Deadhorse at the End of the Road (Report 9, July 29)



Our muskox

This past weekend five of us at the AIVC drove up the rest of the
Dalton Highway from Coldfoot to Deadhorse, aka Prudhoe Bay, on the
Beaufort Sea on the Arctic Ocean.  Not very far from home and still in
the boreal forest we spotted a lone male muskox on the Dietrich River.
 He was my first live wild muskox!

With Craig, boss guy, at Galbraith Earthcache

Christie at the red rock flour stream at Galbraith.

At Galbraith Lake we had lunch and played in the rain by the swollen
creek turned red by rock flour washed down from the Gates glacier.
Undeterred by the miserable weather we stopped frequently: by Slope
Mountain to look for Dall Sheep unsuccessfully and on the
Sagavanirktok River for fossils, which we all found.  Thirty miles
outside Deadhorse there was a herd of about twenty muskoxen.   Late
afternoon found us limping into town with a punctured but still

functional tire.  The Silverado truck seats six and is a jacked up but
uncomfortable ride on the washboard road.  

Other than the sixteen
wheelers most vehicles are trucks of some kind, usually white and
belonging to the government or Alaska DOT or Alyeska (“No One Gets
Hurt”) or another contractor on the pipeline.  We met three bikers who
had cycled from Argentina, two of whom were legally blind and riding a
tandem.  Throw in a handful of motorcyclists and a few intrepid
vacationers in campers and you have the Dalton travelers.
Deadhorse and the Prudhoe Bay oilfield consist of about four full-time
residents and 3 to 6,000 transient workers who claim elsewhere as
home.  Most switch out of Deadhorse every two weeks by plane.  We ate
at the Aurora and slept at Deadhorse Camp, both of which are one of
the many dormitory/hotels used by the workers.  Christie and I were
among the very few women there.  We  left outdoor shoes at the door
and donned hospital style booties or slippers to keep the endless mud
out of the buildings.  The $20 buffet had something for everyone,
more choices than I’ve seen since leaving Montana.  We tried a bit of
everything, including ice cream and ten different desserts.

After dinner I introduced Christie to geocaching.  Since the sun was
still not setting there, we had all night but only did a couple of
caches.  She saw her first caribou amid the construction rigs and
trucks.  We also saw red-necked phalaropes by the hundreds, cackling
and white-fronted geese, scaups and spectacled eiders.  With the rain
there was mud everywhere which made this unloveliest of locations even
uglier.

Geocaching at Steel Pi

 

Inside Deadhorse

In the morning we did the guided tour to the ocean, the only way to
get there since everyone must be cleared by security before entering
the oilfield area.  For liability reasons we weren’t allowed to swim
in the ocean so the rest of my group ‘fell’ into the water.  Oops!
Not being a cold water person, I resisted.  Deadhorse is a once-in-a
lifetime experience in that no one would want to do it twice.

Charlotte in Beaufort Sea

AIVC group in Arctic Ocean





Plug ins at every parking space in Deadhorse



Typical Arctic housing