Ten kilometres on Adak Island, thirteen hundred miles southwest of Anchorage, on treeless volcanic tundra where the Bering Sea meets the North Pacific and there is nothing between you and the weather.

The first six kilometres run barely above sea level — a low, exposed coastal stretch past the ruins of what was once a naval air station of six thousand people. Then the road turns to gravel and becoems a proper climb: a kilometre at 6%, half of it at 8%, ramping to 10% over the steepest hundred metres, up to a 67-metre saddle with the ocean visible on both sides of the island.

The top gives you a kilometre and a half of open, wind-scoured plateau before the road tips over and falls away at nearly 10% down to Clam Lagoon — a sheltered bay at the north end of the island.