In an archival KYUK newsreel from the early '80s, KYUK reporter Rich Trotto squeezes into a small wooden shack with local Kathy Hanson.
“So what’s the grand total, Kathy? How much is the lucky winner gonna get?” Trotto asks.
Hanson replies with a smile. “Twelve-thousand dollars. We’re very happy to be able to offer such a big prize our first year.”
In today’s dollars, that jackpot she’s talking about would be over $40,000. Hanson was hired as the first official organizer of the Kuskokwim Ice Classic — an annual jackpot based around when the river will break up in Bethel.
In the pixelated video, Kathy goes on to break down the trip-wire mechanism connecting the shack to a tripod on the river. Trotto calls it a “masterpiece of ingenuity.”
Nearly 50 years later, Hanson still agrees.
“It’s just kinda nutty,” Hanson said, sitting at a table selling this year’s tickets inside the local grocery store. “We had a halibut reel mounted on the wall, and the line goes from the reel out to the tripod.”
These days she participates as a member of one of the nonprofits the event helps support each year with a cut of the kitty. She remembers the early days before everything moved online. She said that she would stress about the paper tickets arriving from the surrounding villages by bush plane.
“Did we get them all in? And did they all, does everything add up?,” Hanson explained. “It was hard.”
Even though nearly half a century of history has passed in the town, not much has changed when it comes to the Kuskokwim Ice Classic.
The iconic tradition of the Breakup Bash began that first official year in the '80s. In the days after the winner is announced, the whole community is invited to gather by the seawall for free hot dogs and live music.
“Our town, we turn out for hot dogs,” Hanson said. “Doesn't take much else.”
When the tripod looks close to going out, an organizer will sleep in the shack to make sure there are no hitches and the reading is correct.
“I had to do it one time,” Hanson recalled, laughing, “It was cold and it was dark and I was sleeping on a cot. It was really terrible.”
Today, that shack by the riverbank is still housing the annual operation.
A painted calendar on its wall lists the breakups that have unspooled since that first official year, with dates as early as April 12 and as late as early June.
Haley Hanson is the current organizer of the event, which is now managed by the Bethel Community Services Foundation.
Growing up in Bethel, Haley said that the Kuskokwim Ice Classic is part of life's fabric. She said her family would take drives down to the river on Sundays to see how the river was thawing.
“We go through such a long winter period, and especially this year, it was very long and cold and dark,” Haley said. “And [the Kuskokwim] Ice Classic is just, it signifies the season change. And I know that sounds really basic, but it isn't, because until that ice goes out and the river opens, right? People are in this holding pattern.”
On the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta, the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers are the connective tissue between communities. Off the traditional road system, breakup season is often a claustrophobic and land-locked period. It’s unsafe to snowmachine or drive on the ice and too early to boat.
“We can't wait to go out in our boats and go boating and go hunting, fishing, especially for subsistence,” said 2023 jackpot winner Mona Morrow. “We always look forward to that.”
Morrow lives upriver in Aniak and said that the $30,000 she won helped her family pay for her father’s medical care and trips to the hospital in Anchorage. And she said there was a little extra left over.
“We took a three-day trip to Vegas,” Morrow said with a chuckle.
This year, Morrow is placing her bets again, using the birthdays of her grandchildren to conjure lucky guesses and ring in the summer season on the Kuskokwim River.
