The place where the map runs out
September/October 2007

In a remote part of southeastern Alaska sits Ultima Thule, a lodge that wouldn’t be half as special without the women who run it.

Story and photos by Michelle Theall

The women of Ultima Thule. From left to right: Eleanor Claus, Donna Claus, Logan Claus, and Ellie Claus.

You could describe Wrangell−St. Elias National Park as ferociously beautiful, untamed, fearless, and infinite; however, you could just as easily be talking about the women who live there. It’s unclear whether Alaska draws a kinship of hardy souls or creates them from the same cataclysmic chaos that once formed its immovable peaks.

One thing is certain: Donna, Ellie, Logan, and Eleanor Claus—the women of Ultima Thule Lodge in southeastern Alaska—remain a solid force of nature, carving out a way of life completely foreign from what most of us will ever know.

Donna Claus

Donna Claus’s hands and face bear the weathered lines of hard work and determination. Like the Chitina River running beside the lodge, Donna remains in constant motion. To interview her you must join her as she works. Her eyes reflect kindness and patience and seem to tell guests like me that there’s nothing required of them except to enjoy what she’s created here—not once but three times—with her own sweat and strength.

When I ask Donna about her first impression of the five acres her father-in-law, John Claus, homesteaded in 1960 on the Chitina River, she tells me, “I can’t remember. It’s as if it’s always been here.” What started as a primitive “boys’ hunting cabin” surrounded by water became a world-class lodge because of Donna’s vision. Holding on to that vision proved more difficult than she could have imagined. “Glacier rivers drop dirt and have to move. Silt fills in, and new channels for the water are created. It’s always alive. It didn’t take long for the hunting cabin to be overtaken.”

So in 1982 the Clauses leveled the primitive structure and built a 4,000-square-foot lodge and two smaller cabins in its place, making sure to set them on the edge of the bank and away from the water. “There’s no Home Depot out here,” Donna says. “We built the place ourselves. My husband, Paul, flew in supplies, and I hauled them by sled from the runway to the building site. I hand-peeled all 350 logs for the main building. It took me the whole summer, walking around in rain gear to finish it.”

Their first paying customers were hunters. Then mountaineers like Sue Nott, Alison Hargreaves, and Alex Lowe used Ultima Thule as a jumping-off point for first ascents of unnamed peaks. Word spread quickly about an oasis for adventurers, with accommodations well beyond the typical luxuries of pit toilets and spotty electricity.

Ultima Thule welcomed travelers with freshly caught salmon, organic greens from the garden, hot showers and toilets in each room, a steam sauna, coffee and juice wake-up baskets, home-baked breads and pastries, and fully catered expeditions. The dream took off until the river again threatened to swallow them whole. With the land they owned underwater, the Clauses had nowhere else to move.

They negotiated a land exchange with the National Park Service to gain the plots adjacent to their current site. “Fear’s not in my vocabulary,” Donna says. “We took out our chainsaws and cut the lodge and cabins into three sections and moved the buildings in pieces. We flew in I-beams, waited for the permafrost to thaw, laid the foundations, and put them back together.”

It took an entire year, and they reopened for business in 2004, hoping the move would be their last. But in 2005 a caretaker tried to thaw out a frozen water cistern with a fire and burned the entire place to the ground. Places like Ultima Thule can’t get fire or flood insurance, so the family was out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Still undaunted, they rebuilt again. When I ask Donna how she gets such resolve, she says, “In town we’re too quick to call for a plumber instead of figuring it out. There’s such a sense of accomplishment in doing it yourself.” It’s unclear if she realizes that most people consider a do-it-yourself project constructing shelves in the garage or making a sandbox for their kids.

At 53 Donna comes to her no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is attitude honestly. Born in Denver and raised in Durango, she grew up quickly under the verbal and physical blows of her mother and the frequent absences of her father, an FBI agent and later a senator. Adventure rescued her. “My older brothers and I were the first folks in Durango to pioneer the jeep roads there. We spent a lot of time hiking back out whenever we did something stupid. I hung with guys, playing football and riding horses. If I had my choice, I’d spend every minute out in the backcountry.”

In her teens Donna became an accomplished multisport athlete, excelling in swimming and ski racing. Ski racing earned her a scholarship offer to the University of Wyoming, but without the protection of Title IX in those days, the program got cut. That’s when a fiery wanderlust kicked in and never left her. “I backpacked across Europe for a year, then flew out to Fairbanks, Alaska, to work for the summer. I bartended, taught swimming, waitressed, and kept a roof over my head. Got my pilot’s license and bought a plane with my own money in 1980. Sometimes I had to sleep in it. But it was still home. I traveled all over Alaska and have lived here for over 30 years now. It was never a plan, of course; I don’t plan much.”

Donna also never tries to control things, including the safety of her own kids. But the children seem to excel without boundaries, bedtimes, or typical constraints. Donna’s oldest daughter, Ellie, now 21 and the youngest female finisher of the famed Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, says, “Mom never told us not to do something because we’d get hurt. She once put three trampolines side by side and dared us to see how many kids we could get on there at once. My brother, Jay, started commercial fishing at age 14. He’s 16 now and in Bristol Bay. Not one of us has ever broken a bone.”

“I never tried to control my children or husband,” Donna says. “People have this misconception that if they can control things, everything will be okay. That comes from a place of fear. And fear destroys families, relationships, and just about everything else.”

Donna knew what her husband was when she married him—a mountaineer, an adventurer, and a cocky pilot. She didn’t try to tear him down. Pregnant with Jay, and with Ellie just four years old, she induced labor so Paul could climb Everest with a Polish expedition team and not miss the birth of his child. “I saw the invitation he’d thrown in the trash. I took it out and told him he had to go. You don’t let the fear of losing someone keep them from being who they are and who they were born to be.”

Paul was gone for the first three months of his son’s life— leaving his wife to care for a newborn and a toddler in the middle of nowhere—while he summited a mountain where only one in seven people survive. “Jay was a few hours old when I left,” Paul says. “It was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, to leave to climb Everest. I realize that now. I don’t believe you can have the same life after having kids.”

Donna’s 25-year marriage to Paul stands as a testament to her ability to let those around her come to their own conclusions and life lessons without interference. The freedom she allows has the opposite effect an outsider might suppose: it draws those she loves even closer and gives them wings to become the amazing individuals she’s always known they could be.

Ellie Claus

Ellie Claus yells “gee” and “haw” to Harry Potter—and there’s something quite magical about the way the dog, along with 10 others, responds to her. It’s July, and we’ve loaded up her team into a plane to mush on an unnamed glacier. Freckled skin turned toward the sun and wearing khaki overalls,

Ellie looks more 12 than 21—until you speak with her, that is. Pack an entire life into two short decades and you’ve got an encapsulated picture of the woman. Ellie fell in love with puppies at the age of nine but didn’t get the mushing bug until she turned 13. Surrounded by some of the greatest mushers in the world—Martin Buser, Susan Butcher, and Jeff King—she had plenty of mentors to guide the way. “Martin gave me Vanilla, my first lead dog, and allowed me to train with him for four weeks,” Ellie says.

By the time she turned 15, Ellie won the Junior Yukon Quest and duplicated the feat the following year. In 2003 she claimed victory at the Junior Iditarod and set her sights on the Greatest Race on Earth: the Iditarod. “I have my own kennel on the property, with over 40 dogs,” Ellie says. “I call it Paws and Claus.”

She scratches one of the dog’s ears while she speaks. “Bismark knows he’s special. He’s finished more Iditarods than I have. These dogs are the athletes.” Still, she’s quick to point out that it’s not a free trip to Nome. “To get the dogs to go faster, you run with them and sometimes ahead of them. That part is usually uphill. There’s nothing meditative about it. It’s a battle. By the time you’ve trained properly for the event, you and the dogs have run the equivalent of three Iditarods just to prepare.”

So what’s it like to run the Iditarod, a 1,100-mile race through the backcountry of Alaska? “The hardest part is dealing with the lack of sleep,” Ellie says. “You do everything you can to keep awake. I didn’t sleep for the first four days of the race. I listened to music and books on tape, like The Perfect Storm. “It’s a solitary sport. Dusk is the scariest thing. It’s foreboding and intangible. The minute the sun drops, your spirits sink.”

Ellie’s goal heading into the race was to finish it with as many of her dogs as possible. Unlike some of the other drivers, she had all 16 of her dogs still racing by the halfway point, and none of her dogs got sick or injured. Her secret: “My mom and I sewed 250 blankets out of fleece with space blanket material in the middle. The dogs used them at checkpoints whenever they rested,” Ellie explains. “The tighter a dog has to curl up to keep warm, the more energy he uses and the more his muscles tense up. Our dogs were well rested. And supplying them with new blankets kept disease from spreading to us from other teams.” Ellie laughs and says, “To make that many blankets, we used the fleece no one else would even think of buying, so we had some very interesting colors and patterns. Let’s just say everyone knew my team.”

Donna and Paul supported their daughter’s dream, though they weren’t dog mushers themselves. “It’s tough being a parent when it’s 20 below zero and snowing so hard you can’t see 5 feet in front of you,” says Paul, “and your daughter is just starting out in it.” When asked to describe Ellie, Donna says, “I instilled in my children a faith in God and the belief that they could overcome anything. Ellie is the epitome of feminine strength.”

Ellie finished forty-fifth out of 87 mushers and eighth out of all the first-timers. It took her 11 days to reach Nome, and she finished with 11 dogs. Having just turned 18, she became the youngest finisher in the history of the Iditarod. Ellie doubts she’ll run another Iditarod, though she still runs the kennel at Ultima Thule. With a yen to travel, she’s off to Morocco, Thailand, and Sri Lanka next. And, if she gets the bug for sledding again, “I can always fly up and land on a glacier with my dogs for a quick one.”

Logan Claus

At 11 years old, Logan spent most of her first decade moving from one home to another and sleeping between rows of canned goods. About the only thing that makes her sad is thinking about the old house and her two cats that died in the fire. “People who don’t love cats must have been mice in another life,” she says.

Beyond the loss of her pets, she seems to know that she leads a charmed life, free to explore without any traffic or highways to block her path. Home-schooled, and with the nearest road more than 100 miles away, Logan admits that she never gets lonely. “I’ve got great friends in Anchorage and McCarthy that come visit, sometimes for months,” she says. “Otherwise I hang out with the staff and swim in the river. I fill my time with beading, watercolor painting, and downhill and cross-country skiing in the winter months.” Plus, one day she’ll be able to get her pilot’s license like everyone else in her family. “Around here, you don’t ask Dad if you can borrow the car; you ask him if you can borrow the plane. If I didn’t fly, they’d probably disown me,” Logan laughs.

Logan aces her standardized tests and spends only four hours per day on her studies with her mother. “It’s fun. I can tell my mom if I don’t want to read a particular book. We do lots of math, spelling, and vocabulary. I read stories and write captions or comments or my own stories about them,” says Logan.

At the lodge, Logan sits by a window and beads. The necklaces she designs and sells to guests are works of art, fit to sell in any boutique for high dollar. It’s a stretch to call Logan a normal kid, and she’s ready to give some sage advice to others who’ve never lived the way she has: “Just go with the flow. Out here you don’t think about what time it is. You just live.”

Eleanor Claus

Gaze out onto the airplane runway in front of Ultima Thule and you’ll likely find 72-year-old Eleanor training for her next marathon. Back and forth across the short 400-yard swath of dirt, Eleanor forges her own path without ever tiring of the repetition. “I go by time here, not miles,” Eleanor says, sometimes logging four hours a day when she can spare it away from her baking duties for the lodge.

If you ask her if she gets bored, she’ll say, “Why would I? You won’t find better scenery anyplace else.” But why not run on the trails that seem to go on forever? “I do have a favorite trail,” Eleanor says. “It’s one they carved out for Ellie to train with her dogs. But the grizzlies are thick, and it’s easy to surprise them. John doesn’t like it when I go out alone, even if I take a good bear dog.”

Her long stride belies her age; in fact, she’s downright lithe. With more than 24 marathon finishes (and a few triathlons) under her belt, Eleanor often wins her age group and shows no signs of stopping. She ran the Boston marathon on its hundredth anniversary and has run the Chicago marathon six times and the Anchorage marathon five. It’s as if she’s been a runner all her life, yet she started at age 45.

“John homesteaded over 160 acres outside of Anchorage that could be reached only by swamp buggy, and we made our home there. One day John collapsed in the snow. I remembered that our neighbors had a plane, and sprinted 1.5 miles down the road so they could fly him out. I never knew my body could do that. It felt so freeing.”

Two years later she ran her first marathon. At 49 she was finishing first in her age group. Eleanor grew up in California as the oldest of five children, the daughter of a minister and a stay-at-home mom. She met John when she was just 12 years old, and they married when she turned 22.

Eleanor smiles when I ask her to describe John in one word. “Lover,” she says. “After 50 years of marriage, he still compliments me.” Family means everything to Eleanor, and she’s grateful for the opportunity to help her son and daughter-in-law live out their dreams. “Donna and I don’t have that adverse mother- and daughter-in-law relationship. We each have different gifts we bring to the table, and that makes it work. And we all know that there would absolutely be no Ultima Thule if it weren’t for Donna.”

“Eleanor is steadfast and constant. I’m not a planner, and she’s very structured. So Ultima Thule gets the best of both,” says Donna. Not one to sit still for very long, Eleanor looks toward the future with anticipation. “I want to see my grandkids grow up and see their dreams fulfilled. And, if possible, help them achieve them,” she says. “John and I have taken them to New Zealand, Hawaii, and Europe, and we’d like to travel some more with them.”

Her next race might be the Redwood marathon. Just like she’s done with all her previous runs, she’ll pace herself with her own mantra—logging all 26 miles of a race by praying the 26 letters of the alphabet. “Each one reminds me of a person’s name, and I pray for them as I run.” With a wink she says, “I’m adding you to my list. I’ll be thinking about you this year when I get to the M’s.”

In the kitchen of Ultima Thule, the four women work together baking, laughing, and bustling past one another with bowls, oven mitts, and skillets in their hands. The bones of the buildings may have moved three times, but home lands wherever they happen to gather. Alaska forms a solid foundation beneath their family that is no longer dependent on location or miles. And while each of these lady’s individuality and strengths have certainly been nurtured in this wild place, it’s the love and support of one another that have given them all the space to grow into the women of Ultima Thule.