Trip Update #6 (Dawson City, Yukon to Cantwell, Alaska)

Finally, we’ve made it to Alaska, The Last Frontier! We read somewhere that it would take over a year to see the entire state if a person was able to visit one million acres per day. We didn’t quite anticipate spending as much time as we did in Canada (6 weeks), but neither one of us has any regrets as we will have wonderful memories of this wild place for a long time. Oh, Canada! We have run into quite a few other travelers that have pretty much made a beeline for Alaska, passing up or deferring on some of Canada’s attractions. It has dawned on us that we have only 6 weeks (+/-) to spend in Alaska before the cold and snow will begin nipping at our heels, chasing us down to the lower 48…we know we have a lot to see and had better get moving.

We entered Alaska along the unpaved Top of the World Highway, which has probably entailed the worst road conditions we have seen yet. We were adequately warned about this drive, and that conditions can vary significantly depending on the weather. We met several folks earlier on in our trip that had been scared away from the Top of the World, whether because of washboards and potholes, or the steep drop-offs and lack of guardrails along the route. Too bad for them, we thought, because we definitely enjoyed the drive. Truth be told, we didn’t find the conditions that bad, though we were sure to take it slow, we didn’t want a broken axle after all these miles. Then again, who wouldn’t want to take it slow and savor the panoramic vistas? The road climbs and descends along a series of mountain ridges giving expansive views of various Yukon River tributary watersheds and the Forty-Mile gold mining region. The guard at the border check point saw our Texas plates and commented that we must have made a wrong turn (ha ha!-we have been asked different questions each time we have crossed the border (this was our fourth crossing), however, there is always at least one commonality in the line of questioning – firearms. Continuing on, we passed by the spur that leads to the village of Eagle, so that will have to wait to next trip. Eagle is a popular spot for launching or ending a paddling trip, something we will keep in mind for the next trip up to these parts (yep, we’re already planning another one). One general thing about the northland…it is SO big and there are SO many miles to cover, that it hits you rather quickly that it would be impossible to hit every attraction and see every sight in one trip-so just forget about it.

After visiting the quirky town of Chicken, which isn’t much to write home about (just our opinion), the Top of the World Highway turned into the Taylor Highway, which took us south through several old burn areas (and one ongoing), dazzling fields of pink fireweed, past abandoned gold claims and dredges on into the town of Tok. Chicken was an old mining camp that serviced claims in the Forty-Mile Area…word has it that the miners intended to name the camp after the native “Ptarmigan” bird, but they lacked the formal education to spell it, so they opted for “Chicken” instead. Chicken was our first introduction to the touristy, cheezy side of Alaska. There is a large gold dredge at one of the RV parks that they are in the process of converting into a state historical site, but you weren’t allowed to go inside, nor were there organized tours…the RV parks offered free-goldpanning to their customers-they truck in piles of dirt with gold dust in it, you’re basically guaranteed to find something.

We stayed in Tok a couple nights to resupply, pick up our forwarded mail (the Escapees mail service is the bomb!), do laundry and get email/internet access before hitting the road again. Tok is a major road junction that road warriors must go through twice in their travels to Alaska. For us it required a decision to either head northwest towards Fairbanks along the Alaska Highway, or southwest along the Glenn Highway towards Anchorage. Our Lonely Planet Alaska guidebook showed up in the mail and it has served as a relatively useful and current reference in conjunction with the Milepost book. We also bought an Alaska Atlas and Gazetteer, which we haven’t used much, except to satisfy our geographical/topographical curiosities on occasion. After reading a good portion of Alaska Bear Tales, we invested in a $35 can of insurance referred to as “bear spray” (a big can of pepper spray that supposedly has a range of 30 feet) – your aim, though, has got to be pretty good with a grizzly “bear”-ing down on you. From what we gather, the grizzly is known to make “false” charges, where the bruin will veer away from you at the last second, however, this is hardly predictable. We figured it was cheap insurance should we have the misfortune of encountering an aggressive bear intent on consuming us…definitely not as good as a good-sized caliber rifle, but it does give you some confidence to get out there in the wilds.

We opted to head for Fairbanks and savored the scenic drive tracing the Tanana River. We stopped for the night at an Alaska State Park in Delta Junction, which marks the official end of the Alaska Highway and woke to a beautiful sunny morning with dramatic views of the Alaska Range, including Mount Deborah! On our way to Fairbanks that day we passed by a rip-snorting young bull moose alongside the highway and encountered the famous Alaska pipeline for the first time. In dramatic fashion, the pipeline crosses the Tanana River on an impressive suspension bridge (see blog photos). The pullout we stopped at to take pictures had a lot of interesting general information on the pipeline in addition to specific info about this particular bridge crossing. At this same stop we walked by the “Fur Shack” (see blog photo)…I offered to get Debbie a fur bikini as an Alaska souvenir, but she politely declined. We both found the quantity and variety of hides at this shop a little sickening, as these are pretty much being marketed exclusively to tourists as novelty items…oh well, an Alaska exclusive nonetheless.

Fairbanks was rather uneventful for us, though there are many adventures to launch from this area...our visit happened to coincide with their annual Gold Days celebration (the area is rich in gold mining history). They had a never-ending parade (we couldn’t endure the entire thing, especially all the election-year political-oriented floats) and a street fair with the usual accompaniments. We spent one afternoon between the museum at the University of Alaska, which is not to be missed, as well as the L.A.R.S. (Large Animal Research Station) near the university, which conducts tours of musk ox and barren ground caribou. There are several interesting roads that leave from the Fairbanks area including the Dalton Highway, which leads to Prudhoe Bay and the “north slope”, and also a road that leads to the small town of Circle on the Yukon River (Wally, I think you said you made the trip to Circle during your Alaska roadtrip in the sixties…by the way, before it was paved). We decided to defer on these sidetrips till another time as we were anxious to see Denali. One of the best things in Fairbanks is the Sportsman’s Warehouse, which is something akin to Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops. We purchased a jazzy little spotting scope with much higher magnification than our binoculars, figuring it would come in handy to see animals on our trip into Denali country. We used it almost immediately on the drive south down the George Parks Highway leaving Fairbanks.

We had stopped at a roadside turnout overlooking the Tanana River and were checking out the view with the spotting scope when we had our first glimpse of Denali – Athabascan for “the High One”. For those that don’t know, Denali (a.k.a. Mt McKinley) is the highest peak in North America at 20,320 feet and is part of the Alaska Range. The mountain didn’t jump out at us as it was over a hundred miles away and the valley had filled with a little smoke from a wildfire. We set the scope up on the tripod and let other people check out the view as they had no idea it was visible. One Alaskan came by and said that Alaskans do not refer to the mountain as McKinley, since President McKinley never set foot in Alaska and really had nothing to do with it. We felt fortunate to have seen the mountain, even from such a distance as it is only visible about 25% of the time.

While in Fairbanks, we made campsite and shuttle bus reservations for our travels to Denali National Park. Per a recommendation from a ranger at Devils Tower Nat’l Park, who had worked previous summers in Denali, we camped for 4 nights at Teklanika Campground, which is 29 miles up the only road into the park on the banks of the Teklanika River. The road into the park goes about 90 miles and is almost entirely 2-lane gravel. We thought this was the cat’s meow. The deal with Teklanika is that you drive your RV or camper in (the campground is currently closed to tenters because of wolf activity), have to stay 3 nights minimum, and your rig doesn’t move while you’re there. What that means is that you either have to hike, bike, or take the shuttle bus to other locations in the park…and the shuttle bus ticket is unlimited for the duration of your stay at this campground. Unless you’re camping at Teklanika, the farthest you can drive with your vehicle is Mile 14-Savage River, where there is a checkpoint and a ranger armed with an AK-47 assault rifle (just kidding about the AK-47). Only shuttle buses are allowed beyond Savage River, which is intended to preserve Denali’s wilderness…they seem to run constantly through the park, at least one every half hour or so. The weather was clear and we had great views of Denali on the way into Teklanika. Unfortunately we did not see the mountain again from this time forward. We spent the next day (about 11 hours) on the shuttle bus to Wonder Lake (Mile 85), which has plenty of stops along the way to view wildlife and savor the colorful vistas. The scale of everything at Denali seemed enormous…the endless braided rivers and gravel bars, the vast expanse of tundra, and ridge after ridge of colorful peaks. We saw a few grizzlies, but the highlight was seeing a pack of about 6 wolves that were laying out in the sun on a wide gravel bar. We also saw caribou, Dall sheep, and a bunch of other garden-variety creatures (sorry, no offense). The days in the north seem endless…from the campground we went on some great day hikes along the river (with bear spray) hardly ever encountering another person and even went on a mountain bike ride at 9:30 at night. There’s a saying in Denali country: you don’t have to be a track star to outrun a grizzly bear, you just have to be faster than the other person(s) you’re hiking with.

From Denali Nat’l Park we drove just a little south and camped in the town of Cantwell for a couple nights. The couple from Boulder we had met while touring the Dempster Highway had told us that they planned to drive the Denali Highway when they got to Alaska, thereby planting a seed. This east-west route, that runs between Cantwell and Paxson, was the original automobile road to the park before the George Parks Highway was constructed between Anchorage and Fairbanks. Most RVers bypass the Denali Highway because its not on their way to somewhere else or because they don’t want to endure 135 miles of mostly gravel road. We didn’t want to subject the trailer to miles and miles of gravel washboard, either. After waking to a sunny July day (somewhat of a rarity this summer), our mind was made up to drive the Denali, out and back, in a day-trip. Within the first 10 miles we looked back and had another view of “the mountain”…again, spectacular. To the north were the many snow-capped peaks and glaciers of the Alaska Range, the same peaks we had seen from the other side driving from Tok to Fairbanks, but this time, un-shrouded (is that a word?) by clouds. Though the highest peaks in this area of the Alaska Range are modest (12,000-13,000 feet tall) compared to Denali (20,000+ feet) and adjacent Mt Foraker (17,000+), they make a big impression on you when you are only 30 miles away at an elevation of about 3,000 feet. With miles of awe-inspiring views of the West Fork and Susitna glaciers, it is hard for the driver to keep his eyes on the road and not pull over at every roadside stop to take more pictures or admire Mother Nature through the spotting scope. Crossing over the broad gravel floodplains of the Susitna and McLaren Rivers, the Denali Highway winds its way through some of the most incredible glaciated terrain one will ever see via auto. The road tracks along the top of eskers (gravel ridges deposited by streams underneath the glacier), between abundant kettle lakes (depressions formed when chunks of ice broke off from retreating glaciers and subsequently melted), past palsas (a small dome-like frost mount made up of peat), and through enormous lateral moraines. As if the scenery wasn’t enough, we also had a couple instances of caribou darting out and running along the road in front of the truck for a good distance. Turns out game animals use the roads probably as much as we do. In one case, there were two pair of mother-calves that ran in front of the truck for probably ½ mile before finding a gap in the roadside brush through which to escape. Even though we backed away from them a good distance, we couldn’t help but feel like caribou herders. We also saw quite a few foxes and a bald eagle. About 10 miles from Paxson, we had incredible views of another mountain range (the Wrangell Mountains, part of Wrangell-St. Elias Nat’l Park) with Mt. Sanford (16,000+ feet) and Mt. Drum almost completely covered in snow. It was 5 p.m. or so when we reached Paxson and after an especially forgettable dinner at the only place to get something to eat, we turned around and headed back. The bad meal really didn’t matter, though, because the journey to get there was everything we could have dreamed of. If you’re ever in Alaska and have a good day to travel the Denali Highway, don’t pass it up. We felt incredibly lucky to have had this break in the weather to travel what may be the most scenic “highway” in the U.S…it has been a big highlight of our trip...just remember, though, the term “highway” is used loosely in the northland.