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Published: September 7th 2011
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There is a LOT to tell!
We Left Dawson City early in the morning to ride on the Top of the World Highway that crosses into Alaska. Dawson was socked in with fog, I took that as a good sign that the clouds were all going to be in the valleys. We crossed the Yukon river on the free ferry and started to go up in elevation quickly. After a few minutes we cleared the fog and came into clear blue skies! The highway is at about 64° N and runs along a mountain ridge. We are entering autumn this far North, and the aspen and alder trees are all gold and red.
We crossed into Alaska and headed into the mining camp of Chicken. We had a bite to eat there and met a batty old miner that was in 'town' to pick up some supplies. He was great! Long grizzly beard and long worn flannel, he really looked the part. After about five minutes of conversation he let out the craziest laugh, which was followed with many more as he described life as a miner in Chicken, Alaska.
We were going to make it all the
way to Fairbanks, but we saw a mostly dry braided river bed and we HAD to take a drive up it. While there we decided to camp. The river was full of glacier flour and had to be filtered to drink, luckily I have a water purifier! We got some video of our ride up the river bed. Not the best video, we are still trying to get it all figured out.
The next morning we packed up and had another ride up the river bed before heading to Fairbanks. We got here to find the cheapest motel is $120! I thought we left Canada! I went over to the Kawasaki dealer to get a couple new tires, which I put on while watching Boise State pummel Georgia (That was for you, Nick!) I also bled my brakes and taped up my broken headlight (a rock on the Top of the World).
We got everything ironed out the next morning and drove to Coldfoot. Coldfoot is a mining camp about 55 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the Dalton Highway. The end goal was to drive all the way to Deadhorse, The northernmost drivable destination in the
U.S. Deadhorse is a camp for oil workers working in Prudhoe Bay. The camp lies about 70° North Latitude on Alaska's North Slope, nothing but tundra and caribou. Oh, and the dozens of caribou hunters bow-hunting from the side of the road.
We got to Coldfoot and pitched camp around 9, and it was still light out. In fact even though it was September 4th, it was light out well past 10! We noticed that there were no other motorcycles heading North, and we saw none for the rest of the time on the Dalton Highway. We believe that we were the last motorcyclists to go to Deadhorse this year. We discovered why. It was about 50° when we left in the morning. It was about 32° at the pass. There was a skiff of fresh snow on the sides of the mountains as the clouds were cascading over the mountains from the North Slope. It was foggy, windy and drizzly on the tundra. We were tempted several times to turn back, but we marched on. It is about 240 miles from Coldfoot to Deadhorse, which is the absolute limit to our fuel capicity, so we had to keep
going after the first 120 mile mark.
We rolled up to Deadhorse to find nothing but heavy machinery and trailers on stilts that served every building purpose, from hotels to the mess hall. There are no restaurants, no bars, no stores, no private residences, nothing. The "gas station" was tucked into a corner somewhere and the pump was inside a little shack, the hose was outside sticking into a barrel to catch any leaky drops. I still don't know how much they charged, the machine only accepted credit cards and didn't display anything but how much gas was pumped. We went to the mess hall to try to get warmed up and have a bite. It was just like a summer camp mess hall, but with some meals in boxes in a fridge with a microwave if you came between meals. Dan and I heated up some of whatever they had there and ate slowly as we regained feeling in our fingers. There was no cashier, no register, not even a front counter... So we walked out! I had two beers in my back pack and we had a toast to the top of the world, then set on
our way back South.
We got on the road reluctantly, knowing the cold head of us. My visor was now all scratched from me wiping away the mud that was caking to it on the way up, and I had to leave it up to see. The ice crystals stung when they hit my face at 60 MPH! I saw a few caribou off the side of the road, with a hunter stalking them with his bow. We were told to keep a loo out for musk ox, but didn't see any. We crossed the pass and the sky began to clear! The temperature was much warmer than it was that morning (about 60°F!), and with the clear skies we began to get excited about seeing the Aurora Borealis!
We set a fire and ate some english muffins we had in a bag as we waited for the sun to go down. It takes a LONG time for the sun to go down that far North! It was finally dark enough for the Aurora to be seen by 11:30 and they came out blazing! They started out the simple blue-green, then they got quite frisky and yellows and
Gold!
We met a guy panning on a public creek just before Chicken pinks were tipping the ribbons of dancing light. The first show lasted about half an hour and then the second showing was much shorter and not as colorful. I happened to only have my camera ready for the second show😞
We met an old miner named Lloyd Swensen the day before when we were on a trail not far from camp. We asked him if he knew of any good trails in the area. He told us about a 'winter trail' about a mile away. After a few minutes of chatting he invited us to his camp for coffee in the morning. He said he lived about 10 miles up the same 'road' we were on, we had to cross the creek a couple times to get there.
We went and found that winter trail he was talking about. We learned that a winter trail is where you use your snow machine (snowmobile) in the winter, because you only get bogged down in the melted permafrost! We made it about a mile up that road until we turned back for fear of getting stuck. We would sink standing still, and had to keep the RPMs up while we
rode.
We decided to g visit old Lloyd Swenson in the morning. We rode out to where we crossed the creek. We were told that the water was about axel-deep. It was over the tires in the deepest part! We then learned that a summer road was nothing more than a creek that you would continuously ford to get anywhere. Once again we turned back as the fords got deeper and deeper. We were now soaked. We were about to ride for five hours in 45° drizzle.
Once again I had to keep my visor up, and squint against everything that entered my helmet. Then we hit the mud part of the highway. I was shedding brown tears for a couple hours. I soon wizened up and put on my clear riding glasses. After crossing back over the Yukon River The rain stopped and the road got better and better until it was dry asphalt. We made it back to Fairbanks on fumes, soaked shivering and hungry. We got a bite to eat, gassed up and begrudgingly checked into a $120 motel.
We are now in the process of doing laundry and drying out our boots in
Moose!
We had a visitor at out campsite the motel room. Tomorrow we go to Denali National Park!
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