Sunday June 15, 2014
Terry and I had always wanted to go to Barrow, Alaska. Terry thought it intriguing to visit the nation's most northern point plus her parents had visited and shared some interesting stories. As for me, I had developed a mild curiosity after reading an article entitle, If I Can Take It There, I Can Take It Anywhere in a 1996 Outside Magazine article. Terry and I would have ruminated about Barrow for many years and then might never have followed through. All that immediately changed on June 19, 2011 when I received an unexpected phone message from fellow geocacher Frank Bernhardt (geocaching name SM741). The words were a little garbled and staticky with occasional drop outs and annoying echoes, all this being due to the signal bouncing 3,264.46 miles from cell tower to tower, but the achievement came through loud and clear. "I am north of Barrow and have found Beyond Top of the World (geocache GC1YYCZ)." Well, fiddle-dee-dee! Frank Bernhardt had just captured the northern most geocache in the United States. Interestingly enough Frank thought he hung up the phone, but in reality it recorded an additional segment of his conversation with the cab driver. "Oh, he'll be up here now. He will be very envious when he hears my message." Indeed, Frank had painted me green with envy. I must get to Barrow soon!
We incorporated Barrow into our 2014 Alaska itinerary. It would be an incredibly long day for me thus pushing me to my post-surgery physical limits and would also prove to be our most expensive geocache found to date.
I would have loved to hit the snooze button when the alarm clock began screeching at 5:00 AM. However, every minute counted if we wanted to catch the Alaska Airline flight to Barrow. In fact, we had gotten up so early that the breakfast clerk at our hotel hadn't brought out the breakfast buffet yet. Motivating this clerk was analogous to pushing a string and we eventually grabbed the first few items put out and fled. The hotel was gracious enough to provide a free cab to the airport. The flight to Barrow, including a brief stop at Dead Horse, was about an hour and a half and provided numerous wonderful views of ice encased seas. As we landed at the Wiley Post–Will Rogers Memorial Airport our pilot announced it was a beautiful day in Barrow with sunny skies and a current temperature of 36 degrees. Such was the blessing of summertime. If we had been here in winter, well it would be downright nasty. A friend of mine had spent several weeks here one winter. He shared stories of minus 60 degree temperature with minus 75 windchill, snow whiteouts, ice fog, and 24 hours of darkness. Yes, today was a great weather day.
I must admit it was a wee bit odd being in an airport with only one gate, one baggage carousel and hardly enough room to swing a polar bear. The building looked, felt and smelled grizzled and dated. After wandering around aimlessly for a moment or two we finally bumped into our tour guide Mike Shults. Mike had lived here for 41 years and knew every nook and cranny of the town. He reminded us that although he had a pre-planned tour, he was "At Your Service" and would take us anywhere and do anything including the four geocaches we sought.
The entire village reminded me of an Eskimo version of an improvised Appalachian community. The older homes were made of unpainted plywood and tin. Mike pointed out that due to permafrost all homes were built on pilings. If the foundation was placed directly on the ground the home's heat warmed the frozen soil and sunk into it. However, homes didn't sink straight down, but slide in at odd angles. We saw several sad examples of it. Yards were littered with broken snow machines, discarded appliances, pallets, mattresses, wooden dog sleds, frames of stretched skins, pots and pans, whale baleen shards and Huskies chained to little wooden boxes. Mike explained some homes have only one room, no indoor plumbing and use honey buckets.
All terrain vehicles (ATVs) seem to be a way of life here and they buzzed around us like busy bees. We also were passed by a group of four dirt bikes one of which had training wheels!
Unsurprizingly there are no trees or bushes in Barrow. The land was totally flat and gravely and for about eight months out of the year was surrounded by ice. Polar bears and Arctic foxes live in the region as well as the bowhead whale. Mike pointed out whale remnants on several spots on the ice. Subsistence hunting is still a way of life for this Inupiat Eskimo community and the harvest is shared by all. Mike explained thirty crews do whaling and this year only six caught whales.
Barrow has about 30 miles of unpaved roads and all of them dead-end, most of them into the Arctic Ocean. There is absolutely no way to drive off "the island". There are no McDonald's or Walmart or Starbucks or Rave Cinemas. There are a hand full of restaurants and one grocery store.
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| Beautiful downtown Barrow | Homes in Barrow | Home showing pilings |
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| One of the newer homes in town | Wooden dog sled convention | Road dead ends at Arctic Ocean |
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| Husky serves as a home security system and sled puller | Barrow humor | "Magic" Mike Shults and Windows to the World tours |
From Wikipedia, "In 1935, the famous humorist Will Rogers and pilot Wiley Post made an unplanned stop at Walakpa Bay 15 miles south of Barrow while en route to Barrow. As they took off again, their plane stalled and plunged into a river, killing them both. Two memorials have been erected at the location, now called the Rogers-Post Site. Another memorial is located in Barrow." Mike brought us to this memorial for some history and a photo op. As he did throughout the day, he had Terry and I stand together at the site while he snapped a photo. There was a virtual geocache here (Burr, GC6341) which required us to get our photo at the memorial and send it to the cache owner. Done! One geocache down and three to go.
Our next stop was the North Warning System (NWS) formally known as the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line. This is one of fifteen long range surveillance radars that form a military "tripwire" stretching from Alaska to southern Labrador.
Just beyond the satellite dishes was the Imaiqsaun Cemetery. Mike said burials were easier in the winter when the ground was frozen and typically extra graves were dug for summer use. Due to problems with permafrost the dead have to be reburied every 100 years or so.
The Bowhead Whale display and plaque explained a bowhead was one of the oldest and largest mammals on earth. Whales are hunted by boat in the fall keeping with a tradition going back thousands of years. The skin and blubber, known as muktuk, is prized by the Inupiat, and often eaten frozen. Equally important to us outsiders was the fact a nice sized geocache (Bowhead, GCB266) was hidden within the bones.
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| City of Barrow Imaiqsaun Cemetery | Ouch! gasoline at $7.00 a gallon! | Bowhead whale display |
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| I found the sizeable geocache (with some super eager help from Mike). | Signing the log sheet | Welcome to Barrow sign overlooking the Arctic Ocean. Yup, there is a geocache here! |
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| The northern most road ends without any fanfare into the Arctic Ocean. | Here's Terry standing in the Arctic Ocean. We have other photos of us standing in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Three down and two (Indian and Southern) to go! | Famous Whale Bone Arch displays the jaw bones of a Bowhead whale and whaling crew boats. Standing here I felt like Johnny Cash singing the song, "I've Been Everywhere". |
Our last two geocaches brought us about as far north as any automobile could go. The first one was called Top Of The World (GC1DYFV) and was located at the Welcome to Barrow sign. As was typically the case, my wife (geocaching name Mrs. Amazing) made the find within seconds. Now reached the moment I had been waiting for since Frank Bernhardt called me three years ago. To help ensure I would find the geocache Beyond Top of the World (GC1YYCZ) I had read the logs of the 29 people who found it before me. I studied every one of their photos meticulously. However, when we got to the site I was still worried if I would fumble on the one yard line. Mike drove his truck as close as he could, but I would still have to negotiate a fair amount of snow and ice. This just added to the adventure. As is usually the case, I had worried for not as I found the small green bison tube container in less than a minute. I know Robert Peary worked much harder to reach the North Pole than I did getting this geocache, but I still beamed with pride. Not only had Terry and I beat my cancer together, but we stood here today fulfilling our dreams. I got a little choked up realizing it all.
Alcoholism is a problem here in Barrow and Mike pointed out the local detox center. Although Barrow had enacted a "damp" law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages it allowed for import, possession and consumption. With alcohol comes domestic violence, public intoxication, operating vehicles under the influence, assaults and shortened life spans. I wondered if the hardship of living in this environment plus having nowhere to go and nothing to do was a contributing factor.
Mike likes to help out the native Alaskans whenever he can, so he took us to a small shop where the Inupiat made jewelry using whale parts. We were under no obligation to buy anything, but I really wanted a nice keepsake of our Barrow expedition. I bought Terry a nice pair of earrings and had her pose with the fellow who had created them. For me it was a magical moment.
We made a quick drive-by of the Barrow High School, a relatively new facility with computer rooms, an indoor track, heated pool and sensational outdoor football field. The typical graduating class is around 30 people. Total cost to build the facility was $85 million and costs $21,000 per student per year. All monies come from an annual oil tax.
Mike dropped us off at the grocery so we could have a gander at the cost of living. Prices are extremely high as products must travel a great distance to get here. Terry has always been one of the best bargain shopper I've ever known so it was fun watching her point at price tags and gasp, "Oh my gosh!" over and over again. Several store employees spotted us gawking and snapping photos. They simply shrugged their shoulders and kept right on walking. They obviously had seen this many times before.
Our tour had come to an end and we asked Mike to drop us off at the Top of The World hotel so we could grab some hamburgers before catching the flight home. There was a large Inupiat family gathered in the dining area celebrating Father's Day and it was fun to sit and people watch. We called each of our children to let them know we were still alive and each of them wished me a happy Father's Day.
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We walked to the airport within plenty of time to grab a 6:30 PM flight out of Barrow. We found it wonderfully intriguing Inupiat Elders got to board the flight first. Our total trip time would be a whopping six hours as the plane flew a Barrow-to-Anchorage-to-Fairbanks loop pattern. Thus we would first fly to Anchorage (with a three hour layover) and then head to Fairbanks. The flight landed at 12:30 AM and I must admit I was totally spent. By the time we reached the hotel we had put in almost a 21 hour day. I had been physically pushed to my limits, but daggone it I had survived.