Dialogue With Wolf in Alaskan Wilderness

“If I see one wolf, it will be worth the trip.” Those were my first words as the DeHavilland Beaver skimmed off Oolah Lake and disappeared into the lowering clouds of the Brooks Range, leaving us very much alone.

Three days later, while stripping down to wade the icy Itkillik River, my brother, Richard, laid a hand on my shoulder.

“There’s your wolf,” he whispered, nodding at the far bank. Dark eyes in white, an arctic wolf peered at us, almost invisible behind a rise sprinkled with the colors of the summer tundra.

“And a second,” I whispered, pointing to the knoll beyond. “And a third and fourth.”

We had come upon a pack standing guard around a den, the first of two packs we would encounter and watch on a 10-day trek through the deepest wilderness possible on the North American continent.

The Brooks Range is the only mountain range in the world north of the Arctic Circle; a land of soul-chilling rivers, taiga and tundra, grizzly, moose, caribou and wolf. In its midst, like an uncut jewel in a rough setting, lies Gates of the Arctic National Park, a vast expanse, 8 million acres of total wilderness.

Range of Rewards

It is wild. There are no amenities. But for those willing, it has rewards. Mine were wolves; for others, perhaps solitude, the chance to fish a nameless river, climb one of a thousand unclimbed peaks, experience the Arctic, stand upon the land that the first humans to cross into this unknown continent stood upon.

The bulk of the Alaskan interior, about 200,000 square miles, is accessible only by plane. The jumping-off point for Gates to the Arctic is Bettlesfield just north of the Arctic Circle, with a population of 80, a lodge, trading post, national park headquarters and several outfitters for rafting, hiking and winter snowmobile and dog sled trips.

Several small commercial carriers make the flight from Fairbanks to Bettlesfield.

I flew Frontier on recommendation, and on further advice made sure I was the first passenger on the plane, a sleek Piper Navaho Chieftain. First passenger on gets the co-pilot’s seat and an unforgettable introduction to the vastness of the Alaskan interior.

Beneath the cloud cover the evergreen forest, studded with countless emerald pools and lakes and laced with glistening braids of river and stream, stretches off to the edge of imagination, a vision of trackless abundance.

Great Mountain

Before we crossed the Yukon the pilot lifted us through the cloud cover and leveled off at 8,000 feet, just skimming the sun-bleached vapor.

To the southwest, in awesome grandeur, stood the mountain the Indians call Denali, “the great one”--Mt. McKinley, more than 100 miles away, and at that distance still towering majestically 14,000 feet above us.

August is the best time of year for a visit to the Arctic. By the first or second week, due to the cooling weather, most of the infamous Alaskan mosquitoes have gone to their reward, along with the warm-weather assortment of deerflies, moose flies, no-see-ums and other biting insects for which the only names I’ve heard are unprintable.

By mid-month the North Slope is well into fall. The days are still quite long, never really passing completely into the pitch of night. Hikers have a tendency to go on “Eskimo time,” sleeping late into the morning until the distant sun warms the air and then hiking as late as midnight before making camp again.

Carpet of Colors

The fall colors, deep russets and golds, are as severe as the landscape. They are laid out in an ankle-deep carpet that stretches mottled to the horizon, broken only by jutting canyon walls and the sinuous braided paths of pristine rivers.

Flora on the north slope rarely grows higher than a foot, diminishing proportionately as you progress down toward the Arctic Sea. Near the divide, where we spent some of our time, willows would grow to just above waist height in protected areas close to the streams.

Autumn wildflowers abound, but always, it seems, in hidden folds or tucked in along cool rivulets as though purposely to be stumbled upon, delighting the discoverer. Adding to that delight is the discovery that wide areas of the drier tundra are carpeted with blueberries.

You are reminded also by occasional patches of bright blue bear droppings that the August blueberries are the favorite of another inhabitant of the Brooks Range, the grizzly.

August also is the time of the yearly caribou migration. If lucky, and you travel in or below Oolah Pass, it is possible to waken in the twilight of the night amid a sea of thousands of the animals moving in anticipation of the coming winter.

Watery Landscape

The North Slope averages about six inches of rainfall a year. But due to the permafrost, the earth and ice layer beginning two to four feet underground, the land remains permanently frozen. What water does fall tends to stay right on the surface, leaving nearly all of the wide, flat valley floors soft and wet--fine footing for a moose or caribou, far less than ideal for two-footed creatures.

To add to the wilderness comedy of humans with top-heavy packs trying to cross the spongy ground are the cotton-grass tussocks that grow in clumps, layer upon layer, until they resemble great grassy mushrooms.

From the air they seem a smooth surface of autumn colors. Standing at the edge of a sea of tussocks you are confronted with what seems an obvious choice: Rather than try to fight your way through, soaking your boots and pants clean to the knees, you simply walk across their heads, like picking your way across grass stepping stones.

A well-placed foot, square in the center of the tussock, will take just enough weight to make you feel secure. Then the head nods like a sleepy student, dumping you and your pack into the wet grass below. I could have sworn I heard a moose snicker from across the valley.

Carrying Firearms

Gates to the Arctic is one of the few national parks in which you are allowed to carry firearms, ostensibly for protection against bears.

The southern slopes of the range are wooded, leading down into the wide expanse of the Alaska interior and furnishing a fine habitat for both the American black bear and the renowned grizzly.

Beyond the Arctic tree line the mountainous tundra belongs exclusively to the grizzly, about one bear to every 100 square miles. Care taken to avoid unfortunate encounters is advisable.

As the only trees are knee high, tying foodstuffs up for the night is not really going to help. Food, cooking utensils and anything else that might invite a visitor have to be set out on rocks a good distance from your tent.

This helps keep you safe--not your food. Bear-proof containers are available, though bulky, and may protect your larder from the occasional grizzly, and certainly from the inescapable ground squirrels, which otherwise have a holiday with your larder.

Crossing Streams

Visions of bears may keep you awake at night but much more common and dangerous is the frequent necessity of wading streams and rivers. Glacial valleys are broad and flat, inviting the rivers to wander where they will in wide braided waterways.

It is not unusual to cross half-a-dozen stream beds in a single valley crossing. Packs have to be carried and all streams are rapid, treacherous and very cold.

As you carry only the minimum of clothing, it is best to take light wading shoes and strip to the waist. Pack straps are loosened and unclasped. Lives have been lost for want of shedding a pack after a fall.

Crossings must be done safely but as quickly as possible. Loss of body heat is swift and serious.

Late summer weather can be unpredictable. Even on a 70-degree day the temperature can drop 20 degrees when a cloud blocks the sun. Sudden snows are not unusual.

Northern Lights

On the day we were to be back at Oolah Lake waiting for our pickup flight, just such a storm blew in. The night before, my brother had wakened me in the few half-dark hours we had and called me out to look at the sky.

The storm had not yet mustered, blowing up the long glacial valleys as it would from the Arctic Sea, but a special precursor was there, the Northern Lights--slender, fiery ribbons moving above us with incredible vitality, with sudden changes of tone and color.

We woke some hours later in snow. With the storm clouds settling down on the higher passes, our plane could not get in safely for two days. Nearly out of food because of the delay, we found the Arctic wilderness to be generous, its rivers and lakes abundant with Arctic char and grayling.

We decided to follow the Itkillik River--on our way to a mountain climb over the Continental Divide--to its source high in a valley lined with stark, stratified cliffs that rival or surpass those of Yosemite.

By climbing over the divide, a decision that looked increasingly dubious until at long last we reached the top, we shaved a day off our hiking time and arrived back at Oolah Lake.

With a day to spare, not anticipating the storm that would lock us in longer, we decided to hike up a side valley that gives birth to the North Fork of the Koyukuk River, one of the main feeders of the distant Yukon.

Wilderness Trophy

It would turn out to be the highlight of our journey. Along the way, keeping to the higher ground and easier footing, we came upon an area of scattered bones, a great caribou rack bleached white and sitting erect, a wilderness trophy. Bones were split--an old wolf kill.

Six hours of hard hiking took us near the source, a pool beneath a gray wall of stone, the beginning of the Koyukuk. The ground sloped steeply up both sides of the narrow valley’s end, great boulders lying strewn about on the moss and lichen covered hillside.

Then, as before, a hand on my shoulder. “Stand still,” Richard said. “Listen.”

I held my breath, the cool air still in the evening, and the sound came. One at first, the long baleful howl calling others to join, then two, three voices raised to the Arctic sky.

A wolf’s howl in the wild sends shivers you’ve never known. They fell silent and we answered, as well as we could, howling in mimicking pitches to unseen ears.

Then the voice again, and this time a silhouette on the ridge high above us.

The watcher; the warner: strangers here. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of white and, turning, saw two wolves dodging between the boulders near the valley’s end, circling around--one white, one black, a shadow of the other--nervous eyes always casting back to where we stood.

We began creeping forward, hoping that over the next rise, around the next boulder we would come close enough for a picture, close enough to meet eye to eye. As we crept to the base of the ridge the howler began again, different this time, a barking yelp, and we held, spying with binoculars the clutter of stone ahead.

We sat for a good while, watching, waiting. At last, a good 100 yards away, we saw two wolves, gray on gray, stealing nervous looks our way, and behind them, nearly invisible in the shadows, two pups--another den.

At that we decided to slip away. We had disturbed them enough, and I had not forgotten the two in black and white that had disappeared behind us some time before.

We didn’t fear attack; they were there to protect their own. But nonetheless it seemed wise to leave the den area and put two hidden wolves at ease. It was a matter of respect. We were the interlopers in their land, happy just to have found, and seen--and to have howled with the wolves.

For further information write to Alaska Division of Tourism, Department of Commerce and Economic Development, P.O. Box E, Juneau 99811.