Alaska Challenge: A Journey Through Uncharted Wilderness Leading to a New Life in a New Land

Having grown disillusioned with the tedious existence that is expected of young college students, the newlyweds Bill and Ruth Albee dream of heading to Alaska—on foot—by way of a vast blank space on the map that is modern day Western British Columbia.

Like most dreams it dug into their body, mind and soul and nothing could satisfy it until they had given it a try. So, in 1930 they started off, ignoring all warnings and leaving from Vancouver on foot up through western B.C.—following a route very few white men and absolutely no white women had been on—into the Yukon and then on to Alaska down the mighty Yukon River. A journey of many thousands of miles.

Enroute are the perils of bureaucratic red tape, starvation, wolves, the disappearing Rudy, dangerous rivers, a worthless map, crazy frontiersmen, a Russian woman and her stuffed dog, friendly and unfriendly natives, and an unplanned pregnancy.

Upon reaching their goal of Alaska and wondering where to go from there Bill and Ruth accept a remote school teaching assignment in an Inuit village off of the Cape Prince of Wales on the Bering Sea. This is where they will make their home for the next year teaching and learning from the Eskimo children and parents alike. The journey to become an accepted member of the village is fraught with trying and often hilarious episodes.

And the experiences worth every minute of the hardships. For Bill and Ruth discovered something far greater than the adventure. Greater than the experience of it all. Something great, wild, wonderful and truly unexpected. . . .

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