It’s one thing to be told Denali is the tallest mountain in North America; it’s another to see it crowning the sky in Denali National Park. It’s a mountain so tall, so massive and so overwhelming it has visitors stumbling off the park buses. As a state, Alaska is the same, a place so huge, so wild and so unpopulated it’s incomprehensible to most people until they arrive.
Dramatic mountain ranges arch across the landmass of Alaska. The Pacific Mountain System, which includes the Alaska, Aleutian and St Elias Ranges, as well as the Chugach and Kenai Mountains, sweeps along the south before dipping into the sea southwest of Kodiak Island. Further north looms the imposing and little-visited Brooks Range, skirting the Arctic Circle.
In between the Alaska and Brooks Ranges is Interior Alaska, an immense plateau rippled by foothills, low mountains and magnificent rivers, among them the third-longest in the USA, the mighty Yukon River, which runs for 2300 miles. North of the Brooks Range is the North Slope, a coastal plain of scrubby tundra that gently descends to the Arctic Ocean.
In geological terms Alaska is relatively young and still very active. The state represents the northern boundary of the chain of Pacific Ocean volcanoes known as the ‘Ring of Fire’ and is the most seismically active region of North America. In fact, Alaska claims 52% of the earthquakes that occur in the country and averages more than 13 each day. Most are mild shakes, but some are deadly. Three of the six largest earthquakes in the world – and seven of the 10 largest in the USA – have occurred in Alaska.
Most of the state’s volcanoes lie in a 1550-mile arc from the Alaska Peninsula to the tip of the Aleutian Islands. This area contains more than 65 volcanoes, 46 of which have been active in the last 200 years. Even in the past four decades Alaska has averaged more than two eruptions per year. If you spend any time in this state, or read about its history, you will quickly recognize that belching volcanoes and trembling earthquakes (as much as glaciers and towering peaks) are defining characteristics of the last frontier.
Southeast Alaska is a 500-mile coastal strip extending from north of Prince Rupert right across to the Gulf of Alaska. In between are the hundreds of islands of the Alexander Archipelago, and a narrow strip of coast, separated from Canada’s mainland by the glacier-filled Coast Mountains. Winding through the middle of the region is the Inside Passage waterway; it’s the lifeline for isolated communities, as the rugged terrain prohibits road-building. High annual rainfall and mild temperatures have turned the Southeast into rainforest, broken up by majestic mountain ranges, glaciers and fjords.
Like the Southeast, much of this region (also known as Southcentral Alaska) is a jumble of rugged mountains, glaciers, steep fjords and lush forests. This mix of terrain makes Kenai Peninsula a superb recreational area for backpacking, fishing and boating, while Prince William Sound, home of Columbia Glacier, is a mecca for kayakers and other adventurers.
Geographically, the Kenai Peninsula is a grab-bag. The Chugach Range receives the most attention, but in fact mountains only cover around two thirds of the peninsula. On the east side of the peninsula is glorious Kenai Fjords National Park, encompassing tidewater glaciers that pour down from one of the continent’s largest ice fields, as well as the steep-sided fjords those glaciers have carved. Abutting the park in places, and taking in much of the most southerly part of the Kenai Peninsula, is Kachemak Bay State Park, a wondrous land of mountains, forests and fjords.
Covering much of the interior of the peninsula, the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge offers excellent canoeing and hiking routes, plus some of the world’s best salmon fishing. On the west side, the land flattens out into a marshy, lake-pocked region excellent for canoeing and trout fishing.
Prince William Sound is completely enveloped by the vast Chugach National Forest, the second-largest national forest in the US.
Stretching 1500 miles from Kodiak Island to the International Date Line, the Southwest is spread out over four areas: the Kodiak Archipelago including Kodiak Island, the Alaska Peninsula, the Aleutian Islands and Bristol Bay. For the most part it is an island-studded region with stormy weather and violent volcanoes. This is the northern rim of the Ring of Fire, and along the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands is the greatest concentration of volcanoes in North America.
Southwest Alaska is home to some of the state’s largest and most intriguing national parks and refuges. Katmai National Park & Preserve, on the Alaska Peninsula, and Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge are renowned for bear-watching. Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, across Cook Inlet from Anchorage, is a wilderness playground for rafters, anglers and hikers.
Most of the Aleutian Islands and part of the Alaska Peninsula form the huge Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, headquartered in Homer. The refuge encompasses 3.5 million acres and more than 2500 islands, and is home to 80% of the 50 million seabirds that nest in Alaska.
With the Alaska Range to the north, the Wrangell and Chugach Mountains to the south and the Talkeetna Mountains cutting through the middle, the Interior has a rugged appearance matching that of either Southeast or Southcentral Alaska.
Mountains are everywhere. The formidable Alaska Range creates a jagged spine through the Interior’s midsection, while the smaller ranges – the Chugach, Talkeetna and Wrangell to the south and the White Mountains to the north – sit on the flanks. From each of these mountain ranges run major river systems. Spruce and birch predominate in the lowland valleys with their tidy lakes. Higher up on the broad tundra meadows, spectacular wildflowers show their colors during summer months. Wildfire also plays its role here, wiping out vast swaths of forest nearly every summer.
The big name here, of course, is Denali National Park, blessed with the continent’s mightiest mountain and abundant wildlife. Wrangell–St Elias National Park, located in the region’s southeast corner, is the largest national park in the US and a treasure house of glaciers and untouched wilderness. Up in the Interior’s northeast is Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, located at the nexus of two of the state’s legendary waterways.
Alaska is one of the few places in the world where active glaciation occurs on a grand scale. There are an estimated 100,000 glaciers in Alaska, covering 28,000 sq miles, or 3% of the state, and containing three-quarters of all Alaska’s fresh water. The effects of glaciation, both from current and ice age glaciers, are visible everywhere and include wide U-shaped valleys, kettle ponds, fjords and heavily silted rivers.
Glaciers are formed when the snowfall exceeds the rate of melting and the solid cap of ice that forms begins to flow like a frozen river. The rate of flow, or retreat, can be anything but ‘glacial,’ and sometimes reaches tens of yards per day. While most of Alaska’s glaciers are in rapid retreat, roughly 2% of them are advancing – actually growing in size. With that said, climate change is exacerbating the melt rates of some glaciers; guides working at the Matanuska Glacier, for example, report that local ice is retreating at unprecedented levels.
Glaciers are impressive-looking formations, and because ice absorbs all the colors of the spectrum except blue, they often give off a distinct blue tinge. The more overcast the day, the bluer glacial ice appears. The exceptions are glaciers that are covered with layers of rock and silt (the glacier’s moraine) and appear more like mounds of dirt. For example, the Kennicott Glacier in Wrangell-St Elias National Park is often mistaken for a vast dump of old mine tailings. Wrangell-St Elias is one of the best places in the world to see rock glaciers. Rather than an ice glacier covered with rock, a rock glacier reverses the composition ratio; they’re 90% moving rock and silt held together by ice, and advance more slowly than normal ice glaciers.
The largest glacier in Alaska is the Malaspina, which sits at the southern base of Mt St Elias and blankets 850 sq miles.
One of the most spectacular sights is watching – and hearing – tidewater glaciers ‘calve’ icebergs (the act of releasing small to massive chunks of glacier). Tidewater glaciers extend from a land base into the sea (or a lake) and calve icebergs in massive explosions of water. Active tidewater glaciers can be viewed from tour boats in Glacier Bay National Park, Kenai Fjords National Park and Prince William Sound, which has the largest collection in Alaska.
This is the largest slice of Alaska and includes the Brooks Range, Arctic Alaska and western Alaska on the Bering Sea. The remote, hard-to-reach Bush is separated from the rest of the state by mountains, rivers and vast roadless distances.
The mighty Brooks Range slices this region in two. To the north, a vast plain of tundra sweeps down to the frozen wasteland of the Arctic Ocean. In the western reaches, near towns such as Nome and Kotzebue, you’ll find more tundra, as well as a flat landscape of lakes and slow-moving rivers closer to the Bering Sea, and rolling coastal hills and larger mountains heading toward the interior. In the far north, the Arctic Coastal Plain is a flat series of wetlands, lakes, rivers and tundra that extends all the way to the Arctic Ocean.
The Bush has several national parks and preserves. Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve spans the spires of the Brooks Range and offers spectacular hiking and paddling. Near Kotzebue is Kobuk Valley National Park, known for the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes and the oft-paddled Kobuk River, with the mountain-ringed Noatak National Preserve just to the north.
With its vast territory extending from the frigid Arctic Ocean to the temperate Gulf of Alaska, and encompassing mountain ranges, river valleys, sweeping plains, island chains and a range of climatic conditions, Alaska harbors a diversity of ecosystems. Most of the state, however, can be categorized into three large zones: tundra, taiga and temperate forest.
Tundra comes from the Finnish word for barren or treeless land. Of course, tundra isn’t completely barren but often a bewitching landscape of grasses, herbs, mosses, lichens and, during the short summer, wildflowers. Nevertheless, tundra soil is generally poor, the diversity of plants is low and the growing season extremely short: sometimes plants have as little as 1½ months a year to sprout.
Lowland tundra extends along the coastal regions of the Arctic, and the deltas of western Alaska around Nome. What’s referred to as upland tundra covers the land at higher elevations above the treeline throughout the Alaska Range, as well as across the Brooks Range and all along the Aleutians.
Taiga, also called boreal forest, runs from Interior Alaska through Canada and down past the Great Lakes. Taiga forests are low and damp, often broken up with lakes and bogs. The most common species of trees are white spruce, black spruce, birch and aspen. Trees tend to be short and scraggly, and grow in thickets.
Most of Interior Alaska (at lower elevations) is covered in taiga. It’s great moose habitat, so keep your eyes peeled in such areas.
Between the taiga and tundra is a transitional area in which species from either zone may be found. On the ride up the Dalton Hwy, a famous ‘Last Spruce’ is a curious testament to the fact that while transitions rarely have exact boundaries, they do have to end somewhere.
Alaska’s temperate forests are found, no surprise, in southeastern Alaska, along the Gulf of Alaska, as well as the eastern edge of the Kenai Peninsula. They form part of the system of coastal rainforests that runs north from the Pacific Northwest and are dominated by Sitka spruce and other softwoods. Precipitation is high in this region and the winters mild; as a result trees can grow to be giants over 230ft tall. It’s no surprise that Alaska Natives from this region are masters at woodcarving, and created the splendid totem-pole culture that is now famous around the world.
Oceans surround 75% of Alaska, the terrain is mountainous and the sun shines at a low angle. All this gives the state an extremely variable climate, and daily weather that is infamous for its unpredictability.
For visitors, the most spectacular part of Alaska’s climate is its long days. At Point Barrow, Alaska’s northernmost point, the sun doesn’t set for 2½ months from May to August. In other Alaskan regions, the longest day is on June 21 (the summer solstice), when the sun sets for only two hours in Fairbanks and for five hours in the Southeast. Even after sunset in late June, however, there is still no real darkness, just a long twilight.
The Southeast has a temperate maritime climate; like Seattle, but wetter. Juneau averages 57in of precipitation (rain or snow) annually, and Ketchikan gets 154in, most of which is rain as winter temperatures are mild.
Precipitation is the norm in Prince William Sound. In summer, Valdez is the driest of the towns; Whittier is by far the wettest. In all communities, average July daytime temperatures are barely above 60°F (15.6°C). So no matter what your travel plans are, pack your fleece and some bombproof wet-weather gear.
Weather-wise, the Kenai Peninsula is a compromise: drier than Prince William Sound, warmer than the Bush, wetter and cooler (in summer) than the Interior. Especially on the coast, extremes of heat and cold are unusual. Seward’s normal daily high in July is 62°F (16.7°C). Rainfall is quite high on the eastern coasts of the peninsula around Seward and Kenai Fjords National Park; moderate in the south near Homer and Seldovia; and somewhat less frequent on the west coast and inland around Soldotna and Cooper Landing.
Shielded from the dark fury of Southcentral Alaska’s worst weather by the Kenai Mountains, the Anchorage Bowl receives only 14in of rain annually and enjoys a relatively mild climate: January averages 13°F (-10.6°C) and July about 58°F (14.4°C). Technically a sub-Arctic desert, Anchorage does have more than its fair share of overcast days, however, especially in early and late summer.
With little to protect it from the high winds and storms that sweep across the North Pacific, the Southwest is home to the very worst weather in Alaska. Kodiak is greatly affected by the turbulent Gulf of Alaska and receives 80in of rain per year, along with regular blankets of pea-soup fog and occasional blustery winds. On the northern edge of the Pacific, Unalaska and the Alaskan Peninsula receive less rain (annual precipitation ranges from 60in to 70in), but are renowned for unpredictable and stormy bouts of weather. Southwest summer temperatures range from 45°F to 65°F (7°C to 18°C). For the clearest weather, try visiting in early summer or fall.
In this region of mountains and spacious valleys, the climate varies greatly and the weather can change on a dime. In January temperatures can sink to -60°F (-51°C) for days at a time, while in July they often soar to above 90°F (32°C). The norm for the summer is long days with temperatures of 60°F to 70°F (15.6°C to 21.1°C). However, it is common for Denali National Park to experience at least one dump of snowfall in the lowlands between June and August.
Here, more than anywhere else in the state, it’s important to have warm clothes while still being able to strip down to a T-shirt and hiking shorts. Most of the area’s 10in to 15in of annual precipitation comes in the form of summer showers, with cloudy conditions common, especially north of Denali. The Denali mountain, in the eponymous National Park, tends to be hidden by clouds more often than not.
In the Interior and up around Fairbanks, precipitation is light, but temperatures can fluctuate by more than 100°F during the year. Fort Yukon holds the record for the state’s highest temperature, at 100°F (37.8°C) in June 1915, yet it once recorded a temperature of -78°F (-61.1°C) in winter. Fairbanks has the odd summer’s day that hits 90°F (32°C) and always has nights during winter that drop below -60°F (-51.1°C).
Due to its geographical diversity, the Bush is a land of many climates. In inland areas, winter holds sway from mid-September to early May, with ceaseless weeks of clear skies, negligible humidity and temperatures colder than anywhere else in America. Alaska’s all-time low, -80°F (-62°C), was recorded at Prospect Creek Camp, just off the Dalton Hwy. Closer to the ocean winter lingers even longer than inland, but it is incrementally less chilly.
During the brief summer, visitors to the Bush should be prepared for anything. Utqiaġvik and Prudhoe Bay may demand a parka: July highs there often don’t hit 40°F (4.5°C). Along the Dalton Hwy and around Nome, the weather is famously variable. Intense heat (stoked by the unsetting sun) can be as much of a concern as cold.
Alaska’s temperatures are rising, causing permafrost to melt, coastlines to erode, forests to die (or push north into new territory), and Arctic sea ice and glaciers to melt at alarming rates (90% of Southeast glaciers are retreating rapidly). Some scientists now predict the Arctic Ocean will be entirely ice-free in summer by 2040, or even sooner. Meanwhile, Portage Glacier can no longer be viewed from its visitor center, and Mendenhall Glacier is expected to retreat totally onto land and cease being a tidewater glacier within a few years.
Northern Alaska is ground zero when it comes to global warming, and with the vast majority of the land sitting on permafrost – and aboriginal traditions and whole eco-systems inextricably tied to the frozen earth and sea – the very balance of nature has been thrown into disaccord. At Shishmaref, a barrier island village on the Seward Peninsula, residents have watched with horror as homes have literally slipped into the Bering Sea due to the loss of protective sea ice that buffers them against storms. And Shishmaref is just one of 160 rural communities the US Army Corps of Engineers has identified as being threatened by erosion. Relocation plans have already begun for several of these.
Paradoxically, in Juneau sea levels are dropping as billions of tons of ice have melted away, literally springing the land to new heights. In some areas the land is rising three inches a year, the highest rate in North America. As a result, water tables are dropping, wetlands are drying up and property lines are having to be redrawn.
Beyond the disaster for humans, the changes to the Alaskan landscape and climate will have dramatic effects on the highly adapted organisms that call this place home. In Juneau, the rising land has already caused channels that once facilitated salmon runs to silt up and grass over. In the Far North, melting summer sea ice is expected to put such pressure on the polar bear that it has been listed as a ‘threatened’ species.
One of the main attractions of Alaska is public land, where you can play and roam freely over an area of 348,000 sq miles, more than twice the size of California. The agency in charge of the most territory is the Bureau of Land Management (BLM; www.blm.gov), followed by the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS; www.fws.gov) and the National Park Service (www.nps.gov).
Alaska’s national parks are the crown jewels as far as most travelers are concerned, and attract more than two million visitors a year. The most popular units are Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, which draws 860,000 visitors a year, and Denali National Park, home of Denali, which sees around half that number. Other busy units are Glacier Bay National Park, a highlight of every cruise-ship itinerary in the Southeast, and Kenai Fjords National Park in Seward.
Alaska State Parks (www.alaskastateparks.org) oversees 123 units that are not nearly as renowned as most national parks, and thus far less crowded at trailheads and in campgrounds. The largest is the 2500-sq-mile Wood-Tikchik State Park, a roadless wilderness north of Dillingham that’s bigger than the state of Delaware. The most popular is Chugach State Park, the 773-sq-mile unit that is Anchorage’s after-work playground.
Both the BLM and the USFWS oversee many refuges and preserves that are remote, hard to reach and not set up with visitor facilities such as campgrounds and trails. The major exception is the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, an easy drive from Anchorage and a popular weekend destination for locals and tourists alike.
For more pre-trip information, contact the Alaska Public Lands Information Centers (www.alaskacenters.gov).
MAJOR PARKS OF ALASKA
| PARK | FEATURES | ACTIVITIES |
|---|---|---|
| Admiralty Island National Monument | wilderness island, chain of lakes, brown bears, marine wildlife | bear-watching, kayaking, canoeing, cabin rentals |
| Chena River State Recreation Area | Chena River, alpine areas, granite tors, campgrounds, cabin rentals | backpacking, canoeing, hiking |
| Chugach State Park | Chugach Mountains, alpine trails, Eklutna Lake | backpacking, mountain biking, paddling, hiking, campgrounds |
| Denali National Park | Denali, brown bears, caribou, Wonder Lake, campground | wildlife-viewing, backpacking, hiking, park bus tours |
| Denali State Park | alpine scenery, trails, views of Denali, campgrounds | backpacking, hiking, camping |
| Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve | Brooks Range, Noatak River, treeless tundra, caribou | rafting, canoeing, backpacking, fishing |
| Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve | tidewater glaciers, whales, Fairweather Mountains | kayaking, camping, whale-watching, lodge, boat cruises |
| Independence Mine State Historical Park | Talkeetna Mountains, alpine scenery, gold-mine ruins, visitor center | mine tours, hiking |
| Kachemak Bay State Park | glaciers, protected coves, alpine areas, cabin rentals | kayaking, backpacking, boat cruises |
| Katmai National Park & Preserve | Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, volcanoes, brown bears, lodge | fishing, bear-watching, backpacking, kayaking |
| Kenai Fjords National Park | tidewater glaciers, whales, marine wildlife, steep fjords, cabin rental | boat cruises, kayaking, hiking |
| Kenai National Wildlife Refuge | chain of lakes, Russian River, moose, campgrounds | fishing, canoeing, wildlife-watching, hiking |
| Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge | giant bears, rich salmon runs, wilderness lodges, cabin rentals | bear-watching, flightseeing, cabin rentals |
| Misty Fiords National Monument | steep fjords, 3000ft sea cliffs, lush rainforest | boat cruises, kayaking, cabin rentals, flightseeing |
| Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness Area | glaciers, steep fjords, parade of icebergs, marine wildlife | boat cruises, kayaking, wildlife-watching |
| Wrangell–St Elias National Park | mountainous terrain, Kennecott mine ruins, glaciers | backpacking, flightseeing, rafting, biking, mine tours |
Alaska’s vast tracts of pristine land and beloved status as America’s last wild frontier mean that its environmental issues are, more often than not, national debates. These days the focus of those debates (and a fair amount of action) centers on the effects of global warming and resource management, especially the push for mining and drilling in reserve lands.
The proposed Pebble Mine development in Bristol Bay has been one of the most contentious environmental issues this century. The stakes are huge for all sides. Pebble is potentially the second-largest ore deposit of its type in the world, with copper and gold deposits estimated to be worth a staggering $500 billion. But the minerals would be extracted from near the headwaters of Bristol Bay and require a 2-mile-wide open pit that could pollute streams that support the world’s largest run of wild salmon.
That issue saw an unlikely alliance of environmentalists, commercial fishers and Alaska Natives up in arms, and in 2013 the mine project was put on hold as investors pulled out. But under the Trump administration the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has allowed the Pebble Partnership to apply for a federal permit to begin work on the mine development. In September 2017, after meeting with Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt directed the agency to withdraw an Obama-era proposal to protect the Bristol Bay watershed from certain mining activities.
Oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is another unresolved issue, despite a political battle that has raged in the lower 48 since the earliest days of the Reagan presidency. The refuge is often labeled by environmentalists as America’s Serengeti, an unspoiled wilderness inhabited by 45 species of mammals, including grizzly bears, polar bears and wolves. Millions of migratory birds use the refuge to nest, and every spring the country’s second-largest caribou herd, 150,000 strong, gives birth to 40,000 calves there.
Though estimates of the amount of recoverable oil have dropped considerably in recent years, industry is still eager to jump in, and politicians continue to argue that ANWR can help the country achieve energy independence. At the time of research Senate Republicans were moving forward with the first legislative steps needed to allow drilling in ANWR.
The problems of resource exploitation are not restricted to oil, gas and minerals. After the king-crab fishery collapsed in 1982, the commercial fishing industry was rebuilt on pollock (also known as whiting), whose mild flavor made it the choice for imitation crab, frozen fish sticks, and fish sandwiches served at fast-food restaurants. Pollock are groundfish – fish that live on, in, or near the sea floor – and are a crucial species in the Bering Sea ecosystem. The Alaskan pollock catch constitutes the largest fishery in the country, and accounts for almost one third of all US seafood landings by weight. The Marine Stewardship Council rates pollock caught from the eastern Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and the Gulf of Alaska as a sustainable fishery.
Salmon is an incredibly important fishery to Alaskans on both a commercial and recreational level. The future of the species remains in question. During 2017, Bristol Bay, which produces 40% of the world’s harvested sockeye salmon, experienced a record-breaking salmon run. On the flip side, the Kuskokwim River, an important source of king salmon, experienced one of the worst runs in history. The reasons for local fishery collapses remain a mystery, though theories about climate change and its many effects as well as overfishing have the most traction.
Native communities along the Arctic Alaska coast participate in sustenance-level hunting of bowhead whales, an activity with deep cultural roots. A complex social hierarchy determines who is allowed to captain and crew whaling boats, as well as the order of whale meat distribution. Whaling in Alaska is regulated at the state and federal level, with quotas set by the International Whaling Commission (IWC); from 2013 to 2018, indigenous Arctic communities in Alaska and Chukotka (Russia) were allowed to take 336 whales in total.
Waste management is a hot issue in Alaska’s rural communities, many of which are not connected to the rest of the state by convenient transportation routes. Though burning garbage is still a common way of reducing trash, as is dumping, more and more communities have begun to build recycling centers, practice composting and haul back to Anchorage whatever they can. A free program called Flying Cans takes bundled aluminum cans from rural communities to recycling plants in Anchorage via scheduled cargo flights. Energy-saving education programs are also making their way across the state, as are greenhouses. The latter are expected to have a positive impact on both nutrition and the amount of fuel used to supply rural villages with fresh produce.
For more information on environmental issues, contact these conservation organizations:
AAlaska Sierra Club (www.alaska.sierraclub.org)
ANo Dirty Gold (www.nodirtygold.org) A campaign opposing ecologically destructive gold mining around the world.
ASoutheast Alaska Conservation Council (www.seacc.org)
AWilderness Society (www.wilderness.org)