As superintendent of Alaska's western Arctic national parks -- which include Kobuk Valley National Park, Noatak National Park and Preserve, Bering Land Bridge National Park and Preserve, and Cape Krusenstern National Monument -- Helfrich oversees more than 11.5 million acres of commonly held U.S. property.
And despite his having been on the job more than four years, most of Helfrich's domain remains largely a mystery to the Kotzebue-based park manager.
"I haven't even begun to see a fraction of the acreage," Helfrich said. "It's so rich in natural and cultural history."
Ken Burns knows the feeling. Burns' new 12-hour film, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," debuts on PBS Sunday with a preview of the four-part series, and even though America's most popular documentarian has been immersed in the project for years, dozens upon dozens of parks have escaped his cameras' notice.
Burns visited Denali National Park and Preserve, Katmai and Gates of the Arctic National Park, some of Alaska's best-known national parks. His crew even shot at the rarely visited Kobuk Sand Dunes.
But that left tens of millions of acres in Alaska parks unseen by his crew.
In a way, that loneliness is what makes Alaska's vast parklands so unique. More Alaskans will show up at a single Alaska Aces hockey game than visit many of its park units in a calendar year. These are parks with no road in, no facilities, no staff. Shrouded in darkness amid the midwinter subzero chill for months on end, they can be forbidding places for all but the most rugged and self-sufficient adventurer.
In Helfrich's domain, for example, the caribou visitors -- members of the Western Arctic herd, North America's largest -- outnumber the human visitors about 100 to one.
And yet, Alaska's northwest parklands offer more years of history than any other parkland in America. After all, many scientists believe the first Americans to set foot on the continent arrived by crossing the Bering Sea Land Bridge into what's now a national park.
"Kobuk Valley National Park shows 10,000 years of use, and is one of most important archeological sites in North America," Helfrich said. "In a similar way, Serpentine Hot Springs at Bering Land Bridge has long been an important place for healing. It has a wonderful atmosphere.
"At the Cape Krusenstern National Monument (along the Chukchi Sea north of the Arctic Circle), the beach ridges are extraordinary. This is a place with maybe 4,000 years of use. People have been here for 200 generations."
Which makes many Alaska parks archaeological treasures.
"We actually think of these as preserving the homelands of the Inupiat people," said Ted Birkedal, team manager for cultural resources at the park service's Alaska regional office. Most visitors are local subsistence users.
"We allow access for subsistence for traditional ways of life," Birkedal said. "The people of Kotzebue, Shishmaref, Wales -- they're the clients of the park, the legitimate users of the park, along with the few people from places like Ohio who show up."
Not many do.
There are no ticket takers, no way for park managers to get an accurate head count. They estimate Cape Krusenstern saw 1,575 recreational visitors last year, and Bering Land Bridge welcomed 1,019.
But even those sparse numbers are a crowd compared to those at the Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve on the Alaska Peninsula.
An estimated 10 visitors showed up there last year, testament to both its remoteness and how consistently nasty weather keeps people away.
But they couldn't prevent a man on a mission like Woody Harrell from visiting in 2002.
Harrell, superintendent of Shiloh National Military Park in Tennessee, took three summers earlier this decade to visit all 22 park units in Alaska as part of a plan to set foot in every U.S. park.
"We would spend a week going to as many parks as quickly as possible, and then another week for an in-depth visit at one park," he said.
His bid to see Aniakchak, some 450 miles south of Anchorage, was in the latter category -- and getting there took both effort and patience.
With the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Arctic Ocean on the other, Aniakchak weather is a volatile brew of storms.
"It makes its own weather," he said.
Some visitors like Harrell make a 30-mile float down the Aniakchak River, starting on Surprise Lake in Aniakchak's caldera, which is often shrouded in clouds, keeping visiting pilots at bay.
"That trip taught me the most important single item in an Alaska survival kit was a deck of cards," Harrell said.
Patience may be a virtue in getting to some of Alaska's least visited national parks. But the rewards can be exceptional too -- even for people who can't visit.
"What it does for American people is that they know there's gonna be intact ecosystems," Birkedal said. "You may not get there yourself, but there's some satisfaction knowing it's there and that it's preserved for the American people, their children and grandchildren."
After all, noted Harrell, you can only drive to three of the 22 Alaska park units.
"You certainly wouldn't find that anywhere else in America," he said.
Ken Burns’ National Parks series
Channel 7 in Anchorage
• Sunday: — Series preview, 9:30 p.m.
• Sept. 27: — “The Scripture of Nature,” 7 and 9 p.m.
• Sept. 28 — “The Last Refuge,” 7 and 9:30 p.m.
• Sept. 29: — “The Empire of Grandeur,” 7 and 9 p.m.
• Sept. 30: — “Going Home,” 7 and 9 p.m.
RELATED PROGRAMMING
• “Great Lodges of the National Park” looks at Alaska, 8 p.m. Sept. 23 on PBS, Channel 7 in Anchorage
• John Quinley, assistant regional director for the National Park Service’s Alaska Region, will answer questions on Alaska Public Radio Network’s “Talk of Alaska” program, Sept. 22.
SHARE YOUR PARK STORY
The Web site of KAKM is seeking listener contributions of their own Alaska national park stories at www.kakm.org.
SERIES ON DVD
Ken Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” will be available on DVD and Blu-ray on Oct. 6. In addition to the 12-hour film, the DVD has bonus material, including a look at how the project came together, outtakes and more. “We’re thrilled that this film, which is among the most visually stunning we’ve produced, will be our first on Blu-ray,” Burns said.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.