The Pass rises to 4739 feet a mere one hundred and sixty miles from the Arctic Ocean. When I reached the bottom I was already a bit shaken because the climb before the actual pass was a solid six inches of mud. I should have thrown the truck into four wheel drive, but I just didn’t expect to see that much mud on the hillside. Needless to say, I pulled over before the actual pass and locked the Dodge in four wheel drive.
As I pulled over to prepare, a pair of semi trucks roared past me and their shifting gears echoed through the canyon laden with equipment for the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. Figuring they would need time to get ahead of me I sat and watched their progress. Just beyond where I pulled over the road made a sharp ninety degree turn and began the ascent. The dark line of a shadow on the guardrail marked the straight line of the road against the organic rock face protruding from the side of the mountain.
When they passed from view, hidden by the peak closer to me, I pulled out and began my approach. There were no other vehicles around. Luckily the road’s surface was much better than the rutted mud of the previous ascent, and soon I was on the straight and narrow gravel path. The climb went on for minutes. The outdoor temperature on my trucks thermometer dropped from 44 to 37 and snow held to the edges of road. The semis disappeared around a corner and I thought they had begun the descent only to find their backsides again as I turned the corner and we all continued to climb.
Snow covered everything that was not the roadway at this altitude and at least two inches of snow blanketed the steep walls of the peaks on both sides towered another twelve to fifteen hundred feet above me. The road leveled briefly and then swung to the other side of the mountains and before me the view opened to a single black mountain peaked in stripes of snow standing out against pure white of the taller mountains beyond and the thin clouds pulled taut across a blue sky.
