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May 30, 2011 by Brian Smith
 From February 25 through March 8, the winter streets of Anchorage will come alive during the annual Fur Rendezvous. Over the 76-year history of the celebration, unique events have been added to the traditions of the Fur “Rondy”—snowshoe softball, the running of the reindeer, World Champion Dog Weight Pull, outhouse races and more.
A new event added for 2011 was the first official Yukigassen in the U.S.
The “snow battle” invented over 20 years ago in Sobetsu, Japan, has finally made its way to North America and debuted in Anchorage during the final weekend of the 2011 “Rondy”.
Yukigassen is a highly structured snowball fight tournament. Two teams of seven players pelt each other madly on a rectangular court punctuated with shelters and a flag tower for each team. Certified officials oversee each match, consisting of three periods of three minutes each. A team wins by either capturing their opponent’s flag or hitting all of their opponents with snowballs. Spectators watch the chaos in wonder.
Since its origination to boost winter tourism, Yukigassen has developed zealous participation in Japan and annual championships in Finland, Norway, Australia, Holland and Sweden (which held its first in 2010). Edmonton will host the first Canadian tournament in March.
Anchorage’s Fur “Rondy” was established to coincide with the time miners and trappers brought their winter yield into town. What would those old sourdoughs think of a Japanese-style snowball fight?
Hi-Line Moving specializes in moving household goods to Alaska every day of the year.
Learn more:
Online www.hilinemoving.com/alaska,
or call toll-free 1-800-769-1096
Category: Recreation in the Abundant Beauty of AlaskaComments (0)
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May 27, 2011 by Brian Smith
 A simple breakdown becomes serious at 30-below. Diesel fuel and standard lubricants gel at extremely cold temperatures. Tire air pressure fluctuates with temperature change. Hi-Line Moving Services uses science to improve performance and prevent breakdowns on the 5000-mile round trip for household moves to Alaska in the winter months.
“Attention to detail is critical,” says Hi-Line’s Art Groux. “We’ve got to give our drivers the equipment to get there and back safely on their own.”
And they do. Trucks are fitted with special tires and four-wheel traction. Tires are inflated with nitrogen—resulting in constant inflation, less chance of leaks due to the larger molecule, and better tire wear and fuel mileage. Synthetic lube and engine oil are used for better performance in extreme cold. Left and right rear fuel tanks are heated by engine coolant. Fuel and coolant lines are insulated. Fuel conditioner is used along with a low temperature diesel mix. Auxiliary engine heaters are programmed to start two hours before the driver wakes up. An extra cab heater is also installed in each semi-tractor.
“Our trucks that go north are truly customized for the trip,” says Art.
Category: Moves to Alaska in the WinterComments (0)
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May 25, 2011 by Brian Smith
 Twice a month, Lynn Erickson drives to Alaska and back. In the five years he has worked as a driver for Hi-Line Moving Services, Lynn has made the 5,000-mile round trip 102 times.
The Alaska haul, or “running north” as the drivers at the Montana headquarters call it, is the job Lynn has enjoyed most in a long and varied career. He has been a corporate pilot, a police officer and owned his own company in the construction trades. “I could retire,” says Lynn, “but I donʼt want to give up that road.”
Hi-Line general manager Art Groux thinks itʼs not just the road that Lynn wonʼt give up. “He really likes that red truck,” says Art. “When heʼs not working, Lynnʼs in the shop tinkering and polishing. Our fleet of drivers have a lot of pride in maintaining the equipment and Lynn is a driver that take great pride in his tractor.” The same is true for those moving household goods to Alaska.
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May 23, 2011 by Brian Smith
 If you are moving to Alaska or just visiting, the spirit of Christmas is alive all year in North Pole, but never more glowing than in the month of December. North Pole, Alaska, is located about 12 miles south of Fairbanks on the Richardson Highway that begins at Delta Junction. Central attractions in the village are the picturesque Santa Claus House and a 42-foot figure of Santa. Since 1952, Santa Claus House has sent out over two million letters from Santa to children all over the world.
As you might imagine, December is a busy time in North Pole. Letters from near and far are sent to the town to obtain the distinctive “North Pole” postmark.
The first weekend of December, families flock to North Pole for the annual Winterfest events and Christmas tree lighting. The sparkling Christmas in Ice kicks off a competition of Christmas-themed ice sculptures by local and international carvers. Family entertainment includes an ice maze and ice slides.
North Pole will warm your soul in the magical holiday season, but if you’d prefer to keep all your parts unchilled, visit North Pole in August for a view of classic cars and Santa’s summer ensemble during “Cruisin’ with Santa.”
Alaska is a land of endless adventure. Hi-Line Moving specializes in moving household goods toAlaska, the “last frontier” every day of the year.
Learn more:
Online www.hilinemoving.com/alaska,
or call toll-free 1-800-769-1096
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May 11, 2011 by Brian Smith
 If the sourdoughs only knew: moving your household goods to Alaska these days is easier than calling a cab. Working with www.hilinemoving.com provides a one-step move for truckloads of goods.
The Klondike and Nome gold rushes spurred the expansion of transportation routes to Alaska—steamships to Skagway, the 110-mile narrow gauge White Pass and Yukon Railroad built in 1898-1900, and paddle-wheelers up the Yukon River. Today, the most economical and efficient route to Alaska is the AlCan highway. The eighteen-wheeler has replaced the paddle-wheeler (and the train is for the tourists). Instead of manhandled or bounced along on flat sleds and pack mules, the goods are securely crated or blanket-wrapped in a Kentucky air ride trailer.
But it remains true that the 2,400-mile trip to the Far North is no light undertaking—especially when youʼve got a load that averages about 24,000 pounds.
“When you think about it, any kind of journey is harder for the tenderfoot than for the old hand,” says David Vaughn, Hi-Lineʼs road driver manager. Hi-Line Moving has trucks departing for Alaska every other day, year ʻround. “Our drivers arenʼt just drivers; they are trip managers, and every one is an expert on the route to Alaska from the lower 48,” Vaughn explains.
Hi-Line drivers can also oversee packing and loading Code 2 crates for shipment to Alaska, for both military and non-military households. Hi-Line offers the flexibility to meet the needs of partner carriers—supplying the transportation leg or handling every segment of the move.
For more information and a quote calculator, visit
www.hilinemoving.com/alaska
For fun, check out the historical McDougall and Secord Klondike Outfit List here.
Category: History of the Alaska-Canada Highway: The ALCANComments (0)
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May 9, 2011 by Brian Smith
 Times were hard, and the hope of striking it rich was irresistible.
The U.S. remained in a severe recession following the burst of an economic bubble inflated by land and railroad speculation. Businesses went bankrupt and banks closed. The rate of unemployment shot up to as much as 20 percent. Into this backdrop, headlines of gold strikes in the Klondike landed like a bombshell. On July 17, 1897, when the steamship Portland docked at Seattle, a crowd of 5,000 watched 68 bedraggled but jubilant miners unload one million dollars in gold.
Within six months, hoards of clerks, farmers, adventurers and unemployed workers stampeded off to the Yukon Territory in the Klondike Gold Rush. Almost overnight, an entire industry supplying Klondike prospectors sprang up. The fevered gold seekers were showered with advice, maps and equipment lists. Seattle boomed as merchants made fortunes outfitting the miners.
To avoid shortages in the harsh interior, the Canadian government ruled that a yearʼs worth of supplies were required to enter Canada. Each traveler had 2,000 lbs. of household goods moving to Canada and Alaska, including food, clothing and equipment. The Mounties turned back anyone who came short.
The Chilkoot Trail took the stampeders from Dyea (about ten miles from Skagway) to Lake Bennett, where they would build boats for the 500-mile trip on the Yukon River to Dawson. Some prospectors walked nearly 1,000 miles to move their household goods and supplies into northern Canada and on to Alaska by way of the 33 miles from Dyea to the waterway.
For many of those that eventually turned back, the last straw was the 1,000-foot climb up icy “stairs” cut into the Chilkoot Pass. For even the strongest men, it would take 25 to 30 trips up the mountain to get all their goods to the top. Each man would cache his goods at the bottom, take a load on his back to the top, cache that and then slide back down the mountain. Then he would strap on the next load and wait to get back into the endless line of fellow gold-rushers moving to Canada and to Alaska.
Of the estimated 100,000 who set out for the Klondike, only about 30,000 got there, and only about half of those actually did any prospecting. Probably no more than 4,000 found any gold at all.
Very few of the stampeders got their chance at a claim, but the gold was there. “The British Yukon Navigation Company received over 37 tons of gold for shipment ʻoutside,ʼ” in the year 1900, mining inspector G.W. Gilbert wrote in a Canadian government report. At todayʼs gold prices, it would be worth over a billion and a half U.S. dollars—$1,678,142,400.
Opportunities still abound in the Last Frontier. Hi-Line gets the household goods moving to Alaska, the easiest and most economical way, for the start of new Alaskan adventures. Hi-Line Moving specializes in moving crated or wrapped household goods overland to Alaska every day of the year.
Learn more:
Online www.hilinemoving.com/alaska,
or call toll-free 1-800-769-1096
Category: History of the Alaska-Canada Highway: The ALCAN, UncategorizedComments (0)
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May 4, 2011 by Brian Smith
 Back in the day, freight to Alaska’s interior traveled by water in summer and by dog sled in winter. Today, moving household goods by road to Alaska can be much more safe and gentle than the alternatives over sea. Case in point: an antique car collector near the Port of Astoria, Oregon, needed to get his prized antique vehicles to Alaska. Port-to-port transport seemed obvious, but this client found that shippers were not willing to take his precious—and very valuable—early model automobiles on board. Not a good idea to strap them down on deck; not a good idea to put them in a container. Hi-Line Moving was able to load all three antique autos into a secure moving van and transport them to Fairbanks without a scratch.
“Our driver babied those cars all the way, and they didn’t move an inch,” says Hi-Line’s Director of Sales Brian Smith. “But it still cost far less than this client expected. I can’t tell you the models of those cars, but they were beautiful, absolutely mint condition—and that’s the way they arrived. Protecting our loads is just the way we roll.”
The vehicles were loaded in Astoria and brought back across the Rockies to the Alaska highway, a route that Hi-Line drivers know from top to bottom. The 2,450-mile trip took about five days. The autos were delivered directly to the grateful owner’s new location—door-to-door with one loading and one off-loading.
Hi-Line will move your household goods … AND antiques… safely to Alaska, and that includes antique cars. See photos of the autos being loaded at www.hilinemoving.com/alaska.
Category: Proper Planning to Reduce Moving CostsComments (0)
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May 2, 2011 by Brian Smith
 The 39th running of the Iditarod sled dog race started Saturday, March 5, 2011. The mushers and their 12 to 16 dog teams will cover 1,131 miles from Anchorage to Nome on the Iditarod trail. They will take their chances scaling rugged mountain ranges and crossing treacherous frozen rivers, bleak and barren tundra, and the wind-battered coast of the Bering Sea. Whiteouts, sub-zero temperatures, wind-chills down to -100°F, lonely wilderness with up to 90 miles between checkpoints—those are a given.
Alaska’s famous Iditarod may be the most grueling sporting event in the world. But, at its heart, this great race is really a tribute to the hardy souls that hauled the freight that kept early Alaska settlements alive during the winter months. Truly, this was the Alaska moving services of those early days.
You’ve heard the story about the heroic relay of dog sled teams that brought live-saving diptheria serum from Anchorage to icebound Nome in 1925, but the history of the trail goes deeper than that. For centuries, the indigenous peoples of Alaska bred dogs for transport. From the 1880s through the 1920s, dog teams were used to get mail and supplies into the interior and bring out the gold.
For the purposes of hauling freight, dogs are amazingly powerful. The freight mushers typically used twenty or more dogs—each weighing about 75 lbs.—to haul a half a ton of goods. Where horses or oxen would have floundered in the snow and been impossible to feed, the dogs could live on wild game or fish. As well suited as dogs are to the environment, the transport and even the character of Alaska, more modern methods for Alaska movers eventually won out. The advent of the bush plane in the 1920s and finally the “snowmachine” in the 1960s replaced the loyal dog teams that had been a part of village life in Alaska for so long.
The Iditarod is a reminder of the role that sled dogs played in the settlement of the last frontier. The competition over the next 9 to 20 days is really a reconstruction of the old freight route to Nome. Like the haulers of 100 years ago, the mushers travel from checkpoint to checkpoint—just a whole lot lighter and faster and certainly with more media coverage.
Learn more:
Online www.hilinemoving.com/alaska,
or call toll-free 1-800-769-1096
Category: Recreation in the Abundant Beauty of AlaskaComments (0)
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April 29, 2011 by Brian Smith
 On a January day, Fairbanks sees only about four hours of daylight. During the long hours of dark, Hi-Line’s drivers moving household goods to Alaska “on the north road” run a greater risk of encounters with large mammals. An adult moose can weigh 1,200 lbs. and a bison averages about a ton.
“Although temperatures don’t get much colder than we see in Montana, North Dakota or Minnesota, it is still a factor to be managed,” says David Vaughan, Operations Manager at Hi-Line Moving Services, regarding the Alaska moving services division.
Hi-Line Moving has drivers on the highway shipping household goods to and from Alaska every day of the year. The company takes extra precautions to protect the safety of their drivers and their customers’ valuable shipments.
A “moose bumper” prevents damage to the front of the truck in case of a collision. The bumper guard is constructed of 4-inch heavy gage aluminum tubes. Four to six additional headlamps are mounted on it. When allowable, the extra beams are used to light up the road and roadside ditches as much as 100 yards ahead.
Category: Extra Safety PrecautionsComments (0)
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April 28, 2011 by Brian Smith
 On the road between Fairbanks and Anchorage, the highest peak on the continent rises a majestic 20,320 feet. Outside of Alaska, we call it Mt. McKinley, but to Alaskans, it is Denali (“the High One” in Athabaskan).
In summer, the peak of Denali may be visible only one day out of five. Of the 400,000 visitors to Denali National Park and Preserve each year, those in the winter usually see much more of the mountain, snow-clad though it may be.
The preserved area encompasses over six million acres and is truly a wilderness—only one 92-mile long road penetrates the park and private vehicles can only travel the first few miles.
In February, the National Park Services and the residents of nearby communities will host the annual Denali Winterfest. The three-day festivities February 25-27 include snow sculpting, dog sled rides, and family fun.
Winter in Alaska is made for hardy souls, but for those who know how to enjoy it, the deep winter months are beautiful. Denali National Park is open for winter camping, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and dogsledding.
Hi-Line Moving specializes in moving household goods to Alaska, the “land of the midnight sun” every day of the year.
Learn more about moving to Alaska:
Online www.hilinemoving.com/alaska, or call 1-800-769-1096
Category: Recreation in the Abundant Beauty of AlaskaComments (0)
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From February 25 through March 8, the winter streets of Anchorage will come alive during the annual Fur Rendezvous. Over the 76-year history of the celebration, unique events have been added to the traditions of the Fur “Rondy”—snowshoe softball, the running of the reindeer, World Champion Dog Weight Pull, outhouse races and more.
