Fairbanks, Alaska 7/29/1997 Denali National Park is Stopover Point

(FAIRBANKS, ALASKA, Tuesday, July 29, 1997)

by Bob Van Leer

The Alaska Railroad runs through spectacular scenery in its 356 mile run from Anchorage to Fairbanks.

We left Anchorage Monday for the first leg of the trip, 233 miles to Denali National Park, where we spent the night.

Anchorage is not the start of the rail line. Mile zero is at Seward, an ice-free port, 114 miles south of Anchorage.

Our train is called the McKinley Explorer. Its six dome cars were originally built for premium trains in the lower 48 when passengers still traveled by train. The cars have had million-dollar refurbishing, some at the old Tillamook blimp hangar on the Oregon coast. The cars were built for viewing and are perfect for this trip.

The cars are actually owned by Westours, a subsidiary of Holland American Line, and are attached to the regular Alaska Railroad train.

Service is excellent. The cars are two-deck with passenger seating on the top deck and a dining room and service facilities on the bottom level.

The line was built by the U.S. government but was purchased by the State of Alaska. The line hauls passengers and freight between Seward and Fairbanks and makes flag stops for local residents on part of the line.

The line leaves Anchorage along tidewater. One warning we were given was not to walk on what looks like beach and tide flats. We were told this is glacier silt and the unwary can sink in and it is more difficult to get out of than mud. Some have perished because they could not be rescued before the tide came in.

MILITARY BASES
Shortly after leaving Anchorage we passed through Elmendorf Air Force Base and the U.S. Army Ft. Richardson, two large bases which don’t seem to very busy now. The train is not fast, averaging just 30 miles per hour.

Wasilla is a community 32 miles out of Anchorage and it was disillusioning to find out the town’s claim to fame. The 1300 mile Iditarod dog sled race is from Anchorage to Nome. Alas, the teams start in Anchorage, but about as soon as they are out of TV camera range, they up and trucked to Wasilla for the real start of the race.

Willow is 71 miles from Anchorage and was almost the Alaska state capital. But voters, by 5000 votes, voted against putting up $2.4 billion to move the capital. So Willow sleeps along with about 300 people.

Most of the rivers we crossed were dark with glacial silt. A few were sparkling clear and some had salmon spawning in them.

MCKINLEY-DENALI
Near Talketna we got our first view of Mt. McKinley, also known by its Indian name of Denali. We were able to get views of the mountain for the next two days. It is the highest peak in North America at 20,320 feet. We lucked out on this because our guidebook said the mountain is only visible about 20% of the time in summer.

At 190 miles from Anchorage the train goes through Broad Pass, the lowest pass in the Alaska Range at 2363 feet and the highest point on the trip. This pass has snow drifts up to 15 feet in winter.

We met a 66 car coal train pulled by six engines, bound for Seward for shipment to South Korea, one of many, we were told.

Mile after mile of countryside is untouched by development outside the corridor for train, road and power line. This is not agricultural land, the trees are too small for logging, and there is certainly no need for residential development.

We pulled in to Denali Park station, 233 miles from Anchorage, and were bused to the hotel where we would spend the night. After we got off, the passengers who were dropped off the day before boarded to continue their trip to Fairbanks.

The park can also be reached by road, five hours from Anchorage and two hours from Fairbanks.

HELICOPTER RIDE
On arrival, Betty and I decided on a helicopter ride over the park. There is only one road in the huge park, 90 miles long, for which a special permit is needed to drive most of it.

The vast expanses are easiest to see from the air. There are giant “U” shaped canyons carved by glaciers in the last age and enormous glaciers still grinding down the mountains. Our pilot said glaciers need to be a minimum of 200 feet thick to form glaciers and some we were looking at may be 800 feet thick.

Visible from the air is the fault line where the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate meet in the forming of continents.

Glaciers start out as white but pick up debris as they descend and at the bottom leave a mess known as the terminal moraine. As the glacier recedes, or takes a different path, the moraine gradually develops a coat of vegetation and eventually trees. Glaciers are often striped in the direction of their flow, like streaks in pulled taffy. This happens when two glaciers meet to form one and the streaks are the former edges discolored with debris.

We saw a few caribou and a bear and her cub from the air, but we were so high they weren’t much more than specks. We had a long view of McKinley again, but the pilot couldn’t approach too close because of a cloud layer. At 10,000 feet, we could see the top half of the mountain.

The next morning we took a natural history tour along the park’s one road. Our driver said the weather was the best they had had in weeks, clear and bright. Again we were treated to views of the mountain which is perpetually snow-covered.

The guide said the park covers 6 million acres, six times the size of Curry County, and is virtually undeveloped.

PARK A DESERT?
He said, were it not for its location, the park would be a desert. It is in the rain shadow of the Alaska Range, and annual precipitation at park headquarters is only 13 inches per year. But the sun’s rays always hit at an angle here and much of the park is underlain with permafrost.

This is frozen ground a few feet under the surface that never thaws. This means the water that falls can’t soak in and is held on the surface nurturing vegetation.

The tour wasn’t much for wildlife viewing. We saw one caribou and a couple of coveys of ptarmigan, a grouse-like bird.

At 4:00 p.m. we boarded the train to continue on to Fairbanks. From the train we saw three moose.

We saw the Golden Valley Electric coal-fired generating plant on the Nenana River, and nearby was the Usibelli mine that feeds it and produces the coal for Korea. These were the only industrial developments along the line.

Nearing Fairbanks we came to the town of Nenana on the river of the same name. The river runs into the Tanana River, which in turn runs into the Yukon River. This is an important barging point serving all of western Alaska. Supplies were stacked up all over for we were told only a few weeks were left for barge shipping down river. Communities have to get in supplies for half the year, for after the river closes the next shipments will not be until April next year. For the winter the only way to get in freight will be by air and this is not practical for things like power poles.

Our final stop was Fairbanks and we saw a sign saying we were 862 miles from Ketchikan.

Tomorrow we will fly to Prudhoe Bay, on the Arctic Ocean, but we have to get there by flying back to Anchorage first.