Lynden Hauls North Slope Housing Units
A PistenBully Snowcat hauls a sleigh with housing materials to Point Lay.
Lynden
Air and sea logistics to the North Slope are hard enough, given the remoteness and weather. Land logistics are another beast entirely, which Lynden’s team in Deadhorse overcame to deliver packaged housing units to Point Lay, a 990-mile round trip over tundra trails.
Snowcat to the Coast
The Point Lay project delivered materials for six new affordable housing units, which are critically needed as Point Lay has only sixty-seven houses for almost 400 residents. Point Lay, on the Chukchi Sea coast, is considered more than 73 percent overcrowded. “Nowhere is the need for new safe, decent, and affordable housing more clear than in Point Lay,” says Griffin Hagle-Forster, executive director of Taġiuġmiullu Nunamiullu Housing Authority, the organization responsible for the affordable housing project.
Lynden Transport trucked the materials from Anchorage to Deadhorse, and then Lynden Oilfield Services used PistenBully Snowcats to tow the load the final miles. Business development manager Roger Wilson notes that the trip was about eight days.
Housing units are also being built in Kaktovik, Nuiqsut, and Wainwright over the next two years.
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May 2026
Before the winter travel season ended on the North Slope, Lynden also completed the IKO Bay P&A project, which consisted of ten loads to support a small drill rig move from Palmer. The materials were loaded directly to 53-foot platforms for Lynden Transport trucking to the North Slope, where they were transferred directly to a sleigh for PistenBully towing to the remote drilling site.
“These projects are clear examples of how challenging logistics in the Arctic can be,” says Paul Friese, Lynden Transport’s vice president of Alaska sales. “No one else on the planet can do this type of work in the North Slope region. Lynden’s combination of relationships and leveraging our specialized equipment to do this work creates a unique One Lynden experience for our customers.”
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