Camping in Alaska
Getting Along in the Wilds

Camping in Alaska is easier now than ever! Private and public campgrounds for tents, campers, RVs or whatever you have, are numerous.



You can even pitch a tent most anyplace you like, in backwoods areas of most public lands.

There are many things I could say about camping in Alaska but you undoubtedly know the basics - what camping supplies, campsite tools, food and clothing you plan on bringing. I will try to add just a little information to what you already know.

One thing you'll want to know for sure is what a Devil's Club looks like and that you need to avoid touching it.

There is another similar looking plant, we called water weed, that is harmless. It doesn't have any stickers on it and doesn't irritate your skin when you touch it.

Baneberries, though beautiful to look at, are extremely poisonous.

If you haven't already done so, either purchase or stop in at an Alaska Ranger, National or State Park Station, and pick up bear-proof food canisters. This is important to keep you safe as well as your food. You can also store your food inside of a locked vehicle but not in a tent.

Also, learn more about bears and bear safety.

If you don't have refrigeration, keep items like eggs, mayonnaise and other perishables cool by digging a small pit in the ground and covering it with a board and a few rocks – AFTER you've placed your food inside bear-proof canisters, of course. Dig your pit near or in wooded areas, creek edges or areas well-shaded by rocks. Alaska's ground temperatures stay quite cool in most places.

From my own personal experience, we lived for a year in the woods, just outside of Anchorage without a refrigerator. Since my mother had seven kids to feed, she had to keep a lot of groceries on hand. Eggs stayed in her pit for 4 or 5 days without spoiling.

Groceries are expensive in Alaska because of transportation costs. The further you get from towns, the more expensive they get. But there is all kinds of wild Alaskan food available to supplement your stock of groceries.

If you are planning on fishing, doing wild bird or small game hunting, that will help a lot. Before you do, find out about any needed license or permits.

There are also a number of wild food plants that have been used by the Alaska natives for centuries.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce unless they are being grown in the local area. So adding the wild foods to your menus not only supplements your food supply but also improves its taste and nutritional value.

Wild rose petals, wild chives, wild celery, wild cucumber shoots, fiddlehead ferns, seaweed, and dandelion greens are a few Alaskan plants that will add color, taste and nutrition to your campfire meals.

There are even some excellent wild mushrooms to make yourself a gourmet meal.

If you look for mushrooms, just ensure you know the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms. The ones with the orange-red coloring on top with white spots are definitely poisonous. You can find a handy booklet on edible morels in Alaska at this website address: http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_rn546.pdf

Some wild berries ripen as early as late June or July but most are available in August and September. To name just a few, you'll find blueberries, raspberries, high and low bush cranberries, serviceberries, juneberries, currants, crowberriesand of course, rose hips. You might also find strawberries that have been planted and gone wild.

You can get booklets from the University of Alaska Cooperative Extension Service that have pictures, drawings, descriptions and location of many of these wild edible plants.

Alaskan trees do not generally grow deep roots because of the perma-frost in the ground. So there are a lot of tree and brush roots near the surface. This makes it easy for wildfires to spread once they start. The fire will smoulder underground, then burst out in another place.

When camping in Alaska parks, they restrict campfires to certain areas so this will not occur. However, if you are in a remote area without any developed campgrounds, and don't have a camp stove, the best place to build a fire is on a gravel bar in rivers - there are many of these, or in other open, gravelly areas.

This will help ensure no wildfire starts accidentally and will keep you safe while you're camping in Alaska.

Use dead, downed trees for firewood but never cut a live tree or even standing deadwood, as this is protected in the parks. And of course, dead wood burns easier. A few of the parks have very little firewood laying around. So you can always pick up dead wood in other public land areas and bring it with you. Or purchase it from local stores.

Evergreens, of course, are the fastest and hottest burning woods. Trees like birch, aspen (this one smells terrible when burning), willow, alder and other hard woods are slower burning and harder to start, but will keep a campfire alive all night if you put some on top of a hot bed of coals.

Sometimes, getting a campfire started out in the open is one of the hardest things to do.

Rather than wasting a lot of matches or having to use fuel, there are some easy ways to do it. If there are any birch or spruce trees (or other evergreens) in the area, you have a ready supply of materials.

Birches have a paper thin exterior bark that can be peeled easily and used like paper to start your campfire. If you find birch trees that are fallen, you'll have a good supply of it. Do NOT peel bark off a live tree however, as that damages it. Usually you can find dead trees to use.

Or even better, is the sap that oozes out of spruces. When it is fresh, it is clear, then turns milky white to yellow as it drys and hardens. If you find any clear sap, just take a small stick and scrape the sap onto it. Place that under the stack of firewood you've put in place and light it. It will burn like a torch.

If you have to use the hardened sap, pull it off the tree with a piece of paper or dry leaves and lay it on top of some wood that it can melt on and burn, when you light it. If you happen to get sap on your fingers, rub cooking oil or grease on it to remove it more easily - it is extremely sticky.

I don't want to discourage anyone, but with the amount of moisture that stays in the ground, you'll find mosquitoes quite abundant in wooded and marshy or other low-land grounds, so bring plenty of mosquito repellent.

The alternative is to stay near higher, rocky or barren areas. Mosquitoes breed at the sides of even the coldest and fastest streams. But if you are near a wide stream with dry gravel beds in it, you can camp there and also get away from mosquitoes somewhat.

Yes, you can find all the conveniences in a lot of private camping areas and a few in some public camping areas. But if you are going to spend long hours hiking or camp in remote areas, there will be few or no outhouses. There are latrines in a lot of the parks, but there are millions of acres of country to wander through. So plan on some inconveniences and plan accordingly.

Our Alaska parks have specific rules for waste disposal, sanitation, building campfires, storing food and other camping matters, so find out what these rules are and keep our environment safe and clean. Basically, if you "leave no trace" of ever having been there, you are doing the right thing.

I'll tell you a little secret. The picture of the high-bush cranberries (above) is in this section for a reason. If you run out of toilet tissue, their large soft leaves make a great substitute.

Now that you have some information on camping in Alaska, you might want to -

Find some Alaska Campgrounds:

Alaska Campgrounds - general information - including amenities, park regulations and contact information for each park service.

Alaska campgrounds-1, Alaska Highway to Fairbanks area - including Taylor Highway, and beyond Fairbanks to the north slope.

Alaska campgrounds-2, Richardson Highway to Valdez area - starting at Delta Junction, including nearby Denali Highway sites and south to Valdez.

Alaska Campgrounds-3, central Alaska to Anchorage area - along Tok Cutoff Highway to Richardson Highway junction, to Glenn Highway junction, and southwest to Anchorage, then the Seward Highway to end of Turnagain Arm.

Alaska Campgrounds-4, from Portage to Seward - along Seward Highway to Resurrection Bay on the east side of Kenai Peninsula.

Alaska campgrounds-5, Sterling Highway to Homer - from start of Sterling Highway at Seward Highway junction and Tern Lake, to Kachemak Bay on the west side of Kenai Peninsula.

Alaska-campgrounds-6, start of Parks Highway to Fairbanks - from the junction of Glenn and Parks Highways in the Palmer-Wasilla area, all the way to Fairbanks.

Hope this helps you have an enjoyable time while camping in Alaska. And now you may want to look at some of the Alaska Parks, where you'll be able to do your camping...

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