Rainy Pass guests ride in style in old fashioned snowmobile
Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race checkpoint guests are usually carried around by snowmachine. In Rainy Pass, individuals were riding in style in an almost 100-year-old antique.
The Rainy Pass Lodge has a 1924 Model T Ford Snowmobile. The vehicle design was initially patented in New Hampshire during the 1910s.
Buckey Winkley has been a hunting guide for the lodge for about 60 years and knows the snowmobile's history. He said the hotel purchased the machine from family companions in New Hampshire in 2008 and attempted to completely restore it.
“They were very popular in the 1920s by mailmen,” Winkley said. “If you had a sleigh and a horse you delivered the mail at five miles an hour. A Model T Snowmobile delivered the mail at 30 miles an hour.”
Winkley said the snowmobile gets a great deal o...