Seeing Alaska from the window of a Cessna, Otter, or Beaver bush plane isn’t just a sensory rush—it’s an extraordinary opportunity to glimpse untouched landscapes that no car or train will ever reach. Soaring past towering peaks, sprawling glaciers, and vast tundra flats teeming with caribou, moose, grizzly bears, and musk ox is breathtaking and can be genuinely life-changing.

An equally captivating experience awaits as you fly over sweeping tundra, the expansive Yukon River Valley, the rugged Brooks Range, and the iconic Alaska Pipeline in Northern Alaska. Crossing the Arctic Circle, you’ll earn an official Arctic Circle certificate to mark the journey. The terrain, once blanketed by massive ice sheets stretching from Siberia, has transformed into a haunting, flat, treeless landscape. This cold, open expanse is home to bears, caribou, and musk ox, and in the fall, the tundra's green grasses turn vivid shades, while in summer, the "Land of the Midnight Sun" offers endless daylight.

Land 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle at the Brooks Mountain Range community of Coldfoot, the modern day gateway to the Gates of the Arctic National park. Take in a brief orientation and restroom break before continuing on your air journey. Experience the rugged and magnificent Brooks Mountain Range. The flight route takes you inside the Gates of the Arctic National Park, the wild and pristine jewel of the national park system.

Gates of the Arctic covers 13,238 square miles, sprawls 800 miles from east to west and is entirely north of the Arctic Circle. It extends from the southern foothills of the Brooks Range, across the range's ragged peaks and down onto the North Slope. Most of the park is a maze of glaciated valleys and gaunt, rugged mountains covered with boreal forest or treeless slopes of Arctic tundra north of the divide. After taking in the splendor of this unspoiled landscape, you’ll return by air to Fairbanks.