Blogger’s note:  This will be a long, multipart post with a lot of pictures.  I’m going to try to do it as a single post so the sequence makes sense.  I’ll simple edit the post to add new sections.  If it becomes tiresome to find our place I’ll try something different ….

North of Fairbanks, Alaska

Part 1:  The Dalton Highway

The Dalton Highway has a fearsome reputation – but on a summer trip, that reputation is undeserved.  The drive is just over 400 miles, most of it reasonably maintained gravel.  But we had no flat tires, no broken windshield, no auto problems.

I didn’t drive it.  There are 3 gas stations, perhaps 4 places to eat, two “motels,” and lots to learn.  So I took a tour and highly recommend it.  Eight of us in a Ford Eco Van.  15 pounds luggage limit – including my 5 pound extra camera lens – because of restrictions on the flight back to Fairbanks.  All arrangement made and the guide was incredible.

Being able to sit back and enjoy was awesome!

Most of the traffic is big trucks supplying the oil fields.

I didn’t count but there were lots of them!

At least the Dalton isn’t narrow.

But be prepared.  The Arctic has two seasons:  winter and construction!

And be prepared to enjoy!

Part 2:  The Arctic Circle and other necessary information.

At first the drive is forested – mostly white spruce.

The pipeline is often a distant feature since the first section of the road was built before the specific pipeline route had been determined.

At Milepost 56 you cross the Yukon River.  Think food and gas – although if the tour guide hasn’t ordered your food in advance you’ll find little or no choice in what you’d get to eat.

A little later you reach the Arctic Circle.  NO snow!  Shirtsleeve weather!  The Arctic Circle simply is the first place where (on level ground) the sun never dips below the horizon on the summer solstice – June 20th this year.  And never rises above the horizon on the winter solstice.  That’s all.  About 15 years ago the International Standards Organization agreed to say latitude 66 degrees and 33 minutes was that place.  On the Dalton Highway, about 3 miles north is a little knoll where school kids are taken to actually watch the sun at midnight.

Important changes take place gradually.  Three important characteristics we need to understand are the permafrost, the timeberline or tree line, and the tundra.

Permafrost has two layers.  The “active layer” freezes and melts as the seasons change.  In this part of Alaska the active layer may vary from a couple of feet deep below the arctic circle to less than 6″ deep near Prudhoe Bay.  Below this active layer, the ground has been frozen continuously for at least two years.

Here is a view of the plant life in the active layer.

Looking more closely we see clumps and channels.

Looking even closer we see how wet this land is.  Try walking on it.  Within 50 yards my “water resistant” hiking shoes were soaked – very uncomfortable in wearing wool socks.  So most work – oil exploration for example – stops during the three months of summer.

Only construction continues.  Burying the new fiber optic cable from the arctic ocean to Fairbanks for instance.

Here our guide (standing) has one of our group measure the depth of the active layer.

 

In Alaska the permafrost is discontinuous and the depth of the active layer varies.  This picture shows an interesting effect of this variance.  The thicker the active layer, the larger the vegetation that can grow at that place.  Look at the variety of vegetation above – part of the cause of that variety is due to the depth of the active layer.

We all are familiar with the timberline.  But we may be surprised by the complications introduced by the cold, long periods without sunlight, and the permafrost.  In Colorado the timberline is someplace around 11,000 feet.  In Alaska’s Brooks Mountain range the timberline is closed to 2800 feet!  As we travel north, we watch the trees change from tall white spruce to much lower black spruce.  As the cold increases, the active permafrost layer decreases, and the sunlight is reduced, it may take 100 years for a black spruce tree to reach 12 feet!

Black spruce struggle in the harsh environment within the arctic circle,

giving way to the alpine tundra.  The tundra is simple the vegetation that can survive above the timberline but below the solid rock of the mountain tops

Here the transition is very abrupt as the alpine tundra gives way to the arctic tundra.

Here the transition is less abrupt.

But the result is the same – the incredible beauty of the tundra.

Approaching the Brooks Mountains.

Part 3: Coldfoot

There may be a town of Coldfoot – but I don’t know anyone who has ever seen it!  Basically, Coldfoot is a truck stop.  Gas, food, and rooms for the few who overnight there.

Here is the main building.  Cafeteria food, not much to say about it.

Our rooms were in the pre-fab units.

Down this hall – and much more comfortable than expected.  Most units had built-in bathrooms!  Wow!  Heavenly!

Wiseman – The northernmost gold rush town

Wiseman is only a few miles north of Coldfoot.  It is an actual town – 10 or 11 year-around residents!  Long before the temperatures hit 40 below with several feet of snow on the ground, I’d head south along with most everyone else.  Our tour included a stop in Wiseman to see some of the original cabins that are maintained as a tourist exhibit.

 

Two cabins are maintained and open to visitors.  Wiseman is well within the Arctic circle – 33 days of sun and 33 sunless days (but not dark – with snow on the ground the reflective light is sufficient to move around the landscape.)

Jack lives in Wiseman year around – with his wife and two children!  Supports himself trapping, hunting, growing an incredible garden.  He guides tourist groups who want to see the spectacular northern lights displays.  And he makes presentations to groups like ours!  His detailed description of life in Wiseman was incredibly interesting.

A detail of the inside of a cabin.

Some of the equipment used in goldrush days and since.

Part 4 – a Pictorial Interlude.

 

 

Part 4 – The Pipeline

Drive the blacktop roads on the Alcan or in Northern Alaska.   In many stretches you’d think you were driving on a roller coaster.  Long sections have heaved and dropped so that there are dozens – maybe hundreds – of gravel sections as the road is continually repaired.   The permafrost wrecks havoc as it melts and re-freezes.  Yet the original design of the oil pipeline called for burying it in the permafrost.  Environmental activists and government oversight forced a complete re-design.  Done right, the pipeline has not been the disaster once feared.  Expensive yes.  But necessary.  If only the oil tanker business had been forced to pay the costs of doing it right …

So here are a few details I found interesting.

There were two main reasons to elevate the pipeline.  First, the pipeline would have been quickly destroyed had it been buried in the permafrost.  The environmental damage would have been monumental!  Second, animals migrate.  Underground or on ground, the pipeline would have prevented the historic migrations that are the life of Alaska.  Hence many sections are raised sufficiently for moose, caribou, muskox, and brown bears to walk naturally under the pipeline.

The pipeline is actually two pipes.  The inner pipe is 3/4″ thick steel.  (For much of the way.  After passing through the Brooks Mountains, the pressure can be reduced and so the pipe is on 1/2″ thick steel.)  Four inches of insulation are wrapped around the inner pipe between it and the outer pipe.

The pipeline is not attached to the supports.  The expansion and contraction of the pipeline length can be measured in multiple inches in some places.  So teflon sliders seen above are used to allow the expansion and contraction.

The finned elements above the supports are heat exchangers.  Heat is drawn up out of the permafrost and released so the ground remains frozen and stable.

Over 170 valves of several types have been inserted into the pipeline.  The valves allow the flow of oil to be stopped quickly and minimize any release of oil.

Special gate valves stop the oil flow in both directions.

The pipe is never straight for very long – too much expansion.  So some of the sections look pretty funny.

This strange downhill route also helps control the oil pressure within the pipe.

The original design called for 12 pumping stations.  11 were actually built. The oil enters the first pumping station at a natural temperature of over 100 degrees F.  It is essential that the oil move quickly through the pipe – if it slows to much, the oil could freeze blocking the entire pipeline.  The pumps keep it moving although all 11 stations are no longer used because of the reduction in oil pumped.  At maximum production, just over 2 million barrels of oil per day flowed through the pipeline; now the flow rate is somewhat less than 500,000 barrels per day as the oil field is depleted.

Part 5 – Deadhorse

Deadhorse is a town – of perhaps 40 year-round residents.  Deadhorse is adjacent to Prudhoe Bay which is privately controlled by the oil consortium that operates the oil field.  Deadhorse is primarily the place contractors stage equipment and stay while preparing to work within the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.  There is limited tourist housing as well.  We stayed in prefabs in a construction camp.  Access to the Arctic Ocean and to the oil fields is restricted.  Tourists who want to enter the restricted area must provide identity documentation at least 24 hours in advance to allow time for security clearance processing.  As part of our tour preparations, we provided our ID’s (driver’s license or passport) 3 days in advance.

The buildings are all prefabs.  Here is the mail building at the construction camp where we stayed.

The sign is pretty unnecessary – rarely do carloads of tourists show up unannounced!

My bedroom – this time the bathroom and showers were down the hall, turn left, third door on the left.  But I survived.

Here we are eating in the cafeteria.  The guy standing is the camp “manager.”  Our food was in the steam table behind him.  We all survived the food as well.

I’m not sure I was supposed to explore – and take pictures.  But I did.  All this “stuff” was sitting idle.  Waiting for the active layer of the permafrost to freeze so oil exploration could startup again.  (This would be mopping up activities determining how best to finish extraction of the rapidly diminishing oil reserves.)

The equipment was unbelievable.  One of our group was a heavy equipment operator from New Zealand – he estimated the equipment value at over 1 billion dollars!!!

The equipment was brightly painted!

All ready to go ….

Just sooooo much of it!

Here is the view from the equipment storage grounds toward the oil fields and arctic ocean.

This stuff could go anywhere – once the ground was frozen that is!

The amount needed,

and the size of the equipment was fascinating.

Part 5 – The Oil Fields and Arctic Ocean

I can’t imagine working in Prudhoe Bay.  The oil company flies workers in free from Anchorage and Fairbanks.  Everyone works 12 hour shifts for 2 weeks, then flies home for 2 weeks off.  (We were allowed to photograph everything except the security checkpoint.  All cameras had to be put away while we approached, went through, and exited the checkpoint.)

We visited on a wet and rainy day.  Cloudy and dreary.  So don’t look for blue skies in my photographs!

Here are three pictures of workers’ quarters.  Bedrooms like mine – two beds to a room.  Newer ones may have bathrooms.  R&R rooms, TV rooms, cafeterias.

All the comforts of home.  Plus lots of mud.

Everyplace you enter in Deadhorse and in Prudhoe Bay requires everyone stop and put on blue plastic boot covers as you enter.  I probably used 10 pairs by the time I left.

And arctic tundra.

All very homey.  Right?!?!?

On the drive in we passed five unused oil drill rigs.

A closeup of an oil drilling rig.

These are the wells.  No Texas-style pumps needed.  The hot oil rises from the pressure of the gas beneath.

Pump station number 1.

A tanker and equipment center.

Lots and lots of pipes.

Almost everywhere.

An overview of the system viewed from across a freshwater pond.

With a family of geese living on the tundra.

TROUBLE!!!  They are moving in a new drilling rig.  The tractor is moving pieces of a wooden road used to bear the weight of the rig.  The operation is blocking our access to the arctic ocean.

Not to be deterred – our driver requested and received permission to drive around the drill rig!

Passing on the left …

The driver concentrates …

 

Once passed, we all looked back at the rig and cheered his skill!

At last.  The Arctic Ocean!  Not really what I expected.

We all got out, walked to the water’s edge and stuck our hands in.  Cold.  What did we expect?

Marcy was the only one of our group to take off her shoes and wade in.

Yucky!  Not from oil pollution.  From the peat that makes up the soil at the edge and under the ocean.

Heading back. More pipes.

A last view back …

Part 6 – The Flight Back

We met our pilot at the airport – and he loaded our luggage himself!

Neat little plane.  Instrument-based flight given the bad weather and zero visibility.

All aboard – the pilot turns and asks if we’re comfortable – not too hot or too cold! We all put on noise-reduction headphones and he lectured us on plate tectonics and Alaska history as we flew.

A partial clearing allowed for some pictures – through the windows.  Damn – I couldn’t get him to remove a window or door for me!

 

That’s all folks!