Barrow, Alaska: Search For Rossʼs Gull

The land near the far-northern town of Barrow is a flat, watery expanse in the grip of permafrost, which, in places, is as deep as 2000 feet! The landscape is fractured into a maze of giant, ice-wedge polygons, a pattern resulting from the continual freezing and thawing of the surface of the land. The aufeis, overhanging shelves of ice formed by overflow waters of north-flowing rivers, look like rivers of ice from the air. And pingos, or “ice blisters,” frozen hills formed by ice forced to expand upward in drained depressions, contribute further to the unique and fascinating aspect of Alaskaʼs North Slope. Our flights from Anchorage take us over 570 miles of northern Alaska and leave us on the coast of the Arctic Ocean at 71 degrees 20 minutes North latitude, more than 300 miles above the Arctic Circle! Clearly, Point Barrow, the northernmost point in Alaska, is off the beaten track. This is not hard to understand, for Barrow is a place of extremes, where the summer sun does not sink below the horizon for 67 days straight (and it is not dark for another 52 days!). On the other side of the coin, the sun does not shine on the town for 67 days straight in the winter; the weather is calm only 1% of the year; and annual precipitation (rain and snow combined) is a meager 5 to 8 inches, the lowest in Alaska.