THE "BREAKING UP" OF THE YUKON 



By Captain George S. Gibbs 

 Signal Corps, U. S. Army 



LONG after the cold days of arctic 

 winter have given place to con- 

 tinuous day, with warm summer 

 breezes and still warmer summer sun, 

 Alaska still requires an all-important 

 finishing touch to usher in its "open" 

 season — that is, the clearing out of its 

 mighty highways, the rivers, of the ice 

 that for seven months has borne its sledge 

 trails. 



How anxiously this great event is 

 looked forward to by the long-imprisoned 

 inhabitants and the feelings of freedom 

 and relief that it brings can only be un- 

 derstood by those who have participated 

 in the celebration of this occurrence at 



the scattered settlements along the thou- 

 sands of miles of Alaska's great rivers. 



The shutting-in process in the fall is 

 gradual. The level of the water drops 

 daily; the ground is covered with suc- 

 cessive snows, and patches of ice coming 

 out of the small streams amalgamate 

 upon the broad surface of the river into 

 larger floes, which become larger and 

 thicker with the lowering temperature 

 and cementing snows, until some day 

 about the first of November a great mass 

 is stopped against the head of an island 

 and in a few hours you can walk across 

 on a solid and safe footing. 



The break-up in the spring is no such 



The Yukon River " Breaking up " 

 An irresistible torrent of more than three million tons of water per minute. Photo by Sergeant Moore 



