Description
Joe Wilkins has now accumulated more than half a century of experience in the wilds of northern Alaska since receiving training in arctic wilderness survival in 1966. During the 1970s he began hiking, backpacking and camping in the region which, in 1980, was officially designated Gates of the Arctic National Park. A complex land of breathtaking contrasts, this frontier is exceptional -in no other region in North America does it get colder, darker, or wilder. Its remote beauty and extensive human history imbue the land with an elemental and visceral sense of inspiration for those who visit. Gates of the Arctic National Park: Twelve Years of Wilderness Exploration provides thorough, accurate and detailed information about Gates of the Arctic National Park along with a collection of Wilkins’ own personal photographs. Wilkins has created a definitive, perennial book about one of the country’s most enchanting national parks that will stand the test of time.
Joe Wilkins, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Springfield, grew up in what is now the Shawnee National Forest of southern Illinois. He has a lifetime of wilderness experience and has hiked, climbed and backpacked in national parks and other wilderness areas throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Beginning in 1966, with his training in arctic wilderness survival as a young military officer, Wilkins focused his arctic wilderness explorations in and around the mountains of the Brooks Range in northern Alaska – prior even to the creation of Gates of the Arctic National Park in 1980. In this place, the forces of nature are unrestrained and the arctic ecosystem is unaltered. It is a spectacular area. It is rugged, free, wild and remote. Wilkins’ book reports on his explorations of the area in and around North America’s premier wilderness between 2005 and 2017.
