What it's like in Barrow, Alaska | America's Northernmost City

[Music] [Music] hi everyone my name is chris or the jazz guy 13 aviation if you've been following me on my youtube videos the past five years it's pretty obvious that 99 of my content involves aviation trains or some kind of transportation and to some extent this video will fit that bill but this will undoubtedly be a much different video it will be the first time i make one solely about a town one place a very special place this being barrow alaska and we are here guys [Music] just walking in the hotel room so my goal with this video is to kind of show this town and everything about it which is what it's titled we're staying here two nights so i will try my best to show every nook and cranny of this town and what it's like to live in the northernmost town in the united states utkevik orbero alaska so this is the top little hotel it's one of just two hotels here in barrow the other one is the king elder inn which actually was sold out for the night so i'm glad that they have some room here now don't get me wrong i'm not from barrow obviously so i can't show how it is to live in this town only how it's like for an outsider to spend a few days here but already just stepping into this hotel room the plane we came in on the only ride in or out of this town lifts off in the distance and quickly disappears through the fog a very interesting feeling like i said there are two hotels in barrow one being the king elder inn which is actually located right across from the airport just walking distance and the other being the top of the world hotel which is closest to what's supposed to be the main site in quotations to see for visitors welcome to the bone march here in barrow the most popular thing in this town to come see we got some whale bones a nice old fishing boat a cast of some boat and uh that's about it all joking aside there is much more to this special place than just the whale arch uttakiyakvik which is the local inupiat translation it's no ordinary place it's a place of extremes of beauty of togetherness isolation but most importantly adaptation it's a town that sits on the north slope of alaska 300 miles within the arctic circle where the ocean is frozen for most of the year where not a single tree grows or the sun never sets in the summer and the darkness sweeps the land in the winter it's where polar bears frequently roam the icy shores and where whale hunting is legal and a local delicacy and of huge cultural importance [Music] if you do come to barrow yourself and want to learn about the local culture you can head to the anubiat heritage center located a short walk from the top of the world hotel now my friend justin and i were a little too invested in getting enough footage for our videos that we didn't have a chance to go inside but if you are looking for something to do i do hear it's worth a visit most of the people in barrow are of inupiat descent and are believed to have been here for close to 1500 years now because of the strong oil industry here in in nearby pluto bay there are noticeably much more outsiders in the town but the culture definitely seems to be ever present and not diminished in the slightest [Music] all right guys walking into the grocery store here if i know one thing about this town is everything is overpriced very expensive so let's see what stuff costs but why is everything so expensive here it's actually a very simple answer everything has to be shipped in more specifically flown in which naturally raises the prices on a lot of goods for instance thirteen dollars for milk ten dollars for a box of cereal over seven dollars for pop tarts ten bucks for potato chips eleven dollars for a pack of buns and 50 bucks for a pack of paper towels are you kidding me yep that's really how much things cost here in barrow it looks like a normal grocery store it feels like a normal supermarket it has the same exact items for sale but ninety percent of things just cost two to five times what it should you're probably wondering right about now how can people living here afford all this stuff on a weekly basis well compared to the medium yearly household income of roughly 53 000 a year in the lower 48 it's about 83 000 up here so it does balance itself out in the end with utk being the economic center of the north slope borough there's a lot of government jobs in the town and the other economy is as i said earlier oil speaking of which what i thought would have been crazy high the price of gas per gallon in barrow is 550 for regular and 620 for diesel still very high but at the same time this video was shot la's price for regular was above six bucks 550 a gallon and i was complaining back home when it was above three bucks unfortunately you can't escape the high prices in restaurants either whether you go to the hotel's restaurant nigevikput or the northern lights restaurant arctic pizza osakas salmon leaves a filipino shop right next to the hotel or any other place you will likely be set back at least ten dollars for any meal on average i spent about fifty dollars a day on food in barrow and i was trying to be conservative even skipping breakfast a day or two but while your pockets empty quicker than usual the food definitely usually made up for it just a bit [Music] foreign good morning from barrow alaska it's currently 1 30 and it's sleeting that's nature's way of saying it's time to get up and no kidding there are two things that really stood out to me the most while in this arctic town one was the frozen arctic ocean but two was the famous and absolutely gorgeous midnight sun [Music] well guys first off if i seem drunk i'm not my face is just frozen but yeah so you don't have to hear my slurred speech and the constant wind what i was trying to say is how special this moment really is it's one of those times in life where you really step back and appreciate what you have and how lucky you are to be in such a special place it's not a luxury resort in the caribbean a penthouse suite in the big apple a mansion in the hills or even a relaxing cruise through the mediterranean no it's a small town on the edge of the world with the absolute friendliest people and just some small homes and a few businesses that has one of the most unique experiences someone can have in their life it's just not something i can totally describe in words you really have to be there for yourself but it's totally worth that frozen face okay guys got a good night's sleep and now i'm gonna do something that i wouldn't live with myself if i didn't do coming to the arctic i have a pole right here in front of me behind the camera and i'm gonna do the famous polar plunge now unfortunately as you can see behind me the arctic is still very frozen and there's not a whole lot of deep spots in fact there's no deep spots at all so there's just like these little tiny pools that are maybe high maybe more it's just not the right time of year to be doing like the full body polar plunge that'll be like later in the summer when uh when the arctic unfreezes but i'm not here in in august i'm here in june and i gotta do this so time to get wet all right so my plan is to very quickly do this i have a rain jacket here so my feet don't get like crushed from this ice i have a towel ready i have a sweatshirt and then i'm gonna put these shoes like right there and the socks i got two pairs of pants i'm gonna quickly put that on afterwards i got a camera there there justin's over there it should take probably as least amount of time as possible so i don't get hypothermia or something so all right here we go [Music] all right we're going for it let's see that one more time i'm actually not that cool it's very cold all right guys i did it it actually feels great [Music] everything's warm the sun definitely helps as you saw it's not that deep because the ice is still pretty thick here but i tried to put my foot on the ground and get my whole body as much as i could would i tell you i really wish i could have done the full body polar plunge but without a saw or drill it was impossible with the thickness of the ice however because the arctic was still frozen it did give us the opportunity to walk quite far out and really get the true feeling of being oh so close to the north pole when it's foggy out as it often is in barrow it doesn't even seem like you're on planet earth sometimes it's that surreal but with the amazing views of the frozen arctic does of course come with some dangers most notably polar bears in fact the hotel staff warned us upon our arrival that they were spotted a few days beforehand just outside the whale arch this carcass is a good guess what they were doing here i honestly really wanted to see polar bear but it was definitely for the best that we didn't as we had no bear spray or guns on us and polar bears are the most aggressive of the three types of bears the others being the black bears and brown bears still just can't get away from that beauty though of the frozen arctic ocean this in the midnight sun absolute best things to see in barrow as you can see there's just no other place like this in the us [Music] you probably have to go to places like nook or svalbard to experience something close to what barrow is like it's a game of survival and adaptation all possible by the airport which is pretty much the lifeblood of utk for all but a month or two of the year airplanes are the only means into or out of this town both for people and cargo only when the ice unfreezes in the summer for a few months can ships come in with larger supplies and goods before it starts getting colder again now you may be wondering well what about trucks and cars there are no roads out of barrow the plane for 10 plus months of the year is the only way in or out unless you're up for a multiple day trek on the ice down south which is only possible if it's thick enough for vehicles but besides that you can only drive around the town and because of the constant weather changes and shifting land year round all roads are made of dirt and because of that it can get quite dusty when they're dry so water trucks routinely spray the streets to minimize the dust for cars and atvs in the winter though there's no problem as roads stay snow covered that's when most people turn to snowmobiles the only pavement you'll find is the runway at the airport as it's needed for alaska's 737s and the cargo jets [Music] while pharaoh isn't like any other american city it does have everything a normal city would have them there's several grocery stores a post office fire station police station public works building a bank courthouse in elementary school high school surprisingly a small college a car repair shop a barber shop several churches a radio station [Music] a wellness center and a decently sized hospital which honestly looks pretty nice compared to the rest of the buildings in town it's a fully self-sustaining u.s small town that just happens to be the northernmost in the [Music] country well with this shot here in the hotel it's about that time it's about 1 30 a.m on the third day that we're here in barrow and it's also our last day as today is our flight back have to get some sleep try to get some sleep for the next seven hours and get a little more filming done in the morning before the flight comes in at about 2 p.m i think so time to get some sleep it just went around again [Music] it just didn't go around uh we will be getting you reworked on getting rescheduled here for tomorrow's flight so yeah just as i thought i'd be leaving barrow fog rolled in while we slept and our flight couldn't land flights getting canceled here is actually more common than you think which strands everyone up here until the next day well guys we're back back to the top of the world hotel for one more night oh gosh hopefully this doesn't last another night thank you guys since we got stuck here kind of gives us some more chances to check out a little more of the town i mean we've pretty much seen everything but walking through some of the neighborhood streets under heavy fog it then really dawned on me how remote this place is the amount of old vehicles and junk around like these old alaska bag cars is just staggering but there's really no place to put them once they're put there's no junk yards so they just are placed anywhere tell you what guys it's almost like one o'clock the day we're delayed kind of getting used to this all daylight thing you can do a lot more whenever you want it's kind of nice maybe one more delay one more cancellation okay maybe not maybe two more maybe not now we gotta go back but it's been nice really nice goodbye barrow all right let's try this one more time off to the airport thankfully the fog lifted the halo sun kept spinning around and our new flight was confirmed to come in today time to head back down to anchorage [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right guys just came off the flight from vero that'll conclude this amazing awesome interesting trip truly a once-in-a-lifetime trip i do have to give a big shout out to the pilots as you just saw on the montage they literally flew all the way around denali i mean what a way to end this trip the views on both flights in and out the scenery all around barrow with givic tremendous the people that we met and talked to just so friendly there it's such a small place which is 5 000 people and it really feels tight-knit everybody knows each other and that's what i like about it so much that you don't find in the big cities anyway what an amazing experience i hope i can get back to this place at some point maybe in the winter although that would be that would be pretty interesting i really hope you guys enjoyed this video of life in barrow alaska the northernmost town in usa what a trip catch you guys on the next one oh my god you

Channel: Chris Jazz

Views: 673,682

Keywords: Barrow, Alaska, what it's like in barrow alaska, arctic circle, arctic ocean, ice, whale hunting, inupiat, Utqiagvik, Barrow Alaska, Utqiagvik Alaska, aviation, thejazzguy13 Aviation, alaska airlines

Id: MqA-nYH6d8A

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021