I just found an incredibly well done video of a couple (and their two dogs) driving on the Dempster Highway from Dawson City to Tuktoyaktuk (locally called just “Tuk”), my final destination. You can watch it here.
The highway is named after William Dempster who discovered the bodies of some of his Northwest Mounted Police colleagues in 1911.
Until 2017 the only way to complete the final leg from Inuvik to Tuk by “road” was by the ice road built on the McKenzie River in the winter. In the Yukon it’s known as Highway 5 and it starts on the Klondike Highway ~20 miles South East of Dawson City and then goes 457 miles to Tuk, with only a few small towns en route.
The Dempster Highway is a solitary affair as there are no other roads intersecting with it for it’s entire length. But every cloud has a silver lining – it’s quite difficult to get lost!
