Tag Archives: Dan Gabryszak

A wild life

Cancer has claimed Dan Gabryszak, a backwoods Renaissance man who built a life for himself and his family along the Yentna River north of Anchorage when it was still a wilderness a world away from his California roots. Everyone who traveled the now popular, Alaska waterway in the past three decades knew, or knew of, Dan and the Gabryszak family at Yentna Station Roadhouse. Today it is a refueling stop or place to grab a burger for riverboat drivers in summer and a winter swarm of snowmachine riders, mushers, fat bikers or the occasional skier. Forty years ago, it was a considerably different and quieter place where Gabryszak and his wife Jeannette – Jean to friends – nearly starved to death their first winter. >click to read< 17:40