Up The Dempster Highway

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The Dempster Highway is a sort of potholed gravel track that starts just south of Dawson City and ends up in Inuvik in the Northwest territories, crossing the Arctic Circle on the way. It is built on permafrost, and when the road heats up the permafrost melts and the whole road sinks and becomes a small lake. It kills cars.

The highway is constantly being reworked, and nowadays is built up on a large mound of gravel to preserve the permafrost (and therefore the track). I managed to get a lift (along with Keira - one of the other WWOOFers at the farm - and a guy called Brandon) up to Inuvik, on a fuel-price-sharing basis.

The first day's travel - to Eagle Plains - was pretty hairy since the weather was bad and it rained a lot, which turned the highway into a sort of slippery mudslick. The driver said it was like driving on ice, and for a while he was going to abandon the trip and turn back.

We passed an overturned car and I was sent down to investigate if anyone was inside - I had a sort of horror film moment where I had to wipe away the water and mud from the car window and peer inside, half expecting to see mashed bodies and dead faces staring back at me. What I actually saw was an airbag (we found out later the crash had occurred a couple of days earlier, and everyone survived with just a few broken bones). Anyway it was a sobering moment, and we were very aware that we were hundreds of miles from any sort of settlement.

The weather improved over the next few days, and we saw lots of wildlife on the highway, from bears and caribou to moose and even a wolf! The countryside was beautiful, and got increasingly dramatic as we passed the last trees and entered open tundra, which was just starting to turn with the autumn colours.

I don't think I've ever seen a landscape like it, or been in such a remote wilderness - you could literally see for hundreds of miles in all directions, with no towns or settlements of any kind - just tundra and mountains, with the dirt track stretching away to the horizon. I went a bit photo-crazy.

Inuvik itself was a bit of a shit hole - the most interesting thing about the place was a communal greenhouse made out of a converted ice-hockey arena. All the utilities (water/sewage/electricity etc.) were supplied via overground pipes called 'utilidors', since they couldn't dig down into the permafrost. The buildings themselves are built on piers and painted bright colours. But it's still mostly drab and awful.

I managed to get a flight further north to the Inuvialuit settlement of Tuktoyaktuk, which went over the even more bizarre scenery of the Mackenzie Delta - loads of small lakes stretching as far as I could see in every direction, the landscape only occasionally broken by the odd Pingo.

Tuktoyaktuk (or 'Tuk') is on the coast, so I was able to 'dip my toe' in the Arctic Ocean - they make a big tourist thing out of that up here - you get a certificate and everything!

We got pretty lucky with the weather overall I think - it wasn't especially cold, which was good, since we were camping, and each night we had a campfire and stared at the stars (when they eventually came out - stays lighter even longer up here). Even toasted marshmallows. Which was nice.

Pity the guy who drove us up there was a massively annoying cock, but - apart from disagreements as to who would sit in the front with him - we managed ok!

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