North Pole, AK - Ice Road Vanners 2

When we got mostly through the mountains, we arrived in Coldfoot, our stop for the night. It bills itself as the Northernmost Truck Stop in America. And, surely it is. Quite a few trucks in the parking lot. We checked into our rooms and - PLUSH - they each have a bathroom. Check out how dirty those vehicles are.

Coldfoot was settled in the late 1890’s and got its name when the first group of miners got ‘cold feet’ and headed south for the winter of 1898. The gold played out soon and it was a ghost town by 1912 but now it has a large motel, pictured above, a truck stop with the last gas until Deadhorse, a restaurant, a post office an airstrip and a state trooper barracks.

The rooms are not really much more elaborate than the rooms we had in Deadhorse: 2 twin beds and a closet but these rooms have a sink in the bedroom section and a toilet and a shower in the bathroom. WOW. Wonder of wonders.

You’re probably thinking - this is PLUSH? ls this what she calls plush? What kind of hotels does she usually stay in? Yeah, yeah, I’m just comparing it to Deadhorse.

The door frames are painted (not at Deadhorse - plain wood.)

The food at both Deadhorse and Coldfoot is for truckers and oil rig workers. Big appetites. Lots of food. Lots of desserts. They all looked really good but - I had left my apple and chips from my sack lunch and got those out for my dinner. Gary bought the dinner but didn’t eat a lot.

After dinner we all went over to the Gates of the Arctic National Park to check out the exhibits and to listen to the ranger talk for the evening. Really good talk by Ranger Bob Mauer. He told us how he prepared for a winter trek through the park. Why does he trek in the winter? To accompany scientists studying something in the park, to help groups traveling through the park, to help those who have gotten into trouble in the park and to check on the animals and the park itself.

I’ll show you some of the pictures I took and then relate what he told us.

Nice tent set-up. There is a stove inside and a vent pipe that must go out the top - but he didn’t have it set up here. The tent has a wicking polypropylene inner layer (the white layer) and an outside nylon layer. In the morning, he takes off the nylon layer, shakes the moisture off and packs it. Then the inner layer. He also has a shovel and snowshoes with cleats.

Note how down-filled that sleeping bag is. It’s huge - but he’s about 6’ tall himself. He also has some wood here that he has cut down for his stove.

He has to boil snow to get water but lots of snow makes very little water. So, he fills this red bag with snow, puts it right outside his tent, making it easier to fill that little pot.



He has a sled which he pulls. But he also has a huge pack too.

For the coldest weather he has woolen pants, shirt, rubber Bunny boots which, he can just empty if they get water in them. Beaver mittens keep his hands warm but are too large to be useful for any work. Thus he has other mittens under them.  Note the beaver hat.

Very heavy pants and jacket.

Here are some pictures he showed us of his travels through the park.

For every mile he moves he actually does 3. He leaves his sled on the trail, blazes a trail ahead with his snowshoes, comes back, hooks up his sled and follows his blazed trail. Then, when he reaches the end of his blazed section, he unhooks his sled and blazes some more. A slow way to travel but efficient. He says - don’t ever ask how far he will go in a day or how long it will take. He’ll get as far as he can in the least amount of time. And he stops when he's done for the day.



After about 10 minutes into the talk, Gary asked for the key to our room and left. He must not feel well, he would never leave a ranger talk, especially not one so interesting.

The rest of us finished the talk, I asked several questions and then we all headed back to our quarters for the night. I found Gary in bed, still dressed, partly asleep and covered with a blanket. He awoke when I entered, said he didn’t feel well and was cold. Could I get another blanket? I found one in the linen closet and tucked him into it.

Soon he got up, showered and felt much better. And, the next day he was fine. We haven’t a clue what must have happened.