The Alaska Arctic feels clean. Clean in the lack of human influence, clean in the raw day to day struggle and triumphs of life in a harsh environment, clean as in crystal clear waters washing over perfect gravel steambeds, clean as in crisp fresh air and clean beautiful tundra stretching out for endless miles in all directions with only the tracks and sign from caribou, sheep, wolves, fox, muskox, moose, wolverine, grizzly, lemming and a myriad of birds. The extreme invironments of the Brooks Range and the Arctic support only a small variety of plant life and little to no trees, it produces a landscape of tough resilient low lying vegetation covering a base layer of frozen ground hundreds of feet thick In places. This also contributes to the cleaness of the Arctic, it is not overgrown with every kind of shrub, bush, plant or tree, there are only a sellect few and so the country remains open, the streams and waterways are pristine courses of colorful scoured gravel, the tundra with its numerous plants is sweet and carpetlike and at times full of tiny delicate flowers and just as vegetation is dictated by the extreme temperatures and ice so are viruses, bacterias and troublesome organisms. So quite literally the Arctic is a super clean environment.

Wildlife watching has always been a main focus for me when out in wild places and that is also why the Alaska Arctic and the Brooks Range have captured my heart. The great expanses, the long views and unobstructed landscapes all combine to make wildlife viewing here some of the best in the world. And you can’t talk about Alaska’s Brook Range wildlife and the Alaskan arctic and not talk foremost about the barren ground caribou. Several large herds travel, breed and migrate throughout the Brooks Range and the Coastal Plain of the Alaska Arctic. They travel in great numbers, in the tens of thousands at times and other times in groups of just a dozen or less. To be so lucky as to cross paths with a big herd is something special in deed. The feeling one gets surrounded by the seething mass of these large mammals is nothing less than primordial. You can’t help but feel overtaken by the sheer wild nature of it and you become drawn into the landscape yourself. There are few times in our lives as humans in this age of man that we can truly feel like we are a part of the natural world and for some reason, surrounded by caribou, I get that. Watching a pack of arctic wolves care for a litter of pups can do that for me too and I have had the good fortune to witness that in the Alaska Arctic on several occasions.

Hiking and moving through wild country is also absolutely superb in the Alaska’s arctic and Brooks Range. The open tundra slopes and ridges offer some Of the sweetest hiking imaginable with views breathtaking beyond belief. For such harsh at times an environment with short summers and long dark winters the Alaska Arctic and Brooks Range can be some of the most hospitable wild country to traverse, especially on the slopes and ridges in the mountains. 24 hours of summer daylight also make for excellent long days of exploration and truckin’ in the hills.