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My Visit to Kobuk Valley National Park By Louis Waterer of Prescott,Arizona E-mail Lh2oer@aol.com |
My Visit to Kobuk Valley National Park By Louis Waterer of Prescott,Arizona E-mail Lh2oer@aol.com |
A few years ago I began a quest to visit all of our national parks. There are currently 56. I wanted "soft adventure" where I could sleep each night in a lodge or hotel. I completed this quest in June of 2001. While the American Samoa National Park was the farthest away, some of the national parks in Alaska were harder to reach. Gates of the Arctic National Park, Lake Clark National Park, and Katmai National Park were all a challenge to reach, but by searching on the internet I was able to arrange trips to them. Kobuk Valley National Park, however was really hard to get to. This park is located above the Arctic Circle with its western boundry about 75 miles east of Kotzebue, Alaska. Except in the few towns that exist, there are no roads in this part of the world. Access to the park is via float plane or boat up the Kobuk River. The river stays frozen until the middle of June and freezes again in the early fall. I began by flying Alaska Airlines to Kotzebue by way of Anchorage. It was late June. I arrived mid-morning with some changes of clothing and my personal gear in a small pack. I had made reservations to stay that night in town at the Nullagvik Hotel. Just walking around the village was interesting. There is a small visitor center run by the National Park Service and also the "Northwest Arctic Native Arts" museum operated by the local community. The next morning I caught an early Bering Airlines flight to Kiana, Alaska. Our small plane landed on a gravel strip. Kiana is a town of several hundred Inupiat Eskimo people located on the Kobuk River. As I got off my plane, I was greeted by my guide , Lorry Schuerch. He and his wife Nellie built and own the Kiana Lodge located several miles up the river. In a few minutes we were in his jet boat heading farther up the Kobuk River towards the park. Lorry`s business is mostly guiding fisherman or hunters, but he will also take tourists to the park- if they are willing to pay a high enough price for him to make a profit. The price of gas is extremely high in Kiana, and it is a full day round trip, so it is not cheap. It is about 40 miles from Kiana to the park boundry. This area is a preserve for huge herds of caribou that migrate north in late spring and south in early fall. I had chosen a time for my trip that coincided with the time that the herd was swimming across the quarter mile wide river. It is an emotional experience to see the young ones struggle across following their mother through the current. There are no docks to tie up to out here. When we finally got out of the boat, I had to step out into the mud at the river edge, and then needed to scramble up the rather steep river bluffs. I was glad to have a second pair of shoes along to change into later. Another thing that this park preserves in addition to the caribou homeland is archeological sites. There are large digs of house pit dwellings that date back thousands of years. Most are at Onion Portage on the east side of the park, but Lorry pulled us up to shore and took me on a short walk to view some that have been found on the west side where I was visiting. However, the feature that is most famous in Kobuk Valley National Park is an area covered with huge sand dunes. To see them we had to keep going in the boat to the middle of the park. The dunes are located several miles from the river, but my goal was only to hike in far enough and high enough to get a good view of them. That is still not easy. Lorry strapped on a pistol as we left the boat. We scrambled up the riverbank once again. I soon learned that there were no manmade trails to follow. We walked on a series of "game trails" through lots of low brush and small trees. After hiking about a half hour, we reached the top of a hill where the dunes came into very good view. They cover about 25 square miles. This sand was created by the grinding action of ancient glaciers and was carried to their current location by wind and water. They are stabilized by vegetation. As I finished taking photographs, we were startled by a loud noise from the nearby brush. My guide Lorry informed me that it was a bear and it was close to us. He warned me not to run, but said that we should calmly be on our way. Off we went. We heard the noise a few more times, but never saw the bear. Just getting back without taking unnecessary steps was a challenge since there was no man made trail to follow. After we made it down the river bluff and through the mud into the boat, I found out that Lorry took the pistol along for a reason. He knew that the large bears follow the caribou herds and so rarely see humans that they don`t have much fear of people. We might look like lunch to them. He admitted that the pistol might not have done much good if he had needed it, and said that more often he carried a high powered rifle. After that we went back toward Lorry`s Kiana Lodge, where I had arranged to spend the night. I realized that we had seen no other people since we left Kiana. The Kiana Lodge is a very nice place and relatively modern. It sits on a ridge with a wonderful view of the river and surrounding mountains. Lorry`s wife Nellie normally co-hosts at the lodge, but since she happened to be away at this time, he prepared a great halibut dinner and entertained me with stories about people who had been eaten by bears in the park. He also told about recovering bodies when small planes flew in the fog right into the nearby mountain side. Even though it was summer with daylight almost 24 hours a day, I was so tired that I slept well. The next morning Lorry was to take me in his boat back to the Kiana airstrip so I could get my Bering flight out. However, when I woke up I was shocked to see that we were surrounded by heavy fog. Lorry said that when this happens, his guests are sometimes stranded several days. Thankfully, in just a few hours the fog lifted off the ground several hundred feet, so we were able to take his boat back to Kiana and walk to the airstrip. The Bering Airplane soon landed, after they unloaded the mail and supplies, I boarded my flight back to Kotzebue. There I caught an Alaska Airlines flight and flew back to Anchorage. As I traveled back toward home, I was happy knowing that I had completed my quest to visit all 56 U.S national parks. Others have done this too,but not many because some of the parks are so remote. Kobuk Valley National Park stands apart from the others as the hardest to get to, and that is what makes it so interesting. |
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This page was last updated on: January 20, 2003
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