August 15, 2024: Gates of the Arctic National Park and Kobuk National Park, located on the southern side of Alaska’s northern Brooks Range, were both created by Congress in 1980 to preserve the vast tracks of land to support the wilderness and indigineous lifestyle of the native Alaskan people. Kobuk NP is part of a grouping of Noatak National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument and Bering Land Bridge National Preserve known as the Western Arctic National Parklands, each entity having their own focus of governmental protection. We focused our efforts visiting on Kobuk NP, which preserved a 25-square-mile sand dune and additional smaller dunes as well as extensive caribou migration habitat. Gates of the Arctic NP focus its mission on preserving the wilderness and solitude of the area.

It’s not trivial getting to a jumping off point to see these parks (Fairbanks, Bettles, Coldfoot and/or Koetzbue) and then they require a flight (again, if you are Tom and Jeanne Lounsbury and not uber adventurers, hikers or kayers). We were able to take a single flight out of Fairbanks that took us to Kobuk NP and land on the sand dunes, which is one of its notable features, across to Gates of the Arctic NP to land on a gravel river bed and then over to the village of Bettles to refuel and then back to Fairbanks.

In our case, getting to these parks was particulary significant due to the fact we missed Lake Clarke National Park due to weather and we were having serious problems with the truck as we limped into Fairbanks from Denali. The big take away for us is that we were able to officially visit 7 of the 8 Alaska national parks! That puts us at 58 of the 63 national parks in the US National Park system since retirement.

Flight to Kobuk National Park

Kobuk National Park Sand Dune

Gates of the Artic National Park