2 snowsledders eye Alaska-to-Maine record

Some long-distance snowmobilers from Maine are trying to ride their way into the record books.

Steve McKenna of Shapleigh and Tony Wolfinger of Waterboro are in the midst of a journey from Alaska to Maine that would break the two-decade-old snowmobile distance record of 7,211 miles listed by Guinness World Records.

McKenna and Wolfinger began the trip on Jan. 12 in Tok, Alaska, and have traveled 1,862 miles thus far, reaching Dawson City in Canada’s Yukon Territory and making a side trip in the Yukon to a point far north of the Arctic Circle.

The trip is more than just a ride in the woods. The two have had to fight temperatures of 30 below zero and navigate frozen rivers with 6-foot ice heaves as well as roads that have disappeared under old avalanches.

They have also run into mechanical problems that limited them to only nine days of actual riding during the first 36 days of the trip. They faced long waits as replacement parts had to be flown in and ferried to remote locations.

But they say the spectacular landscape and the wonderful people they’ve met along the route are making their adventure worthwhile.

Memorable people they have met include a hermit who took them in for a meal of caribou and hardtack, a trapper who explained how he runs a line of 100 traps for the likes of wolverines and bears, and a waitress who inaugurated Wolfinger into the “Sourtoe Club” after he downed a drink said to have a pickled human toe in it.

Lifelong outdoorsmen who met about five years ago, McKenna and Wolfinger were planning an Alaska-to-Maine snowmobile trip and initially wanted to hit all of the Canadian provinces and territories. Limited access to fuel and large stretches of open water altered their plans.

“This was just a big trip and never was intended to be a world record,” McKenna said in an e-mail. “At some point I looked into the record and noticed that we would be breaking the existing record if we did what we planned.”

The current record was set by Tony Lenzini of the United States in 1986.

The latest trek is similar to one made in 2000 by Mike Ouellette, Kirk St. Peter and Mike McCarthy of Caribou, who covered the 5,977 miles from Tok to their northern Maine home in 29 straight days of sledding, with no breakdowns or delays.

That ride raised a total of $17,310 in pledge money for Pine Tree Camp for Handicapped Children and the Pine Tree Burn Foundation. Beneficiaries of the McKenna and Wolfinger ride are Project Literacy and the Autism Society of Maine.