English: Whatever one thinks about oil exploration on the North Slope of Alaska, the Alaska Pipeline is surely one of the engineering marvels of the 20th century.

According to Wikipedia, "The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) includes the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 12 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one of the world's largest pipeline systems. It is commonly called the Alaska pipeline, trans-Alaska pipeline, or Alyeska pipeline, (or the pipeline as referred to in Alaska), but those terms technically apply only to the 800 miles (1,287 km) of the pipeline with the diameter of 48 inches (122 cm) that conveys oil from Prudhoe Bay, to Valdez, Alaska. The crude oil pipeline is privately owned by the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.

This view is looking north on an otherwise wet and muddy day north of the Arctic Circle. The scarred strip to the west of the highway is where crews had buried a fiber optic cable (cables?) paralleling the entire length of the highway, presumably extending to Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay).