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Alaska, the North S lope
OY HAS GUIDED
his
18-wheeler t ruck and trailer round t he last
few hairpin bends of Atigun Pass and down
onto the North Slope. Behind us lies 300
miles of one of the most remarkab le roads
in the world.
It
connects the oil field at
Prudhoe Bay with Fairbanks.
l have been riding with Roy since dawn. It
has been severa! hours since we paused
at the world's most northerly truck
stop, crossed the Arctic Ci rcle and left
far behind the last tree. The
temperature here has dropped to
minus 39 degrees Fahrenheit- not too
bad for these parts. 1t often goes down
to minus 60 degrccs.
Roy is one of the d r ivers who regularly
drive the "haul road" as it is called,
carrying supplies lo the oil fields. His
dispatchers had asked him lo make a quick
trip north with a load of antifreeze and
sorne urgently needed drilling equipment.
He'd invited me along, explaining that [
could nol appreciate this country by flying
over it. One has to experience it at ground
level, he says.
The North Slope
A herd of caribou are grazing in the middle
distance. The gray-white ribbon of road stretcbes out
ahead- barely dis l inguishable from the frozen
wilderness on either side. Somewhere out there, a
hundred or more miles north, is Prudhoe Bay.
Belween us and Prudhoe Bay is nothing but frozen
snow-covered tundra, the narrow strip of road and
the pipeline.
The pipeline has been with us all
day- sometimes to the r ight, then burrowing
underground and appearing on the left. The
Trans-Aiaska pipeline is an engineering success
story that has been compared to the space shuttle
and the moon landing. Pipelines have been built
that are longer and wider, but never befare has a
pipeline been built through such hostile ter r itory
and against such incredible odds.
Consider the challenge:
1
n
J
uly
!
968, after
years of exploration, oil was discovered in
commercial quantities at Prudhoe Bay, in tbe far
north of Alaska. l t was one of the greatest finds
in recent oil exploration history-and promised to
go a long way toward making the United States
less dependent on imporled oil. That is,
if
the oil
could be broughl out.
" Look ahead!" Roy shouted suddenly. The
North Slope is a great place to look ahead.
Drilliog platform st.ands among ice ftoes of Cook Inlet.
At the top of the world, the earth's curvature begins
to flatten out sl ightly, a nd you can literally see
farther.
Befare us lies a wide snow-covered plain. Only a
few low hills off lo the right break the vast expanse.
September 1983
The North Slope of Alaska is one of the mosl
inhospitable places imaginable. In winter the sun
does not rise a bove the horizon for months, and
the temperature can reach (with the wind chill
factor) minus 11 5 degrees Fahrenheit. At that
19