The Gates of the Arctic National Park is lying North of the Arctic Circle in Alaska and is also described as the premier and quintessential wilderness. The national park does not know any roads, trails or facilities – you can still discover true solitude here. Exploring and hiking this beautiful National Park is not for the faint of heart or unexperienced as you have to fully rely on your own skills and equipment. The National Park is rich in mesmerizing arctic valleys, wild rivers, beautiful lakes and rugged peaks. We came in contact with Jeffrey who did an epic 8-day hike in the National Park with friends and wanted a bespoke designed poster to relive this adventure. And we are very honoured that he wanted to share his experience with us in this interview!

 

Are you as curious to hear Jeffrey’s experience as we are? Let’s dive into it!

*All pictures in this post are from Jeffrey's hike, thank you for sharing these with us to make the interview more alive and personal!  

To start, would you be able to tell us a bit about yourself?

I am an overeducated liberal arts major. I have spent most of my professional career as a data guy in healthcare. Recently I shifted from healthcare to the non-profit world where I am the President of the Wolf-Moose Foundation which is the fundraising arm of the Wolf-Moose Project, the world’s longest running predator-prey study based on Isle Royale in the middle of Lake Superior.

 

I love to travel – backpacking being one form of travel I love. But I am also good at the lazy, luxurious travel with lots of good food and wine.

How did your passion for hiking and the outdoors start?

My first backpacking trip was in August 1976 when I and 2 friends went on a youth group hike in the Smoky Mountains. External frame packs, clunky gear (flannel sleeping bag anyone?), cotton clothing, and hiking in tennis shoes. I broke my 35 mm camera’s light meter on the top of Clingmans Dome (now called Kuwohi) when I dropped it on the USGS marker designating it as the highest point in the park. We experienced 16 separate thunderstorms in 8 days, were constantly wet, had several black bear experiences, and I learned to not love dried apricots. My friends and I called it the gruelling ordeal. I loved it (Type 2 fun) and have been hiking ever since.

 

You hiked in the Gates of the Arctic National Park, an 80-mile journey over 8-days; what a fantastic achievement! The National Park is classified as remote wilderness and doesn’t have any trails or signs – and we would love to hear how your experience was hiking in the National Park?

 

It was great, epic, the hike of a lifetime. I and two good backpacking friends (Dave and David) completed the hike in July/August 2023. Correct, there are no roads, no trails, no infrastructure, and it is not easy to find maps – let alone information – of the area. Almost terra incognita. We used USGS maps which were based upon data gathered in 1970 from aerial photographs using NAD 1927 (i.e., antique technology). The best source for what the hike and land would be like was Bob Marshall’s book Alaska Wilderness, exploring the Brooks Range published in 1956 based upon his notes from 1930s.

 

The hike is north of the Arctic Circle, north of the tree line, and in amongst the Brooks Mountain Range. We hiked late July/early August so the sun never set – It turns out the sun goes to the western horizon, then hangs a right hand turn, goes north for an hour or two, then does another right hand turn to head back east. Weird.

 

The most difficult part of the hike was the planning, knowing what gear would be best, planning a route, how much food to take, and so on. Once we actually started the hike it was fairly straight-forward. But you do need to be comfortable with navigation and being well beyond the reach of help. I’ve done my share of wilderness off-trail hiking but I’ve never felt so exposed, so vulnerable as I did at the midpoint of this hike, mile 40 as we prepared to climb Peregrine Pass.

 

 

How did you discover the Gates of the Arctic NP – and what was the reason to hike in this specific and remote National Park?

 

Like a lot of backpackers my main backpacking friend (Dave) and I throw out ideas for where to hike next. We would riff on various parks, locations, and sometimes simply throw out an outlandish idea figuring we’d never do it. Gates of the Arctic was one of our outlandish ideas that we ended up returning to repeatedly. Until, of course, we decided we should do it.

 

We decided we needed to do it as a challenge to ourselves while we still could (I was 63 when we did the hike), but also because it is one of the last few places on the planet that hasn’t been taken over and changed by man. Being in the middle of the park knowing there is not another human for 30, 40, 50 miles or further is humbling. And exciting.

 

 

As mentioned above there are no roads, trails, signs or facilities within the Gates of the Arctic NP and hence you are fully reliant on your own skills, experiences and equipment. How did you deal with these conditions and how did you prepare for the hike?

 

We flew into Anaktuvuk Pass – a small Nunamiut Eskimo community – in a bush plane. From there we hiked due east until we hit the Dalton Highway, the mostly dirt road that goes 400+ miles from Fairbanks to Dead Horse on the Arctic Ocean. Our preparation focused primarily on our route and what gear would be best.

 

Using the USGS maps I plotted a route along 4 main wild rivers in the park; about 90% of the hike was within 100 yards of a river/stream. I plotted out 3 or 4 dozen UTM points and we entered them into 3 separate GPS units – we thought redundancy on the route was a good thing. All 3 of us, who did the hike, have extensive experience navigating off-trail using GPS and compasses (remember to adjust your compass for magnetic declination) so we weren’t too concerned about getting lost. We also had an InReach satellite GPS unit – if we had trouble we could text out; basically to let somebody know where to find our bodies since any help would not be quick in arriving.

 

As we were north of the treeline we usually could see for miles in every direction – I have rarely hiked where you could see 8 or 10 miles ahead knowing you’d be camping there that evening. Even so, we wanted to be sure we wouldn’t get lost (e.g., taking the wrong canyon thinking we were headed toward a pass) because being lost might mean it would take a day or more to recover.

 

Our biggest concerns for gear focused on several points: having the capacity for enough food for 10 or 11 days (bear vaults only have so much volume), rain gear (it was the rainy season), footwear as we would be crossing multiple rivers every day, and pack weight. I used the pack weight issue as the reason to go out and buy a lot of new ultralight gear.

 

Footwear was a point we went back on forth on. We knew there would be many river and stream crossings each day and we didn’t know how deep the water would be. The rivers and streams ended up being very rocky, fast, and often knee to thigh deep – difficult to cross even with trekking poles. Rather than experiment with some new-fangled footwear we opted to go with regular hiking boots thinking we’d prefer to have good footing for river crossings and wet feet, than dry feet and poor footing. We all agreed that this was the correct choice after we completed the hike.

 

We also prepared for bears. We had bear vaults for the food and bear spray. Anytime we went through bushes we sang out letting bears know we were coming so we wouldn’t surprise them. We didn’t have any bear encounters but we did see a lot of bear scat and bear prints.

 

With the trail being remote, how did you manage your food, water and supplies during the trail?

 

We completed the hike in 8-days and we carried all of our own food. We had enough food for 10 or 11 days because we really had no idea of how many miles we’d be able to cover in a day. It did take some planning to ensure we could stash all the food into the bear vaults.

 

Water was simple – we had several pumps and filters, but in the end we simply used a hanging gravity filter the entire trip. Since there were no trees where we were, we needed to MacGyver a trekking pole tripod to hang the water.

 

 

Even though you prepared well for the trail, did you come across any (major) challenges that you would never have thought of beforehand? And how did you tackle these challenges?

 

We encountered one challenge that did not occur to us and one challenge that could have occurred but didn’t.

 

Our first two days of hiking the temperature hit 85 or 90 degrees. Which being north of the arctic circle, it never occurred to us that heat might be an issue. Fortunately, we always had water close at hand. On the first day we left Anaktuvuk Pass in the heat, then a rain storm came through and the temperature dropped roughly 30-35 degrees in about 2 seconds. Whiplash weather.

 

The other challenge – that didn’t occur but could have – is the depth of the streams we crossed. The entire hike is in river valleys between mountains on both sides. Mountains with glaciers, melting snow, and many streams. We figured that earlier in the season these mountain runoff streams would have been deeper. Perhaps deep to the point they would have been impassable. Certainly much more dangerous. So we were lucky there.

 

 

 

What is your best memory of the trail?

 

Best memory is reaching the top of Peregrine Pass (photo). As we hiked we needed to climb over mountain passes to move from one river to the next. Two of the passes were fairly easy. The most challenging of the passes was Peregrine Pass. It was the most difficult because it was the highest pass at 5,069 feet, or about 1,500 higher than we’d been hiking at, and the route we took was primarily loose shale. Climbing loose shale with full packs is work. And frankly, the maps did not really tell us exactly where the pass was so we sort of picked out a spot as we hiked and said it was the pass.

We timed the hike so the day before we’d climb Peregrine Pass we’d end the day at the base of the mountain we’d have to climb. Meaning we’d get up the next morning and the first thing we’d do it climb Peregrine Pass well rested.

 

In the morning it was chilly, drizzly, foggy, and windy. We ate breakfast, lots of coffee, tore down camp, and then we climbed. As we climbed the wind whipped the fog away and the sun came out. After 90 minutes we made it to the top of the pass where we were greeted by one confused looking caribou.

 

We rested at the top of the pass for quite a while, enjoying the views, and feeling pretty proud of ourselves.

 

Before starting on the hike, you must have probably gone through your gear checklist a dozen times. In the end, did you take any gear with you that you eventually felt you could have done without? Or was there any specific gear that you wished you had with you on the trail?

 

Between the 3 of us we had for the most part the correct gear. Two pieces of gear we had that didn’t work out were a simple tarp to use as a shelter and a small mosquito proof enclosure.

 

The tarp shelter generally works well while hiking, but the wind in the Gates of Arctic was always present and sometimes vicious. The wind defeated the tarp making it useless gear. Two of the nights we set up camp I used every stake and guy-line I had for my tent and placed large rocks on each stake. And I was still concerned the wind was going to take my tent away.

 

We also took a mosquito enclosure because we knew the mosquitos were going to be bad; they were indeed very bad. Rather than set it up we either slathered ourselves with bug repellent or got into our tents.

 

After this amazing achievement of hiking in the remote wilderness of the Gates of the Arctic NP, do you have any other trails on your bucket list which you plan to hike in the (near) future?

 

Dave and I are still throwing out improbable outlandish hikes. I would like to come up with something the equal of the Gates of the Arctic Hike, but we haven’t decided on one yet.

 

 

For all those inspired by your story and experience on the trail, what is the one tip you would like to give them?

 

Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Our hike went well, but the 3 of us have a lot of off trail experience and we planned this hike for over 1 year. Any trouble in a hike like this could rapidly become something that cannot be recovered from easily. Overconfidence is not your friend.

 

And it is very exciting as you are writing a book – can you tell us a bit more about this and when will the book be published and available?

 

In July 2025, Michigan State University Press is publishing my book called Dead Moose on Isle Royale: Off Trail with the Citizen-Scientists of the Wolf-Moose Project. The Wolf-Moose Project is the world’s longest running predator prey study and, if you are so inclined, you can volunteer to hike off trail for a week at a time to help the scientists gather data and bones in support of the project. I have been leading groups of volunteers on the island since 2005 and have hiked 1,000+ miles while doing this. In those years and miles, I’m excited to say, I have some stories to tell.

 

And lastly, when our hiking-lovers want to know more and follow your adventures, where can they find you on social media (if you are, of course, happy to share this info 😊)?

 

I am on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jeffrey.holden.581.

 

Jeffrey, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with us, it was an absolute pleasure!

 Do you have an amazing story about one of your trail adventures which you would like to share with the community? Please reach out to us via contact@tellyourtrail.com as we would love to hear from you.

Happy Trails,
Jay & Maud

 

 

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