There is a bar at the top of the world. In it, there are no millionaires, no homeless people. There is no advantage in any social status. People are kind because they want to be shown kindness. The beer is cold because it’s better cold. The food is good because it’s homemade. It might be the only place in the world where everyone is equal. As you might expect, it’s damned hard to reach.
There is only one road running north out of Fairbanks, Alaska. Officially named the Dalton Highway, it is often called the Haul Road. The Haul Road is five hundred miles long and terminates into the Arctic Ocean on Alaska's northern shore in Deadhorse, AK. The road is primarily gravel and takes the experienced Alaskan driver 15 hours to navigate one way. It is interrupted by several landmarks that help to break up the drive. While each merits a story, this one focuses on the "Town" of Cold Foot.
Neither a glorious mountain range, a mark of geographical significance, nor a monument to man's triumph over a tremendous northern river, one could argue Cold Foot is the most crucial because if you miss it, your likelihood of successfully traversing the rest of the road and returning to Fairbanks is significantly diminished, perhaps impossible, as Cold Foot is the only fuel stop between Fairbanks and Deadhorse. Although Cold Foot has a Post Office, a museum of the Brooks Range, a gas station, a landing strip, a restaurant, a bar, and lodging, all these amenities are in four buildings loosely connected through a series of plywood walkways. Nestled at the foot of the Brooks Range, this small cluster of structures stands proudly amidst the wild Alaskan wilderness.
Following the seasons, the inhabitants of Cold Foot drift in and out of residency in a gypsy-like dance. Whether these men and women should be considered hermits who have tucked themselves into this cold haven to hide from the world or brave explorers racing to see it all isn't as straightforward as one might think.
Like any small town, the hub of activity and where the majority of inhabitants gather is the bar. After filling your tank and extra fuel cans, you walk up the rotting wooden stairs onto the plank sidewalk, past the post office painted brilliant blue, and into the bar’s double doors. The area to the immediate left is a quick service area designated for the truckers to receive faster service than a standard patron. The more runs these men make, the more money they earn. The determining factor in how long drivers stay in circulation is how they withstand the constant pressure to drive faster and farther than their peers. Personal hygiene, sleep, food, and sanity take a backseat to the eternal drive for cash. Some may run for five years on the Haul Road, but most move on after a season. Recreational supplements and various performance-enhancing drugs become the norm as six months of darkness, spent alone in the cab of a truck towing a forty-ton trailer on a gravel road, dodging moose and caribou is more than most unlubricated men can endure.
After waiting in line to be seated, all other guests are ushered into a dining area to the right where a dozen folding tables with a few decades worth of mismatched chairs cover the aging green shag carpet. This room also houses the bar where pilots-for-hire, aviator glasses resting above lit cigars, walk through the swinging doors that open from the covered porch, refilling their cocktails before returning to a rocking chair to watch the airfield and wait for their next client to send a GPS beacon.
Unlike their road-anchored colleagues, the pilots are not hauling oil, food, or fuel. They carry people. In the summer and early fall, many contract their services to outfitters, ferrying fly anglers from the airport in Fairbanks out to the wilderness to catch sea-run Dolly Varden, Arctic Grayling, and arctic char of brilliant colors, then switching to carrying mountain goat and sheep hunters. The pilots are often military veterans and generally slightly better groomed than the trucker crowd. They drift in and out for six months until the clients dry up.
No matter the time of day a pile of dingy puffy jackets and bright yellow packs straight out of a 1980s mountaineering catalog cover a sleeping drifter in more than one corner. These are folks traveling the Haul Road simply because it exists. They have come to see Alaska and, eventually, the Arctic Ocean. Before continuing, this group generally stops for gas, coffee, and a burger. Every summer, a biker gang or two will attempt to drink the world’s northernmost bar out of beer, a feat easily accomplished at nine dollars a beer, the entire supply of which is stored in a standard Midwest garage-style fridge. According to the no-nonsense bartender with the lovely southern accent, she keeps only fifty beers in the refrigerator, "With only 50 beers, I avoid over-serving anyone and make more money by keeping the objective achievable for groups of ten."
Scattered about the establishment, but usually converging on the flush toilets and bar, you find the hunters and anglers, identifiable by the mixed layer of Brooks Range dirt and human grease on the face and hands. There’s a strange dichotomy existing within this caste of Cold Foot residents. On the one hand, you have those with funding galore who have flown in or are flying out with a trophy sheep skull, caribou antlers, or grizzly bear hide. Almost always, these markers of success are a result of some poor hunting guides’ hard work.
“All this fella has to do is step off the helicopter, make a good shot, and then climb back on board a few days later," said a sheep guide enjoying a beverage between clients.
Separately, those self-proclaimed public landowners sit on the other side of the room. They are not adorned from head to foot in the newest camouflage patterns but rather wear a mix of family heirlooms in brown and olive drab, both mostly faded to grey after a hunt. They rent cars in Fairbanks and drive up the Haul Road intent on do-it-yourself fishing and hunting. Fly rods and rifles securely packed away, this bunch smells worse than the truckers, but the odor does nothing to diminish an unmistakable air of superiority, especially when they know their audience includes the pampered folks on the helicopters or bush planes.
Tending to the needs of all of them are the employees who live in Cold Foot, either seasonally or for a few years, to wait tables, pump gas, collect and sort mail, or some combination thereof. Working in the service industry can be bad enough. Add in a clientele of doped-up truckers rushing to beat the clock, the world’s wealthiest one percent, and dirty public land hunters and anglers who haven’t showered or eaten real food in multiple weeks and it would be reasonable for these folks to see their conditions more as a predicament than a home. But the opposite is true. From the man behind the postage counter to the sixty-year-old Georgia native serving coffee, the residents of Cold Foot are some of the most pleasant people you’ll ever meet. They say necessity is the father of invention; necessity may also be the father of kindness in this remote corner of the world. These people know they are the only option for these customers, and whether they make the best cheeseburger in the world or the absolute worst, someone will pay $25 to eat it.
They live in a cluster of temporary housing, made permanent through several not-so-professional improvements. Pallet-based footpaths link all buildings together and lead through what could be called a small subdivision of single-wide trailers and plywood shacks. Of course, all of them are for rent. The public land fly fisherman tired of sleeping on the bedrock of the Brooks Range and the weary hunter who's just spent $60,000 on a sheep hunt will gladly pay $75 a night for a room with a single bed and a shared toilet.
Nighttime in Cold Foot is, at its worst, a scene from a fever dream and, at its best, an airport shut down by a blizzard. Residents bed down wherever they can. Pilots sit on the open front porch, sipping their coffee or cocktail in the 1 AM sunshine. Waitresses retire to their bungalows, donning earplugs to defend against the thin walls and grab a few hours of sleep amidst the sound of partiers not yet ready to call it quits. Hunters and anglers, unwilling to pay $75 for a room, slump against a wall in the bar or even lay down on picnic tables outside, zipped into their sleeping bags. The parking lot has cars full of sleeping people. There's always one straggling trucker at the bar who, having finished his term or service on the haul road, spends his evening zooted out of his mind on something or other, trying to live up his last night in Alaska.
The restaurant buffet runs 24/7 with whatever the chef cooks that day. Trays of lasagna sit alongside country-fried steak and suspiciously good shrimp and grits. What's on the menu tomorrow? Is it cheeseburgers? Maybe pizza? Only the chef knows, and after a few days of observation, you start to wonder if he has a plan at all. What seems more likely is that he looks at a cooler of ingredients and assembles the best meal he can. After all, with all the passersby and temporary residents, he feeds upwards of fifty people daily. If you could gamble on Food Network chef competition shows, I would put my life savings on that twenty-two-year-old, chain-smoking, fry cook.
Perched atop the northernmost barstool in the world, in any direction you look one observation stands out among the litany of smoke and beer-smelling lessons learned from this place. Once you step off that plane or out of your car, you belong to Cold Foot. It doesn’t matter whether you just came off a $60,000 Dall Sheep hunt or if you spent your last $600 on gas to get your old Toyota into caribou country. It doesn’t matter if you are running from a felony conviction in Tennessee grilling burgers in the furthest reaches of the world, or if you served 20 years of honorable service in the military before retiring to fly clients through the glaciers and gorges in the far north. No matter how you got there, no matter how long you’re staying, once here all the superfluous details of your life are stripped away, leaving only the most adventurous pieces of you. In this raw accumulation of American characters, we find equality for all, if only for one night.
About the Author
Trevor is a former Army Paratrooper turned business executive who discovered writing while forced to work from home in 2020. Trevor grew up on the far eastern edge of the Ozark Mountains chasing quail and whitetail in Mississippi River bottoms and has since hunted or fished in 47 states from tarpon in the Florida Keys to Caribou in Alaska. Trevor is the Editor at the Mule Deer Foundation Journal as well as a freelance contributor to a dozen hunting and fishing publications.