“Fake it till you make it” is an oft-repeated slogan throughout the widely-overlapping areas of corporate and alcoholic America. Its also a useful mantra for a solo backpacker picking his way through the tussocks of Denali National Park. In 2011, when I first ventured into the Alaskan heartland, I had just one entry on my backpacking resume. Scrambling along glacial-fed rivers scanning the horizon for bears, I didn’t even know who I was supposed to be impersonating, Merriweather Lewis? After returning to Alaska in 2014 and again in 2017, I realized I didn’t have to fake it anymore.
Alaska is a confusing place. It’s more than twice the size of Texas, the second largest state, but it only has 31,000 miles of roads – a little more than Vermont. It’s a wide-open territory that’s nearly impossible to visit without a lot of money or time.
Surprisingly, Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska’s two commercial centers and wilderness gateways, could be plopped down in South Dakota or South Carolina without being out of place. Probably their only useless features would be the rectangular lakes at their airports that allow float planes to ply rural Alaska and resupply among the avalanche of asphalt.
Another similarity they bear to most mid-size American cities is that they feel like they’re on the far side of a boom economy. This is true of most of Alaska where the construction season is so short that new businesses just put up a new building rather than rehabilitating an old one. And old buildings stick around forever because they are frozen most of the year.
Beyond climate, Alaska has experienced of number of actual booms and subsequent busts as invaders sought to cash in on the state’s natural resources. The town of Eagle, current population 86, straddles the American-Canadian divide where the Yukon River crosses into Alaska. At the turn of the 20th century, during the height the gold rush, the town boasted a population of 1,000 and an Army fort. The people, and the military, have all moved to Anchorage and Fairbanks, though, and like much of the rest of Alaska, Eagle is a small community with a collection of empty buildings.
Denali
Most people come to Alaska for the nature. That too is a study in contrasts. In 2016, nearly 600,000 people visited Denali National Park, the most famous park in the state. Just up the road, only 10,000 people visited the much larger in Gates of the Arctic National Park. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in the state’s southeast corner received 80,000 visitors despite boasting some of the tallest mountains in the country. Of course, these numbers are dwarfed by the nearly 6 million people that visited the Grand Canyon last year.
Belying these numbers is the unspoken secret of Alaska: accessibility. Most of Alaska is off limits to most people. During my first trip to the state, I visited the most popular and most accessible areas because I was short on time and money. During my second trip in 2014, with time on my hands and accommodating friends, I visited some of the less frequented parts of the state. On my most recent trip, I could afford to pay for a bush plane to fly me, and my friends, into the depths of the state’s protected land.
Alaska is the kind of place where you can happen upon a glacier but you have to work much harder harder to escape other people. On the road between Anchorage and Valdez, I was tired of driving and pulled off the highway to go for walk. A few minutes later, I found myself snapping selfies on to the Worthington, Glacier. It was just one of several accessible glaciers I passed on the road, along with all the other vacationers.
Before my 2014 trip, I had spent the previous 14 months backpacking through South America, Europe, and New Zealand. Despite an abundance of beauty, I failed to find solitude. I was returning to Alaska to see friends, but I sought out Gates of the Arctic to be by myself. Luckily, I had plenty of time.
Unable to afford a bush plane into the park, I booked a ticket for a van that drives up the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Deadhorse and back. After seven hours of scenery, I hopped out and started walking. Gates of the Arctic has no entrance, but it’s only a few miles from the Dalton Highway by foot.
During the next five days, I saw an arctic fox, two bears (or maybe the same one twice), and a dead moose. I did not, however, see a single human. Finally, after quitting my job fifteen months before, I had obtained the solitude and loneliness I desired. Even in this huge, empty state, time and money are the key ingredients. Otherwise, the only realistic option is to face the crowds and restrictions that come along with visiting Denali.
Alaska is unquestionably beautiful. Whether its along the coast near Valdez or among the giant mountains of the interior, the state constantly leaves one breathless. But to escape the crowds and take part in a real wilderness adventure is no easy feat. With two trips under my belt, this past 4th of July the stars finally aligned to bring a truly epic trip into focus.
At 8:00 am on June 28th, I boarded my Alaska Airlines flight in Washington D.C. At 6:00 pm the following day, we waited on a gravel bar in the middle of the Alanta River as our pilot, Dirk, flew away in his bush plane. After three flights, seven hours of driving, and a Mariners baseball game in the middle, we had made it to the backcountry.
We included me, my fiancé Laura, her college friend Chris, his wife Jenny, and Chris’s co-clerk Anthony. Jenny had never been backpacking in her life. Anthony planned to spend the next four nights in a tent he lovingly nicknamed the sarcophagus. Chris, Jenny, and Anthony had moved to Fairbanks the previous August where Anthony and Chris clerked for a federal judge.
I imagine that by the time Lewis returned to St. Louis, he thought leading an expedition across the western half of the United States was pretty easy. Similarly, the five days we spent hiking and camping in the Brooks Range made me realize I was no longer faking it. Chris nicknamed me Ranger Dan.
During the five-day trip, we saw bears, hiked to glacial lakes, and ate like royalty. I’m not sure if my favorite meal of the trip was the potatoes and eggs for breakfast or the mac and Tillamook cheese for dinner. But, my favorite beverage was the 4th or 5th cup of coffee I drank on the gravel bar as we waited for Dirk to return in our bush plane.
The trip was notable in that it wasn’t notable. We hiked, we trudged, we navigated through dense bush and tried not to sprain our ankles on the dense tussocks.
Dirk said he would pick us up at three. At six, we used our satellite phone to call him. Dirk’s wife said he was 10 minutes away. We heard the plane before I hung up the phone.
Hiking alone in the Alaskan wilderness for five days is no longer daunting.