Alaska part II - loads of driving, Brooks range, Deadhorse

After my last post, I left Fairbanks and headed north on the Dalton Highway, which, of course, is named after Dalton, Patrick Swayze's character in Roadhouse. 

Some people say it's named after some engineer who had something to do with Alaskan oil exploration and a Cold War-era radar system in the Arctic that provided early warning of incoming Russian aircraft; but I'm pretty sure a highway as badass as the Dalton Highway isn't named after some dorky engineer. The Dalton Highway is 416 miles of gravel, dirt, huge hills, battered guardrails over scary dropoffs, big trucks that are moving way too fast, and very little support if anything goes wrong. Sounds like a great drive for a 16-year-old Jeep!

Gotta love the town names along the highway. 

Sign just north of Coldfoot. 

The highway follows the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, which transports about 700,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil fields around Prudhoe Bay 800 miles south to a port in Valdez. The pipeline and the oil fields are the reason the highway was built. The majority of the traffic now is trucks hauling supplies and equipment to the oil fields. 

The pink flower is fireweed, which gets its name because it's one of the first plants to start to grow in areas that have burned recently. 

A few more pics from the highway:

The last tree along the highway. As you're driving north along the highway you can see the tree line getting lower and lower along the surrounding mountains. And eventually the trees just stop. You may notice that this tree looks pretty dead. If you look closely, the bark was cut near the ground. Some vandals did this a couple years ago. I bet Levi Johnston was involved. 

My destination along the highway was the Brooks Range where I went backpacking in and around Gates of the Arctic National Park. The Park may well be the most remote in our National Park system. There are no roads in the park (the nearest road is the Dalton Highway, which comes within 6 miles of the park), no established trails and no visitor facilities. Despite being 100 miles above the Arctic Circle, summer weather is usually pretty mild. In fact, the weather forecast was for temperatures in the upper 60s and lower 70s during the day and 40s at night. The forecast was about right for my first day of hiking. I hiked in about ten miles. That night it started to rain and the wind started to blow. And then the rain turned to snow. There was about four inches of snow on the ground when I woke up the next morning. I decided that hiking further away from my car in this weather wouldn't bee too wise, so I stayed put the second day to wait and see what the weather would do. It snowed again my second night out. Visibility was pretty bad, and I just wasn't having any fun, so I decided to hike out. There was about eight inches of snow on the ground, so it was a long, tough hike out. 

Sunset from my campsite along the Highway before I started hiking. The picture was taken around a quarter to 11pm. The sun set a little after 11 and rose at a little after 4. Even while the sun was set, however, it never really got dark. 

I didn't see many animals--mostly squirrels and birds. But there was plenty of evidence of animals.

Caribou antlers

Dall sheep horn

Fall colors, Arctic style. (Remember that there are no trees this far north. And fall comes early.)

View of an unnamed mountain near where I camped. 

I got back to my car and had a decision to make: head north to Deadhorse or south back to Fairbanks. The main appeal of Deadhorse is that it's the north coast of Alaska. I was already on the northern part of the Brooks Range, so the mountains would end soon. But, I was only 140 miles from the north coast, so I decided I might as well head up there. 

I camped along the highway and drove into Deadhorse the following day. The only reason there's a town here is that there is oil under the ground. It's a very functional town; there's really nothing here that doesn't have to do with oil. There are only about 35 permanent residents. The rest of the people are oil field workers. They live in large dorms, some of which are moved when wellheads are moved.  Most work two weeks of 12-hour days, 7 days a week, followed by two weeks off. Part of their pay includes free airfare to Fairbanks or Anchorage, so no one sticks around. 

The ultra-posh Prudhoe Bay Hotel. (If you think it looks like a trailer, you're not far off. Everything in town is modular.) Note the extension cords hanging on the walls. Those are used in the spring and fall for engine block heaters. In the dead of winter, the general practice up here is to never turn your truck off.

Since the weather is nasty, I decided to make an exception to my no-hotel policy and I checked into the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. After a night there, I got up early and took a tour of the oil fields. That's the only way to get to the Arctic Ocean. Unfortunately it was foggy (I'm so sick of fog!), so we didn't see much. The dorky side of me enjoyed hearing about all the challenges of getting the oil out of the ground and to market. And the skeptic in me enjoyed the oil company preaching about how much they care about the environment. 

Me in the Arctic Ocean! It was a little chilly for a real swim. 

Now it's time to drive back down the Dalton Highway. Wish me luck!