Going for the Fun in Land of the Midnight Sun

May was about to become June and the temperature had soared to nearly 25 degrees above zero.

New snow softened the ice sculpture left by winter. The midnight sun was like a shadowy moon behind the clouds, a promise that the wildflowers of summer would soon be here to welcome a tourist season that will be a first in Alaskan history.

It was in February, 1980, that my wife and I first visited the oil company town of Deadhorse at Prudhoe Bay in the far north of Alaska, 250 miles above the Arctic Circle. The temperature was minus-55 degrees when we landed at Deadhorse Airport.

Now we were here at the end of springtime to preview the route of a new tour that began early this month. During the past winter, there were again some 56 days when the sun didn’t rise. There has been daylight around the clock since early May, and it will continue until mid-August.

Largest Oil Field

This season of the midnight sun will be the 10th anniversary of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which carries oil 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay and the nation’s largest oil field to the port of Valdez, from where it is transported by tankers to Southern California refineries and processing plants in other states to supply 10% of U.S. petroleum needs.

Now, for the first time, the 2,500 men and women who still live and work year-round in the community of Deadhorse and the Prudhoe Bay oil-producing facilities will be sharing their cherished sunshine season with visitors brought here to the North Slope Borough of Alaska by a new kind of tour package.

It’s a package put together by Princess Tours and sister companies that include Tour Alaska and Royal Hyway Tours. All have become part of P & O, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., world’s oldest and largest shipping company.

The tour package was made possible when the northernmost section of the gravel Dalton Highway paralleling the pipeline was opened for the first time this year to motor coaches carrying visitors.

Private auto travel is banned to protect the environment by keeping sightseers from wandering off across the tundra. Trucks that use what is known locally as the “haul road” aren’t likely to stop for tundra walks; they usually roll along nonstop with vitally needed supplies for the oil rigs and support facilities at Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay.

A Tour Combo

The land portion of this summer’s 12 tours north of the Arctic Circle combines motor-coach travel with the redesigned and restored vista-dome rail cars of the Midnight Sun Express.

The three-day/two-night tours include flying one-way between Anchorage and Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay. We flew from Anchorage into the Arctic airport at Deadhorse, then returned by motor coach and railroad through some of earth’s most spectacular and least-known mountain scenery.

The tours can also be combined with a Princess cruise between Vancouver, British Columbia and Whittier, port of Anchorage.

Each of the 12 tours scheduled for this first summer will accommodate a maximum of 40 passengers. Advance bookings have indicated such popularity that 78 tours are already planned for the summer of 1988.

The Midnight Sun Express covers the 356 miles between Anchorage, Denali National Park and Fairbanks. Motor coaches travel the 416 miles of the Dalton Highway between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay, where caribou graze around the oil wells.

Through the windows of the vista-dome rail cars, views range from the rich farming areas of Alaska’s breadbasket in the Matanuska Valley to the soaring and ice-coated grandeur of 20,320-foot Mt. McKinley, highest peak on the North American continent.

The horizon is always crowned with snow-capped peaks. Far below the train tracks, rivers tumble through awesome gorges, sometimes bouncing orange-colored pontoon rafts over the wild white-water. Beautiful scenery and roaming wildlife framed by train and motor-coach windows are a continuing temptation for photo stops.

A Grand Opening

Harper Lodge, a new $6.3-million Princess Tours facility, had its grand opening last May 29, and will be a regular overnight stop for summer tours. So will the far more modest but comfortable new Arctic Acres Inn, now open for a tour overnight in the community of Coldfoot.

Another choice to consider in planning a visit to Alaska is Holland America Line Westours, which, along with its Gray Line, are operating six McKinley Explorer glass-domed rail cars on the same Alaska Railroad line between Anchorage, Denali Park and Fairbanks, with an overnight stop in the park.

From the early days after the completion of the pipeline in 1977, the Nana Development Corp. has been carefully limiting the number of visitors by air from Anchorage for an overnight experience at Prudhoe and the surrounding North Slope.

When we were here in 1980, the pipeline had been carrying oil southward for only three years and there were still many construction camps carrying on projects to supply the $8-billion pipeline. Now those boom days are gone and a highly computerized operation efficiently manages the two production camps, one still directed by Arco and the other by Standard Oil.

Production here is projected to decline from about 1.5 million barrels this year to around 541,000 barrels by 1997, but new development potentials could maintain Prudhoe Bay and the north slope as a center of world energy interest and a growing tourism destination on into the next century.

Heart of Wildlife Refuge

This summer’s visitors will be making their own evaluations of the national issue now shaping up between energy and environmental concerns. It involves the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain to the east of the Prudhoe Bay oil field. This area is the heart of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Reagan Administration, led by Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, wants to lease this area immediately for oil and gas exploration, arguing it could add another Prudhoe Bay oil resource to the nation’s own petroleum reserves. A 120-mile feeder pipeline would be linked to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline at Prudhoe Bay.

Environmentalists argue that this could endanger the living natural resources of one of the world’s greatest remaining wilderness treasures, perhaps greater in value to future generations than East Africa’s Serengeti Desert preserve. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the home of a wildlife population that numbers some 180,000 caribou.

Battle lines on both sides of this issue have formed in Congress, triggered by legislation introduced to preserve the coastal plain as a wilderness. Tour groups to Prudhoe Bay will ultimately be part of the decision-making process as visitors form their own opinions of what the oil fields and pipeline have done to the environment.

Tourism is directly involved in the basic economics of the issue. Declining oil prices have seriously impacted Alaska’s economy, focusing state attention on the importance of developing tourism as a long-term economic support. J. Anthony Smith, commissioner in charge of Alaska’s Department of Commerce and Economic Development, wants to draft a 20-year program for the development of tourism. He regards the new Prudhoe Bay tours as an important beginning of any such program.

Brief Magic Span

Visitors to the brief and magic span of Arctic summer here on the North Slope can watch the tundra around the lakes and seashore being reborn from the sub-zero winter to become a homeland for more than 100 species of bird life, 30 species of animal life and 440 varieties of plants and flowers.

The life style of the people working here is fascinating. Women, who were a wistful mirage to the early pipeline construction crews and oil-well drillers, now hold key positions in all departments.

There are social evenings, first-run films, gymnasiums and indoor jogging tracks. Employees can phone by satellite to anywhere in the United States. Annual pay begins at around $30,000 for laborers and goes up to over $70,000 for engineers and skilled technicians.

We stayed in a camp facility called the Arctic Caribou Inn, where mobile components have been skillfully assembled and carpeted into the feeling of a comfortable lodge. Rooms have private baths.

Buffet selections for dinner at the restaurant included baked salmon, sirloin steak and reindeer stew. Desserts offered a wide selection of freshly baked cakes and pies.

But there were no wines, beer or cocktails. Alcohol in any drinkable formed is banned at Prudhoe to prevent the possibility of abuse during the long Arctic winter when so many employees are separated from their families.

The complete three-day/two-night tour can be part of a 15-day/14-night cruise aboard a Princess ship sailing between Vancouver and Anchorage. The cruise-tour package begins at $2,685 per person. Contact your travel agent for complete information.

Tour Alaska/Royal Hyway Tours offer the three-day/two-night land tours to Prudhoe Bay at $495 per person, available from now until Aug. 13. Contact your travel agent or Royal Hyway Tours, 2555 76th Ave. S.E., Mercer Island, Washington 98040. Telephone (206) 827-2653 or toll-free (800) 647-7750.

For independent flights and overnights at Prudhoe Bay, contact Nana Development Corp., 4706 Harding Drive, Anchorage, Alaska 99571. Telephone (907) 248-3030.