Alaska
Attractions
Anchorage
Just when you think you're in a northern version of the USA
(Kmart check, Wal-Mart check, Computer City check), a black bear
will unexpectedly join you for tea; or 20 hours come and go
without the sun setting; or you don't see the sun at all; or a
wolf slays a yearling moose in the park.
You can easily hoof around most of Anchorage's sights, or
freewheel around them by bike. They include indigenous art and
culture, panoramic parks, monuments, and within hopping
distance, the superb Alaskan wilderness, overlooked by Flattop
Mountain.
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Denali National Park
Situated on the northern and southern flanks of the Alaska
Range, 237mi (382km) from Anchorage, Denali is the nation's
premier subarctic national park, encompassing 6 million acres
(2,400,000ha). Making its presence felt here at a towering
20,320ft (6096m) is Mt Kinley, undoubtedly the main attraction
of the park and something to behold on a clear day. The park
offers camping, hiking, backpacking, mountain biking and
white-water rafting. It all comes at a slight price though,
since nearly a million visitors queue up for permits and the
shuttle buses during the summer months. Try to go in early June
or late September to avoid the crowds, and remember, they all
disappear once you get into the back country. There is camping
within the park as well as other accommodation. Buses service
the park from Fairbanks, but a better, if pricey, introduction
to this natural spectacle is offered from the glass dome-topped
cars of the Alaska Railroad, with trains departing daily from
Fairbanks and traveling south to Anchorage.
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Glacier Bay National Park
Sixteen tidewater glaciers spilling out of the mountains and
filling the sea with icebergs of all shapes, sizes and shades of
blue have made Glacier Bay National Park an icy wilderness
renowned throughout the world. It is an area of green forests,
steep fjords and icebergs. An added attraction is the variety of
marine life, including humpback whales, harbour seals,
porpoises, and sea otters, while other wildlife includes brown
and black bears, wolves, moose, mountain goats and over 200
species of birds. Glacier Bay offers an excellent opportunity
for kayakers to enjoy the protected arms and inlets where the
glaciers are. It is a trail-less park, but it still provides
enjoyable backpacking. The park is serviced by a small
settlement, Gustavus, which can be reached by plane from Juneau.
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Juneau
Juneau isn't the most accessible of capital cities: you can't
reach it by road and every year 200 scheduled flights never make
it into the city due to bad weather. Once there, though, you'll
find much to like in this Artic 'little San Francisco' with a
picture-pretty skyline.
Though there is a downtown attraction or few worth your
while, the real oomph of the place is its wild frontiers. In
winter there's pristine, sculptural white, and summer months
make the lush terrain really come alive: bears are done
hibernating, wildflowers are whistling and streams are skipping.
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Kenai Peninsula
The Kenai Peninsula to the south of Anchorage is the most
popular recreational area in the state. The peninsula is a
conglomeration of mountains, fjords, icefields and glaciers
serviced by a range of hiking trails, numerous campgrounds and
beautiful paddling areas. Kenai Fjords National Park covers
587,000ac (234,800ha) with an abundance of marine wildlife and
glaciers, including Harding Icefield, measuring 50mi (80km) long
and 30mi (48km) wide. Many towns in this area are delightful:
Homer is a colourful fishing village that has a number of
artists lured by the region's beauty. A handful of galleries
display mostly local art. Camping is the most inexpensive way to
experience the peninsula but you can also find reasonable
accommodation in the towns of Seward, Homer and Soldotna. The
Kenai Peninsula is 43mi (70km) south of Anchorage and is easily
accessible by road. Buses run daily between Seward and
Anchorage.
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Sitka
Rivaled by few for the sheer beauty of its surroundings,
Sitka is fronted by the Pacific ocean and behinded (to the west)
by Mt Edgecumbe, an extinct volcano.
Near the city's waterfront is St Michael's Cathedral, a
replica of the 100-year-old Russian Orthodox cathedral that
burned down in 1966. Luckily, Sitka's residents saved the
priceless treasures and icons inside. East of the city centre,
past the boat harbour, is the octagonal Sheldon Jackson Museum,
in which you'll find a highly regarded collection of indigenous
artefacts.
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Alaska
Off the Beaten Track
Gates of the Arctic
The Gates of the Arctic National Park is a vast
wilderness area, straddling the Artic Divide in the Brooks
Range, 200mi (322km) northwest of Fairbanks. This rugged
back country contains no National Park Service facilities,
and is recommended only for serious, knowledgable
backpackers and paddlers. The park covers 8.4 million acres
(3,360,000ha), extends 200mi (322km) from east to west and
lies north of the Artic Circle. The Gates themselves - Mt
Boreal and Frigid Crags - flank the North Fork of the
Koyukuk River where the unobstructed path northward to the
Arctic coast was discovered by Robert Marshall in 1929.
Most of the park is vegetated with shrubs or is tundra,
and is inhabited by grizzly bears, wolves, dall sheep,
moose, caribou and wolverines. The terrain is only
intermittently good for hiking, so walking across boggy
ground and tussocks is inevitable. Considering the natural
obstacle course on the ground, expect to cover about five or
six miles (8-10km) a day. It's possible to drive to the
Gates but there are a couple of flights from Fairbanks to
Bettles - the closest village with food and accommodation -
where charter air-taxis are available.
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Wrangell-St Elias National Park
If you are intrigued by valleys, canyons, towering
mountains, icefields and glaciers but don't feel like
battling the crowds of Denali National Park, you'll probably
welcome Wrangell-St Elias National Park. An adventure into
this preserve requires time and patience rather than money,
but it can lead to a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Encompassing 13.2 million acres (5,280,000ha), Wrangell-St
Elias - located along the Canadian border - is a true
wilderness, both diverse and plentiful. Species in the
preserve include moose, black and brown bears, dall sheep,
mountain goats, wolves, wolverines and beavers; three of
Alaska's 11 caribou herds also call the park home. It's
possible to hike or paddle to a glacier or float through the
vertical-walled Nizina River Canyon. There is limited
accommodation at nearby McCarthy or the 'ghost' town of
Kennicott. It's possible to drive to the preserve but bus
and air companies service McCarthy frequently.
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Alaska
Activities
Alaska has enshrined its greater than great outdoors
and there are more ways to partake than you can count on
frostbitten fingers and toes. Some of the best hiking
trails are the Chilkoot Trail near Skagway, which was
used by gold prospectors late last century; the
Resurrection Pass Trail on the Kenai Peninsula; and the
Pinnell Mountain Trail near Hyder, which has great views
of the midnight sun. Alaska has some great paddling
opportunities at Misty Fiords National Monument, Glacier
Bay National Park and Katmai National Park. Blue-water
paddling - coastal touring in ocean kayaks - is very
popular throughout Southeast and Southcentral Alaska,
and is also good at Muir Inlet in Glacier Bay National
Park or Tracy Arm Fjord, south of Juneau. Fishing
in ubiquitous rivers, streams and lakes yields rainbow
and cutthroat trout, Dolly Varden, Arctic char and
grayling.
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Alaska
History
Since white settlement, Alaska has both struck it
rich and struck out with its natural resources.
While fur was fur, picks struck gold, whales swum
obligingly into harpoons and oil gurgled in pipes,
Alaska seemed a bountiful repository of raw
resources. As each of these resources in turn has
been discredited or exhausted, the state has fallen
into disfavour, often portrayed as a bleak and
thankless environment that only the polar bear or
the Inupiaq could love.
The first Alaskans migrated from Asia to north
America around 40,000 years ago during an ice age
that squeezed a 1449km (900mi) land bridge out of
the ocean separating Siberia and Alaska. Although
many of these nomadic tribes continued south, four
ethnic groups remained to eke out their existence in
the wilderness - the Athabascans, Aleuts, Inupiaq
and the coastal tribes of Tlingits and Haidas. The
first Caucasian to set foot in Alaska was Virtus
Bering, a Danish navigator sailing on behalf of the
tsar of Russia in 1728, who quickly took notice of
the pelt potential of the large local seal and otter
populations. The Russians quickly established a base
for the fur trade on Kodiak Island, a lawless cowboy
trade that spat and bit unregulated until the
Russian-American Company was organised in the 1790s.
Other European invaders, most notably the Spanish
and the British, were seduced by this lucrative
coast but Russian predominance extended well into
the 19th century.
The fur trade hit hard times in the 1860s and,
with European wars demanding both attention and
resources, the Russians decided to downsize their
territorial holdings: several offers for the sale of
Alaska were made to an initially ambivalent USA.
Eventually, in 1867, the Americans signed a canny
treaty to purchase the region for
7200000.00 - less than two
cents an acre. Despite the bargain buy out, Alaska
remained lawless and unorganised, accessible (and
interesting) only to a few hardy settlers until its
natural riches began to be exploited one by one.
First it was whales, taken mostly in the southeast,
and then the enormous salmon stocks, but the real
explosion in Alaska's economy, population and
profile came in the 1880s with the discovery of
gold.
Chortling with the confidence that arrives hand
in hand with wealth, big hats and the clicking over
of a century's clock, Alaskans (all 60,000 of them)
began laying claim to their own future. Congress
began to grant non-voting legislative privileges but
the statehood movement subsided during WWI when many
residents departed south for high-paying jobs. Thus
depleted, Alaska dozed until mid-1942 when the
Japanese rang alarm bells by attacking the Attu and
Aleutian Islands. Alaska owes much of its
infrastructure to the concerted US response to this
military threat on its northwest flank. Most
notably, Alaska's only overland link to the rest of
the USA, the Alcan, was built, a 2447km (1520mi)
engineering masterwork completed in just over eight
months. The injection of funds and personnel spurred
post-war development, leading to a new drive for
statehood. In 1959, President Eisenhower proclaimed
the 49th State of the Union, spawning the cute
Alaskan monikering of the 'Lower 48'.
In 1968, massive oil deposits were discovered
underneath Prudhoe Bay in the Arctic Ocean,
provoking intense negotiations between a ravenous
oil industry, environmentalists and Native Alaskans
with moral claims to land that now promised to
generate extraordinary wealth. A treaty was signed
with the indigenous population in 1971 and a 1270km
(789mi) pipeline to the warm-water port of Valdez
was constructed. In 1977 the oil that has made
Alaska the richest state in the USA began to flow.
Oil still accounts for the gleam in the eyes of many
Alaskans despite the shadows cast by the 1986 slump
in world prices and the tragic Exxon Valdez
spill in 1989.
The exploitation of 'natural resources',
particularly oil, is a hot topic in Alaska,
concentrating the juicy issue of a coveted
independence from Washington, the concerns of
environmental groups, the desire for economic wealth
and the rights of the indigenous population. An
increasing awareness that the Alaskan wilderness is
an outstanding natural resource all the more
valuable if it is left untouched may be the
sentiment which saves the fabled frontier.
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Alaska
Environment
Easily the USA's largest member, Alaska is a
huge state, able to give each of its residents
more than a square mile in which to do their
morning star jumps. The state measures 1400mi
(2254km) north to south and 2400mi (3864km)
across the girth, comprising several distinctive
regions. The Southeast, also known as the
Panhandle, is a 500mi (805km) coastal strip
including the wildly serrated Inside Passage, a
lifeline for isolated towns inaccessible by
road. The mountain ranges, glaciers and fjords
of this region continue through Southcentral in
its 650mi (1047km) swerve of shore and bend of
bay from the Gulf of Alaska to Kodiak Island.
The Interior is Alaska's heartland, with milder
weather than the state's extremities and scenic
delights which include Denali National Park,
Alaska's number one attraction. The Bush is
larger than all the other regions combined,
claiming the whole western swathe, Arctic Alaska
and the southwest island chains. Bush Alaska is
generally accessible only by charter plane,
rendering it prohibitively expensive for many
travelers, but enabling the maintenance of a
lifestyle unaffected by the state's booming
summer tourist industry.
If you believed the hype, you'd reckon Alaska
was shoulder to shoulder wildlife. Well, the
salmon aren't yet picketing for high-rise
streams, but it is pretty packed here if you're
talking fins, four legs, flippers or flappers.
The moose population is around 150,000, and
black-tailed deer, caribou, mountain goats, dall
sheep, bears and wolves are frequently seen
picnicking from the urban periphery to back of
beyond. Harbor seals, porpoises, dolphins,
humpback and minke whales, sea lions, sea otters
and walruses are all common marine mammals,
making an arctic ocean plunge a decidedly social
affair. Late summer salmon runs (when thousands
of fish swim upstream to spawn) choke many
Alaskan streams. The action is airborne too, and
the sky is alive with birdlife, most notably the
impressive bald eagle, which has a wingspan that
often reaches 8ft (2m). The flora of Alaska is
diverse, changing dramatically from one region
to the next. Among the 33 native tree species
are Sitka spruce (the state tree), western
hemlock, alder, white spruce, cottonwood and
paper birch.
Alaska's climate is not known for its
consistency, and it's not uncommon for more than
one season to be crammed into a single day.
Don't stake your raincoat on it, but Southeast
and Southcentral Alaska generally experience
high rainfall and moderate temperatures with
summers averaging 60-70°F (15-21°C). In the
Interior precipitation is light but temperatures
fluctuate wildly. The climate in the western
coastal region is mostly cool with summer
temperatures around 45°F (7°C) with fog and rain
common along the coast. Most of Alaska
experiences the magic of the midnight sun, a
surfeit of daylight which apparently sanctions
the kind of madness which finds whole families
undertaking 6mi (10km) hikes after dinner and
softball teams convening for a witching hour
hit-up.
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Alaska
Getting There & Away
Flights to Alaska can deposit you in
Anchorage, Juneau, Ketchikan or Fairbanks.
If driving you'll find yourself motoring up
the Alcan (also known as the Alaska Hwy),
and if arriving by boat then it'll be a trip
along the Inside Passage waterway. Anchorage
International Airport (ANC), 11km (7mi) west
of the city centre, is Alaska's largest
airport and is serviced by major airlines
but most travelers from Asia or Europe will
need to touch down in Seattle, Los Angeles,
Detroit or Vancouver first and catch a
connecting flight to Anchorage. You can
drive or take a combination of buses along
the Alcan into Alaska. Good tyres are
essential on this road. Ferries run from
Bellingham, Washington, take between two and
four and a half days to reach Juneau
(depending on the route) and are a scenic
and hassle free way to get to Alaska.
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Getting Around
There are a couple of domestic airlines
servicing major towns and quite a few bush
planes which can be chartered to access
remote destinations. Regular bus services
are available between the larger towns and
cities at reasonable rates. The Alaska
Railroad provides a good, scenic means of
transport, though rarely the cheapest.
Marine ferries service southeast,
southcentral and southwest Alaska and are
often the dominant mode of transport in
these road-unfriendly areas. Car rental
agencies are located in major cities.
Cycling is a good way of getting around, and
can be economically combined with ferry
trips if your bike doesn't convert into a
pedal-steamer.
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