#9 - Fairbanks

It's a four and a half hour train ride from Denali to Fairbanks. The Healy Canyon area just north of the park is spectacular. From there we gradually made our way out of the mountains. Much of the landscape between Denali and Fairbanks is made up trees, trees and more trees. I have never seen so many trees. There must have been billions of them! 

My new friend, Rosie, who I had met on the internet and who had graciously offered to let me stay at her place, met me at the train station at 9:30 at night dressed in shorts and a tank top. Oh, was I glad to feel warm again!! 

Rosie has a number of little cabins on her property, mainly for storage and crafts, but one is a guest house. I had the best night's sleep of my whole trip on the couch she provided me. It was lovely to have a room to myself. Hostels are inexpensive and convenient to town, but the rooms are dorm style, so it had been weeks since I'd had a room to myself. Between the warm sun and my own room, I thought I was in heaven! 

Fairbanks is the hub of Alaska's interior and is the second largest city in the state. The University of Alaska is located there and it has a very nice museum where I spent several hours one day while Rosie was registering for classes. 

The Brooks Range to the north and the Alaska Range to the south keep wet coastal air away from the interior; thus, the hot, sunny weather I so enjoyed during my four-day stay. It was in the mid to upper 80s the entire time, though Rosie said it started raining the day I left. Three days is plenty to take in the sites of Fairbanks and North Pole. I spent the fourth day because of scheduling problems. The Alaskon Express runs from Fairbanks to the Yukon Territories only three times a week--Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Because I arrived in Fairbanks on a Sunday evening, the Tuesday run was too soon. Thus, an extra day in Fairbanks. 

I spent one hot afternoon touring Gold Dredge No. 8, the only authentic gold dredge in Alaska that is open to the public. This dredge has been described as a floating workhorse or a giant mechanical gold pan that extracted millions of ounces of gold from ground that was frozen for most of the year. It was long, hard work. In just an hour and a half of gold panning, I developed a backache. I can't imagine panning for months on end.

Rosie was a wonderful hostess and she drove me all over. We went to Alaskaland where we toured authentic restored cabins and stuffed ourselves at the salmon bake buffet. We visited North Pole, Alaska, and you can see from this picture that the North Pole is not always covered in snow. In fact, that was one of the few times it was warm enough for shorts. Here I am leaning against Alaska's state "bird," the mosquito. I was told to bring lots of bug repellent as the mosquitos are normally really bad during August, but I encountered very few bug problems. 

One evening while out for a stroll at sunset (around 10:30) I noticed several hot air balloons. Rosie said, "Let's go find them," so we jumped in the truck and chased them across Fairbanks. At one point we were close enough to them for Rosie to have a conversation with one of the young men on board. We followed them to the golf course and watched them dismantle the balloons. It was a very interesting experience. 

Rosie's cabins do not have indoor plumbing so I found it necessary to make trips to the outdoor potty in the middle of the night. One morning I woke up at 1:30 not especially thrilled at the thought of going to the outhouse in the dark. I opened the door to discover that it was light outside! There was still a faint pink color along the horizon from the sunset hours before. I had heard that the sunsets in Fairbanks last for hours and I discovered that that it is not an exaggeration. Another night I woke up at 3:30 to discover that the sky was starting to lighten up. Apparently, sometime between 1:30 and 3:30 it gets dark, but I never saw it. 

Fairbanks is just 200 miles from the Arctic Circle. Rosie offered her truck and I debated driving there, but decided I didn't want to drive for eight hours just so I could say I had been to the Arctic Circle. There is nothing but a sign and miles and miles of tundra. 

There are a couple of hot springs in the area. I had so looked forward to sitting in the warm water earlier in my trip when my muscles ached from all the walking and carrying of my heavy pack and my feet were cold and muddy. But by the time I'd been in the 88 degree temperature of Fairbanks, I had lost all desire to sit in hot water. 

Rosie drove me to the local access station of the Alaska Pipeline. It was so interesting to read how it was built. A good portion of it lies deep underground. Imagine digging through the frozen ground! Unfortunately, I was at the end of a roll and my pictures did not turn out. But here is one from the Fairbanks Visitor Guide. 

THE PIPELINE

Construction was started in 1974 and was finished three years later. The entire project, including pumping stations, access roads and the 800 miles of pipe cost about $8 billion in 1977 dollars. At the peak of construction, 28,000 workers lived in isolated camps with names such as Toolik, Old Man, Sourdough and Tonsina, and worked seven 12-hour shifts a week. They earned $1,500 or more a week. Thirty-one construction workers died, well below the one per mile engineers predicted when they considered the massive difficulties of construction. 

The oil pumped from the Prudhoe Bay field, about 10,000-to-20,000 feet below the surface, is about 145 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat exchangers that work like a car's radiator cool the oil to about 120 degrees before it enters the pipeline and begins its 800 mile journey to Valdez. The pipe is a 48-inch diameter tube of 1/2-inch thick steel, wrapped in four inches of fiberglass insulation and covered with a coat of aluminum sheet metal. 

Because much of Northern Alaska is underlain with permafrost, just over half the pipeline was routed above ground. The entire pipeline would have been buried, but it was determined that the permanently-frozen soil would melt as the hot oil passed through, causing the pipe to sag and possibly to leak. Where the pipeline snakes above ground, it is supported by posts designed to keep the permafrost frozen. Topped with aluminum radiators, the posts absorb cold from the winter air and transfer it to the soil. 

The pipeline was built in a zigzag pattern to allow the pipe to expand and contract. Because the pipeline had to be welded in temperatures well below zero, engineers anticipated that the metal would expand once hot oil began flowing through. The zigzag allows for this. It also allows the pipeline to flex during earthquakes. 

The temperature within the pipeline is fairly constant despite the fact that temperatures along the line can range from as much as 100 above to 80 below zero. The fiberglass insulation that surrounds the above-ground portions of the pipeline keeps oil warm enough to flow even on the coldest winter days. If for some reason the pipeline had to be shut down during the winter, the oil inside could sit for several months before congealing. 

Oil began moving in the line in late summer 1977. Powered by the ten pump stations, oil flows through the pipeline at about the same speed the Yukon River carries a raft, about five to seven miles per hour. At that rate, it takes about five-and-one-half days for oil to complete its journey from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. 

At its peak, it carried 2.1 million barrels a day, about an eighth of the oil used in America. Nearly 12 billion barrels have been pumped.