I left the motel at 7:20 am, wanting to get an early start to allow time to quickly go into Dawson City and video the downtown area. The gas station next to the motel was closed, but that didn’t matter as I knew that there was an unattended gas station with credit card facilities at the Klondike Junction where the Dempster Highway started.
Surprisingly, Dawson City has a speed limit of 40 k.p.h. and given the cops who stopped me yesterday made it clear that this is where they were from, I carefully crept along at 38!
The bridge you can see at 1:34 in video #1 is over the Klondike River, which runs into the Yukon River on the West side of the city. This was the route that many prospectors took which is why Dawson City was established where it is in 1897. It’s named after the man who mapped out much of the region, George Dawson. The “tour of the town” starts at 3:22 in video #1.
Look at the road surface starting at 4:06…. there are repairs to the road almost everywhere in the town. Since the average low temperature in January is -30°C (-22°F) I suspect that the ground heave damages a lot of the road surfaces every year and every year they must be repaired.
Note the pastel colors everywhere. Last night while I had dinner at Annabel’s Noodles the waitress told me she used to work for the city, and that if you wanted to build something within the city limits then the city was pretty much going to tell you what it would look like and what colours you could use. Look at the long building starting at 6:11 in video 1 and the piles of snow at 6:40 – you would have thought that by May 4th all of the snow would have gone but it’s an indication of just how far North Dawson City is.
At the start of video #2 I state that the first 10 km of the Dempster Highway is paved… I was wrong – it’s the last 10 km that has a different surface. And the surface that you can see at 1:40 as I leave the bridge over the Klondike River is as good as it ever gets on my journey up the Dempster, and considerably better than most of the way – as we will see.
By 3:36 in video #2 the pot holes were becoming more frequent and deeper but I couldn’t imagine that they could get any worse. They could…. By a big margin! But at least the weather was on my side with hardly a cloud in the sky and brilliant sunshine though it was still around freezing. At 3:49 you can see just how much damage the frost can do to this type of road surface.
At 4:56 the spectacular views on the Tombstone Park mountains begin, even if the potholes are causing camera shake. The second half of video #2 is blank but you haven’t missed anything, it just that when I was creating the video from the original files a rogue text element was left way past the end of the files and the media converter thought it was part of the video so filled it up with blank video.
By the start of video #3 I am entering the Tombstone range… I was getting higher and the road surface was getting worse. AT 1:30 in video #3 you can see a truck coming in the other direction. It has no load and is going really fast, fast enough to throw up all sorts of crap and stones to impress my windshield! I could only slow down as much as I could so that the combined speed of our vehicles became lower enough to avoid impact damage on my windshield.
Look carefully at the road ahead at from 3:05 on in video #3 – there’s a flock of birds sitting on the road. Look how close I have to get before they fly out of the way, in fact two of them run directly across my path at one point. I saw many more on the way further up on the snow slopes. I had never seen birds like this before and had no idea what they were, so I looked them up on my return home. They are ptarmigans – they can survive in these mountains throughout the year. They also change their colour depending on the season, being white in the winter and early spring, until the change to brown during the summer.
By now I was going over ruts in the road, which in places were as deep as the potholes, though many were full of water that had frozen to ice so they weren’t as touch on the Subie as the potholes were. And I never figured out why the water in the ruts froze while most of that in the potholes didn’t?
At 6:22 in video #3 you can see a road maintenance crew coming into view. Given the distance between the ends of this highway and Eagle Plains, the only services point on the entire highway, you might wonder how these maintenance crews manage if they have to drive for hours to get to work? The answer is that they don’t – there are “HMC”s (Highway Maintenance Camp) placed at strategic points all along the highway where the crews are based and live. ~CA$5 million is spent per year maintain the highway.
There are some beautiful views of some peaks starting at 6:49 and by now it was down to 28°F. I stopped at the view station indicated by the sign and took some incredible panoramas with my D300 – look at 2023 05 04 Artic Trip-12/13/14 in the photos for today.
At 2:51 in video #4 you can see why you really don’t want to break down out here… later I was told that it’s so costly to get a tow truck to come out and then tow your vehicle back that some folks just wait to get a lift back to civilization and just leave their vehicle where it went off the road. This was by no means the only abandoned vehicle that I saw on the Dempster.
The video doesn’t really do justice to the length of time it took to get through the Tombstone Park mountains, a distance of ~105 miles including the long plateau on top – just short of the distance from London to Birmingham in England. And remember, that was driving in the freezing cold, over ice and slush and over what is arguably the worst road surface in Canada!
At 5:51 in video #4 you can see in the distance a most unusual rock face formation – almost like a group of fingers stuck on the side of the mountain. These are alongside the Yukon State Engineers Creek Campground – it was not open for business! Just a mere 108 miles to go now to the Eagle Plains Hotel where I will spend the night.
40 miles later I stopped at the Olgivie Ridge viewpoint and spent a while looking at the most scenic view of a mountain range I have seen since flying to Mount Everest from Nepal – it’s the view at the top of this blog. You can see this from 6:09 in video #4… when I shot the video the sun was so strong that I could not see on the screen what I was shooting (the camera does not have a viewfinder – only an LCD screen) but it seemed to turn out OK. You can see the still shots I took in files 2023 05 04 Artic Trip-33/4/5/6/7.
I forgot to mention that once I had got to the Tombstone Park mountains all trees had disappeared. You can see this clearly in the video and stills mentioned above. I was now far enough North to be beyond the boreal forest zone but not quite into tundra, a sort of half-way house.
I got to the Eagle Plains Hotel at about 2:30 pm. It is a hotel, but it’s also a gas station, an airfield, a major truck stop, a shop and a garage – all under the same ownership on one site. It’s here that I discovered that my video camera had developed a fault and had been out of focus completely since leaving Ogilvie Ridge.
It was at this point that my so carefully planned journey fell apart. I arrived at the hotel looking forward to getting a big dinner, a glass of wine even, and a good night’s rest before setting out early to complete the road journey the next day and arrive at the Artic Ocean. It was May so surely the ferries (over the Peel and McKenzie rivers) would be running? You can see where these ferries are at 1:21 in video #5, the ice bridge across the Peel river at 1:46 and the one across the McKenzie river at 2:08.
I was in the bar having a beer when the barman came in excitedly waving a piece of paper and saying, “they’ve issued the 72”. That sounded very interesting, after all, WTF does “issuing a 72” actually involve and who does it, so I asked the barman. The answers were simple… The government of the Northwest Territory does it and “it” is to give a public warning that the ice bridges across the Peel and the McKenzie will close in 72 hours. You can see this document at 2:36.
Wait a minute…. What do you mean the ice bridges will close? Are they still open? Sadly, the answer was yes because the 72 hours are not at all guaranteed – it’s an estimate that is usually correct (they’ve been doing this a while) but if the weather were to suddenly turn warm, as it had for a couple of days on the way up, they bridges might have to be closed early. But then I would just get the ferry, right? No…. very, very wrong. The ferries can’t run while the ice is breaking up and floating down the river – just imagine how think and large those ice chunks will be. So how long does it take for all the ice to get out of the way and let the ferries run? About six weeks!
So, if I proceed to continue my journey as planned there was a chance that I would make it back over the Peel and the McKenzie, but there was also a chance that I would not – for another six weeks. It was a no brainer – I could not risk getting stuck on the wrong side of a river for six weeks. My journey to the Artic was over…. or so I thought. I was, to put it mildly, absolutely devastated to have come this far and not get to the Artic.
I went to the restaurant to get a cup of tea but there was no one there, so I went to reception. There was no one there either so I rang the bell and waited. While I was waiting, I saw a sign proclaiming that it was only 35 km from the hotel to the Artic Circle( look at 3:08 in video #5). That’s strange because I know that the Northwest Territory is quite a bit further away than that and isn’t the Artic Circle in the NWT? I rushed back to my room to check on Google Maps and got the shock of my life when I discovered that the Dempster crossed into the Artic Circle in the Yukon! Look at 3:52 in video #5.
Tea and food will have to wait – if it’s that close then we’re going to the Artic Circle…. Now! My Bucket List item was to get to the Artic Region, not necessarily the Artic Ocean. One step inside the Artic Circle and it’s a Bucket List Tick Off. Tally ho chaps! At this point I hope you’re as excited reading this as I was to find out that I might make the Artic after all.
I made it to the Artic Circle at 66° 33’ North and even took a video of my there, though I still didn’t realise that the camera wasn’t focusing properly so there no video to show. But I did take some stills – 2023 05 04 Artic Trip-38/39 and at 4:21 in video #5 you can see my sat tracker recorded me as being at 66° 33.742’ North – definitely inside the Artic Circle.
Bucket List reduced by 1 item!
Hold on…. I just had a serious thought…. I called this whole venture “Beyond the Yukon”, but that’s the point… if I turned around here then I hadn’t been Beyond the Yukon at all. Well not going beyond the Yukon didn’t alter my Bucket List status but would that be totally against the spirit of this entire journey? I felt that it would, so there was nothing for it but to set off for the Northwest Territory. My satnav showed that it was only another 37 miles which, being as tired as I was, I didn’t exactly relish, but having come this far, I was not going to give up now. Besides, if I go that far into the Artic there can be no argument as to whether I made it there.
Tally ho chaps (again)!
I made it to the NWT as you can see at 5:20 in video #5 and stills IMG_1886/7 and the screenshot at 06:19. I turned around and headed back to the hotel. I would soon be fed, watered and in bed….. or rather, I wouldn’t. The excitement for the day was far, far, far from over…
I was heading back to the hotel and had not yet crossed back into the Yukon when I spotted a bear on the left digging in the snow – look at the start of video #6 and at stills 2023 05 04 Artic Trip-40/1/2/3/4/5/6/7. I assumed that he was digging for grass but later some hunters explained to me that when the shot caribou they hauled them to the side of the road, gutted them and left in innards on the ground, and that sometimes this is what the bears search for. In the hunting season, which was now, this happens frequently enough that the bears know where to look.
If at this stage, you feel you need reminding just how bad the road surface can be on the Dempster go to 0:50 in video #6 to see the Subie being thrown around again – you’ll also see a great view of the Ogilvie range on the far left.
At 1:49 in video #6 you can see how high the sun was in the sky at 7:41 pm – it would be a long time before the sun set.
A short while later my world got turned upside down. You might say that the world turned flat out against me – as in a flat tire. The spare on the Subie is underneath the vehicle but t release it you have to undo a nut in the back of the vehicle, and to do that you have to unload whatever is on the cover of the tool well (see 2:52 in video #6). God only know how folks manage this situation in the winter! Keep looking at the video….
Within two minutes of me starting the unload, the first truck, full of a whole family, stopped to help. They didn’t ask me if I wanted help, I think they could sense I was tired and just a little lost – they just started to get their tools out. And before I knew it, another truck, complete with family, had stopped to help too. Before the job was done there were no less than FIVE trucks and families helping out! One of the women even offloaded my toolkit and was carefully selecting the tools that her husband would need.
The whole episode ran like an extremely well oiled machine… no one was asking what to do because everyone already knew what to do. They repaired the punctured tire with a “plug kit” without even taking the tire off the wheel rim. I’m not exactly a novice when it comes to vehicles, but then again perhaps I am, because I had never seen or heard of such a kit and nor did I realise that you can fix a puncture while still on the rim.
One of the older guys suggested I look at the tires on his truck and then he explained how their construction was different to the ties on the Subie. Then he pointed at the tire being fixed and said “We call these City Slickers” and grinned widely. “Does that apply to their owner?” I asked and his grin got even wider as he nodded his head!
These families lived in Fort McPherson further North over the Peel River but they came down South to hunt caribou.
They told me to get the tire back to the hotel so that it could be patched to strengthen the plug. This made me think I had better use the spare to get back to the hotel and leave the plugged tire in the back. It would have been much better if my brain had not had a “think” but had shut down for a while.
The spare was a doughnut, or “space saver” as it’s called in the UK, intended to be driven only a short distance and not fast. Yet another very, very bad idea on my part…
There’s a short video clip of the guys working on the tire and some of the trucks at 7:00 in video #6.
I was so caught up in the moment that I forgot to ask for contact details so that I could later write and thank them all. Hopefully, someone will see these pictures and videos and recognize these families. If you do please leave a comment with details of how I can make contact. I cannot thank you enough.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an men” as Rabbie Burns put it…. My plan was to get back to the hotel… the mice had other ideas.
Have a listen to the video at 2:03 as I explain that statistically “I’ve had one puncture on the Dempster Highway so I shouldn’t have another one”.
Listen carefully at 2:06…. Hear the crack at the same time as that huge jolt? That’s a statistical anomaly… a.k.a. a second puncture on the Dempster Highway! I probably waited too long to stop and check what had happened because that spare tire was not only flat, but it was also irreparably damaged, and so was the spare wheel itself (CA$425 to replace them both). That spare had lasted less than 12 km.
It was with a very heavy heart that I started to unload the tools from the Subie again to take the spare tire off and put the plugged one back on. Frankly, I was extremely tired and struggling to jack up the vehicle… and then it happened….
A truck heading South with a family onboard came by, asked if I needed help and pulled over. Again, the husband just gathered up his tools, sort of motioned me to the side and proceeded to change the tire. You can see him doing this at 3:19 in video #7. I think they had been hunting too, they being the man, his wife and their 6 week old daughter. Again, if anyone recognizes them, please leave a comment as to how I can get in touch to say “thank you” properly.
While chatting to him about my journey I mentioned that I was having to run around because of the situation of the ice bridges. He looked up, pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of the ice bridge at the Peel River that they had crossed a few hours earlier. He said it was covered in water and slush a couple of inches deep and clearly wasn’t go to last much longer.
I very slowly and carefully made my way back to the hotel – I knew that if I had another (statistically impossible) puncture then the only solution would be to get back to the hotel somehow and arrange a very costly tow in. It was with a sense of great relief that I pulled into the hotel car park.
I drove immediately over to the garage part of the hotel complex to see what time the workshop opened tomorrow morning and there I bumped into the guy who had just changed my tire. He was waiting for someone to come out and start the gas pumps so he could fill up, so I decided to wait too so I could ask the staff about getting my tire patched in the morning. The guy turned up to turn on the pumps and when I asked about getting my tire fixed in the morning the reply was “nae bother pal, just be at the workshop at 8 o’clock”.
“I take it you’re from Glasgow then?” I asked?
“Aye, that’s right pal”
“Bloody hell… I start on Vancouver Island, drive 1,700 miles to a hotel/garage in the middle of absolutely &^%$ing nowhere and find there’s a Glaswegian here?”
“No… there’s not…. There’s three of us here”
As the Monte Python parrot said….. I nearly fell off my perch!
Finally, if you go to 6:57 in video #7 you can see where the sun was at 10:30 pm…. It wasn’t going to get dark for a while.
I went to the bar, got a sandwich, had a couple of beers, spent an hour exchanging (good) jokes with the bar staff and then went to bed.
Here’s a few things I learned today:
- Humanity is alive and kicking – as shown by the First Nations folks I had the great pleasure to encounter today – I am humbled by your kindness and spirit
- There are lies, damned lies, and statistics (OK, I already knew this but had it reinforced today)
- Never give up on what you set out to do
- When the expert guidebook says to always carry at least two spares on the Dempster, then always carry two spares on the Dempster – you idiot!
- If at first you don’t succeed…. then skydiving is not for you 😊
What a day!!!!!
You can see the stills and video shot today here.
