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Eagle Summit

Eagle Summit is a 3,652 feet tall gap through the White Mountains. You can cheat and see the sun at midnight on the solstice in the gap between the mountains even though it's below the artic circle. We didn't do that—it was light enough at "night" in Fairbanks even if the sun was (just barely) below the horizon. Instead, we hiked up in that area. It's a tundra area, which seems more tundra-y than the foresty area by the Pipeline. It's somewhat barren. It was windy and cool when we were there, which mean there were no mosquitos, which was nice. My adventure hat blew off a couple times, but (fortunately) was not lost (Stephanie retrieved it once).

Click on the thumbnail images to get larger ones (around 100-300K). Click on the "huge" link to get the full size pictures (around 3M). Almost 60 pictures included.

Getting There: The Steese Highway

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Here are a few shots of the terrain on the way out to Eagle Summit. The white in the second and third pictures are ice.

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More hillside by the Steese Highway.

Eagle Summit

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We finally arrived at the parking area. A shot of the sign and the area around it.

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There was some sort of weather station thingy, and another sign describing the area. The third picture is of the trail leading up to Eagle Summit, with signs at the start of the path and markers, as it works it ways up the hillside. It didn't take too long to get to the top—but that was only the start.

At the Top

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A picture of the top of Eagle Summit (with Stephanie in the distance), and one of a USGS marker (there were a few at the top). The third picture is looking back to the road and the parking area.

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Looking out beyond the summit, the trail continues. The second and third shots are of the trail going out from the summit. After taking some pictures on top, we eventually proceeded on the trail.

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Another shot of the path continuing (passing through that dark patch). A picture of the hills and valleys in the area, and one of Stephanie taking a picture of some plants while on top of Eagle Summit.

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I took some pictures of plants too. Some white flowers growing next to lichen, and yellow flowers. The yellow flowers were rather small, so I took a picture with my foot in the frame as a reference.

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A shot of lichen, and one of Stephanie sitting on a rock on Eagle Summit looking "Out Beyond."

Beyond

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The first and third pictures are of the trail. Some markers are visible in the distance. The dark patch is what was visible from the top of Eagle Summit. The second picture is of a flower on the trail. The trail was generally rocks over the tundra, so people won't trample over other areas on the tuntra. The trail can get a little soggy, so the rocks help with that.

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A few pictures of the hills and the trail going through the low tundra area.

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More pictures from the trail.

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Still more trail pictures. The stream of water along the trail is visible. It was a bit squishy. In some places, they had rubber mats on the trail instead of rocks. Every now and then there were marker posts, to let people know they are still on the trail.

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There was some ice on the hillside, that the trail crossed. Not a lot of it, but it was late June. Obviously, the melting snow and ice was the source of the water on the trail. Crossing the ice required a little bit of caution. More to avoid falling on one's butt, rather than plummeting off a fjord.

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Stephanie blazed the trail across the ice and then posed for a picture. The second picture is of a trail marker, with Stephanie in the distance. (I was going to take it without her, but she kept walking after I stopped, so I figured it didn't matter.)

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The trail goes on. (This time I got a picture with her behind me.) I'm not sure if the second picture is of the ice spot we crossed or another one. There were some trees (not many) in the valley way below us, in the third shot.

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Three shots of ice on the hills. This was not where we had walked. I noticed a dot, maybe a rock, in the second and third shot. When I magnified it to full resolution, I noticed that the rock was, in fact, a 1-pixel caribou. It kind of counts as wildlife, even though we were really nowhere near it.

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Back at the parking area, I took a picture of the sign describing how and why the midnight sun is visible here, even though it's below the arctic circle (gap in the mountains, some bending of the light over the horizon, magic dust etc.). And a view of where the sun would be visible, if it were midnight and the solstice. And another picture of the valley.

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Finally, a few more pictures of snow on the side of a hill. This was back at the start, not where we crossed, nor where the 1-pixel caribou was

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