Explore Alaska
Interior and northern Alaska is the quintessential “great land”. It’s mostly a rolling plateau divided by the glacier-studded Alaska and Brooks ranges, crisscrossed by rivers and with views of imposing peaks, above all Mount McKinley, the nation’s highest. Even in high summer, when RVs clog the George Parks Highway, people are still hugely outnumbered by game: moose, Dall sheep, grizzly bears, and herds of caribou sweep over seemingly endless swathes of taiga (sparse birch woodland) and tundra.
Heading north from Anchorage the first essential stop is tiny Talkeetna, which has great views of Mount McKinley and the opportunity to fly around it. The mountain is at the heart of Denali National Park, the jewel of the Interior. If you prefer your wilderness with fewer people and regulations, head east to the untrammelled vastness of Wrangell-St Elias National Park. Alternatively, Fairbanks, Alaska’s diverting second city, serves as the hub of the North, with roads fanning out to hot springs and five hundred miles north to the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay.
Weather here can vary enormously from day to day, with even greater seasonal variations: in winter temperatures can drop to -50°F for days at a time, while summer days reach a sweltering 90°F. However, the major problem in summer is huge mosquitoes; don’t forget the insect repellent.
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Talkeetna
Talkeetna
A hundred miles from Anchorage, the eclectic hamlet of TALKEETNA has a palpable small-town Alaska feel, but is lent an international flavour by the world’s mountaineers, who come here to scale the 20,320ft Mount McKinley, usually referred to in Alaska by its Athabascan name Denali, “the Great One”. Whatever you choose to call it, North America’s highest peak rises from 2000ft lowlands, making it the world’s tallest from base to peak (other major peaks such as Everest rise from high terrain). The mountain is best seen from the overlook just south of Talkeetna, which reveals the peak’s transcendent white glow, in sharp contrast to the warm colours all around.
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Denali National Park
Denali National Park
The six-million-acre DENALI NATIONAL PARK, 240 miles north of Anchorage, is home to Mount McKinley, which is often shrouded in cloud. The mountain is far from the park’s only attraction, however. Shuttle buses offer a glimpse of a vast world of tundra and taiga, glaciers, huge mountains and abundant wildlife – the Park Service reports that 95 percent of visitors see bears, caribou and Dall sheep, 82 percent moose, and over one-fifth wolves, along with porcupine, snowshoe hare, red foxes and over 160 bird species. Visiting Alaska without trying to see Denali is unthinkable for most travellers, and therein lies a problem. In high summer, the visitor centre and service areas out on the Parks Highway are a stream of RVs, tour buses and the like. Things pick up in the park itself, and back-country hiking, undertaken by only a tiny fraction of visitors, remains a wonderfully solitary experience.
In winter, Denali is transformed into a ghostly, snow-covered world. Motorized vehicles are banned and travel, even for park personnel, is by snowshoe, skis or dogsled as temperatures dive and northern lights glitter over the snows.
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The Dalton Highway
The Dalton Highway
Built in the 1970s to service the trans-Alaska pipeline, the mostly gravel Dalton Highway, or Haul Road, runs from Fairbanks five hundred miles to the oil facility of Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s north coast, some three hundred miles beyond the Arctic Circle. It is a long, bumpy and demanding drive, so take spare tyres, gas, provisions and, ideally, a sturdy four-wheel-drive vehicle: most regular rentals aren’t permitted up here. Not far from Fairbanks you start to parallel the pipeline, snaking up hills and in and out of the ground. At 188 miles, a sign announces that you’ve just crossed the Arctic Circle. The Northern Alaska Tour Company (t 1-800/474-1986, w www.northernalaska.com) will drive you up in a minibus and either drive you back to Fairbanks ($189; a long arduous day) or fly you back ($359).
The highway plugs on north through increasingly barren territory, finally dispensing with trees as you climb through the wilderness of the Brooks Range, a 9000ft chain mostly held within the Gates of the Arctic National Park. From Atigun Pass you descend through two hundred miles of grand glaciated valleys and blasted Arctic plains to the end of the road at dead-boring Deadhorse. You can’t stroll by the ocean or camp here, so your choices are confined to staying in one of the $190-per-night hotels and taking a $39 tour past the adjacent – and off-limits – Prudhoe Bay oil facility to dip a toe (or your full body) into the Arctic Ocean. By far the best way to do it is with Northern Alaska, who run a three-day fly/drive tour to Prudhoe Bay for $989.
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The Northern Lights
The Northern Lights
The aurora borealis, or “Northern Lights”, an ethereal display of light in the uppermost atmosphere, give their brightest and most colourful displays in the sky above Fairbanks. For up to one hundred winter nights, the sky appears to shimmer with dancing curtains of colour ranging from luminescent greens to fantastic veils that run the full spectrum. Named after the Roman goddess of dawn, the aurora is caused by an interaction between the earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind, an invisible stream of charged electrons and protons continually blown out into space from the sun. The earth deflects the solar wind like a rock in a stream, with the energy released at the magnetic poles – much like a neon sign.
The Northern Lights are at their most dazzling from December to March, when nights are longest and the sky darkest, but late September can be good for summer visitors. They are visible pretty much everywhere, but the further north the better, especially around Fairbanks.
