June 25-26-27 - Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. If Joe had made a bucket list, this would have been near, if not at, the top. He's wanted to go to the "end of the road" in Alaska for years, and see where the pipeline started. This excellent adventure exceeded his dreams, with the exception of a polar bear. Unfortunately, we did not get to see a "polie" bear -- was not the right time of year. But everything else about the trip was spectacular.
We were picked up at 5:45 by a shuttle van and taken to the small aircraft part of the airport. Our 7:00 scheduled departure was delayed until 8:15 due to fog/ocean mist in Deadhorse. They said they like to wait until they can confirm that the weather is actually going to do what it is supposed to do before they take off from Fairbanks. Our pilot, Pete, had been flying planes around Alaska for 40 years, and we lucked out because the skies cleared as we flew over the Brooks Range and we were able to clearly see the beautiful green tundra, some glaciers, the mighty Yukon River and several small lakes below us. Collins caught a few zzz's early on the in the flight, but once we cleared the clouds he was as busy as we were, looking from side to side, trying to take it all in. Our plane was a small 10-seater, and everyone had a window/aisle. We had earphones so Pete could tell us what we were seeing below.
Here are some of the glaciers (above and below).
When we landed at Deadhorse, we met our tour guide, Mike Fenno, who took us to the camp where we would spend the night. This area is called the "coastal plains," and there are absolutely no trees on the coastal plains. We actually stayed in crew quarters here. We had to remove our shoes as we entered the building because this is the "mud season." I asked what season it was when it wasn't the mud season, and they said "summer." Or "wrenching season," because they make all their repairs in the summer, turning wrenches. We took our bags to our room, then we ordered our lunch, and we ordered the next day's breakfast and box lunch.
Then Mike took us touring around the camp. We had seen 5 caribou on our way from the airport runway (there is no airport) to the camp, but we did not see them again. Mike is a native Alaskan, has worked in several capacities around the state, and is currently a teacher, with a degree in geography, so he was very knowledgeable and shared a lot of information about the pipeline, the state, and its history. He explained a lot about the equipment we saw, and how the crews moved their living quarters and all essential buildings with them from camp to camp. The buildings were on skids and could be hooked on behind bulldozers or other tundra-capable vehicles to be towed to the next camp. As we drove around the camp, we came upon a small herd of muskox, 7 adults and 1 baby.
We saw different kinds of tundra throughout this trip. Here are some examples, and I will talk more about tundra later.
There were 2 other women, 4 men, and 2 boys with us in the van. As we drove around the camp and Mike explained the equipment and other things about the oil camp, I looked behind me in the back of the van and realized I was the only female still awake. But the guys were taking everything in. This is a drill rig.
They used this truck (above) to haul equipment out over the tundra, without damaging the tundra.
Below is the building we stayed in, and that dirty white van was our vehicle. They don't waste water up there, so the van never got washed the whole trip. Mike did wash the outside windows from time to time.
This is one of the housing units on sleds.
Above is another one of the trucks they use for seismagraphic (sp?) testing and towing the sleepers to different camps.
Then he drove us out of town a little ways looking for caribou. Mike said there are 600,000 caribou on the North Slope of the Brooks Range. They migrate to the coast (where Prudhoe Bay is) to calve, to get away from mosquitoes and to protect their young from other predators through the summer. He was successful in his search for caribou for our group - we came upon a herd of about 40 beside the road, males, females and babies. Caribou are the only specie, I believe, that both males and females have antlers. But the racks on the males are pretty impressive. Most of them were still in velvet. Continuing down the road, we came across a small herd of about 18 with several males, then a little further was 1 lone male, then another small group of 6 with a male with an awesome rack. When we turned around and headed back, we saw all of these groups again. (Remember that you can click on the images and enlarge them.)
We were ahead of the mosquito season in Prudhoe Bay but it caught up with us as we headed south the next day. Mike said there are lots of migratory birds who come to this area -- we missed the bulk of those by about a month, but we did see quite a few different birds, including tundra swans, snow geese and loons. For the true "birders," this would be a must-see area. We also saw a lot of Arctic ground squirrels, both here and on our trip south. These are tundra swans, white with black beaks and feet.
As we were driving around out of "town," we could see a small "hill" occasionally on the horizon. The coastal range is very flat, so these hills almost looked like a mirage. Mike explained that this is called a "pingo," which is an ice mound covered in dirt. They form underground and push the dirt up into a mound. Sometimes the ice eventually melts and the pingos cave in. He showed us one of these on the trip south.
Then we got on a bus provided by the oil companies, went through security, and headed to the Arctic Ocean. Although this is where the Pump 1 on the Prudhoe Bay is, there was nothing special about that pump station. There was a building on the side, but no big sign stating that this is were the pipeline began. We didn't even get to go over by that pump station. But we did get to go down to the Ocean. It was 29 degrees then, very windy, VERY COLD. But the ocean mist was so heavy we could only see a couple hundred feet offshore. By looking closely, we could see where the ice began, but there were no polie (polar) bears around.
I took my shoe and socks (I had two pair on, plus longjohns) off and stuck my foot in the water. But Joe wanted me to move over, then turn around. I refused to take my other shoe off, so he FINALLY took the picture!
He decided to put his foot in the water too, but Collins suddenly found this huge gold "nugget," so Joe had to take a picture of that.
So then Joe took his shoe off and got ready to be photoed. That water was cold! I tried to take the picture, but the battery was "exhausted." Fortunately, Joe had another battery on him, so I got it, and he put his foot back in the water. When I clicked the picture, the camera "froze up" and I got a "lens error" message. So Joe pulled his foot back out of the water, and checked the camera again. It seemed to be ok, so we got ready again. By then, Joe is saying "would you just take the damn picture!" I felt like that was justified payback for him messing with me when I had my foot in the water!
By now, it's 7:30 p.m., still bright daylight, and when we got away from the ocean it was clear again and the sun was high in the sky. We went back to camp and ate the dinner buffet (prime rib, salmon, oysters, fish, etc.). We finally got to our rooms about 9:00 p.m., pretty tired from our long day. But the camp guys told us if we looked out the north fire door at 1:50 a.m., we should be able to see the sun set and rise. So I woke Joe up and we went down there to see, but it was foggy and we were unable to see anything. At breakfast the next morning, Collins said he checked at 2:30, and another couple had checked at 3:00. All with the same result. Due to daylight savings time, and Alaska now having their own time zone. this event happens around 2:00 a.m., instead of at midnight. But none of us got to see it.
Monday we had breakfast and headed out about 8:00 a.m., destination Coldfoot. We are traveling the Dalton Highway, also known as the Haul Road. This is the road on the Ice Truckers show. As soon as we got out of camp, we started seeing the caribou again. It was a foggy, misty morning, but the animals were close enough to the road to see. We saw 9 caribou within the first mile or so, then 6 more, and on and on. For the first hour and 15 minutes, the landscape was dotted with caribou, like cattle on a ranch, except that the pasture was huge, hundreds of acres. We were hardly ever without some caribou in sight. But once that quit, we did not see any more. Someone in the van said that reindeer are just like caribou, except the reindeer fly. Actually, reindeer are considered caribou.
After a couple hours of driving (40-45 mph or less) across the coastal plains, we could see the Franklin bluffs, which were very pretty. The clouds had not yet cleared, so we couldn't see the sun shining on the bluffs, but they were pretty anyway. We did see a red fox crossing the tundra.
The fox is hard to see -- it's about in the middle. I don't know what the black thing is.
Mike identified a lot of the grasses and plants we passed, including cotton grass as we started into the foothills of the Brooks Range. Cotton grass is an important food source for the caribou as they are getting ready to calve. It provides a lot of protein, as opposed to lichen, their other staple, which is all carbohydrate. We passed a lot of beautiful wildflowers, including fields of lupine, patches of yellow arctic poppies, and Eskimo potato bushes, which has pink flowers. The bears like the roots of the Eskimo potato bush, but we did not see any bears. We did see a moose with a calf, though, which was exciting.
We followed the pipeline for hundreds of miles. Sometimes it goes underground, sometimes it crosses under roads and rivers. Anytime they could build it underground they did because it was cheaper. They also went underground occasionally for about 50 feet to provide an animal crossing because they did not know how the animals would handle this new addition to the landscape. But it didn't bother the animals at all, they just go right under it.
We walked on different kinds of tundra today, some spongy, and another area that was "lumpy." There is also tundra with water all around it, which we could see from the plane. We stopped at another spot and watched about 40 Dall sheep on the side of Slope Mountain. This is an isolated herd which lives here. Mike showed us what frozen tundra looked like, in a "ditch" that has exposed ice showing. The sheep were dotted on these slopes but they don't really show up in the pictures.
We came up Atigun Pass today, often mentioned on that trucker show. This road is really not that awful, not as bad as we had been warned. It is often gravel, has some potholes, and is narrow, but we could have driven up in our Explorer. (I think Joe still wants to do that, but hopefully not this trip). When Mike sees a semi, he always pulls over so they can have the road.
After each stop, it would take us about 10 minutes to kill all the mosquitoes that had gotten in when we opened the door. Anywhere we stopped without a breeze we were bombarded with mosquitoes. Mike next stopped at the pingo that was sinking and breaking up. Again, we could see the frozen ice on the exposed sides. This pingo had completely caved in now, but Mike said just a month ago it was 12-16 feet high.
Joe scared up a ptarmigan (Alaska's state bird) here, so that was cool. It is pretty rare to get to see any of them.
Mike also showed us an aufeis -- where ice forms over a stream and goes completely from bank to bank, with water still flowing beneath it. We saw another moose, and then another one, for a total of 4 for the day. We stopped at an outhouse (these outhouses were really awful) and Mike tried to leave Joe behind, but he stopped and Joe caught up. It was getting to be a long day.
Just before we got to Coldfoot, we started seeing spruce trees. This tree was at one time the farthest north spruce tree, but you can see someone vandalized it by cutting a ring around it, which killed it.
Finally, we arrived at Coldfoot about 8:30 p.m. Our rooms here were in a motel, the Caribou Inn, but they were not very nice.
Very small, and none too clean. But we did have a bathroom in the room, whereas at Deadhorse the bathrooms were down the hall. We tried to fix up the curtain to block out the sun, then had dinner, another buffet, but they didn't have much left by then. They did restock it somewhat, but it wasn't very good ($19.95 each). They fixed us up with a box lunch for the next day as well. The temperature was in the 70s when we got to Coldfoot. Price of gas here is $4.49, diesel is $4.59. This truck stop is sometimes mentioned on the Ice Road Show. Our buffet breakfast was $13.95, and it wasn't very good. The Deadhorse camp was dry -- no liquor of any kind allowed, but the truck stop at Coldfoot had a bar, so Joe enjoyed his first beer in 3 days. However, he was devastated the next morning to learn that the fountain soda machine was out of order - he had really been planning on that diet coke for breakfast.
Sunday morning, we left at 7:30 for a tour of Wiseman, 12 miles back north. This is a very small village with 12 permanent residents. One of the locals gave us a tour of his log home and of the community.
The mosquitoes were awful, but the tour was very educational. We saw a snowshoe hare here (they don't have bunny rabbits in Alaska, they are all hares). In winter, the snowshoe hares are all white, but this one had already turned brown with white feet, which they do in summer. There are several original cabins still here, in different stages of disrepair. There was one new cabin, I think it was built last year by husband/wife physicians. They have their own dog sled team, which they bring with them when they come up from Anchorage. Each dog has its own doghouse. John and Bridgette, I thought you would be interested in this. Mike didn't know how many dogs they had; teams can be any number of dogs. The dogs eat salmon. When they have to buy dogfood to feed these teams, it can be very expensive.
Finally, we got on the road and headed south, to return to Fairbanks tonight. We topped Gobblers Knob (named because it "gobbles us" the trucks on this road). There were very nice views from here.
Then we stopped at the Arctic Circle and Mike spread out the red carpet. He later provided us with certificates for having crossed the Arctic Circle. There is nothing here except a sign, sort of like Four Corners.
We stopped at Finger Mountain and found a rock to eat our lunch on. Fortunately, it was a little windy, so the mosquitoes didn't bother us here. Two of our party walked over to the Finger, but it was further away than they expected; probably 1/3 of a mile.
We went up Roller Coaster Hill, which is often shown on the Ice Roads show, but we didn't get a picture of that. The next time we get a chance to see that show, we will have lots of milestones to watch for.
Then we arrived at the mighty Yukon River. We walked down to the river, had ice cream in the gift shop/restaurant. There were a couple of boats anchored on the bank, but we didn't see any going up or down the river. Collins had an unfortunate incident here. He gave me his camera to take a picture of the Yukon River sign, and somehow the camera got on "reformat," and he ended up losing all his pictures from the whole trip. We gave him a copy of ours, but that is certainly not the same. He had taken tons of pictures of the equipment at Prudhoe Bay, which was really of interest to him, and he lost all that. We don't know how the camera malfunction happened, but it was certainly disappointing for him.
Mike slowed down as he crossed Hess Creek because he said he sometimes sees a beaver in the water in this creek. And sure enough, there was a beaver swimming around. That was about the only animal we saw this day, so we were excited for that.
Our last stop before hitting Fairbanks was at the "town" of Joy, which is nothing more than a house and gift shop. Here, Mike served up tundra with permafrost on top -- chocolate cake with white icing. And he gave us our Arctic Circle certificates.
We got back to Fairbanks about 9:30 p.m., exhausted but having had a wonderful trip. We took 423 pictures of this trip, so there are many more than what's posted here. Everyone in our van agreed that this had been an Excellent Adventure!
