Fairbanks, AK –
My original Prudhoe Bay attempt to swim in the Arctic Ocean was planned for the week of August 12th. After some logistical changes with the folks who were going to go with me, I decided to leave with Wendy. She was back in Fairbanks and about to leave on her own excursion Thursday August 8th. The plan was to leave in the evening on Thursday and then arrive on Saturday morning for our planned tour to the Arctic Ocean. The tour company is actually the only way to reach the Arctic Ocean from Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay. This was going to be the culmination of weeks of planning. An idea that had started becoming a plan months ago down in Southern California over winter. This had been a dream long before then though.
Fairbanks to Five Mile Campground
It started out as a typical overcast August day in Fairbanks. We met up and filled up the truck and several spare gas cans for $3.25 per gallon at a Fred Meyers in Fairbanks. We knew gas on the Dalton would probably be much more expensive. Later we’d find out how much more expensive at both the Yukon River Crossing and Coldfoot Truck Stop where we’d see the prices at $7.49 per gallon. Pro tip, fill up gas in Fairbanks and Deadhorse. Deadhorse isn’t much better than the truck stops on the way, but it is a bit. On our own journey we’d be forced to buy gas on the Dalton due to the round trip mileage being about 1,000 miles. Wendy’s truck averaged something a bit under 15 mpg for the trip. Yikes, haha.
It’s a Sign
We left Fairbanks in good spirits despite the weather, excited for the trip. We took the obligatory pictures at the Dalton Highway signs. There’s one at the very start of the Dalton and another about one mile in. We’d already been driving on dirt roads at this point. The Elliot highway, which connects Fairbanks to the Dalton Highway is unpaved. A little while later we crossed the mighty Yukon River. The Dalton Highway is the only highway in Alaska that crosses the Yukon River. The bridge is also the largest privately funded construction project in U.S. history.
Expensive Gas
Immediately after crossing is the first gas station available on the Dalton Highway, and it was $7.49 per gallon. Since we had plenty of gas to make it the 120 further miles to Coldfoot we held off on filling up figuring it might be cheaper there. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. We did grab quite the tasty burger at the truck stop, tasting way better than the remoteness of the truck stop would suggest.
The first night sleeping in the rain
Being the tourists we were, we went over to the Contact Station across the road to look at the Alaska Pipeline, the Yukon River, and the bridge. Done with that, we progressed five miles down the road to Five Mile Campground, aptly named. This would be the only free campground on the Dalton Highway, so we took advantage of it. Wendy setup her space in the backseat of her truck while I setup my tent in the rain. Unbeknownst to me, although not unexpected, I would get very used to setting up and taking down my tent in the rain on this trip.
Onward from Five Mile Campground
I slept predictably awful. Around 0830 was when I woke. Yet more rain pattering away on the rainfly of my tent at Five Mile Campground. After performing morning ablutions in the rain I got ready for the day. The tent was put away wet, with no signs of the rain letting up. It was Friday August 9th and we had the entire day dedicated for travel. From Five Mile Campground (Milepost 60 on Dalton Highway, and roughly mile 140 from Fairbanks) we continued north. We drove through fog and rain for miles and miles, not able to see much, which included Finger Mountain. The day began to clear up as we hit the Arctic Circle Campground (Milepost 115). So named because this is where travelers going north officially crossed into the arctic circle. We got our picture with the sign of course.
Inflation Charts and Childish Humor
Thinking that the truck rode especially rough we brought out the starlink. I looked up the inflation load chart for Wendy’s tires. Discovering they were way over inflated for what we were doing, we let out some air from them. They were still setup for when she was towing her 30ft+ airstream. We had a much smoother ride from this point onward. This is also where the trip really started to turn gorgeous. Likely because the clouds finally cleared up to reveal all the gorgeous views of the mountains. Gobblers Knob (Milepost 132) — don’t worry, I laughed too because I’m a child — made for a good picture opportunity. Onward from there to Coldfoot – home of the furthest north saloon and the Arctic Interagency Visitor Center. There was also another gas station and burger waiting on us there.
Coldfoot and Road Conditions
Coldfoot at Milepost 175 was certainly worth the stop. The furthest north saloon was empty but a nice break for a beer (from Fairbanks, hah). The gas was expensive but at least there was some! We needed to fill up in order to make it to Deadhorse. There was also a bit of a hostel / hotel on the property. The real gem however was the Arctic Interagency Visitor Center. Lots of little pieces of swag / touristy things to purchase. Also a lot of information about the area on display. This included weather reports and road conditions! One construction zone being noted as closer to Prudhoe Bay. The other construction zone we had already gone through. It wasn’t too bad (maybe it was after working hours?) and was south of the Yukon River Crossing.
Speeding on Gravel and Construction
Speaking of the road: we encountered a couple okay sections of pavement, some sections of pavement with medium amounts of frost heaves, and a LOT of just gravel. The gravel sections varied with a lot of the southern parts having pot holes you’d need to dodge. It was quite mentally draining. Always concentrating on the road to dodge whatever you needed to for hours at a time really got to us. The best sections of the road ended up being the northern parts (in my opinion), closer to Prudhoe Bay. While there was lots of calcium chloride on it which made a nasty sludge on the vehicles, it was mostly level without major pot holes. I think some sections on the gravel we were able to do 60mph+. A lot of sections of pavement had us at 45mph just due to frost heaves. Construction could also really put a damper on things, as there may be a 30 minute wait or more for the pilot car to get back to lead you through the multiple miles of one lane construction zone at low speeds.
Wiseman
We left Coldfoot to hit the road again. We were starting to feel the miles and hours but still in fairly good spirits. Both Wendy and I were still alive and hadn’t murdered one another yet. We saw there was a town, Wiseman (MP 189), a short distance from the road and decided to visit it and see a bit of history. It was originally founded in 1908 after miners abandoned the mining claim that was where Coldfoot now is. The old Wiseman Post Office that is slowly sinking into the ground was fascinating. There was supposed to be some sort of museum there, but if there was it was closed. It was quite quaint. Nowadays, it holds history and less than twenty residents. There was a nice looking AirBNB, and reportedly it’s a bit of a destination during winter to see the northern lights.
Nolan and a U-Turn
Leaving Wiseman we saw a sign for a town called Nolan and decided to check it out. We had four wheel drive, what could go wrong? Nolan was a small town, smaller than Wiseman, with a population of only 5. It was an old gold mining town originally discovered in 1901 and reported gold being mined all the way into the 1990s. It would have been lovely to be able to see what was there, but unfortunately since I was driving Wendy’s truck and we had no real recovery gear we ended up turning around at a particularly long stretch of muddy and rutted road.
Gates of the Arctic
Continuing onto the Dalton after our little detour, we got to witness the majesty to our west of what was the easternmost portion of the Gates of the Arctic National Park. Wendy has a little goal of wanting to visit every national park, and pretty much the only way to get into the Gates of the Arctic is a very very long hike or to fly in. Not marking that one off the list this trip, unfortunately.
Atigun Pass
By far the best views seen were while crossing the Brooks Mountain Range via Atigun Pass, the tallest point on the Dalton Highway at around 4,740 feet above sea level. Really everything in this area was truly gorgeous. It was already stunning after seeing the border of the Gates of the Arctic but Atigun pass and driving in the valley afterwards in between several of the mountains of the Brooks Range was one of the prettiest sites I’d seen. Mountains definitely just do it for me.
The North Slope
Once leaving the Brooks Range it became just the rolling verdant green hills and tundra of the North Slope. I’m going to reveal my nerdiness here, but do you remember the stock Windows XP background on PCs? The one with those rolling green hills. It looked like that, come to life. And life there was. Grizzlies pawing at the tundra looking for, I presume, berries. All sorts of rodents crossing the road. Birds abounded. Also the herds of caribou dotting the hills.
Caribou Hunting
While we’d seen very little traffic on the road aside from the occasional truck or semi going one direction or another, we’d mostly driven without seeing many others. We began to see folks camping along the little turnouts in this area beyond the Brooks Range though. These were people hoping to get their allotment of caribou as allowed by the Alaska Fish and Game. Two males for out of state residents, often able to tell they were out of state by their U Haul vehicles they’d somehow gotten up there. In-state residents were allowed 5 adults, male or female. Only bow hunting was allowed up where we were though, and they’d often wait along the opposite side of the Dalton Highway from the herd, hoping to ambush the Caribou from the bottom of the embankment as the herd crossed. We learned a lot of this while pulled over on the side of the road near the herd along with probably 30 other vehicles, much to the dismay of the semi-trucks trying to get where they needed.
A Wet Night Again
Making it to within 15 miles of Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay, we found a turnout that was flat enough to pitch a tent. Naturally, it was raining yet again. Taking out my still wet tent from the back of Wendy’s truck I started setting it up and preparing for another damp night after a long day. I know that somewhere along the latter part of Friday I was probably not great company after the lack of sleep and being damp for hours began taking its toll. Sorry Wendy!
The Last Push
Tomorrow would be the last push to the end. It was hard to think about that as I was laying in the tent in my damp sleeping bag with my wet clothing pushed off to the side and listening to the rain pitter patter. It was fairly light out, considering we were so far north. I think there is an official sunset, although it never really gets dark. After a debatable 2 hours of sleep sometime in the early morning I gave up and started getting ready for the day. No surprise, it was still raining.
Danger Close
Getting outside and wandering around a bit I noticed that this was apparently the spot a hunter had field dressed a caribou. Thinking about that, this may have been one of the more dangerous things I’d ever done considering that not 20 miles south we had spotted three grizzlies the day before. Musk ox even closer than that, although I wasn’t terribly concerned about them. Shaking off those feelings I began packing up the tent and otherwise trying to drum up excitement for the impending adventure of seeing the arctic ocean and swimming in it.
We got underway and hit the town of Prudhoe Bay. Honestly not a lot to it, and it was definitely just an industrial town / camp. Prudhoe Bay only gets something like 10″ of annual liquid precipitation but also around 45″ of snowfall each year — July is about the only reliable month with zero snowfall. When we arrived it was about 49 degrees Fahrenheit, although apparently the week before there was a day of 89 degrees Fahrenheit!
The Arctic Ocean
We toured the town a bit to get an idea of where things were, and then went to Deadhorse Camp and signed in for our tour. Got a spot of free warm coffee — oh god was it delicious and needed. Socialized a bit with other folks there for the same tour, a lot of motorcycle riders. One guy on a KTM adventure blew his forks on the ride up, granted it was severely overloaded with all the spares he had, but at least some of those spares included new forks!
Official Polar Plunge
Our tour guide Jack was fantastic. Had been doing the tours for two years and definitely a bird guy, telling us all about the various birds you could see there. He swims in the arctic every day, twice a day. Talk about being a believe in cold plunges. Getting to the arctic ocean required passing a security checkpoint, and once past that in the bus we got to a tiny spit of land jutting out into the actual bay. Per Jack, it was actual quite shallow and he’d walked out roughly a half mile and it was still chest height. Stripping down and walking out it felt about like you’d imagine. Very very very cold! This southern boy is used to swimming in lakes in the south closer to the temperature of bath water. After the obligatory polar plunge and quick swim, I immediately started shivering. Drying off I got back into the warm bus and changed back into my clothes. Continue the theme of being cold damp on this trip!
After the plunge we hung around camp a bit, got some more coffee and a pork slider courtesy of the very generous cook. Went to the general store for some swag and the gas station. We were a bit surprised by the price here, but we were half expecting the price at Prudhoe Bay to be the same as all the other gas stations on the way up, roughly $7.50 a gallon. It wasn’t! It was a very reasonable $6.90!
The Long Trek Back to Fairbanks
The time to depart was upon us. We loaded up on a couple snacks and drinks at the store and off we went. Almost immediately I began napping. Just an hour or two later I was up and rotated driving with Wendy so she could nap for a few hours. Around this point we started talking about where we would camp. It had taken us nearly an entire full day of driving and then some to get to Prudhoe Bay in the first place, where did we want to shoot for to camp on the way back? Well, while thinking of my absolutely soaked tent thrown in the back, I was up to try and make it all the way to Fairbanks if we could. If not, we’d see how far we made it when we had to call it quits.
Gas? No Gas.
At this point both Wendy and I were a little grumpy. We still survived though! Hitting Coldfoot we planned on topping up a touch just to make sure we had enough to make it to Fairbanks. Walking inside for a break and snacks, we actually found out they were out of gas… and they wouldn’t be getting more until after 0100 Alaska time. As it was just the beginning of evening and not even night that just wasn’t in the cards to wait for. Luckily for us we did have those extra gas cans, so we should be able to make it to at least the Yukon River Crossing Truck Stop gas station. However, that station closed at 10pm. It would be close.
Still not stopping
Leaving Coldfoot with our additional snacks and having poured all the gas cans into the truck, we set off for the next station at the Yukon River Crossing. It was at this point I think we both became very used to driving on the gravel, hitting 70mph in some sections. Unfortunately it was at this point that a pickup and trailer going in the opposite direction in a dry section — now that I wasn’t planning on setting up my tent it was sunny and dry of course — ended up kicking up a rock and putting a crack in Wendy’s windshield. Womp womp, almost made it back with no issues.
Pushing Through
Looking at our gas mileage that we were doing, we actually figured we could make it all the way back to Fairbanks for that cheap cheap $3.50 per gallon gas. Seeing that, we pushed straight past the Yukon River Crossing truck stop and gas station. Sure enough, we arrived dead tired but safely into Fairbanks around 2330 on Saturday August 10th. What a trip. We did it! Swam in the arctic ocean! Saw Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse Camp! Not to mention all the wonders in between Fairbanks and the ocean along the Dalton Highway. With that, time to clean up and sleep.