A Look See From Murphy Dome

27 April 2012
8:49 PM

Sunrise at	5:30 AM	in direction	53°	Northeast
Sunset at	10:09 PM	in direction	308°	Northwest

Duration of day: 16 hours, 39 minutes (6 minutes, 58 seconds longer than yesterday)


Today was mostly sunny with a few flat bottomed clouds drifting across the sky now and then.  So after we picked up Dad's rental car, I suggested we drive out to Murphy Dome.  It is one of the highest points near town and it can be driven to from town.  I wanted Dad to have a look.  Actually, I wanted to have a look myself.

Since yesterday, the stands of aspen and the birch tree tops have changed from fluff to fleece.  Looking at the hillsides from afar, I felt like I could stretch out upon the pillow tops of the fleece covered hills and take a nap.  Although the trees in our yard revealed green only at the tips of selected buds at day's end yesterday, today each bud's spring green leaves are prominent.  It was wonderful driving through the hills knowing that very soon it would be green.

We drove up to the top of the dome and pulled in to the parking area with the car facing north and northwest.  On the northern horizon was a range with a prominent peak in the distance.  My daughter told me those are the Ray Mountains, the most isolated range in the state because there are only a few lakes large enough for landing and no place for an airstrip.  What I love about Murphy Dome as well as some other select views north, is you are looking upon the vast wilderness of Alaska every where you turn north and west.

To visualize it better to myself today, I imagined a 150 mile swathe from just above the Chatanika River north with the Elliott Highway as is south east corner.  If you ran the swathe to just short of Prudhoe Bay I wondered if you would find even 2000 permanent residents.  I did some checking of villages north and west of Fairbanks, meeting that criteria, but still south of the Brooks Range. The Brooks Range, marking the Divide between drainage into the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean and do not contain permanent villages, only hunting camps.

• Bettles : 36
• Allakaket : 105
• New Allakaket : 36 
• Alatna : 36 
• Evansville : 28 
• Minto : 258

Once you reach the southern tip of the Brooks Range driving north on the Dalton Highway, there are no services for 240 miles until travelers reach Deadhorse at Prudhoe Bay.

A small range of peaks jutting up from the Tolvana Flats and northwest of Minto flattened out near the tops, reminding me of buttes and mesas in the south West.  I think that may be Elephant and Sawtooth Mountains.  Sawtooth certainly would be an appropriate name from my impression of patterns created by lines of remaining snow alternating between melted areas on the mountain.

Although Dad said the flat bottomed clouds indicated a front had already moved through the Interior, the view to the south of Alaska Range was a misty haze. None of the peaks were visible and I could just make out clouds along the top of the haze layer.  Evapotranspiration is happening rapidly as Alaska's growing season rushes toward us.  I wonder when ice will break up causing the tripod trigger to time its drop into the waters of the Tanana River at Nenana.