In the months before this trip, I had been teaching journalism at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and had heard stories of an industrial highway that wound through the top third of the state. Alongside it is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a major feat of engineering that was built in just over three years, from 1974 to 1977, and at its height was pumping 2 million barrels of oil a day. We were driving the Dalton Highway, last frontier of the Last Frontier, on a 414-mile road trip across northern Alaska. Everything about Alaska is big, including the supersize mountain ranges and a wilderness so vast that many of its peaks have no names. We were 4,738 feet up and, had Atigun Pass not been fogged in, the view over the Brooks Range would have been spectacular. No one was heading down the hill, so at 15 mph, our van crept up the narrow S-curve into a cloud.Ī golden plover flew in front of us and posed on a snow-covered rock. The only way up the Chandalar Shelf was a muddy, washboard-like gravel road with sheer drop-offs on our right. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close MenuĪlthough it was early June, snowflakes were drifting down the unforgiving slopes of the slate-gray canyon.
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