Traversing Alaska's Coast: Into Alaska's Changing Tundra
The Arctic Beaver Observation Network (A-BON), funded by the National Science Foundation, brings together scientists, Indigenous communities, land managers, and local observers from across the circumpolar Arctic to study how beavers are moving north and reshaping tundra, waterways, and permafrost. We sent our colleague Tori to Nome to join University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers, affectionately known as the “Beaver Boys,” as they tracked these changes in the field. For Alaska Gear Company, this work hits close to home: our Arctic Oven Tents, Arctic Grade Sleds, and VBX Bunny Boots helped carry the team more than 2,000 miles across some of the state’s harshest terrain. Supporting research like this is part of our commitment to science and to a sustainable Alaska for the generations who live, work, and explore here.
A day with COAST-X and the researchers tracking Arctic beaver expansion.
In Nome, 11°F counts as a nice spring day.
For the team behind University of Alaska Fairbanks’ COAST-X (Collaborative Observations of the Arctic Shorezone: a Traverse for Knowledge eXchange), it was good enough to get back on the sleds.
We joined these researchers in Nome during their 2026 traverse of Alaska’s western and northern coast, a journey that would ultimately cover nearly 2,000 miles from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta to Utqiaġvik. Our colleague, Tori, spent a day with the group, heading out to frozen beaver habitat with researchers studying one of the Arctic’s most conspicuous signs of environmental change.
It was a small window into a much bigger expedition — and into a research project with a decidedly more informal name.
Meet the Beaver Boys.
The team is experiencing northern lights over an Arctic Oven tent at 3am, after a long day traveling by Skidoo.
The Beaver Problem Isn’t Just About Beavers
The Beaver Boys are a handful of researchers who have spent roughly nine years working together on Arctic beaver research: Benjamin Jones, Philip Wilson, Tom, Sebastian and Ken Tape.
Their research is part of the NSF-funded Arctic Beaver Observation Network, or A-BON, which brings together scientists, Indigenous groups, land managers and local observers from across the circumpolar Arctic.
The goal is to understand where beavers are expanding, and how their engineering is changing Arctic ecosystems and communities, and the places Alaskans hunt, fish, and recreate.
The farther north you go, the more consequential small landscape changes can become. Arctic Alaska is warming, shrubs are expanding, and beavers are following those changes into places where they were once uncommon or absent. Their dams turn streams into ponds and wetlands, changing hydrology and, in some places, accelerating permafrost thaw.
And the beavers themselves, Benjamin says, have become an unexpectedly effective way to get people interested in the science.
“We can talk about permafrost, Arctic hydrology, geophysics, or remote sensing, but as soon as you mention tundra beavers, that’s what everyone seems to want to hear about,” he told us.
It’s easy to understand why. Beavers are remarkably charismatic, especially considering they are essentially flooding the tundra and reorganizing the landscape around them. But perhaps that kind of ecosystem engineering is something we humans can relate to.
Into the Field
On Tori’s day with the researchers, they were at a large beaver complex documenting how dams and ponds affect water flow, vegetation, terrain, snow, and permafrost. Their work at the site continues through spring and summer, when they collect data from water sensors and acoustic recorders, conduct ground-penetrating radar surveys, and fly drones to track changes in water area, vegetation, and permafrost terrain.
At one point, Tori stepped onto what looked like solid snow and punched through into flowing water below. Not ideal. But it was also a perfect example of why this research requires people who understand the landscape from multiple angles.
Tori arrived with, in her words, little more than “one YouTube video’s worth of knowledge on beavers.” What she found was a group of researchers whose expertise extended far beyond their individual specialties. They understood how tundra, permafrost, hydrology, wildlife and vegetation influence one another — and they were willing to explain it.
A Long Way to Carry the Lab
The beaver research wasn’t the only reason Philip and Benjamin were traveling through northwest Alaska. Their work naturally overlapped with the larger COAST-X expedition, which gave them a chance to meet the team and spend time at the field sites.
COAST-X traveled more than 1,986 miles through 15 communities along Alaska’s rugged western and northern coast. The team traveled by snowmachine, using our Freight Sleds to pull all the equipment, food, survival gear, and personal supplies required to stay in the field. Their large metal cargo boxes protected sensitive equipment from the constant abuse of Arctic travel, while the machines hauled the load across roughly 120 miles a day during parts of the traverse.
Tori was struck by what the sleds endured. So were we.
There is something satisfying about seeing gear do exactly what it was designed to do; an elegant balance where form and function meet. We got to see our Bunny Boots shine on this trip, too. They kept Tori’s feet warm while she stood still for measurements, stepped through overflow, and rode snowmachines back into town after hours on the tundra.
As gear junkies, it’s important for us to keep things in perspective. We know the gear isn’t the star of this story. The gear doesn’t do the research.
But it does make the research possible.
The People Along the Way
That same philosophy applies to the way COAST-X approaches the communities along its route.
Project leader Benjamin Jones asked us to keep this story grounded in a community-first perspective. The researchers didn’t simply arrive, collect data, and leave. They stopped in communities, met with local leaders, listened to residents, and compared scientific observations with what people were seeing on the land themselves.
Benjamin and Phillip meeting with residents of Kotlik to discuss erosion, flooding, permafrost thaw, and other ongoing challenges. We also traded muktuk from Gambell for beluga from Norton Sound.
The A-BON project takes a similar approach, bringing scientists together with Indigenous groups, land managers and local observers across the Arctic. The idea is that understanding a rapidly changing landscape requires more than instruments and satellite imagery.
Satellite imagery can show where a pond has appeared. Ground-penetrating radar can show what is happening beneath the surface. A weather station can record temperature and precipitation.
But the people who live in a place know what it means when a route changes, when ice forms differently, when water moves somewhere it didn’t used to, or when animals begin appearing in new places.
People bring the science to life, give it relevance and meaning, and ultimately interpret the findings and apply them to a rugged life in a rapidly changing world.
One Day of a Much Bigger Journey
By the time Tori left Nome, COAST-X was preparing to continue north toward Utqiaġvik. They would meet more communities, collect more observations, and keep building a picture of an Arctic that is changing in ways both gradual and startlingly fast. We only saw a few days. But that was enough to understand why this kind of fieldwork matters.
It’s easy to think of climate science as something that happens in laboratories or on computer screens. But in Arctic Alaska, sometimes it looks like five people on snowmachines, a freight sled loaded with equipment, and a researcher kneeling beside a beaver pond surviving overflow by way of VBX Bunny Boots.
Sometimes it looks like a Bunny Boot standing in the overflow.
And sometimes it looks like listening — to the scientists, to the landscape and, most importantly, to the people who call that landscape home.
Learn more at the COAST-X blog and see the full trip: coast-x.blogspot.com
