Dalton Hwy II

From Wiseman on the way back to Fairbanks

Second day of descent along the Dalton, although we begin by returning a dozen miles north for a visit to Wiseman, which will prove very interesting to understand how it is possible to live even in these conditions.

Wiseman and the meeting with Jack Reakoff

Here we meet Jack Reakoff, is 53 years old but has a youthful appearance, a look of subtle challenge towards the powerful from whom he tries to keep away. A confident but never arrogant tone of voice, calm enough to appear almost submissive while in reality hiding a hard exterior. Above all, he demonstrates a fine intelligence, necessary to live in such a harsh environment. In these parts it is essential to think carefully about every gesture, to know that a mistake made today can have lethal consequences tomorrow. It's about combining experience, resistance and reasoning.

He has acquired experience over the years thanks to the lessons learned from those who have lived here, especially from the last prospectors (pioneers in the search for gold) and from Indian inhabitants. He studied biology at the University of Fairbanks, only to return here (where he has lived since the age of 13) due to incompatibility with urban civilization. He speaks with the same familiarity and competence about the chemical reactions that cause the Northern Lights as he does about how to hunt or set traps. He alternates intellectual activities with the construction of log cabins rather than wooden artefacts.

It's a concentration of all human skills: perhaps it's the only way to get by in this place where you have to leave once every three months to go to the city of Fairbanks (approx. 300 km of dirt road) to get supplies. To do this, 3 days are needed, two days of round trip travel and one to "run errands", possibly leaving the car or tools to have the repair done the same day. He recently had to spend over $5,000 at the dentist and believes that Fairbanks, given its remote location, is the most expensive in the world. I don't reply, but I would like to tell him that I know other places that are not so isolated where dental surgery can be devastating for the bank account.

His subsistence life involves very intense agricultural activity, taking advantage of the long summer days, taking into account some tricks learned firsthand or learned from an elderly Indian lady. For example, he tells us that potatoes should be placed in the ground whole. One slightest mistake and the season is lost. Planting only a quarter of it as we do here would not germinate. During the season he fills the freezer with game, making sure that the stocks never go below a certain limit. The forest is not a butcher who has meat whenever you want.

Even hunting isn't that simple: killing a 500 kg moose in the wrong place or even not just on the first shot with the consequence that it falls to its death in a swamp entails enormous difficulties in getting it out. Shooting animals also requires experience. Bears should be hit on the nose or in the carotid area, otherwise you only risk injuring them, accentuating their aggression. Their skin is difficult to penetrate, even by large bullets, says size 35. Defending oneself from low temperatures is another activity that requires attention and experience, -50° are the order of the day in Wiseman, but it's a matter of covering yourself adequately by paying attention to details.

He explains to us how at certain temperatures, by throwing a cup of hot water outside, it immediately atomizes and shortly thereafter falls in the form of snow. The dark winter days require good psychological and organizational preparation to stay active and productive. The problem for many in Alaska is linked to the depression that the long period of darkness can cause, consequently creating a sad natural selection made up of suicides.

In winter he is a trapper, or hunter of fur animals. He has three routes that start from the village and which he always keeps open, with which he goes once a week to check if the traps have borne fruit. He then sells the furs to obtain the money needed to buy what nature cannot provide. Another economic source is the visits of tourists, to whom he sells wooden objects he made during the long, dark winter. In spring he leads some tourists to see the best Northern Lights in the world. He also collaborates with the University of Fairbanks, which entrusts him with tests to carry out (especially in the agricultural sector) to see the behavior of certain products in extreme conditions above the Arctic Circle.

Being just south of the Atigun Pass, Wiseman represents the northern limit for experimenting. In the midst of all this activity he has had four children, now adults and who live or study elsewhere, to whom he has been able to pass on his philosophy of life, protecting them from cultural pollution and urban temptations. One daughter even lives in Galena, a roadless village on the banks of the Yukon. In the summer his wife works at the Visitor Center in Coldfoot.

His house is a museum, it probably does not represent an example for Western hygienists who in these places would in any case have a short lifespan, devoid as they are of antibodies but above all of instincts. The fridge is natural: through a trap door in the kitchen floor you access a hole dug in the earth, where in winter it lets heat filter through to keep the temperature above zero. The ceiling is very low for obvious thermal reasons and there are various maps hanging there, as well as photos and various papers. In short, a large overturned desk.

In addition to his own house, he built another which served as a bedroom for his children. It has now been transformed into a medicinal plant dryer and is kept at a constant temperature of 25° via a stove. It has a profound religious sense, so much so that a cabin is used as a place of worship, a real one little church complete with an altar and crucifix carved from an elk horn. The former General Store it is used as a museum of ancient things, while another log house has a large series of hanging objects as well as a table where photographs depicting the surroundings in winter are placed, as well as animals or hunting scenes.

His parents live in other cabins, while his sister runs a small bar which also sells objects and gifts for tourists. A necessary compromise to get through the winter. Close to town a stream flows, which prevents the formation of permafrost within a radius of a hundred meters but beyond, under a few tens of cm, even in summer a state of permanent frost is encountered. Frozen ground is found from 20 to 2000 ft deep. In some ways it can be said that Wiseman's life gravitates around him and his family.

To live here you must not be unwary and the story of the young McCandless comes to mind, an inexperienced citizen who went to seek adventure in places hostile to him. The unpreparedness was fatal to him.

The discussion then shifts to oil companies and the project for new drilling in the north-east, in a protected area, which would also require the doubling of the pipeline or a gas pipeline. Jack is very critical of governments, to whom he attributes much of the blame in the speculative management of the resource. He is not against development but is keen to preserve Alaska from industrial contamination. It seems that there is an abundance of oil and people want to sip it to keep its prices high. There is no shortage of ways to do this: one of them is represented by decreasing the flow speed inside the pipeline. This is explained by technical reasons, a greater pressure inside the pipe would lead to faster erosion of the walls and 1300 km of pipes cannot be easily replaced.

In case it becomes necessary to confirm that Jack is not a savage in an environment that is, we learn that he is also capable of piloting planes. In the end I leave the meeting convinced that I have met a free man for the first time.

Enriched by this experience and somehow aware of having wasted many years of life, we set off again towards the south. Our travel companions obviously pay the utmost attention to the most insignificant details, completely neglecting the lesson that that living book of experience called Jack has just imparted to us. A return to the origins accompanied by the intelligence that mankind is equipped with, when it wants to use it.

There are currently closed gold mines near Wiseman. The prospectors had found some interesting threads. Unfortunately in the area there is not the abundance of water necessary to sift the mineral, therefore the difficulties immediately seemed insurmountable even with the means available.

Coldfoot and the Arctic Circle

Let's go back to the Coldfoot Visitor Center to see the interesting information sources. We also take the opportunity to go and see the old cemetery, now invaded by trees, difficult to distinguish from the rest of the surrounding forest.

We stop at Arctic Circle, where we finally manage to find something that arouses the real interest of our travel companions. The sign that marks the imaginary line of the Club is literally stormed by tourists who want to pass on to their homes and perhaps to future generations such an important (even heroic) gesture of which they were protagonists. Crossing the club by being immortalized in the most idiotic positions becomes the subject of a long stop and a waste of time that we will pay for in the evening.

The sky is covered with low gray clouds which contribute to making the moment sad and cold. The rolling hills are covered in black spruce trees, a symbol that permafrost lies beneath. We take the opportunity to take a walk in a forest full of mushrooms and when the Club sign is now free of human figures we also portray it in a souvenir photo, aware that exceeding the limit to which the midnight sun descends does not in itself represent any particular merit or emotion.

Finger Mountain and Yukon Crossing

When the weather is at its worst with low fogs that end up reducing visibility we reach Finger Mountain, a truly enormous finger of rock which in the past on sunny days served aviators to indicate the route towards Fairbanks.

At mile 56 we are at Yukon River Camp, where Dalton and the pipeline they cross the mythical North American river. The construction of the bridge meant the definitive completion of the Dalton, previously ferries were used in the summer, while in the winter it was crossed thanks to the thick layer of ice present. The problem was the intermediate seasons. It required a year and a half of work and has a wooden road surface.

Let's go and get some information at the local Visitor Centre. There is a local bar/restaurant that sells a bit of everything, you just need to manage to get there in the middle of a layer of mud that clings to your shoes. Inside there is a photo album that testifies to the winter incursion of a brown bear when the Camp was empty. He managed to get in by making havoc with everything in his path, until he fell asleep in a delayed hibernation. This happened in 2005 when the huge fires that devastated the area created imbalances for the plantigrades, which were unable to store enough supplies for the winter and thus wandered aimlessly beyond the usual time. Trucks also frequently stop at the Camp for refreshments.

The place is also a transportation exchange point. Many people who live in the villages facing the Yukon that are not reached by road travel by boat (or by snowmobile in winter) on the river and from this point proceed on wheeled vehicles.

Fires, mud and the last kilometers of Dalton

We often come across areas completely burned by the great fires of 2004 and 2005. The causes are completely natural and according to experts they are part of the normal biological process that reigns over forests. They are used to regenerate the forest from the ashes of the old one, so much so that in Alaska the average cycle is 80 years, which in some areas even drops to 26. Black fir trees are rich in resin and become easy prey to fire. The first pioneer plants to colonize the burned area are fireweed, followed by shrubs and finally tall trees.

It is surprising how the pipeline which carries a highly flammable load is completely immune to fires and, even if enveloped, is not affected in the slightest. Sometimes it happens that human beings get some things right.

Despite the frequent showers, the sky often remains clear, with a very characteristic changeability that favors the formation of the rainbow. The road is sometimes particularly earthy and becomes a single quagmire as vehicles pass by. These frequent meteorological alternations favor the creation of particular and extremely photographic landscapes.

The Dalton Hwy it was created and therefore conceived very quickly, therefore some aspects could be improved. To design it, images from satellites were taken. Unfortunately, the area south of the Yukon at the time of the surveys was affected by large fires which prevented clear results from being obtained. In a certain area the road was traced in a very approximate way and therefore very demanding for the drivers who traveled along it, so much so that a valley was called Happy Man. Anyone who traveled along it unscathed could consider themselves a happy man. In the 1990s it was improved with the creation of a bypass which makes the route easier. It is interesting to note how in the meantime vegetation has once again taken over the unused stretch.

Overnight return to Fairbanks

We arrive at a further stopping point as time passes and the evening begins to fall. We stop with a pioneer family who has purchased a large territory and currently lives by cutting wood, carving it and selling tourist gadgets in the summer. The family has grown considerably and currently consists of 37 members. The yard is a pile of old cars and all kinds of junk.

During the trip, speaking with Emma, we learn that only 1% of Alaskan territory is privately owned, while all the rest, including forests, parks and reserves, belongs to the state or is federal. This is particularly surprising since we find ourselves in a nation that has made private property a flag to be proud of. For this reason the land has a very high cost. No one would believe that landed property in Wiseman could be expensive, even though it seems unthinkable that there would be high demand. Even in Fairbanks, real estate is unaffordable, so many people live in log cabins year-round. For a medium-small accommodation the rent is around $1200-1500. At the same time, approximately 30% of Fairbanks residents do not have running water at home because the service does not exist. In this regard, there are public showers in the laundromats.

The Dalton ends when it joins the Elliott Hwy which after a few tens of miles gives way to the Steese Hwy. At 10pm we are finally back atEast Ramp in Fairbanks, from which we left two days earlier. Two hours to go up and two days to go down. Frankly, the return journey was even redundant and anticipating the return by a couple of hours would have allowed us to see everything the same and would have been more pleasant for everyone. However, it is a highly recommended experience in places we could barely have imagined. We are welcomed by a sunset that wonderfully seals the Nordic weekend that has just ended.

Night in Fairbanks

It's too late for dinner now. We return to John in the B&B where we were guests on Thursday evening and have "dinner" with some biscuits, which are added to the lunch sandwiches. We will have time for the salmon dishes later.