Alaska - The Final American Frontier*

3^rd August 2016

March 24, 1989, 12:27 A.M.: “We’ve fetched up hard aground…evidently we’re leaking some oil, and we’re going to be here for a while” – Exxon Valdez Captain Joseph Hazlewood to the U.S. Coastguard

The end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline at Valdez

*Alaska is known as America’s final frontier. A Google search of the term “frontier” yields the following definition:

“The extreme limit of settled land beyond which lies wilderness…”

I have spent the past couple of weeks traversing some of the state of Alaska. I have wandered to the northernmost land within U.S. territory at Barrow, and I am currently waiting in Haines to take a ferry to Prince Rupert in British Columbia, marking the end of my Alaska adventure. In between, I have visited Fairbanks, Anchorage, Denali, Kenai, Coldfoot and Valdez, a fraction of the largest state in the United States of America. I have seen vast areas of wild lands, all of which have been impacted, to some degree, by humanity. We are at a place in human history where a new definition of frontier is needed.

Satellite dishes on the tundra at Barrow, the northernmost land in the United States

My intention is not to denigrate the incomparable value of Alaska’s natural areas. I have traveled across the globe, and I have never before experienced such vast wild landscapes. Alaska has one of the most commendable protected areas networks on Earth, with 104,000,000 acres put into conservation, an area approximately the same size as the state of California. Outside the two cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks and a few scattered towns, most Alaskan land areas are unmarred by visible signs of human development, as far as the eye can see. From the airplane window enroute from Anchorage to Barrow, the never-ending vista of mountain, forest and tundra is awe-inspiring.

Wilderness in the Denali National Park

Frontier was once the edge of civilization, beyond which the wilds represented an unknown, untamed and unpredictable force. Nature no longer has any impenetrable boundaries. In Alaska, bowhead whale populations in the far reaches of the Arctic Ocean were hunted for oil and baleen to the brink of extinction. Sea otter populations were annihilated for the sin of their luxurious fur, recovered, and then were decimated again by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Oil rigs, in one of the most remote areas on earth, supply at least 20% of the U.S. supply, pumping billions of gallons of crude 800 miles down a pipeline, across the Alaskan wilderness from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. During my visit to Barrow, no sea ice graced the Arctic seas. 

An iceless Arctic Ocean at midnight in Barrow, Alaska

On 24^th March 1989, just after midnight, the largest oil spill in history (at that time), poured millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Alaska, killing hundreds of thousands of seabirds and other wildlife. Crude oil can still be detected in the sediments, and toxins are present in the tissues of sea animals in the region, more than 28 years later.

Seabirds feeding in the Gulf of Alaska

Denali National Park is larger than the country of Wales. The combined protected area, which includes the Wrengell-Saint Ellias National Park, Glacier Bay National Park and Kluane National Park (Canada), represents the largest internationally protected area on Earth. Within Alaska's protected areas grizzly bears, moose, caribou, eagles, sea otters, bowhead whales and thousands of other species of flora and fauna can recover from human impact, thrive and live, for the most part, in accordance with their own natural histories. Outside Alaska’s protected areas, even in apparent wilderness, wildlife is rare. Alaska’s wilderness continues to exist because of man’s consent, not in spite of it.

Sea otter in the Kenai Fjords National Park

My brain is now attempting to process the overload of stimuli it received during my Alaska experience. Over the next several days, I will try to compile the data into succinct pieces and post them, based on each location I visited.

Humpback whale and seabirds in the Kenai Fjords National Park

Dawson City and the Top of the World - Thawing Rivers and Wildfires

19th and 20th July 2016

Dawson City feels like the most remote city on Earth. To get there by road, one can travel 532 kilometers northwest from Whitehorse on YT2 or 298 miles northeast from Tok, Alaska on the Taylor Highway and then YT9 (a.k.a. "the Top of the World Highway"). Neither one of these options offers easy open highway. Both involve narrow, two-lane roads, with long areas of no pavement, some areas of pavement that have been dramatically altered by "frost heaves," no guardrails, soft shoulders, precipitous drops from the soft shoulders and many areas where roadworks are being undertaken. I drive to Dawson City from Whitehorse and from Dawson City to Tok, thus being able to take in the full perspective of access, for better and worse.

A Section of Yukon Highway 2

One of my recurrent dreams (or nightmares) is driving along a deserted, narrow road, with no guardrails and precipitous drops. As I drive through the wilderness of Yukon and Alaska, I am hoping those dreams are just manifestations of sub-conscious fears of constraint, changes in life, loss of control, etc., rather than prophecy. I pass two accidents, which are statistically alarming, since I only pass about 20 other cars along the entire route. Police are on the scene (where did they come from?) The cars are mutilated beyond recovery. I hate to think about what happened to the people inside. I think this is what happens when you hit a moose at high speed. Arctic ground squirrels dart about and play Russian roulette on the road in front of my vehicle. Ravens clean up the losers. I drive slowly.

Baby Arctic Ground Squirrel - Too cute to squash

The trip up YK2 takes much longer than anticipated for the above reasons, and I get in to Dawson City around 11:00 pm. It seems much earlier because the sun is still up. Given its proximity to the Arctic Circle, Dawson City enjoys about three hours of semi-darkness in the summer, with a similar amount of semi-lightness in the winter. I am glad to be here in the summer. The office to the roadside motel is closed, but this isn't a problem because they have left keys in all the doors for late arrivals. A helpful board on the door lets me know which rooms are available. "Help yourself and pay in the morning," it says. Isolation seems to have some benefits, trusting your neighbors being one of them.

Modern Dawson City on the Yukon River

I spend the following morning taking a tour around Dawson City. The town experienced its boom era more than a century ago, during the Klondike gold rush of the late 19th Century. The boom was brief, starting in 1896 and ending only a few years later in the early 1900's, as prospectors moved on to the next boom town. At its peak, Dawson City had a population of about 30,000 people. Today it has about 1,500. While some people made their fortunes during the Klondike gold rush. Most did not.

Main Street Dawson City

"All Yukon belong to my papas. All Klondike belong my people. Long time all mine. Hills all mine, caribou all mine, moose all mine, rabbits all mine, gold all mine. White man come and take all my gold. Take millions, take more hundreds fifty millions, and blow ‘em in Seattle. Now Moosehide Injun want Christmas. Game is gone. White man kills all moose and caribou near Dawson... Moosehides hunt up Klondike, up Sixtymile, up Twentymile, but game is all gone. White man kill all" (Chief Isaac of the Tr'ochek Han, quoted in Dawson Daily News, 16th December 1911). Today, only two people speak the Han language fluently, and they are both in their 80's. The cost of gold is high.

A casino and ravens in Dawson City

No bridge has been constructed across the Yukon, and the government of Canada provides a ferry service to take vehicles across the river from Dawson City to West Dawson during the summer months. During the fall, winter and spring, people can just drive their cars across the frozen river. The only time when it is not possible to cross the river is during the spring "break up" and the fall "freeze up." During these times, the  approximately 200 people living in West Dawson, who even under normal conditions are "off the grid," are completely isolated. During break-up and freeze-up it is traditional for people in Dawson City to open their homes to the people of West Dawson. The process usually takes between three and six weeks. Spring break-up typically takes place during the first or second week of May. 2016 set a record, when the began to break up at 11:15 am on April 23rd. Someday soon a bridge may be required.

A view of the Yukon River from my car window, as I cross from Dawson City to West Dawson

The Top of the World Highway snakes along mountaintops across the distance between West Dawson and Tok, Alaska, crossing over the U.S. border along the way. Except for one small town (Chicken, Alaska), in approximately the middle of the distance, the area is practically devoid of human settlement, with the exception of a few small-scale gold mining operations along the way. From what I can tell, the population of Chicken is approximately 10, and the town consists of a gas station, gift shop and restaurant (where they serve excellent food, by the way).

Like most small towns in these parts, Chicken started as a small gold mining outpost. Apparently, the original settlers wanted to name the town "Ptarmigan," but they couldn't spell the name of that particular species of fowl and so decided upon "Chicken" instead.

Not a Chicken, in Chicken Alaska

If one manages to survive the pitfalls, the views from the Top of the World are spectacular. Dense forest cover at lower elevations gives way to herbaceous meadows above the tree line. The seemingly endless landscape of mountains and rivers is interrupted only by wildfire scars, which when functioning according to nature's laws, cleanse the earth of dead and diseased things and bring forth healthy new life.

View from the Top of the World

Fireweed is the official plant of Yukon. It is often the first plant to emerge from the ashes of forest fires and therefore symbolizes rebirth and renewal after adversity. I can think of no better symbol for this place.

Fireweed at the Top of the World

The next morning, I leave my campground at Tok and head for Fairbanks. After a short distance, I cross over the Robertson River Bridge, noticing as I cross a mother moose, leading her calf across the shallow river below. I stop on the bridge to watch (I can do this because there really is no traffic at all, and it's 6:00 am in the morning). While I am watching, a pickup truck pulls up next to me, heading in the opposite direction. An elderly Native American gentleman is inside the truck, motioning me to roll down my window. I do. He tells me with tears welling up in his eyes that the mother moose is teaching the calf how to swim and to cross the river. We both agree it is a beautiful sight it is to see.