John Kauffmann - Alaskas Brooks Range: The Ultimate Mountains

JOHN M. KAUFFMANN

THE MOUNTAINEERS BOOKS
is the nonprofit publishing arm of The Mountaineers, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas.

1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98134

2013 by John M. Kauffmann

First edition: first printing 1992, second printing 1997
Second edition: first printing 2005, second printing 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Project editor: Christine Clifton-Thornton
Editor: Sara Levant
Maps: Nick Gregoric
Cover design and layout: Emily Ford/The Mountaineers Books
Cover photograph: Landscape of autumn colored hills leading up to mountains in the distance in Alaskas Brooks Range. (Photo from iStockphoto.com)

A copy of the Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is on file at the Library of Congress.

PERMISSIONS
The following publishers have generously granted permission to use extended quotations from copyrighted works: Excerpts from Two in the Far North, by Margaret E. Murie, are reprinted with permission of Alaska Northwest Books. Copyright 1978 by Margaret E. Murie. *Excerpts from Journey to the Far North, by Olaus J. Murie, are reprinted courtesy of Margaret E. Murie. *Excerpts from Caribou and the Barren-Lands, by George Calef, are reprinted with permission of the Canadian Arctic Resource Committee. *The quotations from Brooks Range Passage, by David Cooper, are reprinted with permission of the publisher, The Mountaineers Books. *Collins, George L., The Art and Politics of Park Planning and Preservation, 19201979, an oral history conducted 19781979 by Ann Lage, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1980. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library. *Excerpts from Midnight Wilderness, by Debbie S. Miller, are reprinted with permission of Sierra Club Books. *Excerpts from Koviashuvik, by Sam Wright, are reprinted with permission of Sierra Club Books. *The excerpt from Make Prayers to the Raven, by Richard K. Nelson, is reprinted with permission of the University of Chicago Press. Copyright 1983 by the University of Chicago Press. *Excerpts from Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled, by Hudson Stuck, are courtesy of Charles Scribners Sons. *Excerpts from Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range, Second Edition, by Robert Marshall, edited by George Marshall, are reprinted with permission of the University of California Press. Copyright 1970 by The Regents of the University of California. *Excerpts from Nunamiut, by Helge Ingstad, are reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company. Copyright 1954 by Helge Ingstad. *Excerpts from Arctic Wild, by Lois Crisler, are reprinted with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 1958 by Lois Crisler. *Excerpts from The People Who Read the Day, (Wilderness magazine, Fall 1986), by Joseph W. Meeker; Where the Wilderness is Complete, by Lois Crisler (The Living Wilderness magazine [now Wilderness magazine], Spring 1957) are reprinted with permission of T. H. Watkins. *Excerpts from Vanishing Arctic: Alaskas National Wildlife Refuge, by T. H. Watkins, published by Aperture in association with The Wilderness Society, are reprinted by permission of T. H. Watkins. Copyright 1988 by the Aperture Foundation. *Excerpts from Nameless Valleys, Shining Mountains, by John Milton, are reprinted by permission from Walker and Company. Copyright 1970 by John Milton. *Excerpts from The Practice of the Wild, by Gary Snyder, are reprinted with permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. *Excerpts from We Live in the Arctic and The Flight of the Arctic Tern, by Constance and Harmon Helmericks, are reprinted courtesy of Harmon Helmericks. *The poem The Brooks Range first appeared in the Spring 1991 issue of Voices, a literary magazine for College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine. The author gratefully acknowledges all those whose works contributed meaning and depth to this book.

ISBN (paperback): 978-0-89886-347-5
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-829-1

During my years of Alaskan residence, my home in Anchorage on Kershner Avenue became a happy rendezvous and rallying place for many colleagues and other friends living in Alaska or arriving there to help in the cause of protecting its wild magnificence. Students, government officials, environmental leaders, old friends and young acquaintances who themselves became firm friends very soon, all contributed conviviality exceeded only by dedication. Some began to call us The Kershner Club. Mardy Murie was a specially honored member, Ted Swem, another. The roster is long, often distinguished, always characterized by warm hearts, vim, and faith.

To Mardy, Ted, and all the other members of The Kershner Club this book is thankfully and affectionately dedicated.

C ONTENTS

Behold the Brooks Range

Human culture in the north

Military men, geologists, biologists, and miners

Adventures and philosophy

The literature of Brooks Range experience

Protecting arctic wildlife habitat

Proposals form for central Brooks Range parklands

Planning concepts for a wilderness

Getting to know the territoryfruits of planning

Since ANILCA

Bob Marshalls Matterhorn of the Koyukuk. He termed it a towering, black, unscalable-looking giant and later renamed it Mount Doonerak. He considered it to be probably the highest Brooks Range peak, although later surveys have recorded its height at a more modest 7,610 feet. Marshall tried to climb this beacon of his Brooks Range love and aspiration. (National Park Service photograph by the author)

PROLOUGE

This windswept country is so revealing that you see what you are spiritually, morally.

Benjamin Wyer Bragonier

T he gaunt peaks of the Brooks Range are North Americas ultimate mountains. Beyond their far slope, the continent slips beneath the ice of arctic seas. A few ranges and parts of ranges stand even closer to the polein Siberia, on Ellesmere Islandbut none so extensive or important. The Brooks is the northernmost major mountain range in the world, stretching from Canadas Yukon Territory across the entire breadth of Alaska as a rampart more than seven hundred miles long.