Southward on the Dalton Highway

Posted on August 3, 2021 by admin

Gravel makes better roads when crossing land with underlying permafrost. That isn’t a new idea.

“The primary benefit to gravel roads is that they are relatively immune from frost heaving and have less of a tendency to thaw underlying permafrost,” an Alaskan scientist named Larry Gedney wrote in 1983. “Studies showed that on very poor foundation material, such as thawing permafrost, the patching, pothole filling and repaving required by paved roads resulted in maintenance costs more than twice that for a good gravel surface.”

Thus most of the Dalton Highway, which runs for 414 miles, is gravel covered, though short stretches are paved, presumably not on top of permafrost. Making sure that no trucks were headed my way, I took some pictures standing in the gravel road. It makes a satisfying crunch under your shoes. The sound of somewhere remote, in this case.

Trucks pass by with some regularity, though I understand winter is really the busy season.

We left Coldfoot, Alaska, last Tuesday in the afternoon on a small bus driven by a guide named Steve. His job was to drive us back south, but also to talk about the Alaskan wilderness, the Alaska Pipeline and the road itself, which he did with expert knowledge, as far as I could tell.

Not following things Alaskan in much detail, there was much that he said that I didn’t know, such as about the composition of boreal forests in this part of the world — only six kinds of trees, two of which are kinds of spruces, highly visible out my window and odd-looking in the case of pencil-thin-looking trees with clutches of cones on top.

The tour stopped at a number of spots en route, either to use outhouses — one bank of which actually featured crescent moons in the door — or at points of interest. The first stop, still north of the Arctic Circle, was for a look at the Alaska Pipeline (formally the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System).

The pipeline wasn’t exactly a hidden presence. The road was built to service the pipeline, after all, which got its impetus from the energy panic of the 1970s. Long stretches of the pipeline were built above ground, because permafrost is a lousy place for underground pipes, and so the it was easy to see most of the time from the bus window as we rolled by, a thin white snake taut across the green backdrop.

Next stop, the Arctic Circle sign.

We weren’t the only ones there. Another bus pulled up, and so did a couple of private cars, including a small sedan I don’t believe I’d drive on the Dalton. Then again, it had some extra tires and gas cans lashed to the roof — at least I hope they were tied down — so maybe they were ready.

I happened to see the back of the sign. That side featured a number of stickers, including him again.

South from that point is Finger Mountain. Not actually a mountain, just a large hill with a granite tor off in the distance. We stopped long enough for us to scramble to the top of the hill, which is about 17 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Distant fog obscured the distant mountains, but they were visible.

I was reminded of the alpine tundra I saw on the mountainsides of Alberta. Yes, this counts as alpine tundra, Steve the guide agreed.

Further south we stopped at the Yukon River Camp.

Some of its buildings had that abandoned look. Wonder when the last time there was an artist in residence here, across the parking lot from the camp’s main building, and nearer to the highway.

Not far from the buildings is the mighty Yukon River, third-longest in North America. It was good to stand on the banks of such a river.

The 2,295-foot Yukon River Bridge, formally the E. L. Patton Bridge, carries the Dalton Highway, along with the Alaska Pipeline, across the river. It’s only one of four bridges on the Yukon, despite the river being nearly 3,200 miles long.

Near the bridge, I got a better look at the pipeline. I could stand under it.

Though it wasn’t the end of our drive, the last stop (except for an outhouse break) was at the entrance to the Dalton Highway. A sign marks the spot.

“At first, the highway was called the Haul Road because almost everything supporting oil development was ‘hauled’ on tractor-trailer rigs to its final destination,” notes the Bureau of Land Management. “In 1981, the State of Alaska named the highway after James B. Dalton, a lifelong Alaskan and expert in arctic engineering who was involved in early oil exploration efforts on the North Slope.

“The highway was open only to commercial traffic until 1981, when the state allowed public access to Disaster Creek at milepost 211. In 1994, public access was allowed all the way to Deadhorse for the first time.”

Up to Coldfoot

Posted on August 2, 2021 by admin

Turns out that a lot of information about an airplane is readily available via its registration number, typically found on the fin. If I’d thought about it, I probably would have realized that before, but it isn’t something I ever had much interest in, until I decided to look up the number on this aircraft.

N3589B tells me that it’s a Piper PA-31 Navajo Chieftain manufactured in 1980 and owned by tour operator Air Arctic since 2007, with 310-horsepower Lycoming TIO-540 engines.

“Stretched version of the Navajo with more powerful 350-hp (261-kW) counter-rotating engines (a Lycoming TIO-540 and a Lycoming LTIO-540) to eliminate critical engine issues,” Wiki says.

Italics mine, since critical engine issues were the last thing I’d have wanted during my flight from Fairbanks to Coldfoot, Alaska (pop. 10), last Tuesday. Of course nothing untoward happened. There wasn’t even that much turbulence.

There was a chance that we might not have made it to Coldfoot, however. Not long before boarding the plane, a tour company employee told us that visibility was poor in Coldfoot, with low clouds and rain. If those conditions persisted, landing in Coldfoot might be impossible, since the place only had a simple airstrip with no instruments. Such are the vagaries of an Alaskan summer.

In that case, our flight would be diverted to Bettles, where an instrument landing would be possible. Bettles (pop. 12), founded during the 1898 Alaska gold rush and currently location of a lodge devoted to Arctic tourism, is also above the Arctic Circle, but not on the Dalton Highway, so we would have to return by air rather than tour bus.

We all said that we understood this was possible, and agreed to proceed.

The pilot was this fellow, Steve. He posed for pictures after the flight with all of the groups on board: a couple, a family of four and me. He has some years on me, which I counted as a good thing. You know what they say about old pilots and bold pilots.

I sat in the back of the plane. When I called for a reservation about a month earlier, the woman taking my information asked me my weight. I gave as honest answer as I could, considering I don’t weigh myself regularly. I suspect I earned by position in back by being the fattest of the passengers, but I didn’t ask.

That was before we all put on earphones, so we could hear the pilot talking to us, and not hear the roar of the engines. I listened to the engines for a few seconds, and they did roar — too much to put up with for the full hour and ten minutes of the flight.

Off we went.

Because I was by myself in the back, with the seat next to me empty, I could look out of both windows. For a while out of Fairbanks, the view was pretty good. Such as of the expansive Tanana River, south of town.

The pilot mentioned the name of this place, but I’ve forgotten it.

We also had a view of the Alaska Pipeline for a while, but soon everything clouded over, and the views looked like this for a time.

No matter. The thrill was still there. We spent much of the flight at 6,000 or 8,000 feet, above the clouds. Air-traffic control chatter was audible through the earphones, and I could see the altimeter clear enough all the way in the back. Guess that’s something that really needs to be visible. There was a fair amount of air traffic over the Alaskan bush, including a medevac in progress, though I couldn’t make out from where to where. Guess bush planes are the main way to get around this wilderness.

Most of the way into the flight, the pilot pointed to a display on the control panel — that I couldn’t see much from back in the back — that told us we were flying over the Arctic Circle. We were still over cloud cover. “It isn’t like you’d see a line on the ground anyway,” he said.

We flew near Bettles, within sight of the airstrip, in case we needed to land there. But pilot Steve reported good visibility ahead, and the ground at Coldfoot confirmed tolerable weather, so on we went for a landing. The landing strip was wet with recent rain, with temps in the 50s F.

In full, the place is Coldfoot Camp, at Mile 175 on the Dalton Highway, and roughly 55 miles above the Arctic Circle. It too was originally an ephemeral gold rush camp, much later (1970) repurposed as a camp for the construction of the Alaska Pipeline. Later still (as it is now) it’s a truck stop for the traffic on the Dalton, founded by Iditarod champion Dick Mackey. Last gas for 240 miles.

For me, and of interest to no one else, Coldfoot now marks the furthest north I’ve ever been, besting Vyborg, Russia, where we stopped briefly in 1994. Coldfoot is at 67°15′ 5″ N, 150°10′ 34″ W. Actually, the day before, Fairbanks bested Vyborg, but never mind.

Coldfoot is a utilitarian place.

Boasting the northernmost bar in the USA, at least according to our guide (not the pilot, but someone also named Steve, who later drove our bus south).

It’s a claim I haven’t checked thoroughly, except to note that it would be unwise to have a bar up near Prudhoe Bay among the oilfield workers, and in fact Deadhorse is a dry town. Barrow (Utqiaġvik) is what the Alaskans call a “damp” town. No alcohol for sale, but you can bring your own. This map seems to confirm Coldfoot’s northernmost-bar status, though it doesn’t seem to be up-to-date about Barrow.

We ate lunch in the barroom, meals we’d ordered back in Fairbanks and which the tour operator faxed to Coldfoot. I had a decent fish sandwich and fries. Elsewhere in the complex was a dining room occupied mostly by truckers, a kitchen, a snack counter and a gift shop, and outbuildings that seemed devoted to truck and aircraft maintenance (Alaska DOT has a facility there). I understand that spartan rooms are available for rent in Coldfoot as well.

One wall included a place for stickers. People come from all over to visit Coldfoot, just like I did. Note that Buc-ee’s is in Alaska, in spirit anyway.

There’s also a post office, adjacent to the main complex, open three days a week — not the day I was there.

Still, the slot is always open, and I dropped in eight cards that I’d written earlier while waiting for the plane: two to Illinois, two to Texas, two to Tennessee and one each to Massachusetts and New York, with the promise they would be picked up the next day. We shall see how long delivery takes.

North to Alaska

Posted on August 1, 2021 by admin

Last week, I found myself at the Arctic Circle. Or so the sign said. I didn’t bother to check with GPS, since I knew it was close enough, like the Prime Meridian line in Greenwich, England. I posed with it. That’s the tourist thing to do, especially when you’ve come a long way.

A fleeting but memorable moment there at 66 degrees, 33 minutes North, early during my recent visit to Alaska, which ran from July 26 to July 31. Before that, I flew to Seattle to spent a long weekend with Lilly, who has established a life in that city. I also visited some of my old friends — stretching back to college and high school — now resident in that part of the country.

On the first day in Seattle, July 23, Lilly and I walked from her apartment in the Wallingford neighborhood (near Fremont) over to Gas Works Park under a warm summer sun. That was one of the first places I ever visited in Seattle in ’85, long before the notion of walking anywhere with a grown daughter. After an afternoon nap (for me), we had a delightful take-out dinner at Bill and Gillian’s back yard in Edmonds, with another friend, Matt, joining us.

On Saturday the 24th, I had breakfast up the street from Lilly’s with a high school friend, Louis, whom I hadn’t seen in… 40 years? Late in the morning, Lilly and I went to the Seattle Art Museum, which has quite the collection, arrayed in galleries each featuring a certain genre or artistic theme – usually a radically different one from the neighboring galleries. Out to smash that paradigm called “chronology” or “art history,” I suppose.

That afternoon, we went to the Ballard Locks, formally known as the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, which connect Puget Sound with Lake Washington, a worthwhile suggestion of Jay’s. Not as impressive as the Panama Canal, Lilly said, but still a feat of 1910s engineering. That evening, old age rested (me) and youth went out (Lilly). That meant that the next morning, youth was a lot more tired than old age during the ferry ride and drive to spend the day at Olympic National Park, where we took a hike along Hurricane Ridge and then a walk to see Marymere Falls.

On July 26, I flew to Fairbanks, my base for the rest of the week. I didn’t have a rental car at first, so I got around via cabs and municipal buses in roughly equal measure – the former being infinitely more expensive than the latter, since the buses have been free since the pandemic hit. I took in the excellent Museum of the North on the sprawling campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and visited downtown Fairbanks long enough to get dinner.

The next day, I made my way to a general aviation runway near the airport and took a tour that involved flying in a small plane to Coldfoot, Alaska, which isn’t even a town, but rather a camp on the Dalton Highway, about 250 miles north of Fairbanks. North of Coldfoot, there are no services for 240 miles, until Deadhorse.

We didn’t continue further north. The tour then headed southward by bus on the gravel road that is the Dalton, stopping at a few places, including the Arctic Circle sign.

On July 28, I picked up a rental car and spent some time looking around Fairbanks, including the Birch Hill Cemetery on the outskirts of town, and then suburban North Pole, Alaska, for a look at the curiosities there. Mainly, the Santa Claus House. From there I headed south on Alaska 3, a two-lane road to Anchorage. I didn’t go to that city, but rather to a hotel near the entrance of Denali National Park, where I spent the night. Along that road, I unexpectedly found a presidential site.

The next day, I took a bus tour of the national park, which took us along the only road in the park to see magnificent vistas and animals along the way. We saw many of each. We also saw Denali itself for a short time without a shroud of clouds, gleaming white among the brown mountains. About 600,000 people visited Denali NP in 2019, a record, and I understand the attraction.

That evening, or rather during the long twilight afternoon, I drove back to Fairbanks, only about 90 miles. On the morning of July 30, I spent time futzing around downtown Fairbanks, this time using the rental car, occasionally marveling that I was in the furthest north U.S. city.

A heavy lunch made me tired, so I returned to my room and napped and read and wrote postcards and watched YouTube and regular TV. Even tourists need time off. If the trip had ended then, I would have been more than satisfied, but I had scheduled one more day.

It was a good one. Better than I expected. I’d considered going to a hot spring about 60 miles from Fairbanks, but I’d had enough of long drives, so instead I visited another cemetery, some churches, a couple of neighborhoods and had a lighter lunch than the day before.

That meant I was ready for the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum in the afternoon. I almost didn’t go. Two museums seemed like enough for this trip. But I figured I’d go look at some old cars for an hour or so, since I was nearby anyway. I was astonished at the place. Not only was it an excellent car museum, it was an excellent museum, period: an amazing collection expertly displayed and curated.

That wasn’t quite all. I spent a little more time before returning to the airport walking on the trails of Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, including its boreal forest trail, a term that evokes the trackless reaches not much further out of town. My July 31 flight from Fairbanks was a redeye, bringing me home early today.

My senses had to work overtime to take in all that I experienced. Alaskan vistas tend to be intense, in spots sweeping far to the distance; more expansive than I’d ever seen, besting even the Grand Canyon or the Canadian Rockies or the Gobi Desert. Roads took me through vast forested square miles without much human presence. On learning that there are really only six main species of trees in the Alaskan forests, and that one of them is the quaking aspen, I started noticing them everywhere. At one rest stop, I listened to the wind blow through a stand of maybe half a dozen quaking aspens, a distinctive rustle I’ve heard in my own back yard, only magnified.

Mostly the temps were in the 60s and 70s, and as high as 80, though a rainy cool day on the Dalton made the gravel crunch and the mud stick, and some of it yet remains dried on my hiking shoes. As the days passed, I started noticing the hours-long twilight and the never-quite dark of the night, strange to contemplate, if you’re not used to it. The signs and businesses and other details along the way in Fairbanks spoke to a strong regional identity, as much as in Texas.

At first, Fairbanks itself didn’t impress. The Lubbock of the far north, I thought. But the longer I stayed, the more I began to appreciate its light traffic, historic spots, and restaurants that wouldn’t be out of place in any much larger American city.

And its oddities. Perhaps none as odd as the green pyramid at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in front of the engineering building.

The text is here.

The Alaska leg of the trip was a little expensive, at least after arrival, because the airfares to get there and away were the least expensive part of the trip. Everything else in Alaska is expensive. But I have to add: entirely worth it.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Monthly Archives: August 2021

Southward on the Dalton Highway

Up to Coldfoot

North to Alaska