Two Found Dead In Their Car At Frozen, Windy Eagle Summit On The Steese

DANGERS OF JANUARY 

 Two People Dead In Their Car On Steese Highway North of Fairbanks 

...Even Over 100 Years Ago, This Pass Was Considered Terrible 

Troopers say that the weather is too bad – with high winds and cold – to go out onto the Steese Highway to recover the vehicle 

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5TH, 2024 

The Anchorage Daily News has reported that Troopers are planning to go out and recover the vehicle of two people who were found by DOT and Troopers near Eagle Summit. The first 81 miles of the Steese are paved. The section where the car was found is not. 

The summit is 3,652 feet above sea level and forms a gap through the White Mountains. 

In 1916, according to Wikipedia, Hudson Stuck, the famous early Denali climber wrote:

 "The Eagle Summit is one of the most difficult summits in Alaska. The wind blows so fiercely that sometimes for days together its passage is almost impossible. ... The snow smothers up everything on the lee side of the hill, and the end of every storm presents a new surface and an altered route. ... there is no easier pass and no way around.."

The summit is 102 miles northeast of Fairbanks, on the old Gold Rush route to the Yukon, through Central and Circle. 

As of Friday, January 5th, DOT's Alaska 511 site, which monitors road conditions around the state, showed the region as being impassable and closed, with snow on the roadway, heavy drifting, visibility reduced, and "resuspended snow dust." It lists winds as "high" -- running a minimum of 45 mph and a maximum of 55 mph. 

Details of who the people were, whether they died of the cold or other reasons, and why anyone was driving on the road have not been disclosed by Troopers.

The population of Central, which is beyond Eagle Summit, was listed as 38 people in 2020. The population of Circle was listed, for 2020, as 42 people.