An Alaska pole vaulter reaches new heights with skills developed in his family’s backyard Quonset hut

The latest only-in-Alaska sports moment comes from the Brannan family of Fairbanks, who turned its yard into a pole vault pit of dreams. Or maybe a Quonset hut of dreams.

Inspired by a dad’s passion and an entire family’s labor, the Alaska Pole Vault Club is headquartered in Salcha near the banks of the Tanana River.

It includes an indoor facility built from two Quonset huts and comes complete with T-shirts calling it the northernmost pole vaulting club in the world.

The club reached new heights last week when 15-year-old Dakota Brannan competed at the Hershey National Junior Olympic track and field championships in Sacramento, California.

He posted a top-20 finish in the boys 15-16 age group with a personal-best performance. He cleared 12 feet, 6 inches to finish 16th in a field of 35.

Dakota, who will be a sophomore at Eielson High, qualified for the national championships by placing third at the regional meet earlier this month in Tacoma, Washington.

His accomplishments are significant because pole vaulting is not contested in Alaska high schools.

The event was eliminated after the 1991 season because there weren’t enough qualified coaches in the state and the event was deemed too dangerous, according to Mike Janecek, the former Palmer High track coach who has been around the sport for decades.

As a result, Dakota Brannan is a DIY pole vaulter. He helped build the Salcha Dome.

“I had to help with it a lot more than I’d like to,” Dakota said recently. “I had to help put in all these small bolts and I had to help put up all the metal, the roof and the walls.”

He’s not complaining about the final result though — year-round pole vaulting.

“It feels free when you’re flying over the bar,” he said.

The second of David and Tori Brannan’s three children, Dakota lives with his family on seven acres in Salcha.

In the yard is a complete setup for pole vaulting — runway, box, standards and pit.

Also in the yard is what David Brannan calls the Salcha Dome — two connected Quonset huts that house another complete pole vaulting setup.

“Our ceiling was really limited by winter, so we built an indoor facility — the Salcha Dome. They have the Anchorage Dome, so we figured we’d have a Salcha Dome,” Brannan said. “It took us two years to build.”

The two-part structure includes a 35x45-foot Quonset hut with a 24-foot ceiling where the jumping happens, and a 12x80-foot tunnel-like structure that serves as the runway.

The two building are separated by a garage door. “We didn’t want to heat a building 125 feet long,” Brannan said, so only the structure with the pit is heated.

“In the winter we raise the garage door and blow some heat in there,” he said.

Brannan, 50, once owned the Utah state high school pole vault record — 16-0 — and he went won multiple Western Athletic Conference championships for Brigham Young.

In 1997 he and Tori moved to Fairbanks, where he’s a teacher and track coach at Eielson High and she’s the principal at Salcha Elementary. Their oldest child, Dawson, is 19 and their youngest, Teslin, is 13.

“When my children started becoming the age where they could pole vault, we started entertaining the idea of putting a facility at our house,” Brannan said.

They started with an outdoor pit and then came the Salcha Dome, built during the summers of 2017 and 2018.

Asked how much it cost, Brannan laughed.

“Too much,” he said. “... I have an understanding wife.”

The Alaska Pole Vault Club is sanctioned by U.S. Track & Field, and Brannan said about a half-dozen kids other than his own jump there.

“My oldest did it mainly because his dad did it,” Brannan said of Dawson, a computer science major at UAF. “Dakota, he’s addicted to it kinda like I was — he thrives on it and loves it. And my daughter is the same way.”

No one has been injured at the facility, Brannan noted — including himself. Five years ago, at age 45, Brannan started pole vaulting again.

“I picked up a pole and realized I still knew how to pole vault,” he said. “But I couldn’t run nearly as fast as I used to.”

He lost some weight and started doing pullups. At the 2017 Reno Pole Vault Summit in Nevada, he cleared 13-7 to finish second in his age group.

Dakota has benefited from his dad’s coaching and experience, as well as from videos and from friends of his dad who are still involved in the sport.

He said he was about 10 when he started. He started in the long jump pit — yes, the Brannan have one of those too — by planting a short pole in the sand and riding it for a short distance.

“I wasn’t too scared because I didn’t know what was going on — I’d just take a big stick and jump,” he said.

After a few months of short jumps across the sand, he was ready for the pole vault pit. His dad set the bar at 3 feet, and Dakota missed.

“I took awhile, another month of trying, before I was finally able to get over it,” Dakota said.

It took about a year before he was able to clear his height.

“I was really excited about it,” he said.

Dakota is 5-foot-6 now and clearing twice his height every time out. At the Junior Olympics last week in California, he established a new personal-best by clearing 12-6 on his second attempt at the height before missing all three attempts at 13-0.

The meet was the last of the summer for Dakota, but he hopes to compete again in January at the Reno Pole Vault Summit. Thanks to the conveniently located Salcha Dome, he’ll be able to keep training until then.