Alaska Sunday VI

The Haul Road – 414 miles of dirt, gravel, and pot holes

See part I of the Haul road saga from last week

For those looking for Sunday's Camera Critters,
Scroll down and see the Flower Beetles playing Rugby.
There are two posts for today.

Today’s post on Alaska will be abbreviated.

Yesterday, the temperature was 75-80 F., and we spent the entire day at Hagerman NWR. We saw 45 species of birds including more Spotted sandpipers that I have ever seen on the migration route and lots of beautiful Black terns. And for those that are worried about where all of the Dicksissles are – well, they are alive and well at Hagerman. Seems like they were in every tree. This morning we are off to the Ft. Worth Nature Refuge to look for Tiger Beetles. It may still be early for them there, but we will find something great. We always do.

Next week I will continue with the travelogue portion of the drive on the Haul Road from Coldfoot to Deadhorse. There we will cross over Atigun Pass, the highest in Alaska, and then drop down onto the tundra on the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Atigun Pass (el. 1415 m./4643 ft.) is a high mountain pass across the Brooks Range in Alaska. While famous among bush pilots for difficulty of crossing the pass with small planes (Anaktuvuk Pass is favored as the safer flying route), it is the only pass in the Brooks Range that is crossed by a road (the Dalton Highway).

Atigun Pass is the northernmost pass in the world that is kept open year-round and the highest year-round pass in Alaska.

Atigun Pass in July
(Click on the photos for much larger views)
There is still plenty of snow

Looking Back at Atigun Pass
(The pass is the first notch on the left side)
Alaska Pipeline

I will leave you with another photograph of one of my favorite wildflowers along this road – the Fireweed.

Fireweed

For an amazing photograph,
Scroll down two posts to see a Long-tailed Jaeger playing in a storm on this portion of the road.

Alaska Sunday is a collection of photographic remembrances of our driving trip from Texas to Alaska.
18,000 miles, 16 weeks, 16 western states including Alaska and four Canadian Provinces.
No chronological order, just anything of interest that got in front of our cameras.

Troy