Alaska
Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve is the northernmost national park in North America and it’s not a place for a casual visit. With no roads and no trails, this landscape is one of the most remote and untamed places in North America.
The name Gates of the Arctic is apt when the region is viewed from above: the Brooks Range, a major component of the park, presents an impressive wall separating the mountainous country of central Alaska from the rolling hills of the High Arctic tundra. The east-west-running Brooks Range straddles the continental divide for 600 miles. Water from the range’s north slopes flows into the Arctic Ocean and runoff from the south slopes finds its way to the Pacific Ocean. On the north side of the range is the Arctic foothills tundra, a hilly, deeply permafrosted region that is home to some of the largest migrating herds of caribou in the world.
Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve protects the Brooks Range, just north of the Arctic Circle. The High Arctic sees twenty-four hours of daylight during the summer and twenty-four hours of darkness in the winter.
The view of this landscape depends on the time of year: snowy, icy winters are long and formidable, with temperatures plunging well below zero for nine months of the year. Summers are brief and busy, as an entire ecosystem of life-forms hurries to breed and raise their young in a few short months. These annual freeze-thaw cycles, along with glacial erosion, have sculpted the Brooks Range into one of Earth’s most dramatic landscapes.
A village may seem out of place in this wilderness, but the community of Anaktuvuk Pass, in the northeast area of the park, is home to around 350 people of Nunamiut descent. In fact, people have lived in the region for more than 13,000 years, following the herds of caribou on their annual migrations. This ecozone may have hosted the first humans in North America after their journey from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge.
Just south of the Brooks Range is the Batza Tena obsidian source, an outcrop of volcanic glass that ancient people used to make tools such as knives, arrowheads, and spear points. Each obsidian source has its own unique geochemical signature, enabling geoarchaeologists to trace far-flung individual tools back to their original source. Tools made from Batza Tena obsidian have been found throughout Alaska, transported on foot for hundreds of miles by the seasonally nomadic hunter-gatherers who scraped a harsh existence from this severe environment.
Today, the only ground access into Gates of the Arctic is by way of the Dalton Highway, a primitive unpaved road that runs from Fairbanks, Alaska, up to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean and is frequented by large trucks from the oil industry. The highway defines the eastern boundary of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve as it snakes through a pass in the otherwise impenetrable Brooks Range. From the road, entry into the park is tricky, as there is no bridge over the deep, cold waters of the Middle Fork Koyukuk River, which parallels the highway. This natural barrier means that flying is the most practical way to reach Gates of the Arctic. Hardy visitors who make it to the tiny town of Bettles, just south of the park, can arrange to be dropped off by a small float plane equipped to land on one of the many lakes in the area.
Winter dominates the northern hemisphere, as shown in this photograph of the Brooks Range and the Arctic foothills tundra, taken in mid-October.
To fly over the Gates of the Arctic National Park and the Brooks Range, you’ll need to charter a plane out of Fairbanks or Bettles, Alaska. Look for the impressive mountain range stretching for 600 miles east and west, as well as the expanse of Arctic tundra rolling north toward the Arctic Ocean.
