John, Isabel, and I met Sara at the Anchorage airport for our flight to Fairbanks, the official starting point of our Noatak River/Great Kobuk Sand Dunes trip and where, that afternoon, we met the rest of our group.
Our fellow adventurers included Geoff and Mike from Seattle, Doug from Baltimore, Dave from Boston, and our two guides, Matt and Brian, who were both born and raised in Alaska. Having had Matt as our guide on our Twin Lakes trip, we knew we were in good hands. Additionally, we were pleased our group had lots of interests in common and, like our guides and ourselves, had all been fully vaccinated. It was clear almost immediately, that our group was going to get along famously. This was not only an added bonus but very important, since we would literally be heading into the wilderness, where we would need to rely on each other in the event things went awry. As stated on the Gates of the Arctic National Park website, “Visitors … should be prepared to care for their own life and their partner(s) if an emergency arises.”
After our first group dinner, John and I spent the rest of the evening sorting, packing, re-packing, and literally squeezing all of the required clothing and gear, plus some, for the next 16 days into our respective day pack and dry bags. Making sure nothing essential was left out was critical, since once we left Fairbanks, we would not have the opportunity to purchase anything we may have forgotten.
Early the next morning, Wednesday, July 28th, Matt drove five of us, in light rain, to Wright Air Service at the Fairbanks airport for our flight to Bettles. After providing our weight (estimating high) to the folks behind the counter, we found a place to sit, fully masked, in the cramped waiting room along with a dozen or so other folks, who were waiting on flights to other villages. The weather delayed our departure for over an hour. In the meantime, the rest of our group arrived. We continued our wait, chatting, examining the “America’s Northern Wildlands” map on one wall of the waiting room, and checking our respective smartphones for that one last message.
Once we were given the thumbs up, six members of our group slipped on rain jackets and walked outside across a water-soaked tarmac to climb, carefully, the metal drop-down stairs leading into a Model 208B Cessna Caravan. With our 2,000+ pounds of gear and food already loaded into the plane, the Cessna’s weight limit had been reached. Therefore, by necessity, the rest of our group stayed in Fairbanks for a subsequent flight. Inside the plane, after securing our harnesses and seat belts, untangling the cords on our headsets, and placing the headsets on our heads and over our ears, we waited for the pilot to get the go ahead to taxi onto the runway and take off for the approximately one hour, 180-mile flight to Bettles.
Not surprisingly, less than five minutes after the plane took off, the plane was completely surrounded by clouds, which necessitated the pilot to fly via Instrument Flight Rules. Since most of the landscape between Fairbanks and Bettles was hidden by the clouds and it was too noisy in the plane to talk, we were left to our own thoughts with some of our group choosing to nap. I kept my nose close to the window to ensure I wouldn’t miss those few moments when the clouds parted and I could catch a glimpse of what lay below.
As we began our descent and emerged from the clouds, parts of the Koyukuk River as well as the villages of Bettles and Evansville and the surrounding boreal forest came into view. Everything below us looked wet. Landing mid-morning on the gravel airstrip, known as Bettles Field, we emerged from the plane onto the soaking-wet airstrip, retrieving our day packs before Brian oversaw the loading of our gear and food into the back of a Brooks Range Aviation pickup.
Stepping around innumerable puddles, we took refuge from the rain on the open-air porch of the Brooks Range Aviation office to wait for the rest of our group. Once they arrived, the plan was for all of us and our supplies to be shuttled by float plane to Pingo Lake, adjacent to the upper reaches of the Noatak River in the western part of Gates of the Arctic National Park, the most northern national park in the U.S.
It was our first time in Bettles and Evansville, which are two, small, adjacent villages with a combined population of approximately 75. Indistinguishable from each other on the ground, they are located 35 miles north of the Arctic Circle near the Koyukuk River and just 20 miles from the southern boundary of the Gates of the Arctic National Park.
Encompassing 8.5 million acres, Gates of the Arctic is the second largest of the 63 national parks in the U.S. Not surprisingly, however, it is also the least visited. The vast majority of visitors are “park collectors” who fly in via air taxi from Fairbanks or Bettles and then land for 30 minutes or so, while they have their picture taken holding a sign that reads: “Gates of the Arctic National Park.” A much smaller percentage of visitors fly into the park via air taxi to spend multiple days backpacking or kayaking or canoeing one of six national wild and scenic rivers within the park’s boundary. We felt proud to be part of that second type of visitor.
While waiting on the porch, it didn’t take long for the local mosquitoes to zero in on the reservoir of fresh blood in town. That was the incentive to hightail it to the Bettles Ranger Station, which was only a few hundred feet away in the nicest (and likely the newest) building in Bettles. The two-story blue frame structure, which sits atop a multi-log foundation, also hosts the visitor center for Gates of the Arctic National Park and Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge. Upon entering a large enclosed porch with multiple (open) screened windows, and a vaulted ceiling, we were disappointed to find that the visitor center, located in the main part of the building, was closed due to COVID-19.
Maps, other information about the park and refuge, and National Park Service passport stamps were displayed on a beautifully-finished wooden table in the middle of the porch. In addition, wooden benches, where we were welcome to sit, were arranged along two sides. Of even greater interest was a white board with hand-written weather forecasts based on National Weather Service information. It was not encouraging that the forecast for the next several days included rain, rain, and more rain.
Nevertheless, to make good use of our time, the locally-based park ranger provided us with the mandatory bear safety briefing. Toward the end of her talk, she was interrupted by the distinct and loud sound of a plane coming in for a landing. This caused her to stop briefly and glance up, where she could see the aircraft. A pilot herself, what she saw on the plane’s final approach both alarmed and startled her. When the pilot aborted the landing after the aircraft was very close to the ground, she exclaimed, “Holy Shit!” Now we were all looking in the direction of the airstrip, where thankfully, the plane, with the rest of our group, landed safely on its second attempt. The ranger, after regaining what she called, her “professional” composure, completed the briefing.
We were pleased when the rest of our group joined us, and we were in fact all in one piece and safe and sound. Now we were anxious to learn when we would leave for Pingo Lake. At this point, we were coming to grips with the fact that we would be spending the first part of our river trip in the rain. While not what we had imagined when we had dreamed about our adventure for the last four years; we nonetheless were resigned to take it in stride. What we had not imagined, however, was a situation where low cloud cover might preclude Brooks Range Aviation, which uses Visual (rather than Instrument) Flight Rules, from dropping us off at Pingo Lake. Now that was a different kettle of fish!