KUAC - Fairbanks

It’s 40 below and snowing.

I’m huddled next to a wood-burning stove inside an old schoolhouse in Eagle, Alaska, a small village in the bush with a population of about 200 to 300 – depending on the season.

It’s a strange place to find myself, a reporter from Arkansas chasing sled dogs as they race across Alaska and Canada. Which is why I’m even more surprised to run into a fellow Arkansan — and his 14 Alaska huskies.

Allen Moore, sometimes known as the Southern Gentleman of Mushing is an elite sled dog runner, who’s path from small-town Arkansas to mushing fame surprises even him.

“It does not make sense, a redneck from Arkansas coming here and runnin’ dogs.” Moore said.

Moore grew up in Arkansas’ northeast corner in a small town called Manila. He was always active and loved being outside. Most of all, he loved animals. Moore studied wildlife management at Arkansas State University and eventually went on to work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, tagging ducks and counting deer.

One thing Moore didn’t like was the Arkansas heat.

“When I left Arkansas, it was 100-plus degrees with the heat index and all that,” Moore said. “I wanted to go where it was cool.”

Moore sold almost everything he owned and loaded the rest into his truck along with his two young daughters, Bridgett and Jennifer, and he drove to the coldest place he knew – Alaska.

Moore was drawn north by childhood memories of cool blue ice and glacial streams from a visit to Anchorage, memories that drew him north to Fairbanks, where he settled with his daughters and started working in wildlife management.

Almost immediately, Moore felt the allure of a sled and a dog team.

“First thing we saw in Fairbanks were these little dog races. Kids with one dog, one little sled, going around this one little oval track,” Moore said. “So what do you think she wanted to do? I got a dog, and I had to help her train this one dog. She did it for the first winter and enjoyed it so much that then her older sister wanted to do it, so I had to get another dog.”

Moore was hooked.

“It is addictive,” Moore said. “I wish everyone could experience it.”

Moore started competing in sprints, working his way up to 100, 300 and finally – 1,000 mile distances.

“It’s cool knowing how people traveled 100-plus years ago. That’s the only means of transportation they had,” Moore said. “And when we go to these isolated places, even today, it looks no different.”

Moore met his wife, Ally Zirkle, and they started work building houses and then selling them, using the meager profits to run dogs all winter long.

Zirkle, an experienced musher herself with multiple second place Iditarod finishes, won a smaller race – the Yukon Quest.

Zirkle built a house herself with the winnings.

They started a kennel – SP Kennel – to grow their passion for mushing.

After a few more racing successes, sponsorships started rolling in, allowing Moore to pursue mushing full time.

“Here we are, running dogs for a living. You can’t beat that. It’s a passion, number one,” Moore said. “But when you can turn your passion into a vocation, it seems like that would be everyone’s dream.”

For Moore, mushing combines many of his favorite things – a passion for the outdoors, curiosity about fitness, and a love of animals.

There’s no relationship quite like that between a musher and their team – even Moore, who’s been running dogs for 20-plus years, struggles to describe it.

“Sled dogs, I don’t know how to pinpoint it, but it’s just different,” Moore said. “It’s like you and a sled dog are the same. I mean, you sleep together, you do everything together.”

It’s this relationship, this passion for canine companionship that’s fueled much of Moore’s success.

It’s not just surprising to find an Arkansan on the back of a dog sled.

Moore is really good at it.

Aside from several successful Iditarod runs, he has won the rugged Yukon Quest three times.

He and his wife now have a kennel of almost 40 dogs.

“We just love to be around dogs. That’s what it was all about,” Moore said. “And now it’s become so much more than dogs.”

For Moore’s part – he just glad to be enjoying the cooler weather.

“Up here if it’s 40 below, 50 below, I can always put more clothes on,” Moore said. “Because you can only take so much off.”

The family of an armed man shot dead by law enforcement on Christmas Eve in Fairbanks is questioning how officers handled the incident.

Cody Eyre, 20, originally from Juneau, was shot by Alaska State Troopers and Fairbanks Police near the intersection of the Steese Highway and the Johansen Expressway, after they responded to a call about a distraught man with a gun walking along the road.

Investigation of the Dec. 24, 2017, shooting is ongoing and Alaska State Troopers, who are handling the case, has released only basic information.

One of Cody Eyre’s sisters, Samantha Eyre Harrison said the family has been denied access to evidence, including law enforcement video of the incident.

“Once we found out that there was video footage, we’ve been really adamant about, please let us watch the video,” she said.

Harrison said her brother left the family home early in the evening to take a walk and clear his head, like he often did, but notes he was stressed after an especially tough day.

“Christmas stress going on in addition to girlfriend problems, and I then think the last part was that his truck wouldn’t start, and so it just kind of created this perfect storm of of events where he was having a really difficult Christmas Eve.”

Harrison said her brother left the house wearing a pistol he more typically carried for safety on remote construction jobs.

She said her mom was worried, followed in a vehicle and called 911.

Four miles, and over an hour later she says troopers and police arrived, blockaded the area and talked to Cody, but he walked away into the woods.

“The situation was stable and then once he walked into the wooded area and she lost of sight of him that’s when whatever occurred in the woods, ultimately he ended up losing his life,” she said. “And I guess the big question that we’re asking is, why was lethal force necessary?”

An Alaska State Trooper dispatch said Eyre brandished a firearm toward the officers.

Harrison said the family questions what happened given her brother’s nonviolent past, and because he was training to become a military police officer.

“It would have been very uncharacteristic for him to have threatened anyone especially a law enforcement officer and so the word brandished in our mind is a red flag,” she said. “We want to know exactly what you mean by brandished.”

Harrison noted that the officers were dressed in tactical gear and carried assault-style rifles.

“I’m sure that he felt scared in those final moments.”

Five officers fired on Eyre, who was pronounced dead shortly after at the hospital.

Harrison said family members were briefly allowed to see him.

“It was really concerning to us that not only had he been shot multiple times from the waist to the ankles, but that he had been shot directly to the back of the head,” she said. “That to us was just a huge use of force. ”

A letter from the Harrisons also raises the issue of potential racial bias, noting that Cody Eyre was part Alaska Native.

In an email , trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said she does not expect any new information to become available until after the Office of Special Prosecutions receives the case for review and makes a determination.

The Eyre family has created a website and social media pages about the case.

Allen Moore is the 2018 Yukon Quest champion.

Moore has mushed himself into elite class of Yukon Quest champions. Moore joins John Schandlemier, Hans Gatt and Lance Mackey who have all won the Quest three or more times.

Last year’s Quest winner Matt Hall crossed the finish line in second place, followed by fellow veteran Laura Neese in 3rd.

Musher Paige Drobny, who had maintained a strong second place for much of the race, dropped out in Carmacks after attempting to travel to Braeburn.

A Quest news release says she decided to turn back to keep her team happy and healthy.

That brings the total number of mushers who have either scratched or been withdrawn from this year Quest to 12.

The red lantern spot currently belongs to rookie Nathaniel Hamlyn, who left Pelly Crossing, over 200 miles from the finish.

A 23-car pileup closed a slippery stretch of the Johansen Expressway in Fairbanks for nearly three hours Tuesday afternoon.

Only minor injuries were reported, but the chain-reaction wrecks closed the two westbound lanes between Peger Road and University Avenue – right after four state Department of Transportation snowplows had passed through the area.

State Transportation Department spokeswoman Meadow Bailey said the weather we’ve been having over the past week has created the perfect conditions for very slick roadways.

“We had rain last week, followed by freezing temperatures, and then just a continuous dusting of snow,” Bailey said Tuesday. “And when we have conditions like that, there’s really nothing we can do to get that layer of ice off the road.”

But Bailey said Tuesday afternoon that DOT has been trying its best in recent days to clear snow and at least scratch the surface of the ice, and then spread sand on it.

“We have all of our resources out right now — all of our equipment that’s available, all of our staff,” Bailey said. “They’ve been working since last week.”

In fact, Bailey said the crews and equipment were working Tuesday afternoon on the Johansen Expressway, immediately before the drivers of 23 vehicles lost control in a chain-reaction wreck near the western end of the expressway.

“We actually had four pieces of equipment out – two regular plows and two tow-plows,” Bailey said. “They were plowing the full width of the Johansen, and putting down sand really just before this crash.”

Bailey said two snowplows that were sent to make one last run over the Johansen were instead unable to get through, because of the pileup, which closed the two westbound lanes from about 2:45 to 5:30 p.m.

She said motorists should focus on the need to employ such wintertime driving habits as slowing down and maintaining a safe following distance.

“This was a section of road that was sanded and plowed very recently,” Bailey said. “And it’s just a reminder to everyone that we need to slow down in these conditions.”

Alaska State Troopers say only minor injuries were reported.

Troopers handled the wreck, with help from University of Alaska Fairbanks and city police.

Fairbanks police spokeswoman Yumi McCullough said city officers had responded to five wrecks and three motorist-assist calls by about 5 p.m. Tuesday. She said city police urge motorists to just slow down, even if some stretches of road don’t look as slippery as they really are.

“It’s got that thin layer of ice on there and a little bit of snow on top of it,” McCullough said, which “makes it seem like it might be OK.”

Temperatures around the pileup were around 15 below. Troopers say the borough sent a public transit bus to the scene to give motorists and their passengers a place to warm up while troopers investigated the wreck.

Troopers say their investigation into the wrecks is ongoing.

Meanwhile, Bailey said DOT crews will continue to run blades over the ice and spread sand on it. But she says the area’s roads are likely to remain slippery for a while.

North Pole Rep. Tammie Wilson says fellow lawmaker Gabrielle LeDoux should resign because she failed to promptly respond to a legislative staffer’s complaint that she was sexually harassed by a lawmaker who was later forced to resign over those and other allegations.

The Anchorage Republican LeDoux chairs the House Rules Committee. She denies Wilson’s accusation.

LeDoux says it’s politically motivated and stems from a dispute over sexual-harassment training that all lawmakers and staffers are being required to take this year.

Wilson raised a ruckus a week ago when she issued a Friday afternoon statement accusing LeDoux of failing to follow up on a legislative staff member’s report filed in the spring alleging that the staffer had been sexually harassed by former Rep. Dean Westlake.

“The complaint was put in in March,” Wilson said. “And so it sat there for months and months, before anybody even knew it was there.”

Westlake, a Democrat from Kiana, resigned last month after more women came forward to accuse him of harassment. But Wilson said LeDoux should have acted sooner to investigate the case and punish Westlake, because taking care of legislative staff is one of the House Rules Committee chair’s main responsibilities.

Wilson is calling for an outside investigator to look into whether LeDoux and House leaders failed to uphold their responsibility to follow up on the complaints.

“Yes, Rep. Westlake has resigned. But what happens to those who did nothing? Something needs to be done – a third-party investigation needs to be done to find out who knew what when,” Wilson said.

Those others at fault, Wilson says, include House Majority Leader Chris Tuck and Speaker Bryce Edgmon.

Both are Democrats – Tuck is from Anchorage, Edgmon from Dillingham.

Wilson said they too should resign if the outside investigator determines they didn’t follow the Legislature’s sexual-harassment policies and procedures.

“We need to know why they hid for so long the accusation that they didn’t investigate immediately, that they didn’t make sure that others weren’t not going to be hurt,” Wilson said.

A spokesman for the House leadership declined to comment on Wilson’s accusations.

LeDoux said neither she nor the House leadership “hid” the staffer’s complaint, and she notes that Wilson admits she has no evidence for that accusation.

LeDoux said she initially wasn’t told about the complaint, which she said was handled by Edgmon, who confronted Westlake and urged him to resign.

“As far as I know, there’s been no other caucus in the history of the Legislature that has ever called for a member to resign,” LeDoux said. “And believe me, there’s been plenty of sexual harassment in the Legislature.”

LeDoux says she can’t say much more about it until a report on the issue is made public.

“Now that doesn’t mean that the procedure can’t be improved, and that is why we’ve initiated a legislative subcommittee to review our procedures, to review our sexual-harassment policy, so that maybe we can improve things,” she said.

LeDoux said Legislative leaders have instituted new rules requiring all lawmakers and their staffers to take sexual-harassment training, even if they’ve already attended previous sessions.

She suspects that’s one reason why Wilson is attacking her, because she says Wilson has refused to participate in the training, and in response LeDoux has threatened to cut off her authority to hire staff.

“For some reason, Ms. Wilson thinks that she should be exempt from this training, and doesn’t have to take it,” LeDoux said. “And that’s what annoys hers so much.”

Wilson said she won’t participate in the training because she’s already attended earlier sessions, and because she’s waiting for an outside investigator to be brought and for LeDoux and the House leaders to explain on why they didn’t move more quickly on the allegations against Westlake.

“It’s not that I won’t take the training,” Wilson said. “But I am not doing any other training done by this Democrat majority, until they are able to answer the questions on what happened.”

LeDoux said she also sees a partisan motivation behind Wilson’s attacks. She says conservatives dislike her and other Republican lawmakers who work with their Democratic counterparts in the House coalition.

“It’s simply a political hit job,” LeDoux said. “Because the Republican Party has a target on my back.”

Both Wilson and LeDoux said they’ll be headed to Juneau this weekend for the start of this year’s legislative session, which gets under way Tuesday.

University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeology professor Ben Potter and an international team of scientists he worked with have discovered evidence of a previously unknown, ancient people who were among the first to cross over from Asia to Alaska more than 15,000 years ago.

The scientists based their findings on analysis of DNA from two infants buried more than 11,000 years ago at a site south of Fairbanks.

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, sheds new light on when and how the ancestors of today’s indigenous peoples first settled the New World.

Potter couldn’t even get a cup of coffee Wednesday morning, because he was fielding interviews with reporters from around the world who were clamoring to talk about the article that he and two fellow researchers had co-authored – a piece that already had created quite a stir in the scientific community.

“The importance of the paper is, one, that we’ve identified a brand-new population that we hitherto we did not know existed – Ancient Beringians,” Potter said Wednesday. “And, the second is what the implications are for that, for understanding the peopling of the New World. Which, you know, is pretty profound.”

The article is the latest chapter in the evolving study of how humans migrated from Asia to North America – and how some, but not all, went on to settle the rest of the western hemisphere.

“It opens the window for a much wider, more accurate perspective on the complex colonization of the New World,” he said.

The key evidence that opened that window wide came from DNA samples taken from the remains of an infant girl who’d been buried more than 11,000 years ago at a site located on a ridge above the Tanana River about 50 miles south of Fairbanks. Archeologists first found the remains of a young child at the so-called Upward Sun River site in 2010, and further excavation revealed those of two infants.

“These two were part of an ancient population that came in to the New World, survived, (and) were part of a very well-adapted group of people who survived for thousands of years in the far north,” Potter said. He says the genetic analysis and other evidence confirmed the infant whose genome was analyzed was descended from a group that had separated from other East Asian peoples about 35,000 years ago.

But the data also showed the infant likely was not related to the people who crossed over from Asia and then migrated into both North and South America – the people who became Native Americans.

So Potter and fellow researchers concluded the infant was descended from a new and heretofore unknown group they called Ancient Beringians. The name refers to the region known as Beringia, which encompasses most of Alaska, eastern Siberia and the land bridge that once connected the two continents and which is now submerged below the Bering Sea.

So Potter and fellow researchers concluded the infant was descended from a new and heretofore unknown group they called Ancient Beringians. The name refers to the region known as Beringia, which encompasses most of Alaska, eastern Siberia and the land bridge that once connected the two continents and which is now submerged below the Bering Sea.

Potter says the ancient people settled in Beringia for a few thousand years, despite the harsh ebb and flow of the Pleistocene ice age. “Throughout periods of almost unimaginable climate change, from full glacial conditions to essentially the modern boreal forest, with extinction of mammoth, later on extinction of bison. So, major climate, vegetation and animal abundance changes – but yet, they persisted, throughout this region.”

All of which, Potter says, leads one to wonder: What happened to the Ancient Beringians?

“The answer is – we don’t know at this point.”

But that’s OK, Potter says. He says scientists will continue to search for more DNA samples from early Athabascan peoples, to determine whether they’re related to the Ancient Beringians. And researchers also will begin work on all the other new questions that the study raises.

“Certainly, it provides new questions – which, as a scientist, that’s the most important thing.”

Potter says, however, there’s no question that the history of the New World’s indigenous peoples grows more complex with every new study that’s published.

Editor’s note: UAF archeologist Josh Reuther and archeology professor emeritus Joel Irish were among the 18 researchers who contributed to the study published in Nature.