Around 40 miles north of Coldfoot the landscape changes dramatically. Coming around a bend in the road Sukakpak Mountain suddenly dominates your field of vision. Massive marble cliffs rise up out of the ground for three thousand feet. This is the Brooks Range, the most northern extent of the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide.It's also a strong signal that you've arrived at Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.
Sunkakpak Mountain. About 6 hours after taking this picture, i came across that car on the road. It was flipped upside down in the tundra with the lights still on, but no body was inside.
A close up of Sukakpak's marble and metamorphosed limestone cliffs.
Sunkakpak Mountain behind a veil of rain
Shining wet in the sun.
In the 1930's a guy called Robert Marshall spent a lot of time up here and came up with the name of the park (which wasn't established until 1980). He called two specific mountains, Frigid Crags and Boreal Mountain, the Gates of the Arctic. That was a few valleys over from where i was but Sukakpak Mountain is impressive enough be called a sentinel if not a "gate". It is one of those distinctive possibilities of nature that burns an image in a mans head. That being so, it is no surprise that the mountain has functioned as the historical boundary between the Eskimo and Athabaskan cultures of the Arctic.
The rock began to look more like limestone.
The impressive mountains continued, and the massive grey cliffs and overthrust characteristics reminded me of Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada. Opportunities for rewarding exploration were present in nearly every side valley that i drove past. Tree line was very low, and streams coming from side valleys were contained in flat, braided gravel beds that made for easy access up the valleys. Farther north, the rock seemed to be changing from metamorphosed rock into more limestone looking stones. I've been looking for limestone in Alaska for years. The cliffs were far from me, but if they were limestone then that opened up the possible existence of caves.
Small braided streams seemed to offer easy access to wild valleys.
A fresh looking landslide large enough to have possibly damned the valley's stream.
I kept finding great places to camp and hike but kept deciding to continue on. I wanted to get where i was going first, then come back at a more leisurely pace and do some hiking. The weather was a little ominous anyway. Eventually i made it up to Atigun Pass. It was typically cold, rugged and windy for a mountain pass, put unusually small for a road to be going over. It was much smaller than many passes that i have walked over on small trails. I was stunned at how completely different things were in the land on the other side of the divide.. Truly, i had gone through the gates.
I didn't know it at the time but these would be the last trees i would see for a few days.
At the level of Atigun Pass, metallic tinted gravels were covered in nearly fluorescent green moss.
