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A Third Chance: This One I Could Not Refuse

Pre-amble:

This is what I wrote in EXCURSIONS: ALASKA - Blog 40 - Fairbanks.

Now before ending my Fairbanks blog, I have to address the issue of the Dalton Highway - the 800 km gravel road that goes from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay on the Beaufort Sea.

The Dalton Highway - Did I drive it or not?
The Short answer is NOT!

The Long Answer is, well, a bit longer --

I did not drive the Dalton Highway for the following reasons.

A major aim of my trip to Alaska was to see Denali National Park where Mt. McKinley and Polychrome Pass are located. The bus tours in Denali National Park, which are the only means of seeing Mt. McKinley and accessing Polychrome Pass, were coming to an end for the season on the following Thursday. It would have been a real rush, if not impossible, to drive the Dalton Highway and get to Denali with enough time to see the park.

I adored driving the Liard Highway in the Northwest Territories which I drove a one-way distance of about 300 km. The Dalton on the other hand would be a driving distance of 1,600 km for the round trip. That is a huge, huge distance on gravel road that is used as a haul road for the oil fields of the Beaufort Sea.

As a haul road, there would be a fair amount of heavy truck traffic. Each passing truck would pose a potential hazard to the windshield or headlights of my car.

Had I driven the entire distance of 800 km to the hamlet of Deadhorse, there is still a distance of 8 miles to the Beaufort Sea for which there is no public access. Apparently there are organized tours in season, for the last stretch.

There are no medical facilities between Fairbanks and Deadhorse.

Food, gas and vehicle repairs are extremely limited (for a Volvo - nonexistent).
It is suggested that a car be equipped with 2 spare tires mounted on rims, emergency flares, extra gasoline, oil and a CB radio to monitor truck traffic (I had none of the above).

The weather is also iffy at this time of year with snow not unexpected from the Brooks Range on north.

There is a danger that flash floods and running water may wash out the culverts and bridges.

The highway is apparently nowhere near the excellent standard of the Liard Highway. There is abundance of potholes, washboard, sharp rocks and depending on the weather, clouds of dust or slick conditions.

Rental car companies prohibit the use of their cars on the Dalton which speaks for itself.

Fortunately, the extreme hoards of mosquitoes would no longer be a factor at this time of year.

The most daunting factor of all is the towing charge of $5 per mile in the case of a breakdown. That could add up to more than the value of my car should it happen at the extreme end of the highway.

So these are the factors which ultimately led me to err on the side of caution.

In conclusion, of course, I wish I would have gone.

A Third Chance: This one I Could Not Refuse

That last sentence from Blog 40 must have remained in my subconscious. Once I got to Dawson City, I kept glancing at the map to focus on that narrow line that wound its way 700 km north from Dawson City to Inuvik. A town of 3,000 inhabitants, Inuvik is located on the McKenzie Delta, 160 km from the Arctic Ocean and 320 km north of the Arctic Circle.

The line on the map is Canada's equivalent to the Dalton Highway as it is the only all-weather road access to the Arctic. It is called The DEMPSTER HIGHWAY.


I first became aware of the Dempster Highway in 1996. That was the year I completed two extraordinary independent bicycle tours.


In July 1996, I cycled the Viking Trail which runs the length of the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland/Labrador. It starts at Deer Lake and leads 230 km north past spectacular Gros Morne National Park to L'Anse-aux-Meadows at the tip of the "thumb" of Newfoundland.

L'Anse-aux-Meadows is renowned as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in honour of the archeological remains of a settlement established by the Vikings 500 years before Columbus "discovered" America in 1492.

The following website has a map of the Viking Trail.
http://www.vikingtrail.org/welcome.html
click on Welcome and select "How to Get Here"
click on map to get the detailed map for the Viking Trial

After L'Anse-aux-Meadows, I took an auto/passenger ferry from St. Barbe to Blanc Sablon in Labrador. From here the attraction was to turn east and cycle 85 km to reach the end of the road at Red Bay. There is a sense of satisfaction in traveling and reaching "the end of the road".

That was the end of the road in 1996 as the 450 km line on the map that continued from Red Bay to Cartwright on Sandwich Bay was designated as a snow mobile trail.

As approval was given in 1999 for a four-year project to construct a road, the line on the map now designates a gravel road.

This is part of the Trans Labrador Highway which only lacks a 250 km section from Happy Valley - Goose Bay to Cartwright Junction to be completed in 2008. This will give communities along the Atlantic Ocean land access to the rest of Canada and will throw the area wide open to tourism. I am looking forward to someday driving and blogging the completed Trans Labrador Highway.

http://www.amxfiles.com/stoneji/97trip/tlh_notes.htm

While I may be enthusiastic about the prospects of exploring Labrador, I should mention that the Innu Nation has voiced strong objections to the government's plan for the completion of the highway as they perceive it to be a threat to their way of life.

From Red Bay I was fortunate enough to catch a freighter to St. Anthony, Newfoundland. A lasting memory is that of a cargo boom being lowered from the freighter and ropes being attached to my heavily laden touring bicycle to be lifted on board. Since I was not blogging at that time, the photos and travelog are long gone somewhere.

In August of 1996, I flew to Vancouver with the same bike and cycled from Vancouver Airport north on the beautiful Sunshine Coast to Powell River. That was followed by a ferry crossing of the Georgia Strait to Campbell River.
http://www.vcmbc.com/page.cfm/937

From Campbell River I cycled 250 km to Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. The trip continued with a voyage on the MV Queen of the North (see Blog 24: Sinking of the Queen of the North) to Prince Rupert to eventually end up cycling the Queen Charlotte Islands.



http://www.britishcolumbia.com/Maps/?id=53 (sorry, hyperlink does not work)


It was during the bike trip from Campbell River to Port Hardy that I met a fellow cyclist who was a remarkable individual by the name of William LeRoy from Paris France.

Remarkable, for he was a cancer survivor who was doing his own "Ocean to Ocean to Ocean" bike tour of Canada. Therefore by the time I met him, he had already cycled across Canada from Nova Scotia to Vancouver. That is an extraordinary feat in itself since few people have the perseverance and strength to do that. The fact that he cycled the route east to west, against the prevailing winds, made the feat even more unusual. Having achieved the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, he was now headed for the Arctic Ocean to complete his triple feat.

It was during the voyage to Prince Rupert on the Queen of the North that he kept bringing up the topic of my joining him on his planned cycle north on the Dempster Highway to Inuvik. At this point I had never heard of the gravel road that was the Dempster Highway but it certainly caught my attention for it would have been an unbelievable trip. It would have taken us from Prince Rupert on the Alaska Ferry to Skagway and then by bicycle to Whitehorse, Dawson City and then to Inuvik, this last stretch being the Dempster Highway. That would have been another month of difficult cycling just to get there since the distance is about 1,400 km.

Even though I was greatly tempted, I simply did not have the time or the level of equipment to make that sort of a rugged trip.

That was 1996 and I never forgot the "Ocean to Ocean to Ocean" feat of William LeRoy nor the Dempster Highway.

After all that, perhaps I still need to explain my title:

A THIRD CHANCE: This One I Could Not Refuse

The chance was to visit the ARCTIC.

My first chance was with William LeRoy in 1996.

My second chance was the Dalton Highway to Prudoe Bay in Alaska on this trip to Alaska

My third chance was here and now in Dawson City to drive the DEMPSTER HIGHWAY.

Enough is enough; this is my third chance to go to the Arctic and I simply could not refuse.


Coming Soon: The Dempster Highway