Deadhorse & Prudhoe Bay

Tundra ponds. Because the permafrost (up to 500-600m thick) is frozen and holds a lot of water on the surface.

I have one more full day in Deadhorse before heading back home to New Hampshire. It's been a long, fun, full 2 months and it will be nice to be home again. I realized I didn't share much about where I am other than the ice and the tundra. That's the best part, but most of my time has been been spent sitting at Deadhorse Camp in Deadhorse.

Deadhorse Camp, a.k.a. Home Sweet Home. It's like a single-wide, 2-story trailer on stilts, and one of the first camps constructed here in the 80s.

Deadhorse Camp is the area on the left, an X marks our building. The airport stretches out behind it. The small x to the left is where we watched the mama brown bear and her cub eat the caribou carcass while we sat in the truck.

The Dalton Highway (also called the Haul Road) crosses the photo. We're the first camp you come to if you drive up from the south. We're almost at the very northern end of the road. We drive about 10 minutes around to the airport.

Deadhorse is basically the 'town' around the airport, several camps, a store and a couple hotels, and a variety of workers, travelers and researchers like us stay here. Prudhoe Bay is the is the area filled with camps dedicated to drilling and housing oil workers.

Prudhoe Bay is a 'company town', and it focuses on oil production, transport and supporting services. It's not set up for tourism, but there is some mostly from travelers driving up the Dalton Hwy in everything from motor cycles to motor homes.

The Field is where the majority of the drilling operations take place and is a highly restricted area. Private vehicles are prohibited, though some camps offer tours of The Field. The only access to the Arctic Ocean is through here by road.

The Field, the restricted area, and a flowline from one of the drilling sights.

The Field sprawls across nearly 90,000 acres of tundra and ponds, linked by miles and miles of flowlines snaking across the tundra. Flowlines carry 180 degree oil straight from the drill sites to the gargantuan pump house where the oil is processed then sent south through the pipeline.

Prudhoe Bay drill sight, flowlines and lakes.

Prudhoe Bay drill sight off the coast.

Even oil field workers enjoy a fun-run and free T-shirt, and the aerial crew took advantage of the last 5K event of the season to see a part of the Arctic most Joe Schmoes never see. Surprisingly there was a long list of 5K events in the oil field this summer and we finally made it to the last one.

Lisa Barry, Vicki Beaver & Luciana Santos

An Evening on the Haul Road - the best was last

Two nights ago a couple of us jumped in the truck after dinner and took a drive south a little ways on the Dalton Hwy (a.k.a. the Haul Road because of all the trucks hauling equipment and supplies up from the lower 48). We were searching for wildlife. It started slow, but as the evening passed the critters became more active. There was a muskox herd off in the distance but too far to photograph. Terns dove into a small lake, feeding on tiny fish.

First we saw a mother Arctic ground squirrel and her 3 youngsters eating something off the road gravel.  We pulled up and mom took off but the kids clearly didn't recognize possible danger even as we pulled up alongside and parked. Mom chirped from the vegetation off the road but they ignored her.

We drove further and the short-eared owls started coming out. This one flew parallel to the truck as we drove south.

We turned around and a fledgling short-eared owl sat at the edge of the road with a lemming at it's feet. We had a few minutes of it staring unblinking at us before we had to pull ahead to let a semi pass. He must not have seen it and came within about a foot from it, almost hitting it. Fortunately it could fly and launched as the truck passed.

Then we saw five Willow Ptarmagin.

We headed closer to home and the muskox herd had moved closer to the road. By this time the sun had settled to a beautiful low angle and the light on the herd was super. We were lucky to find a short pullout up ahead of where the 13 muskox were ambling, which put us really close to their path. They weren't bothered by us at all and ambled past.

But the best was saved 'til last. We saw a beautiful bear.

And finally we saw another bear with a cub, about 100 yards from where we're staying. We knew about a caribou carcass, likely road kill, between the bear and our camp so we pulled up to it and waited. Mom and cub disappeared behind the river bank. We waited. Mom popped up, then disappeared. It was eery how easily a big bear could be hidden out here and we confirmed how risky it is to walk anywhere here. Mom popped up again and headed for the carcass. The cub followed. We sat 50 feet away, in awe.

Wildlife around Deadhorse

We've been grounded the last couple days due to fog, so we've spent a lot of time sitting around hoping it will lift and let us fly. But this has let us spend some time looking for wildlife along the Haul Road. We've seen a number of birds - short-eared owl, long-tailed jaegers, red-throated loons, and a golden eagle among others. We also see Arctic ground squirrels, caribou and muskox, plus one amazing sighting of a wolverine. Here are photos of some of them.

Large bull muskox with two youngsters.

Two youngsters seeming to use each other to try to rub away the mosquitos.

Arctic Ground Squirrel

Caribou

Wolverine

Deadhorse, Alaska

I've been in Deadhorse (also part of Prudhoe Bay) for 2 days doing bowhead whale surveys, much like the beluga surveys I was a part of in Barrow. But Deadhorse is very different from Barrow. This place is an expansive plain filled with many camps. The camps are operated by different companies and it's all based around oil drilling onshore and now oil exploration offshore. There are also, somewhat amazingly, tourists. The Haul Road stretches up through AK all the way here. My first night I met an international motorcycling tour group riding bikes all over AK and part of Canada.

More photos out the bubble window.

Prudhoe Bay

Travel to Deadhorse

I had a pretty interesting travel day getting from Port Townsend, WA to Deadhorse, AK. It involved a short hike, 2 buses, a ferry, a monorail, 2 planes and a van. I schlepped all my stuff to the bus stop in uptown PT to catch the 6am ride. There I met Ilene and Sarah and began a several hour conversation. We were joined at the next stop by Yvonne. The 4 of us chatted all the way to Seattle, and Ilene and Yvonne traveled with me all the way to the airport. They were a fresh change to my usual plod to catch a plane, and they are each very strong and interesting women that I’m really glad I got to know.

Sarah, Ilene and Yvonne on the Bainbridge/Seattle ferry.

Ilene (headed to the Outer Banks, NC) and her husband met while working for Greenpeace in the 80s – he a captain, she doing PR. He was on the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed in New Zealand. Turns out, we figured out we knew each other more than 10 years ago when I worked at a gym in PT and she worked out there.

Sarah (headed to the U of WA library) does “Gilded Age Massage’, historical presentations, has written a couple books, and wears period, turn of the last century, clothing she makes herself. Today she wore a long blue dress with small buttons all the way up the front, a brooch, a satin hat with a satin ribbon around her chin and a peacock feather on top, and a whale baleen corset! Her waist was cinched up tightly like an hourglass. Here's her website www.Chrismancollection.weebly.com

Yvonne (headed to the Hilton next to the airport for a NW Writers Conference) is an artist and writer who taught art to women in Kuwait for a number of years. She also built a log cabin in the OR mountains when she was a teenager, nearly killing herself with a falling tree. Here's her website www.yvonnepepinwakefield.com

So it was undoubtedly the most interesting trip I’ve had to the airport, and I made a couple friends I’m looking forward to seeing again.

At SeaTac Airport in Seattle I finally got to see my friend Jana Suchy's Alaska fishing photographs at the Anthony's Seafood restaurant in the Alaska Air wing. 

Arctic From the Air

Today is our last day on the beluga survey and fortunately we have good weather. We'll be heading down the coastal transect from Barrow to the SE. We haven't seen the large numbers of belugas seen in past years, so with a good effort today we'll look for them in the area they have been seen the most. Not sure if this means their numbers are down, if the past population has been overestimated, or if they're out there but we just aren't seeing them in mass quantity.

Pod of beluga in mouth of lagoon. Disclaimer: photographed to aid in getting a count, not for the beauty.

This is a pretty typical beluga sighting. We fly at around 1100 feet when we survey, looking whales, bears, walrus and seals. When we see them we get the best count we can, location, swim direction, etc. Although belugas are the main focus on this 2-week survey, and getting an idea of their population in the Chukchi Sea, we're also recording all other sightings - even land mammals. One day we saw 3 brown bears and a heard of about 55 caribou. On another, we saw this herd of 25 muskox.

Part of the muskox herd, including a calf. Again, not a pretty shot, but good for a count.

So far we haven't seen a polar bear, which is disappointing.

We spend a fair amount of time over land when we're deadheading - not surveying but going from point A to point B. Sometimes we get fogged out over the water and can't survey so we go overland if it's more direct.

Tundra with fog over the coastline.

High-centered tundra polygons, one of the most distinctive permafrost landscapes.

Glacial fluting left behind from the last iceage.

There are so many interesting things to see around here. I never get tired of looking out the window.

Airport, the town of Barrow in the middle, and the town of Browerville on the right. The fog covers the Chukchi Sea.

Barrow/Browerville is the largest town in the North Slope Borough, with a population of about 4500. There's not a lot of tourism here, but it's amazing how many people we've met coming up for just a day, including 2 separate Australians.

Chukchi Sea.

The weather up here is difficult to work with at times. Some nights I pull down the blinds and get a last look at the lit sky and suspect the morning won't be so flight-friendly. So far it's been pretty predictable. If it's too foggy in Barrow we can't take off. If fog is approaching Barrow we might not be able to land. If it's foggy over our survey area in the Chukchi, we won't be able to survey. So there are down days.

One morning's view out my hotel window = a non-flight day.

But usually we have better weather than not. Sometimes it's bad in the morning but clears later so we can do an afternoon flight. And when it's good, it's beautiful.