End of the Road
So okay, Sky Pilot Larry and I decide we’d run up to the Arctic Circle, take a picture at the 66 degree latitude, turn around and head back to Fairbanks. But … we thought, hellfire, we’re all this way north, we’d kick ourselves for not driving the extra 500 miles to Prudeau Bay, check on the drilling rigs, maybe see a few musk oxen, find out what the northernmost one third of Alaska looks like. The pipeline snakes alongside the highway, perched on steel platforms with gizmoes on top that disperse the heat of the flowing crude oil to keep it from melting the permafrost and causing the cradle to tilt. Pump stations come up every 50 miles or so, don’t ask me how they push this stuff down the line.
We crossed the Yukon River on its only bridge in Alaska, a wooden one no less. We got diesel at Coldfoot where in 1971 the temperature hit minus 82 degrees and froze truck tires so hard they became brittle and shattered, according to one old boy we talked to. At Atigun Pass we traversed the Brooks Range, an east to west mountain range that descends into a coastal plain of permafrost, tors and pings — these rock formations that look like hiding spots for Cro Magnons huntin g wooly mammoths tens of thousands of years ago — endless tundra, then a vast table top of low vegetation that runs to the Arctic Ocean broken only by the ‘Sag’ River that offers the only break in the topography.
We camped on its eastern edge and watched a herd of musk oxen forage in the delta the way our forebears did who knows how far back in time and memory. This, I’m telling you, is prehistoric land, cruel in the winter, harsh in the summer. It is barren and virtually devoid of life or traffic. And then we arrived at Deadhorse at Prudeau Bay, a surreal oasis of trailers, pumps, drill rigs, modules, caterpillar tractors, equipment of unknown use, airport, shuttles, trailer housing and hotel, an industrial complex the way one would look on Mars if we could mine there, alien in every possible way. It was 37 degrees with a stiff wind off the ocean. We tried to imagine winter — 24 hours of night, 60 below, a frozen hell. 3000 people work here. Good money, I guess. Very good money, I’m betting.
We turned around and headed home.
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