JK Wild Adventures: The Dalton Highway Adventure Days 3-4: Galbraith Lake to Deadhorse; Prudhoe Bay, Arctic Ocean

Mosquitoes in Alaska are formidable, to say the least, and I would be remiss if I failed to mention them! You don’t know what it means to have a mosquito problem until you’ve experienced the Alaska swarms. Although they come in all sizes, most are huge… actually the mosquito is the state bird! Normally when you venture outdoors, it will take a few minutes for the mosquitoes to pinpoint your location. Well, these guys are anything but normal – they’re already there waiting for you, poised and ready to strike like an army of smallish but annoying blood-sucking vampires. They don’t congregate in the woods like you might be used to. No, this is the arctic tundra, baby! It’s a permanently wet environment devoid of forest, and believe me, they make efficient use of it as their nursery and feeding grounds, right out in the great wide open. They are also not as affected by cool temperatures as their southern cousins, enabling them to keep you company just a little longer. Oh, and forget about sunshine hindering their activity. They are ever-present, and with 24 hours of daylight in the summer, it’s a giant mosquito festival. “Just use Deet repellant,” you say? Don’t worry, even if they don’t get a blood meal, they can still lay eggs – they’ll just lay fewer.

Try as I may to describe the Alaskan Mosquito Feeding Frenzy, it’s difficult to convey what they are like in person. It’s even more difficult to imagine the experience if you’ve never endured it, but I’m here to help. I have uploaded a video of them, so you can satisfy your voyeuristic needs without donating a single drop of blood or scratching at a single relentless itch. However, you should bear in mind that the video is only a vague representation of the visual aspect, and without the blood and itching, you’re still not getting the full effect!

As I mentioned we are well into the arctic tundra. The treeless landscape of the tundra begins a little south of Atigun Pass, and is characterized by wet bogs and marshes under which is permafrost. Permafrost is as it sounds; it is permanently frozen soil all year and can be as little as ten inches below the soil’s surface, making for an environment in which trees cannot grow. In the summer after the ice and snow have melted, the water collects on the surface and in the thawed top layer of soil, forming bogs, marshes, ponds and lakes.

Typical plant life on the tundra consists of shrubs, flowers, grasses, mosses and lichens which have shallow root systems enabling them to take hold of what little soil is available. Like the animals that live here, the plants have evolved with adaptations specifically to withstand this harsh environment. Many plants have satellite dish shaped flowers which follow the sun to maximize its heat, or tiny hairs as protection from the wind. All things considered, the amount and variety of life here is truly amazing!

Aside from clouds of mosquitoes, our third day on the Dalton showed us beautiful weather and birds of all kinds. Some species migrate here from all over the world, coming from South America and even Africa!

Musk oxen can often be seen along the Sag River, where we spotted this herd with young.

Unfortunately, we just missed seeing a herd of about 2,000 caribou as they were passing through the area. We did see this female with her calf just before we arrived in Deadhorse.

We also passed this vehicle lying on its side – another casualty of the Dalton Highway. The cost to have it towed back to Fairbanks would be around four or five thousand dollars!

We had reserved a room at Deadhorse Camp (one of three or four hotels in Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay), so we went there first and got checked in. We could have camped just outside of Deadhorse, but Ken wanted to stay there to get a taste of the oil field workers’ lifestyle. Deadhorse hotels provide work camp style accommodations, which are simple and rustic. A couple of the hotels are primarily for the oil field workers – they will sell extra rooms to travelers, but the workers are the priority. We squeezed in a little exploring in Deadhorse, which is a very busy place.

We spotted a few more caribou on the way back to the hotel for dinner.

The food was served buffet style, with plenty of variety, plenty of dessert, and was fantastic! It was what you might call home-cooked; everything seemed to be made from scratch including the bread. It was the best food we’d had so far, although the food at Coldfoot Camp was delicious too!

Day four was the day of our Arctic Ocean Tour. For security reasons, you can’t drive your vehicle to the Arctic Ocean. You have to make reservations at least 24 hours in advance with one of the tour operators, and provide your driver’s license or passport for identification. Upon discovering a flat tire on the tour bus, the driver quickly got another bus and we were under way. He pointed out various things while en route, one of which was the “Prudhoe Bay National Forest.”

Shortly before we reached the ocean, our driver spotted a grizzly bear about three hundred yards away and pulled over so we could take pictures. She had a cub, and after a couple of minutes, sat down to let it nurse! That’s not something you get to see every day!

We arrived at the ocean and filed out of the bus toward the beach. In the course of switching vehicles, the driver had forgotten to bring the towels they provide for people who want to go in the water. I had planned to stick my feet in, but not wanting to walk around in sand with wet feet, I changed my mind. I did at least stick my hand in, and it was pretty cold! So I decided to stay dry and take pictures of Ken in the Arctic Ocean instead.