Saturday, April 22nd, 2017
This was the day I had been waiting for since January, my summer was about to begin. I was so sure of my choice until the moment I boarded my flight. All of a sudden I had this sinking feeling, was I really doing this? I knew no one and had no idea what to expect, what if I hated it?
The flight was only a couple hours most of which I spent looking out the window. The landscape below was astounding. We flew over the mountains for nearly half the trip. As soon as we were out of Anchorage the Alaska Range took over the earth below us.
There are several mountain ranges in Alaska, the Aleutian Range, the Alaska Range, and the Brooks Range. Between the 3 mountain ranges, nearly all of Alaska is covered in unbelievably tall peaks.
As we got closer to Deadhorse the mountains ended and a vast expanse of white tundra unfolded below us. Before we began our descent the Pilot announced the weather, 1 degree. Holy shit, what have I done was my initial thought.
Intro to Deadhorse
I was greeted by Scott at the airport, he was the Camp Support (basically camp manager) at Deadhorse Camp. Walking outside was a shock to my system, back home it was in the 70s I wasn’t prepared for how cold 1 degree was.
The town, if you can call it that, was blanketed in a heavy coating of snow. Deadhorse Camp, where I would be working, was just a little outside of town on the Dalton Highway.
Scott gave me a temporary room in the main building and let me get set up before introducing me to the guys that I would be cooking for that summer. Fortunately for me, our crew was only about 12 guys so I didn’t have too many faces to remember. None of them were all that chatty, which made sense considering they had just worked a 12-hour shift.
The breakfast shift started at 3 am so after meeting the other camp employees I quickly went to bed.
Becoming a Breakfast Cook
Up until this point, I had never cooked professionally. I had gone to culinary school and I had been working as a baker for nearly 5 years but baking and cooking are two different things. I was nervous for my first shift but grateful that Scott would be training me.
Scott was in his mid-40s and from Louisiana. He had been at Deadhorse camp for eight months straight, probably a record. Besides the employees at Deadhorse camp, everyone was on a rotating schedule. They would spend 2 or 3 weeks working and then they would have 2 or 3 weeks off so eight months was a really long time to be up there.
Scott had been in the culinary industry nearly all his life, and he was damn good at it too. I hadn’t realized how many different ways there were to cook an egg! Scott made it look so easy, flipping eggs in the air like it was no big deal. I, on the other hand, tossed eggs halfway across the room when attempting to flip them.
For the most part, breakfast was an easy meal to cook. The eggs were the hardest part and with a little practice, I was sure I could do it. After three days of training, I was on my own. Thankfully I managed to have everything ready at 5 am when they guys came down.
Baking is where I started to win the guys over, they had a lot of cooks in and out of there so at first they were kind of skeptical. I had no set menu for dessert and was able to have my fun with whatever we had in stock so I did a lot of experimenting.
The Magic of the Tundra
Deadhorse is 500 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska and about 250 miles north of the nearest town, Wisemen. What do you find when you’re that far north? A whole lot of nothing, but that’s the beauty of it. Just outside of Deadhorse the tundra stretches endlessly completely uninterrupted. There are no mountains and the tree line has long since passed. Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay are the only towns around so outside of that there are no buildings either. With nothing to block the view, the sunrises and sunsets go on for miles.
Being so far north some pretty rare phenomenons happen. When the temperature is cold enough the moisture in the air freezes creating tiny little ice crystals, making it look like the air is glittering. Everywhere you look is sparkly and slightly glimmering, it feels like you’re in some sort of fairy world. But don’t stay outside too long if it’s cold enough to freeze the moisture in the air it’s cold enough to give you frostbite!
Another strangely incredible thing that happens is sundogs. Sundogs are also caused by moisture freezing in the air, and they look like little rainbows on one or both sides of the sun. They’re pretty rare to see anywhere else but are a fairly regular occurrence up in Deadhorse.
The whole sunlight situation up there is pretty weird in itself. I had heard a couple of times in my life that Alaska gets 24 hours of darkness at certain parts of the year but I never really thought about it too much. Well, they do get 24 hours of darkness but that also means they get 24 hours of sunlight at certain times of the year too. I was there for the 24 hours of sunlight.
When I landed at the end of April we were still getting hours of “twilight”. Twilight is not as dark as I had expected, it’s actually not dark at all. The sun is technically below the horizon but just barely making it pretty freaking bright out. Not only did I have a weird schedule to adjust to, working from about 3 am until noon but it was also bright out all the time making it pretty impossible to sleep.
Your body just has no sense of time when it’s always bright. I had worked nights before so I thought I would be fine sleeping in the never-ending daylight but when it’s constantly bright it’s a whole different ball game. Even blocking out my window wasn’t enough. Any sliver of light getting into my room would drive me crazy, it made for a rough first month.
Adjusting to Everyday Life
I quickly settled into a routine, I would work from 3 am until around 10 or 11, then hang out with Scott for an hour or so ate lunch with my coworkers and then read for a couple of hours before going to bed. I was bored after a few weeks. I needed more social interaction. I was used to being around people all the time and now my whole social group consisted of 15 men. There were no other women at my camp and I was too afraid to drive, not that there was anywhere to go.
I started feeling stuck, the tundra was covered by a couple of feet of snow so there wasn’t much to explore. Luckily my coworkers were fun. The dinner cook, Jeremy was about my age and from Flordia. He had spent the winter in Deadhorse and couldn’t wait to get out. He had worked in several places around Alaska and somehow he had never built a snowman. So one afternoon I convinced him to build a snowman with me.
We decided my snowman was what you looked like arriving at Deadhorse and his snowman was what you look like after 5 months in Deadhorse.
I had previously decided to take a break from men while I was there, that lasted less than a month. The real problem was that I got bored, we had no community room so everyone just went to their rooms at night. I needed more human contact than an hour or 2 a day.
Dating in Deadhorse
Tinder was pretty sparse but there were options. The oil industry drew people from all over the country so it was pretty interesting to talk to guys from all over the US. However, it was pretty challenging setting up dates. I wasn’t allowed into Prudhoe Bay which is where the drilling takes place and most of the guys weren’t able to leave Prudhoe Bay.
Even when I found a guy worth meeting what were we supposed to do? There were no restaurants or bars. There was a coffee shop but it was closed at night so that option was out and going to their rooms just sounded like a bad idea. It’s kind of a rule that I meet people in public for the first time but in this situation that just felt awkward.
I eventually did arrange a date. We went for a drive to see Muskox, I had never heard of them but some of the guys that Tyler worked with told him there were 3 of them a couple of miles down the Dalton Highway. I’m not sure why but I was picturing a small rodent almost like a beaver. Boy oh boy was I wrong! They’re huge bison-like animals. They’re short and stocky with small horns. They look almost prehistoric like they belong with the Mammoths. Over the next few months, they became my favorite animal to see.
At one time Muskox were found across northern Europe, Asia, Greenland, and Northern America. Unfortunately, Muskox were hunted to near extinction in the 1800s and early 1900s. In 1930 Muskox were captured in Greenland and brought to Alaska ro restore the population. Today Muskox can be found in Northern and Western Alaska as well as Greenland, and Russia. Though hunting still poses a large threat to the survival of these animals.
Check back next week for more Arctic animals as my adventure in the Arctic Tundra continues.
