EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Crossing the Yukon River -- in 3D

Yukon River, Alaska
left:  3D anaglyph  ...  right:  2D view

Explanation:  It is May in the frigid interior of Alaska, as we find ourselves flying north from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope.  Fortuitously, the cloud cover below us breaks just in time for us to view this remarkable scene of the immense Yukon River.  

Break out your 3D red-blue glasses ... and view the image on the left, above, to soar over the clouds.

And threading over the brown waters is one of only four roads that cross this river in all of its 1,900 miles (3,100 km) in the U.S. and Canada.  This is the the Yukon River Bridge, more officially known as the E.L. Patton Bridge ... and is the only road crossing the Yukon in all of Alaska (the other three bridges are in Canada).  

Here, we are north of Fairbanks and following the Dalton Highway, known locally as the Haul Road, that winds steep and narrow north to the Beaufort Sea, through immense landscapes of spruce and tundra inhabited by wolves, caribou, grizzly bears, red and Arctic fox, muskox, snowy owls, voles and lemmings, and much else.  

The Yukon has been ice-locked since October and has only recently broken up.   
  

Here is where the Dalton Highway (a.k.a. "Haul Road") skims
across the Yukon River, north of Fairbanks.
Stringers of river ice can still be seen.
 This is one long and lonely highway!