Before being patched with thick black asphalt during recent weeks, the roads across Goldstream Creek’s swampy valley bucked my car like a whitewater raft in the Nenana River canyon.
Before being patched with thick black asphalt during recent weeks, the roads across Goldstream Creek’s swampy valley bucked my car like a whitewater raft in the Nenana River canyon.
This is not news. I’ve bobbed over these road waves for 60 years. I first felt them as a kid riding the original gravel roads in my parents’ dust-trap of a Land Rover. At some point, pavement arrived and the dust left. But the bumps have continued.
I understand how roads thaw the underlying permafrost, roiling the routes across Goldstream’s bottomland and the slopes that define the valley. But it seems like the thawing should have an end date, a point when the road settles into a smooth plane. Sixty years isn’t enough?
Not by a country mile, according to Billy Connor. A professional engineer, Connor has studied Alaska roads for almost 50 years. He spent 30 years with the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities before coming to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he most recently directed the Arctic Infrastructure Development Center.
Read More: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Photo Credit: tookapic via Pixabay
