Mountains, Glaciers, and Innumerable Rivers

Rivers, creeks, and streams almost without number course through the extent of Alaska, but it is the mountain ranges that most define its landscape. Jutting southward from the main landmass, the Aleutian Range is the backbone of the narrow Alaska Peninsula. To the north, the Alaska Range sprawls more than 500 miles across the heart of the state, rising to 20,320 feet atop the icy crown of North America. The Chugach and Wrangell–St. Elias Mountains shadow the Alaska Range to the south and wrap around southcentral Alaska’s turbulent rim of fire and ice. Southeast of the St. Elias Range, the Coast Mountains march down the southeast panhandle above the emerald waters of the Inside Passage. West of the Alaska Range, the Kuskokwim Mountains are mere foothills by comparison, but this range rises above the entangled streams and wetlands of the Yukon and Kuskokwim river systems. The Kuskokwim Mountains point north toward the Brooks Range, the northernmost mountain chain in the United States and the roof above Alaska’s North Slope.

Aleutian Range, Alaska Range, Chugach Mountains, Wrangell–St. Elias Mountains, Coast Mountains, Kuskokwim Mountains, and Brooks Range; these are the seven great mountain systems that define Alaska.

 

The Aleutian Range dominates the sweeping arc of the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands as they slice between the waters of the Bering Sea and the North Pacific Ocean. This wild, 1,600-mile tail of Alaska is a grand necklace of rugged peaks, lowland plains, and rocky beaches cast upon a restless and frequently rambunctious sea. The highpoint of the range, 11,413-foot Mount Torbert, lies near its tangled juncture with the Alaska Range. Chakachamna Lake and the Chakachatna River slice through the range just south of Mount Torbert and Mount Spurr (11,070 feet) and tempt some to lump these peaks with the Alaska Range rather than the Aleutians. South of here, however, beyond Lake Clark Pass, there can be no doubt. The active volcanoes of Redoubt (10,197 feet) and Iliamna (10,016 feet) rise above the waters of Cook Inlet to the east and sparkling Lake Clark to the west.

The Aleutian Range fades briefly near Iliamna Lake before regaining height in the peaks north and south of Mount Katmai. Had it not been for the 1912 eruption of nearby Novarupta that collapsed Katmai’s summit cone, the mountain would be some 7,500 feet high. As it is, 6,715-foot Mount Katmai is one of eleven 6,000-foot-plus mountains in Katmai National Park and Preserve and one of fifteen active volcanoes lining Shelikof Strait between the peninsula and Kodiak Island.

Southwest of Katmai, Aniakchak caldera also bears stark witness to Alaska’s rim of fire and ice. About 3,500 years ago, a cataclysmic eruption blew the top off Aniakchak Mountain. This caused its summit slopes to collapse, leaving a 2,000-foot-deep, six-mile-wide caldera. The Aniakchak River rises in Surprise Lake within the caldera and then cuts through its rim at the Gates, embarking on a rollicking thirty-two-mile journey to the sea.

Southwest of Aniakchak, the Alaska Peninsula ends opposite Unimak Island. This narrow waterway was called False Pass because passage on its northern end appeared blocked at low tide. Mount Shishaldin (9,372 feet) on Unimak Island towers above the strait and is one of those volcanoes with an almost perfect symmetry to its cone. Here, the terrain sweeps upward from sea level to above 9,000 feet in less than ten miles. Beyond watery Unimak Pass, the Aleutian Islands trail off across the North Pacific toward Asia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The islands get smaller as the chain bends westward, but mountains—many more than 4,000 feet tall—continue to dominate the landscape.

In the other direction from Lake Clark Pass, the rocky backbone of the Alaska Range curves northeastward for some 500 miles across the heart of Alaska, dividing the southcentral coast from the interior. No roads cross its crest in the western half, and it is a barrier even to the moisture-laden clouds that drop most of their load south of the range.

The U.S. Board of Geographic Names insists that the tallest mountain in the range—and the highpoint of North America—is called Mount McKinley. Athabascan Natives of the interior long called the mountain Denali, meaning “the high one.” Charles Sheldon, who was instrumental in the creation of Mount McKinley National Park, also always referred to the mountain as Denali. Sheldon first arrived near the mountain from the north in 1906 and wrote: “Soon after starting again we caught glimpses of snowy peaks toward the south, and when we reached the top, Denali and the Alaska Range suddenly burst into view ahead, apparently very near. I can never forget my sensations at the sight. No description could convey any suggestion of it.”2 Sheldon was not the first—nor would he be the last—to be fooled by this country’s scale. Denali was still a good thirty miles away, but Sheldon was certainly right about the mountain’s name.

The highest summits of the Alaska Range cluster about Denali: Mounts Crosson (12,800 feet), Foraker (17,400 feet), Russell (11,670 feet), and Dall (8,756 feet) curving to the southwest; Hunter (14,573 feet) and Huntington (12,240 feet) forming a barrrier to the south; and Silverthrone (13,220 feet), Deception (11,826 feet), and Mather (12,123 feet) running eastward along the crest of the range. Today, all of these summits are within Denali National Park and Preserve.

The lowest crossing of the main Alaska Range is 2,300-foot Broad Pass, the route of both the Alaska Railroad and the George Parks Highway. Broad Pass is just that—almost flat and very broad—sending waters either north to the Nenana-Yukon drainage or south to the Susitna River. Both the railroad and the highway ease through the remainder of the range by following the canyon of the Nenana River.

East of where the Nenana River bisects the range, Mount Deborah (12,339 feet), Mount Hayes (13,832 feet), and Mount Moffit (13,020 feet) rise north of the Denali Highway. East of the Deborah massif, the Alaska Range is crossed by the Alaska Pipeline and the Richardson Highway over 3,000-foot Isabel Pass. The Glenn Highway cuts a third crossing of the range via Mentasta Pass (2,280 feet) at the headwaters of the Little Tok River.

Other than its gigantic mountains, the most striking features of the Alaska Range are the huge glaciers that flow from its spine. Warm moist air flowing north from the Gulf of Alaska drops most of its precipitation on the south side of the range, making the glaciers there considerably larger than those on the north side. The largest, the Kahiltna, is up to three miles wide and forty-five miles long. On the north side of the range, the glacial monarch is the Muldrow, flowing northeast from the upper slopes of Denali and fed by the Traleika and Brooks Glaciers. From Kahiltna Pass below the West Buttress of Denali, the Peters Glacier flows northeast beneath the heights of Wickersham Wall and Pioneer Ridge. During the summer of 1987, the Peters Glacier surged forward three miles, moving at an astonishing rate of up to seventy-five yards per day. In 2001, the Tokositna Glacier on the south side of the range went on a similar rampage. These events, which occurred when most of the world’s glaciers were receding, bear witness to the dynamic forces that continue to shape the Alaskan landscape.

South of the Alaska Range, the Chugach Mountains mirror the larger range’s crescent arc and form a 250-mile-long divide along the Gulf of Alaska. Only the Copper River cuts a path completely through the range. The highpoint is 13,176-foot Mount Marcus Baker, but hundreds of snowy summits rise above Turnagain Arm, Prince William Sound, and the Copper River Delta. A southwestern extension of the range, the Kenai Mountains, dominates the Kenai Peninsula along with the Harding and Sargent Icefields.

At the eastern end of the range, between the Chugach Mountains and the Gulf of Alaska, the Bagley Icefield is the largest subpolar icefield in North America and extends for some eighty miles. The Martin River, Steller, Bering, Yahtse, and Guyot Glaciers flow south from it toward the Gulf of Alaska. Everywhere, there are braided rivers and streams laden with glacial silt carving away at the landscape.

East of the Chugach, the landscape intensifies even more. The Alaska Range may have Denali, but the Wrangell and St. Elias Mountains are the most extensive realm of towering mountains, raging rivers, and massive glaciers in North America. Twelve of the fifteen highest peaks in Alaska, and ten of the fifteen highest peaks in North America, rise in these ranges. The international boundary between Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory bisects the St. Elias Mountains and makes 19,432-foot Mount Logan the highest point in Canada. Had the boundary been drawn one degree of longitude to the east—a mere thirty-four miles at this latitude—Mount Logan and the 16,000-foot-plus giants of Mounts Lucania and Steele and King Peak would also be in Alaska.

Much of this region is now Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve. With some 13 million acres, it is the largest national park in the United States—six times the size of Yellowstone. Together with neighboring Kluane National Park in the Yukon Territory, Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Provincial Park in British Columbia, and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska’s panhandle, Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve has been designated a World Heritage Area—evidence indeed that the interdependency and cohesiveness of a far-flung ecosystem cannot be severed by political boundaries.

Highest Mountains of North America

1.	Mount McKinley	Alaska Range	Alaska	20,320 feet
2.	Mount Logan	St. Elias Range	Canada	19,432 feet
3.	Pico de Orizaba	Mexico	Mexico	18,700 feet
4.	Mount St. Elias	St. Elias Range	Alaska/Canada	18,008 feet
5.	Popocatepetl	Mexico	Mexico	17,887 feet
6.	Mount Foraker	Alaska Range	Alaska	17,400 feet
7.	Iztaccihuatl	Mexico	Mexico	17,343 feet
8.	Mount Lucania	St. Elias Range	Canada	17,150 feet
9.	King Peak	St. Elias Range	Canada	16,972 feet
10.	Mount Steele	St. Elias Range	Canada	16,600 feet
11.	Mount Bona	St. Elias Range	Alaska	16,421 feet
12.	Mount Blackburn	Wrangell Mts.	Alaska	16,390 feet
13.	Mount Sanford	Wrangell	Mts. Alaska	16,237 feet
14.	Mount Wood	St. Elias Range	Canada	15,880 feet
15.	Mount Vancouver	St. Elias Range	Alaska/Canada	15,700 feet

Highest Mountains of Alaska

1.	Mount McKinley	Alaska Range	Alaska	20,320 feet
2.	Mount St. Elias	St. Elias Range	Alaska/Canada	18,008 feet
3.	Mount Foraker	Alaska Range	Alaska	17,400 feet
4.	Mount Bona	St. Elias Range	Alaska	16,421 feet
5.	Mount Blackburn	Wrangell Mts.	Alaska	16,390 feet
6.	Mount Sanford	Wrangell Mts.	Alaska	16,237 feet
7.	Mount Vancouver	St. Elias Range	Alaska/Canada	15,700 feet
8.	Mount Churchill	St. Elias Range	Alaska	15,638 feet
9.	Mount Fairweather	St. Elias Range	Alaska	15,330 feet
10.	Mount Hubbard	St. Elias Range	Alaska	15,015 feet
11.	Mount Bear	St. Elias Range	Alaska	14,831 feet
12.	Mount Hunter	Alaska Range	Alaska	14,573 feet
13.	Mount Alverstone	St. Elias Range	Alaska/Canada	14,565 feet
14.	University Peak	St. Elias Range	Alaska	14,470 feet
15.	Mount Wrangell	Wrangell Mts.	Alaska	14,163 feet
16.	Mount Augusta	St. Elias Range	Alaska/Canada	14,070 feet

The Wrangell Mountains extend eastward some 110 miles from the valley of the Copper River to the vicinity of Chitistone and Skolai Passes. The first Wrangell volcanoes formed about 26 million years ago when the northwest-moving Pacific plate began to push beneath the North American plate. Called the Wrangell volcanic field, this extensive volcanic terrain covers about 4,000 square miles and extends into the St. Elias Mountains.

The highpoint of the Wrangell Mountains is the 16,390-foot dome of Mount Blackburn, which is almost completely covered with icefields and glaciers. The best-known glacier is the Kennicott, which sweeps south from the mountain in a relatively straight line and now terminates near the towns of McCarthy and Kennecott.

Northwest of Blackburn, Mount Wrangell (14,163 feet) is an enormous shield volcano. Its ice-filled summit caldera is 3.5 miles long and2.5 miles wide with three small craters containing active fumaroles situated along its rim. There have been at least three reports (1784, 1884–85, and 1900) of eruptions, including unconfirmed reports of flowing lava. One landmark on the mountain is Mount Zanetti (13,009 feet), a large cinder cone high on Mount Wrangell’s northwest flank that may have erupted less than 25,000 years ago.

The highpoint in the western Wrangell Mountains is Mount Sanford (16,237 feet). Its soaring south face rises some 8,000 feet in about one mile, one of the steepest gradients in North America. The Sanford Glacier heads in the massive cirque at the base of the south face and carries with it tons of debris from the rockfall and avalanches that roar down the face.

Mount Drum (12,010 feet) is the westernmost of the Wrangell volcanoes. Although 4,000 feet lower than neighboring Mount Sanford, the mountain dominates the local landscape because of its vertical rise above the adjacent Copper River valley. Major eruptions on its southern flanks produced mudflows that poured into the Copper River valley and flowed downstream at least as far as the current site of Chitina. The Nadina Glacier is the largest of eleven glaciers on the mountain and flows southwest more than nine miles from the large amphitheater created by these mudflows.3

East of the Wrangells, the St. Elias Mountains arc southeastward from the vicinity of Chitistone and Skolai Passes to the waters of Glacier Bay. Denali is indeed taller, but no area in North America matches the St. Elias Mountains in any other category. It is the largest and highest concentration of snow-covered mountains in North America. The complexity and enormity of the range was best described by geologist Israel Cook Russell after an 1891 attempt to climb Mount St. Elias. Russell viewed the country to the north for the first time and wrote:

I expected to see a comparatively low, wooded country stretching away to the north, with lakes and rivers and perhaps some signs of human habitation, but I was entirely mistaken. What did meet my eager gaze was a vast snow-covered region, limitless in its expanse, through which hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of barren angular mountain peaks projected. There was not a stream, not a lake, and not a trace of vegetation of any kind in sight. A more desolate or utterly lifeless land one never beheld. Vast, smooth snow surfaces, without crevasses or breaks, so far as I could judge, stretched away to unknown distances, broken only by jagged and angular mountain peaks.4

Mount St. Elias (18,008 feet), the highest peak in the range in Alaska, is located on the Alaskan-Yukon border above the waters of Icy Bay. The mountain rises dramatically—and perpendicularly—less than twenty miles from sea level at Icy Bay. Before a thorough survey of Denali was undertaken, St. Elias was briefly thought to be the tallest peak on the continent. Less than thirty miles northeast of the pointy pyramid of St. Elias, the broad plateau of Mount Logan (19,432 feet) is the highpoint of Canada. On a clear day, Logan’s broad plateau and St. Elias’s pointy pyramid are easily discernible to air travelers en route to and from Anchorage.

The Fairweather Range—many immediately call its name a misnomer—is a southern extension of the St. Elias Range and runs some seventy miles from Grand Pacific and Grand Plateau Glaciers south to Cross Sound and Icy Strait. The range separates Glacier Bay from the Gulf of Alaska, and along with Canada’s Alsek and Takhinsha Mountains, it is the source of the glaciers that sculpted Glacier Bay. The many inlets of Glacier Bay have only recently been exposed from beneath massive glaciers. Mount Fairweather (15,330 feet), the highpoint of the range, sits squarely on yet another corner of the jagged United States–Canada boundary.

From the southern end of the St. Elias Range, the Coast Mountains stand like a towering picket fence above the waters of the North Pacific for some 900 miles, all the way south to the forty-ninth parallel and the Cascade Range. Look at a relief map of North America, and here is a graphic example of the mountain-building forces of plate tectonics. In general, the Pacific plate has dug under the North American plate and pushed it upward, folding and buckling the earth’s crust in a process called subduction.

For 350 of these miles, from the windswept slopes of Chilkoot and White Passes southward to the southern tip of Dall Island, the connecting thread at the foot of the range is the Inside Passage, the tangled, meandering system of waterways that runs the length of southeast Alaska. It is called the Inside Passage because a myriad of islands—some quite large, others mere piles of boulders—form a barrier between the unruly North Pacific Ocean “outside” and quieter waters “inside.” Much of the land—almost 17 million acres—is Tongass National Forest, the largest in the United States, covering a combined area larger than the state of West Virginia.

No road crosses the Coast Mountains from White Pass south to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. By Alaska Range and St. Elias Range standards, Coast summits are not particularly lofty, but their dramatic rise within a comparatively short distance from sea level, combined with fickle southeast Alaska weather, crumbling sedimentary rock, and extensive glaciers, make them mountaineering challenges. The international boundary runs along the crest of the range, and the highpoint of the Alaskan portion is 10,023-foot Kates Needle above the Stikine Icefield.

As in the Alaska Range, warm moisture-laden air from the Pacific cools on the windward side of the range and deposits its cargo. The larger glaciers flow west from the crest. They are easily seen from the waters of the Inside Passage. The most famous are the Mendenhall Glacier north of Juneau, flowing from the Juneau Icefield, and the LeConte Glacier east of Petersburg, flowing from the Stikine Icefield.

The Mendenhall is one of thirty-eight glaciers flowing from the 1,500-square-mile (larger than Rhode Island) Juneau Icefield. In about twelve miles, the Mendenhall drops from an elevation of 4,500 feet at the icefield to 54 feet above sea level at its terminus at Mendenhall Lake. Ice formed at the glacier’s head takes about eighty years to make the journey. Less than 250 years ago, the glacier’s face stood 2.5 miles farther down the valley than its current position, and as recently as the 1930s, it still covered the rocks where the visitor center now stands.

The LeConte Glacier at the southern end of the 2,900-square mile Stikine Icefield is the southernmost tidewater glacier in North America. Icebergs from the glacier frequently choke LeConte Bay and float with the tide into Frederick Sound. Tlingit Natives called LeConte Glacier “Hutli,” meaning “thunder.” The Tlingit knew well the thundering noise of ice calving from the glacier’s face. A Tlingit legend tells that a mythical bird produced the thunder by flapping its giant wings. The mountain looking down on LeConte Bay is appropriately named “Thunder Mountain.”5

If the mountains of southeast Alaska are draped in ice and snow much of the year, the cape thrown across much of the Kuskokwim Mountains is one of watery muskeg and wetlands. The Kuskokwim Mountains and their more rugged southwestern extensions, the Kilbuck, Ahklun, and Wood River Mountains, extend from Cape Newenham between Kuskokwim and Bristol Bays northeast some 550 miles to the Tanana River west of Fairbanks. This is the great divide between the Yukon and Kuskokwim river systems.

No roads cross the Kuskokwim Mountains, and the real route across the range is that of the Iditarod Trail. After cresting the Alaska Range at Rainy Pass, the Iditarod crosses the south fork of the Kuskokwim River at Rohn Roadhouse, jumps the Kuskokwim’s main stem at Big River Roadhouse, and then runs up Fourth of July Creek before crossing the range and descending Bonanza Creek to the Iditarod River. The highpoints of the range are Von Frank Mountain (4,508 feet) west of Lake Minchumina, Mount Oratia (4,658 feet) in the Ahklun Mountains, and Mount Waskey (5,026 feet) in the Wood River Mountains northwest of Dillingham.

Dominating the entire northern third of Alaska, the Brooks Range is the northernmost mountain chain in the United States. Named for Alaskan explorer and geologist Alfred H. Brooks, the range spans the roof of Alaska for some 600 miles, from Cape Lisburne on the Chukchi Sea east into Canada. Along its sinuous crest, the Arctic Divide sends waters flowing either north across the tundra of the North Slope or south through boreal forests to the Yukon.

By its sheer immensity, the Brooks Range encompasses what anywhere else would be great ranges isolated unto themselves, including the DeLong, Baird, Waring, Schwatka, Endicott, Philip Smith, Franklin, Romanzof, and Davidson Mountains. Obtaining accurate measurements in this geographic maze was long problematic, but 9,020-foot Mount Chamberlain in the Franklin Mountains, less than fifty miles from the Arctic Ocean, is currently considered the highpoint of the range. Mount Isto (8,975 feet) and Mount Michelson (8,855 feet) in the Romanzof Mountains are other highpoints before the Brooks chain heads into Canada and terminates in the British and Richardson Mountains west of the massive Mackenzie River delta.

The central part of the Brooks Range is largely Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, dominated by the Schwatka and Endicott Mountains. Between these ranges rise the twin-turreted fortress of Igikpak Peak (8,510 feet), the park’s highpoint, and the razor-thin arêtes and sweeping flatirons of the Arrigetch Peaks (7,190 feet). From this mountainous maze flow the innumerable tributaries of four great rivers: the Colville draining north to the Arctic, the Noatak and the Kobuk coursing west to the Chukchi Sea, and the Koyukuk, flowing south to the Yukon. Because of its relatively drier climate—at least when compared to the Chugach and Coast Ranges—the Brooks Range has no massive valley glaciers except in the higher reaches of the Franklin and Romanzof Mountains.

Aleutian Range, Alaska Range, Chugach Mountains, Wrangell–St. Elias Mountains, Coast Mountains, Kuskokwim Mountains, and Brooks Range. East, west, north, or south, these mountain ranges dominate Alaska, but it is the rivers that are the avenues into their domains, and it is the rivers that give character to the lands in between. Alaska’s rivers are many, and their tributaries almost infinite, but four great systems intertwine the mountain ranges: the mighty Yukon drainage spanning the entire state; the Kuskokwim flowing southwest from the north side of the Alaska Range; the Susitna and Copper Rivers winding around and through the Chugach Mountains; and the Kobuk, Noatak, and Colville draining the Brooks Range.

The headwaters of the Yukon River rise in a collection of lakes just north of 2,915-foot White Pass on the Alaska–British Columbia border. Sea level is less than 40 miles away at the head of the Inside Passage, but the Yukon goes on a wild 1,500-mile sweep north and then west before finally reaching the Bering Sea. More than any other river, the Yukon and the tentacles of its many tributaries have been the highways into the interior of Alaska.

From its headwaters the Yukon flows north through Canada’s Yukon Territory past Whitehorse and Dawson, being joined in the process by the Pelly, Stewart, White, and famous Klondike Rivers. Below Dawson, the Yukon swings west into Alaska and skirts the Tanana Hills before meeting the Porcupine and Chandalar Rivers in the swampy wetlands of the Yukon Flats. Ever westward now, the river cuts across the heart of interior Alaska and picks up the Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers. Then, blocked by the Nulato Hills from making a straight 20-mile dash to the Unalakleet River and Norton Sound, the river detours in a huge U-loop—south, west, and then north—of some 400 more miles before finally reaching Norton Sound and the Bering Sea.

The Yukon’s three major tributaries are the Porcupine, Tanana, and Koyukuk. The Porcupine heads in Canada and flows west some 460 miles to join the Yukon at Fort Yukon. Its basin on both sides of the international boundary is home to the Porcupine caribou herd. The Tanana rises from the Chisana and Nabesna Rivers that flow from glaciers of the same names on the north side of the Wrangell Mountains. The two rivers force their way through the Mentasta and Nutzotin Mountains at the eastern end of the Alaska Range and then meet to form the Tanana. The Tanana flows generally northwest for 440 miles along the northern side of the Alaska Range before meeting the Yukon at Tanana, deep in the interior. The Koyukuk has three main branches, the North Fork, Middle Fork, and South Fork, the former two heading deep in the Brooks Range atop the Arctic Divide. From the confluence of the North and Middle Forks, the main stem of the Koyukuk flows generally southwest for 425 miles to join the Yukon at—where else?—Koyukuk. Anywhere else but Alaska, all three tributaries would be major rivers in their own right.

South of the Yukon, the Kuskokwim River shadows the big river for the lower third of its course. The Yukon flows north of the Kuskokwim Mountains and the Kuskokwim River south of the northern two-thirds of the range. At one point, the rivers are barely twenty-five miles apart before each meanders its own way through the marshy wetlands of their expansive deltas.

Both the Susitna and Copper Rivers flow from north of the Chugach Mountains into the Gulf of Alaska. The Susitna takes the easier route down the broad valley between the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains to Cook Inlet, while the Copper cuts straight through the range. The Susitna heads at the glaciers near Mount Deborah and begins to flow south. Thinking better of the idea, the river cuts west north of the Talkeetna Mountains and roars through Devils Canyon, perhaps the toughest whitewater in Alaska. Then, having been joined by the Chulitna River flowing south from Broad Pass, the “Big Su” swings wide and muddy through the lowlands north of Cook Inlet.

The Copper River rises from glaciers on the north side of Mount Wrangell and begins to flow north as if bound for the Yukon. But when confronted by the Alaska Range at Mentasta Pass, the river turns west and then loops south around the western Wrangell Mountains. Its major tributary, the Chitina, joins it just before the river carves a rocky path through the Chugach Mountains. Once the route of an amazing railroad that no road has dared to follow, the Copper River rolls through Wood and Baird Canyons before reaching the wide wetland delta at its mouth. Like so many wetlands in Alaska, the Copper River delta is a critical wildlife habitat, especially for migratory birds.

The Kobuk, Noatak, and Colville are the great rivers of northern Alaska and the Brooks Range. The Kobuk and Noatak each flow west for some 400 miles from sources within a few miles of each other between Mount Igikpak and the Arrigetch Peaks. Once out of the canyons at its headwaters, the Kobuk runs between the Waring and Baird Mountains and is wide and placid for most of its length. It flows through enormous oxbows and past the Kobuk sand dunes on its way to Kotzebue Sound on the Chukchi Sea. The Noatak runs north of the Baird Mountains, across the vast tundra of the Noatak Basin, and through the 65-mile-long Grand Canyon of the Noatak before swinging south to a labyrinthine wetland delta on Kotzebue Sound. Both river basins are critical habitat to the Western caribou herd.

North of the Brooks Range, the Colville River flows just the opposite way—east from the northern slopes of the DeLong Mountains across a full half of the North Slope. Although its many tributaries draining the northern reaches of the range descend in haste and with a sense of urgency, by the time their waters mingle in the Colville, it is a slow, meandering river curving across tundra flats to the Arctic Ocean.

 

All of the forces that built this diverse landscape are still very much at work. Cataclysmic, landscape-altering events continue to occur here, some with little or no warning. On July 9, 1958, an earthquake rocked Lituya Bay on the Fairweather Fault just west of Glacier Bay. During this one episode, the Pacific plate moved northwestward an estimated twenty-one feet. The quake triggered several large landslides that in turn created a giant tidal wave in the bay. As it surged toward the ocean, the wave tore mature trees from Lituya’s shoreline up to an elevation of 1,740 feet, leaving a mountainside scar that is still visible. Of course, the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964 reshaped the coastline along hundreds of miles of southcentral Alaska.

Even more recent evidence of nature’s capriciousness was the rambling surge of the Hubbard Glacier. The Hubbard heads in the Icefield Ranges of Canada’s Kluane National Park and flows south for more than ninety miles to Disenchantment Bay. Glaciologists estimate that about A.D. 1000 the glacier extended all the way to the Gulf of Alaska, completely covering what is now Disenchantment and Yakutat Bays. Over time, Hubbard Glacier retreated more than thirty miles to uncover these bodies of water.

Then in the spring of 1986, the Hubbard advanced to cut off Russell Fjord at the head of Disenchantment Bay. The glacier pushed a thick plug of mud, gravel, and boulders across the mouth of the fjord, and runoff from rain and glacial melt soon turned the fjord into a freshwater lake. Meanwhile, the ice continued to build an increasingly taller dam at its mouth. By early October, the “lake” was more than eighty feet above sea level. On October 8, 1986, the ice dam burst and an estimated 3.5 million cubic feet of water per second, thirty-five times the flow of Niagara Falls, gushed out of the lake into Disenchantment Bay, creating standing waves ten to thirty feet high. Such is the power of Alaska’s elements.

 

When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, vehement cries against the transaction called the new acquisition “Seward’s icebox.” Alaska, it was said, was nothing more than a barren and frozen wasteland, locked in ice and cold as the proverbial witch’s teat. In fact, Alaska’s climate is as diverse as its varied geographic regions, and it is a land of extremes on both ends of the thermometer and rain gauge.

The warm Japanese current in the North Pacific keeps the southeast downright balmy in comparison to the interior. Cool summers with occasional days in the sixties or seventies blend into winters where temperatures rarely fall below twenty degrees along the Inside Passage. (All temperatures are given in Fahrenheit degrees.) It is a wet cold, however, and rain and clouds are the norm. Parts of southeast Alaska get upwards of 200 inches of rainfall per year. Kids in Ketchikan learned long ago how to answer the inevitable “How long has it been raining?” queries of cruise-ship tourists disembarking under rainy skies. Answer: “I don’t know, I’m only twelve years old.”

The Aleutians and the Alaska Peninsula are foggy and wet, too, but not nearly as warm as the southeast. The Japanese current flows too far south to be of much benefit here, and prevailing winds blow from cold Siberia across the Bering Sea. Along the remainder of the southcentral coast, from Anchorage and Cook Inlet east to Prince William Sound, winters are hard, but with about five hours of daylight, and summers—well, it can be cool and misty or sunny and up to ninety-two degrees, the record for Anchorage. Just to the north of Anchorage, moderate temperatures and the daylight of long Arctic summers have made the Matanuska Valley Alaska’s breadbasket.

Much of interior Alaska sits in the rain shadow of the Alaska Range. Here, rainfall averages less than a dozen inches per year, although what rain and snow does fall has little place to go given the spongelike muskeg and watery wetlands of the Yukon and Kuskokwim Valleys. Elevation plays a part, of course, and in June it can be below zero on the summit of Denali and ninety degrees on the banks of the Chena River in Fairbanks. Winter is another matter, however, with Fairbanks routinely reporting below-zero temperatures. At Barrow, the temperatures are just as low, but there the cold is masked in the total darkness that lasts from about November 18 until January 23.

The Brooks Range is even more arid than the interior, receiving less than six inches of rainfall a year. What snow does fall usually melts by May with the lengthening days of the Arctic summer. Of course, winter here and throughout the interior finds, as Robert Service wrote, “the white land locked tight as a drum.”6

And, of course, within these generalities, there are the daily extremes. Changing sea breezes, high mountain environments, and fickle Arctic weather systems combine to make for rapid weather changes—sometimes within minutes. Perhaps Inga Sjolseth, then a single woman crossing the Chilkoot Pass in the spring of 1898, summed up Alaska’s climate most succinctly when she confided to her diary: “The weather is very changeable here.”⁷ So it was, so it remains, but therein, too—along with its mountains, glaciers, and innumerable rivers—lies much of the mystique of this great land.