Year-end recess in the Alaskan wilderness
Exploring Alaska in winter when it is 40 below zero degrees? I wasn’t sure it was possible (for me). Years ago, as a teenager, my mom and dad took me to Leh, Ladakh (India), and I refused to get out of the car as I couldn’t breathe at such a high elevation and handle the cold. Nevertheless, I survived in Alaska! One of the largest and last states added to the United States in the 1950s, the land of the extreme climate, wild, vast, and nature-rich Alaska feels like a world of its own. In the last ten days, I meandered around the state outside the arctic region like the backpacker Chris McCandless from Into the Wild — exploring the wildlife, hiking one of the most popular glaciers, seeing the northern lights, learning about the Alaskan natives’ culture & history, crossing the Arctic circle, and driving from Anchorage to Fairbanks through the Denali national park as part of my year-end recess in the wilderness. I was expecting some nerve-wracking adventures in the extreme cold and mentally prepared for it. One day I was stranded on a highway where the sidewalk had disappeared because of the snow (probably Google Maps should be intelligent to inform if a sidewalk has not been plowed for days). And another day, I woke up to a freezing Airbnb amid a power & water outage, forcing me to run to the nearest cafe and get ready for an early morning tour.
Day 1, 2
I flew into Anchorage while enjoying some stunning views of the snow-capped mountains and glacial lakes, and oceans on the way from the window. The following day, I woke up to a mesmerizing view outside the window — it was 9:54 am, the sky was dark, and the moon was still up. It was 20 below zero, and the cold was bearable with the gears I had on. I was scared to walk around as I read a lot about bears and moose popping up in the city randomly, locals’ strange encounters with them, and their advice that one shouldn’t walk with headphones on. Every few seconds, I looked back, left, right and center to check if there was a wild animal in my vicinity. Navigating my way around the snow covered sidewalks, I finally made it to the Anchorage Museum in the city’s downtown. It’s a massive museum with fascinating science exhibits demonstrating the native American history and culture of Alaskan tribes (such as Tlingit, Athabascan, Haida, etc.) and the natural phenomena that Alaska experiences — Aurora borealis (also known as the northern lights), midnight sun (when the sun stays up for 24 hrs), winter & summer solstice (shortest & longest day of the year). Finally, I obtained a visual explanation as to why we see Northern lights in different colors — when the atoms in the earth’s atmosphere collide with the solar particles that poles draw towards them with their magnetic force, they generate light. For example, if the nitrogen atoms collide with the solar particles, the generated light is purple; for oxygen atoms, it is green (the most visible to the human eye), and so on.
Day 3, 4
On day 3, I took a wonderful tour with PicTours Alaska to the Wildlife conservation center in Girdwood, an hour and a half drive south of Anchorage on the Seward highway. This center is home to various orphaned and injured animals; it provides them with special care and reintroduces them back into the wilderness. It warms your heart to see winter wildlife in real life that you have only seen in National Geographic or BBC documentaries before. And it’s even more intriguing when you are freezing in the cold, and the animals are super comfortable rolling on the ground, taking a hug in the snow — if they can do it, why can’t you? In the center, we saw unimaginable wildlife scenes of a herd of moose protecting their calf from a wolf and a male caribou fighting with their antlers. But, I was sad that I didn’t see a bear, as they were in hibernation mode during this time of the year and resting in their den.
The next day, I took a hiking trip to the Matanuska Glacier with Greatland Adventures. The drive to the glacier is 2 hrs long, northeast of Anchorage. This 27 miles long glacier is the only one in Alaska easily accessible by car, unlike others that need a glacier landing via airplane. These ice glaciers have formed over hundreds to thousands of years. Walking with massive walls of ice on the side, on ice sheets that would make crackling noises as we would walk, and through highly narrow glacier cracks resembling the Antelope canyon experience made it truly one of its kind and an out-of-the-world adventure. The hike lasted for two hours, and at the end of it, I could barely feel my hands and feet and could only get the blood flowing in them using the chemical warmers our tour guide provided. Such a hike is recommended only with a tour guide; you never know if you are walking on a frozen lake with a crack underneath and how deep that is.
Day 5, 6
Alaska is huge! No matter how long I’d have stayed here, getting the breadth and depth of the state in one go was impossible. But, it would have been an incomplete trip without a glimpse of the Denali views (the highest mountain peak in North America) and the northern and southern parts of Alaska. So, I took an 8 hr road trip from Anchorage (in the south) to Fairbanks (up in the North) through the Parks Highway (the most popular one and well-maintained). I stopped by Talkeetna (a small town), Murie Learning & Research Center in the Denali National Park, Healy (stayover for a night), and finally arrived in Fairbanks the next day.
Seeing the snowy roads and learning how quiet the Parks highway is, and there are only a few gas stations on the way, I thought of reconsidering the road trip idea and taking a flight to Fairbanks instead on the very first day of my Alaska trip. Gradually, I gathered information from locals on which cars to rent (e.g., AWD) and some tips for safe driving. Such as not accelerating or decelerating too quickly, driving like a grandma, and not going on sketchy highways where the rental companies cannot provide roadside assistance. With 9 out of 10 people saying I can make this happen, it boosted my confidence, and I felt encouraged to go ahead. There were no cars for a couple hundred miles, and as I was moving north, the temperatures were falling, and at one point, the difference between the car temperature on the inside and outside was 100 degrees; indeed, very thrilling!
I arrived in Fairbanks in the bone-chilling temperature of 40 below zero; even though I was getting acclimated to the weather by now, I realized that the same gear I had in Anchorage simply won’t work. So, I made the first stop at The Prospectors to buy warmer socks, face coverings, mittens, etc. Lesson learned — driving in winter on some highways in Alaska is possible, but do your research first.
Day 7, 8
The most awaited experience of the trip was here! I took an Aurora Borealis night tour to see the northern lights with Aurora in Alaska. The aurora forecast for the night looked good — activity level ranging from 3 to 5, signifying that the aurora will be brighter. It’s midnight, and we are two hours into the tour; it is getting harder to stay outside the van with 40 below zero and chilling winds, and there is no sign of aurora. And, I am like, this is it; we are not going to see it tonight. In the meantime, the tour guide asks us to be patient and drives us from one place to another to chase aurora. Around 12:30 am, someone yelled at people sitting inside the van, asking them to come out of the vehicle — “Here there is, aurora.” That was when we saw the first streak of gray light. And this was just the beginning. From here onward began the light show — a continuous stream of light dancing, swirling, and waving in the sky in different colors — green, pink, and purple. A phenomenon that was so surreal that we forgot about how cold it was outside and stood there with our heads looking up for about an hour till it lasted. “You sleep under the lights, and you become younger,” as the natives say in Alaska, so we wanted to soak every bit of what the sky had to offer that night. Our tour guide treated us to a campfire, and we bonded with fellow travelers over the campfire on our trip experiences and what made us come to Alaska.
On the second day in Fairbanks, I took a 10-hour round trip from Fairbanks to the Arctic Circle with Alaska Aurora Adventures. Besides the trans-Alaskan oil pipeline visible all throughout (800 miles long; runs from the North to the south), there was no evidence of a civilization that I found on the five-hour-long stretch, no network coverage, no gas stations, and no restrooms. On the route, we saw the sight of an unbelievable landscape for hours and hours of long-frozen trees made of thick ice and frost, each peculiarly shaped, resembling a standing frozen mummy-like structure formed by years of compressed ice. It was the coldest that I’ve felt in Alaska on this trip. I would get off the bus to look at the view, and in a few seconds, my nose and hands would start feeling amputated. Finally, we reached the Arctic Circle Monument sign in the arctic circle, located 66.3 degrees north of the equator. It felt special when in the freezing cold, we were all given certificates for crossing the arctic circle in the land of the midnight sun :)
On Christmas eve, I visited North Pole, a cute little town 10 miles from Fairbanks known for its all-year-round Christmas celebrations. Everything is decorated here with candy canes, and a giant Santa Claus House sells beautiful artifacts.
Alaska & climate change
You read all about it in the news. But it’s different when you hear it from the locals who witness the change daily. Your jaw drops when locals say they have lived in 70 below zero in the winter. And they don’t seem happy that it’s warmer now and the temperatures have risen to 40 below zero. The glaciers that would take hundreds of years to move a few meters are now moving about the same distance in a year. They worry about the glaciers melting too quickly, ocean ice freezing later and melting sooner, disturbing the climate ecosystem — bears that rely on ocean ice for their natural habitat are now moving to Alaskan cities in search of food. They worry about the ice on polar caps melting sooner, releasing gases from deep within the earth’s surface, and harming our planet. The world should be thinking about this, they say.
And, here comes the end of my trip with a heartwarming conversation with an Alaskan mom at the airport:
Me: My heart is still in Alaska — one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in the United States, and I am in love with her and its people living there with warm hearts — kids, adults, and the elderly. I want to move there.
Alaskan mom: Shows me a view from her window of her home in Alaska and says: “Be the change. Never live where you grew up. Move to Alaska”. (She thought I was born in California).
Me: That’s what my mom says too. Your birthplace and workplace should not be the same.
Alaskan mom: Your mom and I would bond on this. Tell her I said that. Come to Alaska.
