Landscape view of Gates of the Arctic National Park (Alaska), the least visited national park in the United States.; Shutterstock ID 2015296841; purchase_order: 65050; job: ; client: ; other:
2015296841

Shutterstock / BlueBarronPhoto

Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve

Alaska


Standing in the middle of this park's eight million acres of uninhabited mountains and tundra, you could be forgiven for assuming a woolly mammoth was about to cross your path. The landscape is simply that raw.

Within Gates of the Arctic, Kobuk Valley National Park and Noatak National Preserve are dozens of rivers to run, miles of valleys and tundra slopes to hike and, of course, the ‘gates’ themselves: Mt Boreal and Frigid Crags, which flank the north fork of the Koyukuk River. In 1929 Robert Marshall found an unobstructed path northward to the Arctic through these landmark peaks and his name for the passage has stuck ever since.