Pile Burning Protects a Remote Cabin in Gates of the Arctic

The Narvak Lake cabin. NPS/Alaska Eastern Area Fire Management.

Shelter far from any road

Alaska's size and scarce roads make it hard to reduce excess vegetation — fuels — that could feed a wildfire. The same things make the few remote structures all the more important to protect.

More than half of the Park Service's structures in Alaska are more than a mile from a road. For the more than 1,500 that are, the nearest road is on average 32 miles away. Yet these buildings matter to everyone who travels the backcountry — to recreate, to hunt and fish for subsistence, and to work. Often they are the only shelter for miles, in conditions where shelter can decide whether someone lives or dies.

Being so hard to reach makes them especially vulnerable to wildfire, so it is important to treat the fuels around them before any fire threatens. Treatments such as pile burning — burning piles of cut brush and wood — greatly improve the chances of defending a structure when fire comes.

A winter trip to Narvak Lake

In Alaska's Interior, the snow of fall and winter opens up more, and sometimes safer, ways to move people and gear. In April 2022, Park Service Eastern Area Fire Management staff set out to burn piles at a remote cabin at Narvak Lake in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve — timing the burn so it would not collide with a possible active fire season.

It was a logistical challenge: a day's drive from Fairbanks to Coldfoot, then a full day ferrying people and gear to the cabin, partly by ski plane.

A ski plane on Narvak Lake. NPS/Alaska Eastern Area Fire Management.

Unloading gear at Narvak Lake. NPS/Alaska Eastern Area Fire Management.

The crew camped at the lake in temperatures as low as −22°F, and burned piles that had been gathered the previous summer, creating defensible space within one hundred feet of the cabin.

Digging out the burn pit. NPS/Alaska Eastern Area Fire Management.

Three parks, three burns

Burn plans for Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, including Narvak Lake, let fire staff complete a pile burn in each park within a year. The treatments make these remote structures more likely to survive a wildfire and keep sheltering backcountry travellers for years to come.

Sources

• National Park Service, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Pile burning protects remote structure in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.