The delightful town of Juneau is the official capital of the USA State of Alaska. It is situated on the Gastineau Channel …an area Cruisers call the inside passage. It is both a coastal and a mountain town which is rich in both culture and wildlife.
It was named in 1881, after gold prospector Joe Juneau and it became the designated capital of Alaska in 1906. It covers an area of 3,255sq miles, of which only 14sq miles are inhabited by approx 32,400 people.
One of Juneaus unique features is that you can not drive to it. The rugged mountain ranges surrounding Juneau make it impossible to access by road. People either fly in, arrive by ferry or like many visitors arrive by cruise ship.
We have been fortunate to visit Juneau on many different occasions. This has meant we have visited most of its attractions :-
The beautiful Mendenhall Glacier is only 12 miles from the centre of Juneau and is a very popular attraction. Visitors enjoy a variety of activities here including hiking, wildlife viewing, and exploring the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. On one occasion when we visited the UK BBC had just finished filming bears during the salmon spawning season from the raised wooden walkway along the river at the foot of the glacier. Lots of people choose to glacier walk here. We, however, like walking the wooden platforms looking for bears. We’ve been lucky a couple of times and even luckier to see a porcupine rattle past us.
Mendenhall GlacierClose up of Mendenhall Glacier
The Mount Roberts Tramway is another visitor attraction. Although there is usually a long queue it moves quickly and it never seems crowded at the top . The tramway is a quick and scenic ride to the top of Mount Roberts, from here you can enjoy panoramic views of Juneau and the surrounding area.
The Salmon Hatchery is extremely interesting. You learn all about Alaska’s important salmon industry, the 5 different types of Salmon and you get to see salmon up close.
Our favourite activity which we do every time is Juneau is Whale Watching. Juneau is a great place to spot humpback whales and killer whales (orcas), especially between April and November. We take a tour boat out in Auke Bay. The company we always use guarantee that we will see whales or they will give you your money back. We’ve never had to have a refund because we have always seen whales…..splendid sightings…
Breaching Humpback Whale Whale FlukeOrca whale (often referred to as the Killer whale ) .
Denali is the highest peak, 20,310 feet high, in North America. It is situated in the central area of Alaska 237 miles north of Anchorage, and 120 miles south of Fairbanks. Mount Denali has a north and south summit. They were both snow-capped at the time of our last visit. However climate change has altered this and suggests that the view we had is unlikely to be repeated.
It is also the name of the National Park. Denali National Park is 6 million acres(24,000sq Km) of wild land, with one winding road. We call it the road to nowhere!!
We have been fortunate to visit it several times. On arriving in the town, the first time, we went to a show which was not only very well acted but also very informative.
We decided to do a full day trip into the park. Half day trips transverse the lowest elevations which is mostly forestry areas for approximately 15 mi (24 km) of the road. These lower elevations are covered in trees and contribute to the fact that in Alaska there are at least 40,000 trees for each Alaskan resident. Through our experience we have learnt that this lower elevation area doesn’t attract as much wild life as you can see deeper into the National Park. We have seen occasional Moose, Caribou and Grizzly Bears this low.
A full days tour in a school bus, goes deeper into the park on to the tundra of the middle elevations. Several portions of the road run alongside sheer cliffs that drop hundreds of feet at the edges. There are no crash barriers. As a result of the danger involved, and because most of the gravel road is only one lane wide, drivers have to be trained in procedures for navigating the sharp mountain curves and yielding the right of way to wild life, opposing buses and park vehicles. On one occasion we got in a traffic queue with a slow moving Caribou who walked down the middle of the road for several kilometres with our bus trundling along behind it.
This park road runs north of and roughly parallel to the imposing Alaska Range. Only the start of the road is paved because both permafrost and the freeze-thaw annual cycle would create a very expensive maintenance programme for a paved road.
Denali National park was formally known as Mount McKinley National Park. The name was subject to local criticism, as the mountain was originally named after a newly elected US president in 1897 and the park was named Mount McKinley National Park when it was created in 1917. The local Alaskan people wanted it called Denali because it means “the great one” or “the high one,” Denali plays a central role in the creation myth of the Koyukon Athabascans, a Native Alaskan group that has lived in the region for centuries. For many years the local people tried to get the name changed. Much to most peoples delight on August 30, 2015 President Barak Obama directed the Secretary of the Interior to rename the mountain Denali. The higher elevations of the park are covered with snow, glaciers and bare rock. In the winter people dog-sledge, cross-country ski and snowmobile in the park which is home to numerous wildlife including grizzly bears, wolves, foxes, moose and Caribou.
The top of Mount Denali is often shrouded in cloud, we have, however, been fortunate to see it on a couple of occasions on beautiful clear days.
The Arctic Circle is an imaginary line encircling the earth. This line is located at latitude 66 33′ North. In the Arctic Circle, the sun does not set on summer solstice (June 20 or 21) and is does not rise on winter solstice (December 21 or 22). There are eight countries which extend into The Arctic Circle. These are Greenland, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and Alaska (USA).
Approximately 4 million people, of which 10% of the inhabitants are indigenous, live with in the Arctic circle today. It had been on our ‘bucket list’ to visit and understand some of the cultures of those who live within the Arctic circle for sometime. We decided to achieve this by flying from London to Vancouver, cruising from Vancouver up to Whittier, Alaska, and then take the train to Denali and continue by coach to Fairbanks, from there we decided to take a small plane into the Arctic Circle. It was all going swingingly well up to Fairbanks. We had magnificent views from the train, which slowed for us to take, evidently, unusually clear pictures of Mount Denali.
The weather was kind to us and we got further views of the majestic mountain from the early morning bus to Fairbanks.
Alas! arriving in Fairbanks we were not so lucky…we had allowed two nights in Fairbanks thinking that we would be able to fly in to The Arctic Circle on one of the two nights….more fool us!!! The weather was appalling and we were told on our first night that they were not flying so on our second night as we waited in the small office on the edge of the airstrip we had high hopes. However! It soon became obvious we were going nowhere……they only charge ( it was about US$1000 for two people) if you can actually land in The Arctic, so although we didn’t loose any money by trying, we were bitterly disappointed…we couldn’t stay longer because we had restrictions such as return flights and work to consider……we returned to the UK without completing our ambition..
Two years later we took exactly the same route only this time, on advice, we booked into a Fairbanks hotel for a week. On our first night we found ourselves back at the office on the runway…our chariot awaited us..it didn’t half look small as we boarded our 6 seater plane. Handbags were stashed in the lockers in the wings. We squeezed ourselves in, with John next to the pilot and me behind him, 4 others joined us and we were soon in the air. The flight time is just under an hour. Looking down we had a good view of The Dalton Highway and the Oil Pipeline.
About 40 minutes into the flight the pilot told us he was detouring to circle another small town, which had a landing strip, because some heavy weather was moving in. We circled for about 30 minutes before the pilot said it was safe to continue. We were heading towards ‘Coldfoot’ a town within the Arctic Circle. As we entered into the Arctic circle the pilot told us we could take pictures of the planes dials..which we did.
Again we began to circle and the pilot said he couldn’t land until he could see the landing strip. The weather wasn’t great and the pilot said he’d circle once more before taking us back to Fairbanks and we could try again tomorrow!! We had been in the air nearly 2 hours and he said he had enough ‘gas’ to get us back to Fairbanks….we were just a little nervous!!! Suddenly the pilot said he could see the strip and he was going in…….all we could see was the Yukon River!!! Or was it a fork of the Koyukuk River ??? So we just prayed for longevity!! Thankfully our skilled pilot landed us safely and we disembarked in Coldfoot.
Coldfoot reminded me of some of the towns Dana Stabenhow writes about in her Kate Shuga Novels!!!!! Coldfoot came about when In 1899, gold was discovered in Slate Creek, and a small rush began as prospectors arrived to pan for gold. As winter approached, many of the prospectors got “cold feet” and decided to turn around and head back to warmer climates. The name stuck, Coldfoot’s gold rush only lasted around 5 years and the small town was quickly abandoned when gold was discovered in Wiseman only 10 miles north in 1908. Many of the buildings in Coldfoot were hauled north to Wiseman and rebuilt there. However Coldfoot was resurrected in the 1970s as a construction camp for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and as long-haul truckers began driving the Haul Road (later renamed the Dalton Highway), a full-service truck stop was established in Coldfoot. Coldfoot is now a place where travelers can find lodging, dining, gasoline, air service, and even a post office. It is situated nearly 200 miles away from the next largest community. We used its facilities, which could only be described as basic….this really is a ‘one horse town’ with the truckers stop being the one horse!!
Having used the ‘Ladies’ in the truck stop/bar/restaurant/lodgings…we got into a vehicle which took us down the highway for thirty minutes and then off to the right to a place called Wiseman. Wiseman is situated in the Arctic Circle, Northern Alaska it is on the edge of the beautiful Brooks Range mountains near the Gates of the Arctic National Park, along the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk River. The community population has fluctuated over the years from a robust mining/trading outpost to current times, with a few families making it their home, when we visited it had had a population explosion!!! Increasing from 12 residents to 14!!! There are no services in the town. We were greeted by one of the residents who took us into the meetings/community centre…it’s still used for village functions but also for tourist group talks.
Another of the huts is set up as a museum. We browsed the village. The residents grow their own vegetables…they are hunters/gatherers. They hunt their allocation of meat..usually Caribou and Moose, which they store in areas deep under their huts, this space acts as a deep freeze all year around. They also store fish they have caught. This helps see them through the winter months when they are snowed in and the river turns to ice.
There are also a few huts which act as Bed & Breakfasts for tourists wishing to experience a few days “off the grid” in the middle of nowhere. After a couple of hours we returned to Coldfoot. Our pilot was waiting for us. The weather was still not good. I nervously asked how he would see to take off…his response was he didn’t need to see to take off only to land!!!!! 52 minutes later we landed back in the modern day town of Fairbanks.
We were totally delighted to have achieved our ambition. Learning about the way the small population lives was amazing. Wiseman is a village where time has stood still…a wonderful adventure.
2 J's World of Adventure 