Army & Navy – COMMUNICATIONS: Frost Snorters

New “I’ve-been-there” club reported from the far Northwest this week is the Short Roaders, composed of those who have ridden, crawled or hiked more than 500 miles over the Alaska Military High way. Its membership certificate: a Canadian dollar bill, inscribed and signed in the Short Snorter manner.

Still more exclusive back-patting travel group is the Kee Club, named after the mythical Kee bird, which flies around the North Pole plaintively crying: “Kee-KeeKee-rist, but it’s cold!” Membership emblem : a walrus tooth on a key chain. To qualify for membership (by invitation only), initiates must have accomplished any two of four feats: completed a mission above the Arctic Circle; ridden the White Pass & Yukon Railway from Whitehorse to Skagway; flown across the mountains from Whitehorse to Norman Wells on the Mackenzie; gone down the Yukon from Fort Yukon to the mouth.

The Kee Club was founded last winter in a wood-and-tar-paper barracks of the U.S. Army’s Northwest Service Command at Whitehorse by officers and civilian contractors who had just returned from a particularly chilly trip to Skagway. Its membership today totals only about 30.