Going to Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve

What to do in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve

You know you must be heading somewhere incredible when you have to pass through stone gates thousands of feet high to get there—and the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve lives up to its impressive entryway.

The park's dramatic name was coined by legendary wilderness advocate and early far-north explorer Robert Marshall, who described two peaks, Frigid Crags and Boreal Mountain, as massive gates opening into a region of mystery from Alaska's central Brooks Range into the arctic regions of the far north.

As any trip to the park will attest, Marshall wasn't simply exercising poetic license. The gates lead to a labyrinth of glaciated valleys and forbidding, snowcapped peaks and innumerable rivers running rampant through a landscape populated by caribou, sheep, wolves, and brown bears.

Wind, water,...

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