About the park

This vast landscape does not contain any roads or trails. Visitors discover intact ecosystems where people have lived with the land for thousands of years. Wild rivers meander through glacier-carved valleys, caribou migrate along age-old trails, endless summer light fades into aurora-lit night skies of winter. It remains virtually unchanged except by the forces of nature.

History

People have lived in the Brooks Range for more than 13,000 years and thousands of archeological sites in Gates of the Arctic document this history and people's strong connections to the land. Today Athapaskan and Inupiat descendants and various Non-Native Alaskan peoples call the area home. Traditionally, populations were small and mobile, moving throughout the year among a series of camps to harvest seasonally available foods. It was not until last century that people settled in permanent, year-round villages. Today there are

eleven resident zone communities directly associated with the Park, and many people continue to conduct subsistence activities within and around the park and preserve.

People of European descent first began to visit the Central Brooks Range in the 1880s. Military explorers assigned to map this previously uncharted territory struggled up rivers and over mountain passes. Prospectors followed, searching for signs of placer gold and struggling through long winters in rough mining camps. Government scientists came to examine and record the intricacies of the natural and cultural history of this previously undocumented place. More recently the introduction of recreational adventurers seeking untamed places has added a new page to the history of the region.

Establishment

By establishing Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve in Alaska’s Brooks Range, Congress has reserved a vast and essentially untouched area of superlative natural beauty and exceptional scientific value – a maze of glaciated valleys and gaunt, rugged mountains covered with boreal forest and arctic tundra vegetation, cut by wild rivers, and inhabited by far-ranging populations of caribou, Dall sheep, wolves, and bears (barren-ground grizzlies and black bears). Congress recognized that a special value of the Park and Preserve is its wild and undeveloped character, and the opportunities it affords for solitude, wilderness travel, and adventure. Gates of the Arctic encompasses several congressionally recognized elements, including the national park, national preserve, wilderness, six Wild Rivers and two National Natural Landmarks. The National Park Service is entrusted to manage this area to protect its physical resources and to maintain the intangible qualities of the wilderness and the opportunity it provides for people to learn and renew its values.

The dramatic title for the park comes from the wilderness advocate Robert Marshall, a frequent traveler in the North Fork Koyukuk drainage from 1929 to 1939. Marshall described two peaks, Frigid Crags and Boreal mountains, as the gates from Alaska’s central Brooks Range into the arctic regions of the far north. The natural forces of wind, water, temperature, and glacial and tectonic action have sculpted a wildly varied landscape in this northern-most and east-west trending portion of the Rocky Mountains. Southerly foothills step into waves of mountains rising to elevations of 4,000 feet. These in turn may climax in limestone or granitic peaks over 7,000 feet.

Proclaimed Gates of the Arctic National Monument on 01 Dec 1978, established as a national park and preserve on 02 Dec 1980 and wilderness designated 02 Dec 1980 all by President Jimmy Carter. Designated a Biosphere Reserve 1984.

Landscape

Climb practically any ridge in the heart of the park and you’ll see a dozen glacial cirques side by side; serrated mountains that scythe the sky; and storms that snap out of dark, brooding clouds. Six National Wild and Scenic Rivers—Alatna, John, Kobuk, Noatak, North Fork Koyukuk, and Tinayguk—tumble out of high alpine valleys into forested lowlands. The park lies entirely above the Arctic Circle, straddling the Brooks Range, one of the world's northernmost mountain chains.

Along with Kobuk Valley National Park and Noatak National Preserve, Gates of the Arctic protects much of the habitat of the western arctic caribou. Grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, and foxes also roam over the severe land in search of food. Ptarmigan nibble on willow, and gyrfalcons dive for ptarmigan.

Shafts of cinnabar sunlight pour through the mountains at 2 a.m. in June, setting the wild land ablaze. In this mammoth mountain kingdom—the northernmost reach of the Rockies—the summer sun does not set for 30 straight days.

"No sight or sound or smell or feeling even remotely hinted of men or their creations," wrote Marshall. "It seemed as if time had dropped away a million years and we were back in a primordial world."

Animals

The story of summer in the Central Brooks Range is one of spectacular abundance—millions of insects, lush new plant growth, prey for the predators.

In fact, the availability of food is so great that birds undertake long migrations to arrive here in time to breed and to raise their chicks on a protein-rich diet of mosquitoes and other prolific insects. Some birds have come unimaginable distances, like the arctic terns that fly all the way from Antarctic waters—the longest migration of any bird in the world.

Caribou trek from their boreal forest wintering grounds to their calving areas on the coastal plain, sustaining themselves on lichens along the way. Grizzly and black bears leave their dens with cubs born the previous winter. Small mammals like arctic ground squirrels, lemmings and voles, emerge from their winter homes to feed and frolic once again in the open air. Whitefish, northern pike and grayling feast in the rivers and lakes.

For all of the abundance of summer, it is a fleeting season…and for eight months each year the deep cold and scarcity of winter prevails.

Insects and seeds suddenly become scarce, so most of the birds are forced to migrate—or starve. The few species that remain have made special and often surprising adaptations. Ptarmigan for example, have feathered feet that act like snowshoes allowing them to walk and forage atop the powdery surface. And they’ve learned to dive or burrow down into the snow, which insulates them from the much colder air above.

Caribou and moose move to the boreal forest, sheltering among the trees, eating twigs and scratching for browse under the snow. Voles and lemmings live in chambers tunneled through the snow, spending their winters active and in relative warmth, eating food cached in summer.

Some animals fatten up before winter and do not have to eat. Ground squirrels go fully into hibernation, while black and grizzly bears spend many months in a lighter, sleeplike dormancy inside their dens. Some fish become inactive after retreating to deep still waters under the ice of rivers and lakes. Beavers keep snug within their lodges and live mostly on stored food.

Winter survival for animals of the central Brooks Range means adaptation to scarcity and bitter cold.

But for those that make it—the lavish riches of summer await.

References:

[Web Graphic]. Retrieved from http://new-flies.com/karupa-lake.php

Gates of the Arctic National Park Information Page - National Parks. (n.d.). National Parks. Retrieved May 24, 2014, from http://www.gates.of.the.arctic.national-park.com/info.htm