Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve

Listen for a moment. There is no engine hum here, no distant road, no voices but your own. The ground under your boots gives a little with every step. It is spongy, wet and uneven, a carpet of moss, lichen and low shrubs over soil that never fully thaws. The air smells of cold water and crushed tundra plants. Welcome to Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, one of the quietest places in the United States.

Start with where you are. This park lies entirely north of the Arctic Circle, in the central Brooks Range of northern Alaska. It is the northernmost national park in the country. It is also one of the largest, covering more than eight million acres when the park and the preserve are counted together. That is larger than some American states. Much of this land falls within the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, a vast region with very few people and almost no roads.

Here is the first surprise. This national park has no roads inside it, no marked trails and no built campgrounds. There is no visitor centre at the edge of a scenic drive. Most people arrive by small bush plane, often from tiny communities such as Bettles or Coldfoot, or the village of Anaktuvuk Pass. The pilot lands on a gravel bar, a lake or a patch of open ground. Then the plane leaves, and the wilderness belongs to you.

The name has a story. In the late 1920s and 1930s, a forester and wilderness advocate named Bob Marshall explored the upper Koyukuk River country. He was fascinated by its emptiness. On the North Fork of the Koyukuk, two mountains stand on either side of the valley, Frigid Crags and Boreal Mountain. Marshall saw them as a pair of great gateposts opening north toward the Arctic. He called them the Gates of the Arctic, and the name stayed with the land.

Marshall's writing helped people far away imagine this place. Decades later, that imagination turned into protection. The area became a national monument in 1978. Then, in 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act made it a national park and preserve. That one law set aside enormous areas of Alaska at the same time. Gates of the Arctic was part of a deliberate choice: to keep a whole mountain range wild, not just a few scenic viewpoints.

Now look at the mountains themselves. The Brooks Range runs east to west across northern Alaska, a long wall between the forested interior and the flat North Slope. On the southern side, you see spruce trees thinning out along the valleys. Climb higher or travel north, and the trees disappear. What remains is open tundra, grey rock and bare ridgelines. Glaciers carved many of these valleys into wide, U-shaped troughs, and you can still read that shape in the land today.

In the western part of the park stand the Arrigetch Peaks, a cluster of sharp granite spires. The name is commonly translated from Iñupiaq as the fingers of an outstretched hand. When you see the pale towers rising from the valley, the image makes sense. Climbers and hikers who reach them describe a landscape that looks almost carved by hand. They are remote even by the standards of this park, which is saying a great deal.

Water shapes everything here. Several rivers in and around the park are designated Wild and Scenic Rivers, among them the Noatak, the Kobuk, the Alatna and the North Fork of the Koyukuk. That designation protects them in their free-flowing state. For many visitors, a river trip by raft or canoe is the most practical way to travel. The water is cold and clear. Gravel bars make natural campsites, and the current carries you through country that few people ever see.

This is not an empty land, and that is the second surprise. People have lived in the Brooks Range for thousands of years. The Nunamiut, an inland Iñupiat people, hunted caribou in these mountains. Their descendants live today in Anaktuvuk Pass, a village surrounded by the park. To the south, Koyukon Athabascan communities have deep ties to the river valleys. Unlike most national parks, this one allows local residents to continue subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering. The land is a working homeland, not only a reserve.

Animals move through on their own schedules. The Western Arctic caribou herd, one of the largest in Alaska, travels across parts of the range during its seasonal migrations. Grizzly bears dig for roots and ground squirrels on the slopes. Wolves, moose and Dall sheep live here too. In summer, migratory birds arrive from distant continents to nest on the tundra. You may walk for hours and see only tracks. Then, suddenly, a whole valley comes alive.

Light here follows Arctic rules. Around midsummer, the sun does not set at all for weeks. It circles low around the sky, and the evening glow can last until morning. Your sense of time slips. In late summer and autumn, the nights return, and the tundra turns red, orange and gold. On clear, dark nights, the northern lights can ripple green across the sky. Winter is long, very cold and dark, and only the most experienced travellers visit then.

Travel here demands respect. There are no rangers at every turn and no cell signal in most places. Weather can hold a bush plane on the ground for days, so visitors plan extra food and time. Rivers rise quickly after rain. Bears are a real presence, so food is stored carefully, away from camp. Many people choose a licensed guide for their first trip. Self-reliance is not an extra skill here. It is the price of entry.

Before you move on, pause and take in what is around you right now. Notice the size of the sky. Notice how far the eye can travel before it meets anything made by people. Listen again to the quiet, the wind over the tundra, perhaps the sound of running water. When the plane returns, this silence will stay behind you. And somewhere between those two mountains on the Koyukuk, the gates will stand open, just as Bob Marshall found them.