I read stories about people hiking in Gates prior to our trip there. Many of the stories that people told focused on how hard it was to hike and that they could only hike maybe six miles a day through the boreal forest and tundra. Those stories emphasized “that there were no trails” but they never really said why it was so hard to hike here. They never discussed the forest floor. From my perspective, less distance was more fascinating in Gates. I felt like the slower I hiked, the more I enjoyed it and the more I got to see of it.

There was a lot of beauty in this park but we didn’t have to hike any great distances to see it. All we needed to do was to hike slowly and look down at the ground. It’s hard to explain so of course, I will include some photos. The ground was covered with plants to a depth of from several inches to over a foot of soft spongy ground. But it was so beautiful. The colors and textures and the vast array of plants was almost overwhelming to me. And remember, this is above the Arctic Circle…where I thought everything was usually frozen.

These photos were all taken looking down at the ground. I may have squatted down a bit to get a few of them, but mostly I just aimed the camera down and snapped the picture.

Just go slowly through the photos, closely looking at each one, and enjoy the ground-cover in Gates of the Arctic National Park. It felt sacrilegious to step on the ground.