Travel Log to Alaska in 1993 (Coldfoot, Part 2)

06/06/93

It has been a rainy day in Coldfoot. The rain started last night and has been intermittent throughout the day. This area normally doesn’t get much rain, in fact the annual rainfall is 10 inches. On the other side of the Brooks Range it rains about 5 inches annually. This is called an Arctic Desert.
We went on a nature walk with a group of tourists this morning. I also spent time working on computer programs at the Center. I am putting all of our Alaska Natural History Association forms into an EXCEL spreadsheet format. Marian is continuing to get our trailer better in better order. The towels we have here are very large so she cut them in half and hand sticked the ends. Tonight there will be a small tourbus coming in so we will go over to the Center at about eight for a couple of hours.
There were about 12 tourists over this evening for the presentation. After the presentation Marian, Rick, Sandy and myself went over to the Coldfoot bar for a few hours. Rick is a new person who just got into Coldfoot today and will represent the National Park Service at the Center.

06/07/93

It continued to rain throughout the night last night. I think that so much rain in a short period of time is unusual for here. Marian and I got into our trailer near two AM today and slept till almost ten. This is going to be a beautiful day. The ground will remain wet for some time with the low evaporation due to the permafrost layer. This makes it messy going in and out of the trailer.
Today is an official work day for us. We were at the Center from noon until about nine thirty. Marian gave the presentation tonight and did a very good job. Would you believe, a man and his wife from my ham club in Alexandria were on the tour bus. We were surprised when we saw them and enjoyed the conversation.
After leaving the Center this evening we went over to the bar for a couple of hours with Sandy & Rick. Sandy has this tradition that whenever someone does their first presentation she buys.
Tomorrow Marian & I will head down to Fairbanks for our Bear Safety & rifle training. Arrangements were made with a small plane from Frontier Airlines to make a stop here in Coldfoot to pick us up. When we return to Coldfoot Thurs/Fri the USF&W is going to try to arrange to get one of their planes to bring us back.
Well enough for now. I won’t write again until we return from our trip to Fairbanks.

06/08-12/93

We have had a great time the past few days. On the afternoon of 8 June the USF&W arranged for a charter Frontier Airline plane to pick us up at the Coldfoot airstrip and fly us into Fairbanks. This was a twin engine Beach craft. Just after leaving Coldfoot we saw a big tanker truck fire on the Dalton. This truck explosion made the Fairbanks front page. Tom, our USF&W contact, picked us up at the Fairbanks airport and gave us a govt. vehicle to use while in Fairbanks. They put us up in the Denali Suite at the Westmark Hotel with full per diem. Our room was as large as three normal size rooms. After coming in from the wild and trailer living we felt like we were in “hog heaven”.
On the 9th & 10th we were in Bear Safety & gun training. The 9th & morning of the 10th was devoted exclusively to classroom training. We went out to the Ft. Wainwright firing range all afternoon on the 10th. The actual firing range training was fun and interesting. We shot at fixed targets and a simulated moving bear target. Marian & I qualified on the Remington 870 Police Magnum using a 12 gauge slug. This shell shoots a single “big slug” of lead which when fired slams the gun stock pretty hard against your shoulder. We fired many rounds. We were required to get at least one slug out of three in the designated kill zone on the target. This wasn’t difficult at all to do. The moving target was a little more challenging but both of us qualified OK.
The USF&W issued us a 870 Magnum & ammunition to bring back to Coldfoot. It is an official office policy that anyone assigned to one of the USF&W field sites must go through this training and be qualified on a weapon. We are in bear country here at Coldfoot and the surrounding area. We have both Black and Grizzly bears here. One year in the past a bear almost got into one of the trailers. Also when we go out on hikes it desirable to have some type of protection should it be needed.
Marian & I are very pleased with the USF&W. We are not getting much money for our daily pay but there are sure a lot of fringes. Today, 11 June, we returned to Coldfoot on a small USF&W single engine airplane. The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) office set up the flight and provided the plane & pilot. We flew from Fairbanks to the Arctic Village for a refueling stop (we had to hand pump the gas from a big barrel). It is kind of interesting that when you decide to land somewhere you just get on 122.0 MHz and announce “I am going to land here” then do it. We proceeded over the North & South slopes of the Brooks Mountain Range, over the ANWR, the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge and etc. It was a great experience to see this wild and scenic area from a low flying aircraft. Sometimes we had to look up at the mountains while flying between them. We could see bears & wildlife on the ground and Dall Sheep high on the mountain peaks. If you can believe it, when we finally landed at Coldfoot we taxied down the road, across the Dalton Highway and right up in front of the Visitor Center within 20 feet of the front door. Where else could you do something like this than in the wilds of Alaska. This is truly bush flying country where most anything you think you are competent enough to do goes.
Tonight I gave the presentation at the Center. Marian gave it prior to leaving for Fairbanks earlier in the week. So we are now pretty comfortable with the routine here and feel we now know enough about the area to competently talk & answer questions. We will have the Center to ourselves tomorrow. The others will be going on a float trip down one of the rivers. We will make this trip a little later on. We need to get in a little work time first before a pleasure trip.

06/12/93

Today was our first day to solo at the Center and all went well. We gave two presentations today. Normally we only give one presentation in the evening however a bus load of tourists got stranded in Coldfoot due to bus problems so we provided some entertainment for them. WOULD YOU BELIEVE, we now have indoor plumbing, and a cook stove. We brought the hot water heater back with us yesterday in the airplane and I got it installed today. ALL SYSTEMS ARE NOW OPERATIONAL IN THE TRAILER.
One of the BLM fellows stopped by this evening for a short visit. He said while he was changing a flat tire on the Dalton a bear came down the road to investigate. He got the tire changed fast and back in the truck in a flash.
Tomorrow we will be by ourselves again at the Center. Sundays are usually a pretty slow day here.

06/13/93

This morning was “dump day”. I am certain that we did something wrong since when we got the trailer back to the resting spot the tanks still registered half. We will try it again tomorrow. When we move the trailer we have to secure everything down and take the breakable things out of the cabinets. It is almost like re-packing.
We were at the Center from 1300 until 1700 and again from 1930 until 2200. We had a number of guests today. Marian gave the evening presentation. As I have said previously, I am in computer heaven here with three Macs. Like any design person I keep improving my programs every day. We keep track of rain with a sophisticated rain gauge. We also have a big platform which measures snow weight and computes inches of snow. I will set up a database soon for these measuring instruments. Today I got most of the ANHA inventory into the EXCEL spreadsheet/database.
Joe, the latest member of our Interagency Center just arrived. He is a volunteer with the National Park Service. We now have 5 persons at the Center. We are a high percentage of the total number of persons in “metropolitan” Coldfoot.

06/14/93

This has been a pretty routine day. We were at the Center for about 9 hours off & on today. There were about 56 tourists in the Center today of which 46 attended the evening presentation. Sandy & Rick came over to our trailer and visited with us this evening. It is midnight now so after we have a cup of coffee and a little snack we will give some thought about going to bed.

06/15/93

We went over to the Center for a couple of hours this morning then took off for Nolan. Nolan is just down the road from Wiseman (a back dirt road). Nolan was one of the mining settlements at the turn of the century and in fact there is still mining going on there. We visited with Paul & Sue Dionne who work a claim on Nolan Creek. They have, and are currently, taking quite a bit of gold out of the hills around Nolan. The first nugget he dug out when first starting the mining operation weighed 7.5 ounces. We went up to Sue & Pauls house and Marian bought a small gold nugget for a necklace. Sue brought out a pan full of gold nuggets for Marian to select from. Some of the Nuggets were in the thousands of dollars weight value. Sue will put a mount on Marians nugget and drop it by the Center when she makes her monthly trip into Coldfoot. It is, to say the least, a unique way of living there in Nolan. They live in a small house high on a hill overlooking Nolan Creek with a beautiful view overlooking a mountain range. Paul runs his gold mining operation in the summer when the soil has melted to the point where it can be worked. In the winter he hunts and traps. Their children are home taught since there are no schools for 250 miles. They use rainwater and creek water for washing dishes & cloths and haul their drinking water in from Coldfoot some 20 miles away over very rough roads.
Marian caught a head cold and has a sore throat and is feeling under the weather this evening. I have been sneezing some but so far so good. There were a number of drop-in’s today but no tour busses.

06/16/93

Things were pretty slow at the Center during the day. There were a couple of tour busses in for the evening presentation. Joe, the new fellow, made the presentation. Marian has been resting today trying to shake her cold so that she will feel better tomorrow.

06/17/93

We are off work today and we took advantage of this to do our weekly laundry. Marian is feeling somewhat better today after a rough night of coughing.
Tomorrow we are scheduled on a bus trip up to Prudhoe Bay. Arrangements have been made so that we can go up on one of the Princess Tour Busses and deadhead back on their southbound buses. We are looking forward to the trip and learning more about the Alaska Pipeline. The bus leaves at 0800 tomorrow morning and takes all day to reach Prudhoe. There will be a couple day lapse in the log until we return on Saturday evening. We have a four day off period.
The weather today has been great. There is a slight breeze which keeps the mosquitoes down somewhat. We keep one of the Mosquito Pic’s going most of the time we are in the trailer.

06/18-19/93

We are back in Coldfoot after a very interesting trip up to Prudhoe Bay. Prudhoe Bay is about 250 miles north of here and takes 8 hours on a tour bus to reach (with stops along the way looking at animals & lunch). Previously we had only been up the Dalton about 150 miles so we saw new territory on this trip. Twenty five percent of all U.S. oil comes from Prudhoe Bay through the Alaska Pipeline. It is North Americas largest oil field. The Oil facilities at Prudhoe are totally self contained. They have all that is required to live comfortably (relative) in Prudhoe. The employees are taken care of very well and well paid for their work. The work is demanding and in a very isolated area. Outside temperatures in the winter will normally be -40 to -60 degrees and with very high winds can cause a chill factor of -130 degrees. No one lives there permanently. The workers are on for a couple of weeks or so and off the same amount of time. Many of the workers live as far away as Louisiana, New Mexico, & etc. The Oil company will fly them to their home point free of charge on their time off. Prudhoe is what is called a “no second chance town” from the alcohol and drug standpoint. In other words a one time occurrence and you are out immediately. During the winter months they never shut off any of the car engines or heavy equipment engines. With the severe temperatures it would be very difficult to restart if shut off. All buildings are built on pilings frozen deep into the ground. They set the pilings deep into the permafrost in the summer and let them freeze into place over the winter before building a structure on them.
We went out to the shoreline of the Beaufort Sea which is the inland side of the Arctic Ocean. In the winter this sea is totally frozen to the shoreline. Now the ice has broken from the shore and floating out to the Arctic Ocean. The Polar Bears stay on the ice pack and float out to sea during the summer months.
It was quite an experience to see this area of Alaska and participate in the Oil field tour program. Marian & I stayed at the North Shore hotel in Prudhoe which was built in 1990. The rooms were small but the other accommodations in the hotel were superb. There was food and a coffee pots in every hall. The dining room was “an all you can eat and carry back to your room” arrangement. They also supply paper bags for taking food out during the day. Believe me we are both stuffed from yesterday and todays food. We had some fresh king salmon in addition to many other things last night. This morning we ate a breakfast like we were going out to work on the pipeline all day.
Marian & I both have colds now and are running a bit slow this evening. We will go to bed early and get some rest. Tomorrow will be a slow day since we are not scheduled to work.