This isn’t my first time in Alaska, although I’ve never been in early September. I was told I’d see fall color that nearly equals New England’s. I also wanted to do something different, and for the first part of my visit I signed up for a three-day tour to Prudhoe Bay, where the Trans-Alaska Pipeline begins its 800-mile journey to Valdez.
So I came partly to see the autumn color, partly to dip in the Arctic and partly just out of curiosity.
With my truck camper safely parked beside the Chena River in Fairbanks, I join nine other curious souls for the two-and-a-half-hour flight to Deadhorse and the two-day drive back along the Dalton Highway, led by the Northern Alaska Tour Company.
Our pilot, Bill, provides a running commentary as we fly over the sprawling plains. He points out old mining camps, trails and small landing strips. From 9,000 feet, the trees look like a labyrinth of green and yellow ribbons: spruce interspersed with the golds and yellows of birch, aspen and willow. Almost as dazzling as New England, except they’re missing the reds and rusts of maple trees.
As we fly over the Brooks Range, we see a few small glaciers. Bill says most glaciers on the South Slope have been gone for 20 to 30 years, probably due to global warming. Before oil exploration, the nearly inaccessible North Slope was virtually unspoiled—69,000 square miles of treeless plain extending from the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean. Even now, with 400 square miles of oil field landscape and the pipeline, the land remains mostly remote and barren.
About 15 minutes before we land, we hit sleep-inducing ground fog. “This is the usual weather,” says Bill.
Outside, it’s 35 degrees Fahrenheit. But that’s better than winter when temperatures drop to a bone-chilling 60 below and the sun doesn’t rise for 56 days. In the brief summer, when a warm day is 70 degrees with 24 hours of sunshine, the area resembles a vast swampland dotted with lakes. Year-round, the ground is frozen for hundreds of feet below the surface, though the top layer may thaw down a foot or so during the summer.
This is a no-frills trip. It calls for warm jackets and pants (even long johns), hats, gloves and sturdy walking shoes. Hiking boots are even better. Expect to get dirty.
Deadhorse is more a place than a town. There are no schools or government here. Its purpose is to be the camp for a community of about 2,000 oil-field workers. The lowest salary is $55,000 per year for cooks and housekeepers.
After the introductory movie,
Arctic Energy, we take a two-hour bus tour of the oil fields with the official authorized tour operator. We see drill stations and a “pig scrubber” (used to clean the pipeline) but little wildlife other than mute swans and caribou that seem unruffled by man’s encroachment. They meander over the tundra, through the oil fields, along the gravel roads and under the pipeline. It’s not unusual to see a line of trucks patiently waiting for them to mosey off the road; caribou have the right of way.
For the finale, we take the obligatory pictures of each other as we dip our toes in the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean.
The next morning we head back to Fairbanks on the 414-mile Dalton Highway, a National Scenic Byway. Some locals still call it the Haul Road, the name it acquired during construction of the pipeline when truckers hauled equipment and supplies for the work camps along the route.
The Dalton is open to traffic, but most rental companies prohibit their vehicles on the road. You’d have to be a masochist to take your own RV or car on the mostly gravel highway. Besides the risk of flat tires, there’s near-constant bombardment from rocks, not to mention the narrow road, steep hills, dangerous curves, slick mud, clouds of dust and potholes to deal with. If you break down, a tow back to Fairbanks starts at $1,000.
Patrick, our driver and guide, fills us in along the way. For instance, the pipeline cost nearly $8 billion; about half is buried, half is above ground; there are 554 designated animal crossings along its route. The highway was built in just five months in 1974, it cost $125 million, and at the height of construction some 600 trucks traveled the road daily; now about 50 or 60 a day make the trip.
At first we drive in fog along the dreary flat tundra almost 100 miles. The only thing we see is a herd of musk oxen close to the road. When the fog clears, we spot four tiny specks in the distance—caribou. I become bored with sightings of “musk-ox rocks” and “caribou bushes” but later the grasses turn colorful shades of orange, red and yellow, and there are bird sightings, including a falcon with a ptarmigan in its mouth.
We stop at Galbraith Lake, a camping area, for a picnic lunch before heading up the North Slope of the Brooks Range and crossing the Continental Divide. We spot herds of Dall sheep scrambling along narrow rocky ledges and see few signs of civilization except the truckers, a pump station and our fairly constant companion, the 48-inch-wide stainless-steel pipeline.
As our vehicle crawls to the summit of Atigun Pass—the highest in Alaska at 4,800 feet—we stop to take advantage of a turnout to photograph the snaking pipeline and highway spread out below us on the South Slope.
At Wiseman (population 13), we tour the tiny community with resident Jack Reakoff, who tells us it was established in the early 1900s during the Koyukuk Gold Rush. A caribou and moose trapper, Reakoff describes living off the land and how he and his wife grow and store their own vegetables. But not in the winter when it’s 20 below and their cabin is banked with snow and there’s no sun for five weeks. Reakoff smiles when he says, “I dream about salads in the winter.”
We arrive in Coldfoot just in time for dinner and to overnight at the more-than-rustic Slate Creek Inn. Legend says the community, mostly serving truck drivers and tour operators, got its name in 1900 when gold prospectors made it this far north, then got cold feet and turned back. There’s also a restaurant, a post office, a general store and the Frozen Foot Saloon, the northernmost saloon in North America.
The next morning we drive through rolling hills heavily forested with scrubby spruce trees. The Russians called this part of Alaska
taiga, meaning land of the little sticks. (“Tundra” is also Russian, meaning land of little growth.) Next stop is Yukon River Camp, where there’s lodging, a small grocery store and a trucker-style restaurant at the site of a former pipeline construction camp. It’s a short walk to stand beside the legendary, mighty Yukon River.
At our last stop, the Alyeska Pipeline Visitor Center, about 8 miles north of Fairbanks on the Steese Highway, we inspect two pig scrubbers on display and the pipeline up close.
I’m told the best autumn color is along the Parks Highway, so the next morning I take off for Talkeetna, 153 miles south of the Denali National Park entrance. The drive is almost wall-to-wall yellow and gold trees. Because the state limits roadside billboards and advertising, I keep missing the small signs for viewing areas, though I do pull over at the Denali View South viewpoint. As usual, the famous mountain (officially McKinley) is shrouded in clouds.
Talkeetna, the base for McKinley climbing excursions, is a small town popular with tourists who walk the historic district, shop at stores housed in Gold Rush–era buildings, visit the historical society museum and take dog-mushing tours.
It’s also the prime location for flight-seeing excursions for an exhilarating look at Alaska’s wilderness and Mount McKinley. I join three other passengers for a 70-minute flight that features unbelievable views of the mountain. We climb through clouds to 11,000 feet and gawk at the immense panorama below us, pass over Muldrow Glacier and continue around to the west side of McKinley, flying so close it seems as if we could reach out the window and touch the glistening white walls. The plane is a gnat in the mountain’s presence.
Of course, I can’t ignore Denali National Park on my way back to Fairbanks, so I stop off for an overnight stay at the park’s Riley Creek Campground and head for the spiffy new visitor center to sign up for whatever tours I can manage in 24 hours. I’m too late for the sled-dog tour and demonstration but I drive to the park’s kennels anyway to talk to a ranger and see the 32 dogs that patrol 2 million acres in winter.
Early the next morning I take the park’s five-hour natural-history tour, which includes stops for wildlife sightings: beaver, hoary marmots and a moose cow and calf. We spot a golden eagle soaring along a barren ridge top that turns in midflight and looks back at us quizzically, probably curious why all the people are hanging out of bus windows pointing. We also hike short distances to hear two interpreters, including an Athabascan Indian who talks about his heritage.
Then it’s back to Fairbanks to investigate the few attractions that haven’t yet closed for the winter.
The 44-acre Pioneer Park, patterned after a 1906 Gold Rush town, is basically shut down but open for walking the grounds. I stroll among the principal attractions: a native village, the Palace Theatre and Saloon, the dry-docked 227-foot sternwheeler
Nenana, an antique mining community and the railroad car used by President Warren Harding to drive the golden spike for the Alaska Railroad.
I sign up for Fairbanks’ most popular tourist attraction, the
Discovery III sternwheeler that cruises the Chena and Tanana rivers where traditional fish wheels are still in use. Guides on board narrate the history and culture of the region as the ship follows the route of the pioneers for the three-hour trip.
We go ashore at Chena Village, a replica of an Athabascan Indian village, where a native cleans fish in a smokehouse and bright red salmon dry in the sun like socks hanging on a wash line. Women show off decorated Indian moose-hide dresses adorned with porcupine quills and glass beads. We also visit the kennels of the late four-time Iditarod winner Susan Butcher, where her husband, Dave Monson, shares stories of her champion dog team.
That afternoon, I head for the University of Alaska campus and its spectacular Museum of the North where I could easily spend all day investigating the exhibits and historical documents. I’m transfixed by the ivory art collection, lusting over a beautiful Inupiat scrimshaw cribbage board crafted from walrus ivory. Later, in the gift shop, I spot a similar one almost as nice I can buy for $3,500.
Instead, since I haven’t seen the Northern Lights yet, I pay $5 to watch the 30-minute movie
Dynamic Aurora. Almost as good as the real thing.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Alaska Travel Industry Association
907-929-2200
www.travelalaska.com
Fairbanks Convention and Visitors Bureau
800-327-5774
www.explorefairbanks.com
ON OUR WEBSITE
If you’re yearning to dip your toes in the Arctic Ocean, join one of two Good Sam Alaska RV caravans this summer and sign up for the side trip to Prudhoe Bay, guided by the Northern Alaska Tour Company. To find out more about Good Sam’s RV tours, go to www.goodsamclub.com/community and click on Events and Tours.