The Noatak and Kobuk Rivers are described by the National Park Service as some of North america's finest waters for wilderness expeditions.

The Noatak River is one of North America's largest mountain-ringed river basins that is still virtually unaffected by humans. Its environs feature some of the Arctic's finest arrays of plants and animals. The river offers superlative wilderness float-trip opportunities -- from deep in the Brooks Range to tidewater of the Chukchi Sea. The Noatak River is classified as a national wild and scenic river from its headwaters to the Kelly River.

The Kobuk River is also enclosed by mountains: the Brooks Range, and the Baird and Waring mountains. A major feature along the river was created by the grinding action of ancient glaciers. The sand the glaciers left behind has been carried by winds and water into the Kobuk Valley to form the 25-square-mile Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, and the little Kobuk and Hunt River dunes. Additional dunes that have been stabilized by vegetation cover much of the southern portion of the Kobuk Valley.

River bluffs, composed of sand and standing as much as 150 feet high, hold the fossils of Ice Age mammals. Up to 1,500 feet wide, the placid Kobuk River falls only 2 to 3 inches per mile. Its valley provides important fall and winter range for the western arctic caribou herd. Bands of migrating bulls and cows may be seen here from late August through October.

Native people have lived along the Kobuk River for at least 12,000 years. The community of Kobuk, population 79, is an Interior Inupiaq Eskimo village. Temperatures there can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and fall to -70 F in the winter.