High Sierra Topix

John Dittli's recent Brooks Range trip report with its beautiful images inspired me to go down to the basement and rummage around to locate some of my own slides that I had taken on a trip up there decades ago. Back then I had been dreaming about visiting northern Alaska for years, but I hadn't been able to figure out how to make it happen, given the complicated logistics and the expense of hiring a bush plane on my own. So instead, for the first and only time in my life I signed up for a commercial wilderness trip with a guide, and in the end I was very happy to have done so.

Our guide, Ron Yarnell, ran a company named "Wilderness Alaska/Mexico" (which later evolved to become "Arctic Wild"). The itinerary for the trip I joined included a week-long float of the Noatak River, followed by an optional second week of backpacking along a couple of the Noatak tributaries. After a quick meeting in Fairbanks, we took a small commercial flight to Bettles. Bettles has the advantage of both having a small airstrip and also being adjacent to the Koyukuk River, allowing float planes to take off and land there. After spending a few hours in Bettles, our group climbed into a De Havilland for the flight across the Brooks Range to the Noatak. We were equipped with two small inflatable rafts, one plastic kayak and one Klepper kayak that was owned by one of the participants. After we touched down it was fascinating to watch the Klepper owner as he unpacked his kayak from its duffels and quickly converted what looked at first like a giant tinkertoy set into a fully functional watercraft.

The goal of the rafting portion of the trip wasn't to experience whitewater thrills, as there were almost none to be had on the section of river we were on. Instead, each day we would spend the morning leisurely floating down the river, making camp around noon. We then spent the rest of the day exploring the immediate area, enjoying the scenery and looking for wildlife.
I often found myself fooled by the sense of scale here, perhaps because of the clean air and unimpeded views. Mountains in the distance that appeared to be relatively close by would in reality be many miles away.
Mid-August is already autumn in this part of Alaska, and the tundra takes on a marvelous pallete of colors. The few trees in the area are small and scrubby, which permits virtually uninterrupted sight lines in every direction. The ever-shifting clouds would cause one area after another to be bathed in light. And there's something about the light here gives the landscape an ethereal "painterly" quality.
Our trip coincided with the beginning of the fall caribou migration, and we had the great fortune to see caribou almost every day.
Caribou shed their velvet each year around this time, giving their antlers a bloody red appearance. Sometimes a group of migrating caribou would go around bodies of water: but other times they would take a more direct route: Although caribou were the main attraction, we saw various other animals along the way. We also spotted a lone wolf in the alders along the riverbank, but this blurry photo taken from the boat was the only one I managed to get. ...

After a week of paddling, our pilot returned to the prearranged downstream location, picking up the watercraft and the members of the group that weren't continuing on to the backpacking portion of the trip, and dropping off more supplies for those that were.

Sadly, I'm not 100% certain of the exact route we took backpacking, but my best guess is that we went up the Igning and then back down the Kugrak. What I am certain of is that we hiked for around a week in total, going up one Noatak tributary, then crossing over a pass to the east and hiking back down the adjacent one.
We continued to have daily wildlife sightings: although often the animals were far in the distance: A day or so into our hike we began to see bears, although they were never all that close (thankfully). Brooks Range grizzlies are much smaller than their Kodiak counterparts, more around the size of Sierra black bears, but they still aren't to be trifled with.

My most memorable bear sighting came one evening as were finishing up dinner. We spotted both a bear and a wolf, each one about an eighth of a mile downstream from our campsite. At around this exact time, they finally noticed each other. The bear immediately started chasing after the wolf in a direction roughly perpendicular to our location. After ten or fifteen seconds, the wolf abrubtly stopped, turned and began chasing after the bear in the opposite direction. Then another turn and the bear was again chasing the wolf. After a couple more iterations of this, I guess they grew tired of their "game" and moseyed off in opposite directions. It was quite a show while it lasted, though. Ron explained that probably neither bear nor wolf were all that pleased to be in each other's presence, but that they weren't actually looking for any sort of confrontation that might have ended up with one or both of them being seriously injured.

Ron noticed afterwards that the bear was gradually walking toward a point where it would be directly downwind from the five of us. He suggested that we watch closely to see what would happen when the bear finally caught our scent. Sure enough, a minute or so later, the bear turned and took off like a shot, in exactly the opposite direction from where we were located, running hard for several minutes until it was completely out of sight. Ron said that we were probably the first humans that the bear had ever smelled and that it didn't want any part of this strange new phenomenon. Another evening while we were in camp we were serenaded by a pair of wolves. They were far away, and consequently I don't have any good photos, but you might just be able to make them out in the photo below. The wolf that was howling when the photo was taken is white and light gray, center left. The other one, that appears mostly white in the photo, is on top of a small mound towards the right. A day or so later we woke up to an inch or two of snow on our tents. The snow quickly began to melt, but our plan for that day was to climb up and cross over into the next drainage, and so conditions up at the pass were on our mind. Fortunately the snow at the top was light and fluffy and we made it across without problem. As we headed back down the other valley, we continued to spot bears, although always at a safe distance. By the time we were nearly back down to the Noatak, we had counted fifteen bears in total over our week of hiking (although it's possible that some of our sightings were duplicates). Around this time Ron mentioned that he had always wondered where the Noatak-area bears went this time of year, and that now he knew. He also confided that this was the first time he had led a trip with our particular itinerary. When I asked if he was going to continue offering the same trip in future years, he paused and said "probably not". I guess fifteen bears must have been a few too many. I never personally felt particularly threatened, although there were several times that we did need to make a lot of noise because of the lack of visibility as we pushed through alder thickets along the rivers.

The following day we were back at the Noatak. As we waited for the Beaver to arrive at our prearranged meeting place to fly us back to Bettles, we continued to see migrating caribou.
For anyone that loves wilderness and wildlife, I can't recommend a visit to Alaska more highly. I would normally also give a plug for Ron's guiding services, but I read that he's now retired. But be sure to check out John Dittli's gorgeous photographs on his Facebook page.

Fascinating and lovely report. I am quite envious since going to that area has long been a (unfullfilled) dream. When I was much younger in high school and college, I had a poster of a photo of the Brooks Range on my wall and I'd think how marvelous it would be to go there. I did make it to Denali in 2015, but I 've never managed to get to the Gates of the Arctic. Thanks for sharing!

Another envious person here. That's a great place to explore; isn't it great to see the wildlife-- the scenery becomes habitat. Congratulations on your trip, Ian.