway between Nome and Coville.
Okay. Yep. It's called the Cougar Rock Region. Some call it the road, the Nome Cougar Rock Road is different. Yep. Yep. That's where we, that's where we mine. My brother still has all of the claims up there. Uh, they have two brothers up there mining right now. Wow. Yeah that's one thing I think people often don't know when they visit Alaska is that gold mining is something that's still happening today.
I mean, I know for sure in Nome and also in the Fairbanks area. Are there any other. Places where, you know of Mike, that there's active gold mining in 2025 in Alaska. I, yeah, I I have seen mines everywhere. Virtually everywhere in Alaska. Even in southeast Alaska. Oh, yeah. You know, was, you know, was a gold mining town.
Yep. So it, yeah. Pick your spot. There's a mine near you somewhere. Yeah. But, uh, but Nome, it's, I don't know if it's richer ground, more, wealthier ground in, in Nome, or for whatever reason it's huge up there. There's many, many mines. Yeah. Going, yeah. Although there's so much gold, it just really is.
It's just get if not for the permafrost, yeah. Permafrost could be wiped away gold. There'd be a massive gold rush. Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. You know, I'm thinking too about like when we take guests to different gold mining experiences. Mm-hmm. So, by the way, listeners, if you're going to a place in Alaska where you have the option of doing gold panning, you should definitely do it.
It's really fun. Skagway and. Fairbanks and Girdwood all have places to you, um, do gold panty. But I love how, I don't know if you've had this experience, but I feel like there's often someone on the tour who's like, I don't know, this seems it's cold and raining and I don't wanna do this. This is, and then I feel like that is always the person that I am like dragging out of there.
It's like you're holding up dinner, friend. You gotta go. Yeah. Oh man. I should, there's a misconception too. I should, I should say this. People assume that we're, I'm going gold mining, you know, commercial gold mining with a gold pan uhhuh. And that's absolutely not the case. That if you think about how much a gold pan holds, if you dump it fill it with gravel, whatever it's, yeah.
Yeah, little tiny bit. If you have a, a backhoe, a crane, a ex excavator or something else, dumping into a sluice box, each bucket full, each dump is like a hundred gold pans and, and you know that those are processed every minute or so. So using heavy equipment is the way that they modern miers go. The gold pan is used to clean up the sluice box at the very end.
So at the end of the day, you, you take off the, the very, very rich gravel, mostly, a lot of gold in it, and you pan it, you gold pan it and that's how you, you wind up your day on a gold mine. Yeah, you certainly don't mind with a gold pan. You prospect. We'll go out and see, wonder how rich this ground is and we'll, we'll look at it with a gold pan.
Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good point. That like, it just would be way too inefficient to like make a living getting gold like that. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mike, is there anything else, any other stories that people have gotta hear about No. Before we wrap up today? How about a permafrost?
Real quick story? Yes. Let's have a permafrost story. It's, wait, Mike, to start with, can you explain for everyone what permafrost is, what we're talking about? You bet. Yeah, you bet. And I, and I thought this should be said because it's so, it's such a big deal there. Yeah. But permafrost is. Ground that is year round, always frozen.
And it happens as further north. You go in Alaska, the more, uh, permafrost you'll see Fairbanks has some it might be six feet down where the permafrost starts. It might be shallow, it might, it varies all over the place. Yep. So no Nome is unique. It's about the same longitudinal, spot is Fairbanks, but it's very different climate. It's all tundra, no trees. Yeah. And the permafrost is right there. It's right under the tundra. Mm-hmm. It's just mm-hmm. It's hard as a rock. So it one, we, we had a moose out at the mine. We always, always did, except for that one year, and we, we had a freezer, nice upright freezer.
We would run a little Briggs and Stratton generator two or three times a day to keep the freezer cold. So we had all this moose meat wrapped up and butcher paper and labeled and so on, and the freezer. Everything was good. We were fat, dumb, and happy. But then the freezer went out, it died.
Oh. Oh, and now we, we fix everything at the mine. We can't fix a freezer. Mm-hmm. So here's an entire moose in that freezer temperature of 70, 80 degrees. It's interior. Very, very warm in the summer, and we're kind of panic. What are we, we can't get a new freezer. Noam doesn't sell freezers. We have to order one on a barge and get one in three weeks or so.
Didn't know what to do. So my dad actually did know what to do. He act, he had me as the young guy step outta camp. We went out of camp a hundred feet or so in case Bears came in. Right? That's always a, always a thought. Yes. He said, dig, dig a hole right here. Three feet square by about three feet down or so that should hold all of our meat.
And so we took the tundra off in squares, like big chunks of tundra. Tundra is like a foot to foot and a half of just mossy vegetation. Uh, very thick, heavy stuff. Mm-hmm. Took those off and put 'em off to the side. And I remember thinking, well, this is okay. This is a little hole. It'll take me half hour or so.
But right under the tundra he put the shovel down and chink, it was like rock. Mm-hmm. It looked like dirt, but it was frozen. Absolutely. Just solid and had been frozen for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yeah. So I ended up taking a minor's pick. And, chipping away at little pieces and shelving those, it was all day I spent, I know I spent eight hours of digging that little tiny hole.
Yeah. But once it was dug, we put the mo, the moose meat, which was wrapped up, put it in garbage bag eggs to keep the dirt off, put it in the ground, put the tundra back on top as an insulator. Mm-hmm. And that meat stated frozen, stayed frozen hard as a rock for the rest of the summer. It was, wow. That's amazing.
Oh yeah. And bears have the best sense of smell of any, any animal. Yeah. We were worried, but they didn't happen to get in there. Okay. The awkwardness though, they'd say, Hey Mike, we need a, we need some steaks. Go out and guy to take the tundra off and dig through the garbage bags. But they'd be like, here's one.
Yeah. But, but it stayed cold and that's how I, I didn't realize it, but that's how the indigenous folks up there keep things cold in the summer. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Passing freezer, the rural freezer that we're walking on. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. So how did you guys do cooking? Did you do it over like a fire or did you have a wood stove, or how did you No, we were, we were pretty produce meat.
Yeah. That, that main cabin, the one that had the cans of food in it and so forth. Yep. Had a diesel stove. It's the only one. Oh, okay, cool. We, we would, you know, have stove oil or, or diesel and we could heat that thing up. Now the stove would. Heat the room as well as you, you had a dual purpose, heat the room and it would cook as well, even had an oven in it that was, you could not regulate whatsoever.
But we just, yeah. No, we could cook right there. There's no microwave or, well that, yes, no pre microwave. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine, like I know that any kind of stove or oven like that is just so challenging to like have any idea what the temperature is inside. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome.
Just a guess. Yeah. So Mike, before we wrap up here, I would love to know, you know, in addition to decades of living in Alaska, you know, you're also a tour director and spend a lot of time with visitors, and what is your biggest piece of advice for someone, um, who's planning to visit Alaska, especially for the first time?
Yeah, boy. Um. Of course as you know, Alaska is so different from here to there to there to there, it's, you know, vastly climates and, and different regions and so forth. Yep. But I, I would, you know, the, the, uh, the tourism areas show you some great stuff. But I would certainly recommend just if you're not in a tour group, if you're by yourself, get off the beaten path and look up like gold.
Gold panning a, a little, a small outfit doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, just look, look for small tourism, tourism things and talk to some locals and say, Hey what's nice to look at here? If you're in Anchorage, maybe you wanna hike up to flat top and see the entire region. That's not something they do on tours.
Yeah. So many sites. It's a place like no other. And if you, if you know where to go, talk to some locals and ask them you can see some amazing things that you, you would never, ever forget. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with that. That's great advice. I always ask all of our guests what their favorite restaurant is, where they live, and then over time we get this great collection of restaurant recommendations.
So what is, what's your favorite place to eat in Anchorage? Speaking of asking a local. Sure. Anchorage. I would have to say Orso. It's a, it's an Italian restaurant. Yeah. On, on fifth Avenue, right next door to the Glacier Brewhouse, which is also right up there. Yep. Is excellent place to eat. It's a they're owned by the same, same person in fact, but yeah.
Fifth and Avenue, right next to G Street between G and H Street. Yep. Or SO'S Italian dining. Excellent. Please. Yeah, that's a great suggestion. Love it. Well, Mike, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your stories and your life in Nome. I really appreciate it. You bet. No, I'm glad to 📍 share. Thank you so much.
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