The drive started out innocent enough. About 120 miles of pretty good paved road from Fairbanks to the beginning of the "Haul Road". The road was built to allow trucks to haul materials to the North Slope oil fields and Prudhoe Bay. Truckers who drive the road have been made famous on the History Channel's Ice Road Truckers program. You can read more about it here.
Entering the Dalton, they let you know what you're in for.
About two thirds of the highway is dirt, maybe more. It's all dirt from just north of Coldfoot to Deadhorse, which is the end of the road.
First stop is the Yukon River.
There's a 2,000 foot long bridge over the Yukon. Gas and food are available here.
The plants along the highway are starting to change color. Fall is in full swing here.
Even though the fireweed is done blooming, just the purple stems that are left are colorful. We can only imagine how bright the colors were here just a couple weeks ago.
As we cross one of the first passes, we get some pics of these "tors". From Wikipedia - A tor is a rock outcrop formed by weathering, usually found on or near the summit of a hill. A volunteer at the Yukon BLM visitor center told us that the native indians used these for shelter when on their hunting trips in the area. Kinda reminded us of the aboriginal tribes in Australia hunkered down behind those huge rock formations.
With all the open tundra, there isn't much else to hide behind to get out of the wind and weather.
At mile marker 115, we finally reach the Arctic Circle! North of this imaginary line at latitude 66° 33′ 44″, where the sun doesn't set on June 21, and doesn't rise on December 21. It's a nice sunny day here for us today though!
After a couple pictures, it's decision time. We decide to keep heading north to Coldfoot at mile post 174. Quite a bit of this section is paved, but we soon find out we prefer the dirt. The paved section is full of potholes and frost heaves. We could actually travel faster and smoother on the dirt sections.
It was all scenic though.
Finally, we arrive at the Coldfoot Camp at about 2:30 in the afternoon. Here's a building from the original camp.
And the new camp - gas pumps restaurant and all.
The truckers get their own private section in the restaurant. We did catch dinner here on the return trip at 9:30 pm.
We find out that the 22 miles of road north of Coldfoot is smooth asphalt, freshly repaved in 2010, so we decide to keep heading north. This was actually some of the smoothest road we've seen in Alaska.
Soon we can see Sukakpak Mountain, just one big old chunk of rock full of color.
We're glad we didn't chose to ride the motorcycle up here. As we get into the higher elevations, there's more rain....and mud.
But the rain is just in patches and doesn't last long.
We pass the last spruce tree along the highway at mile post 235. It was killed by a vandal last year or so. Sad.
We've pretty much decided now we're going to go all the way to Atigun Pass, which is at mile post 244. And one of the BLM staff we talked to suggested we go to a view point at mile 285 to really see the arctic tundra. We'll see....
This is the only sign we could find for Atigun Pass, which is on the north side. The elevation at the pass is 4,739 feet.
The view at the other side, with the sun shining in the valley, was amazing.
And we spotted a few Dall sheep on the mountains above. Just a few of the many we would see from here on.
The drive down through the valley between mountains that make up the northern extent of the Brooks Range (which is the northernmost section of the Rocky Mountains), had scenery that made the drive well worth it.
And the pipeline was almost always visible all the way, especially here, where it is not buried at all. Only the top foot of this ground is not frozen right now, and the permafrost is as much as 2,000 feet thick/deep.
We spot more Dall sheep on the mountains - they are everywhere here.
The arctic tundra is changing to its fall colors and goes on for as far as the eye can see.
About 1 mile short of our destination, we come up against some construction. About a 20 minute delay and we almost decide to turn around, but we've come this far right? Thje pace car leads us through the mess. Good thing we have a truck!
Finally, we get to the turn out at mile post 285 at 6:00 pm. We traveled a total of about 375 miles and 10 hours to see the arctic tundra and more pipeline. It was well worth it though as it is just impossible to describe the expansiveness of it in words or pictures. According to the GPS, we are at 68.640120 latitude, -149.513633 longitude.
You can click here to see where were are at in a Google map tool. Zoom out on the map and you can see, this is a long way from home! A 3,984 mile drive to be exact. Luckily, we only have to go 375 miles to get back to our home away from home.
We spotted a couple of caribou wandering nearby.
They keep looking our way. While Greg is taking pictures, Roxane spots something....can you see what it is?
It's a bowhunter just over a little hill from them trying to get a shot - it's caribou hunting season!
They ended up getting away this time. When the hunter walked back, we talked to him for a few minutes. He was within 40 yards, but when he started to pull back his bow, it made a noise and they trotted off. We got his email and will send him the pics and video for his memory book.
There were hunters camped everywhere. It's still daylight all day long here, so they have lots of hunting hours. Looks like fun!
We enjoyed the tundra scenery on the way back to Atigun Pass.
Again, pictures just can't describe how desolate and amazing the arctic really is.
While sitting at the top of Atigun Pass, we spot more white spots on the side of the mountain.
It turns out to be a dozen more Dall sheep. Helps to zoom in.....
The drive back is still great. The tundra areas are really colorful.
The color wasn't just on the ground. Everywhere there were rain showers, a rainbow could be seen. Here's the best one.
At one of the rest stops, Roxane spotted this cool mushroom. Nice pic Roxane!
As we drove south, even after midnight, it was still a bit light. Finally though, it did get dark, even though we could see the sky to the north was still bright. We didn't know if it was dusk or dawn! After over 750 miles and almost 20 hours of driving, we rolled into the camp back in Fairbanks at 3 am and hit the sack.
The next morning, we awoke to the next task - getting all that Haul Road mud off the truck!
How do you breathe half the time with all those amazing views one mile after another? AWESOME!
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