Arrigetch Peaks

USGS Name: Arrigetch Peaks

Arrigetch means “fingers of the outstretched hand” in Iñupiaq, and these peaks lie within traditional Koyukon Athabaskan and Nunamiut lands. Here, and in the nearby Alatna River valley, dozens of Indigenous archaeological sites spanning at least 4000 years have been identified.

Though the Brooks Range was a home to Athabaskan and Iñupiat peoples for millennia, it remained unknown to outsiders until the end of the 19th century. In the 1880s, officials in the US government pushed to map northern Alaska. The first known western documentation of the Arrigetch Peaks were recorded by Naval Lieutenant George Stoney in 1886, who wrote, “The configuration at this junction of the surrounding heights [Arrigetch Peaks] is worthy of note. They appear in every conceivable way and shape; there are rugged, weather-scarred peaks, lofty minarets, cathedral spires, high towers and rounded domes, with circular knobs, flat tops, sharp edges, serrated ridges, and smooth backbones. These fantastic shapes form the summits of bare, perpendicular mountains.”

The name Arrigetch was reported in 1931 by Robert Marshall.

Sources: Gaunt Beauty, Tenuous Life, Military Exploration of the Brook Range