The wind whipped by us, drawing in its wake scraps of clouds and flecks of moisture. It cut through our clothes without any real effort [and in some ways not really even needing effort, seeing as I was wearing shorts]. Rain had been off and on the previous couple of days, turning the mountain pass to mud in places that weren’t paved with the sharp shale notorious for wrecking tires, forcing us to become acquainted with our four wheel drive. The warmth from our excitement made up for the chill in the air, though; we stood on the cusp of the Arctic Circle on the Dempster Highway. The road already challenged us, and the next six days would cement the Dempster as the pinnacle of our trip.
Edmonton is nestled in the northeast corner of the Canadian plains, and the low rolling landscape soon yielded to green forests and growing hills. The increasing bite to the air was offset by the growing strength of the sun. Our first night we soaked up the sun and landscape at Charlie Lake, meandering along an old ATV trail picking wild raspberries. What started as a diversion to enjoy the hike turned into a full endeavor as we noticed the dozens of plants ripe with fruit. As we came out of the zen one achieves when picking berries, we realized we each had full cupped hands of raspberries and a hike up a hill back to our campsite. We trudged back up the hill delicately holding the berries, and promptly celebrated our find by making raspberry mojitos and snacking on the leftovers.
Edmonton to Whitehorse is roughly a 24 hour drive according to google. This necessitated an acclimation to longer drives than we were currently used to, and by the end of day two, Bethany and I were happy to be pulling into a campsite renowned for its hot springs. Nestled half a kilometer behind the main campground, at the base of a large hill, I was distinctly reminded of the onsen public baths in Japan: the lightly rising steam, the pungent scent of sulphur in the air, and the tinkling of running water. The Liard hot springs had all of these, but thankfully skipped the gendered sectioning of the hot spring [and the nude bathing that necessitated it], allowing Bethany and I to soak up the heat together. Approaching the water, we saw many people wallowing in the water to the left of the entrance, many of them kids splashing and having fun, but saw the right side was empty. We made our way to the right and gingerly stepped in, promptly gasping at the intense heat and quickly retreating. “Quite a bit cooler down here” someone called out, “the spring starts up there.” So, that’s why it was empty, I thought as I ruefully shook my head. We found that by starting at the left end, you could acclimate yourself to the water and gradually make your way further upstream towards the source and the warmer water. I couldn’t help but be reminded of a frog in a pot. Although the thought abruptly switched from amphibian to crustacean as I saw a man get out of the hot spring on the hot end – an angry red line serving as demarcation of the skin that had been submerged.
This BAMF greeted us in our campsite. He’s now hanging from our rear-view mirror
Unavoidable casualties in rural areas
We also met Shawn, traveling from Alaska to North Dakota, but a fellow Wisconsinite. Here’s to safe travels. As those who have done a hot spring [or a jacuzzi] before know, making two trips to them in an latter part of a day saps all the energy out of you, and it was deep sleep that greeted us that night.
Boo
Leaving Liard Hot Springs the following morning. Just another day in Canada.
Things start to get weird as you get rural…
Whitehorse is the capital and most populous city of the Yukon Territories, a massive 26k strong. We rolled into town late in the afternoon on a Saturday, making our way to the campground on the outskirts of town. The campsite was a tent only campsite, and I had a laugh or two watching an RV pull in and then promptly having to leave. The campground was an intimate mismash of blue collar and hippie. For every woman in a fedora and loose-knit wool sweater, there were three tent sites set up for long term occupation by oilfield workers. Near the office was the ‘Living Room’, where several sofas sat around a table with a fireplace, underneath a corrugated plastic roof and a power strip nearby. As the rain started that evening, Bethany and I went there, expectantly waiting for other campers to swing by and to start up a conversation. Whitehorse, as the base of operations for those heading out into Klondike excursions, seemed a likely place to finally meet some other overlanders. A lone person showed up over the next hour, as we were leaving. Whomp whomp.
“That has to be the third load of wood he’s gotten” I muttered to Bethany as the late 90′s gray Dodge Neon came whipping back into it’s parking spot, the trunk lid swaying up and down, bits of sawdust floating in it’s wake and a few precarious pieces of wood almost falling out. Our neighbor was clearly taking the ‘all you can cut and carry’ rule the campsite had to the extreme. It was this same neighbor I woke up to loudly carrying on a conversation at 4:30 in the morning. As I stepped out of the tent to relieve myself, I kept debating with myself about going over to the site and politely asking them to cut the volume considering the time. As my eyes adjusted and made him out through the drizzle, I noticed there was only one person sitting outside of the tent speaking. I opted to just use my ear plugs.
The Wal-Mart website clearly stated that their tire and lube service opened at 8am on Sunday. It was one of the few places that offered Sunday service in town. The doors remained closed as we rolled up at ten after. Asking around inside, I received a slightly confused answer of 8:30. Still nothing. Finally a clear answer of ’9.’ ‘I’m not trying to be a pain, but I want you to know that your website clearly states differently.’ Blank stares greeted me. Good to see Wal-Mart maintains the same standards of excellence internationally. We were one of three vehicles queued up when they finally opened the garage doors nearly a quarter past 9. The first vehicle they flat out refused to service because he had a camper on his truck. “Can’t I leave it out here and have you just change it without lifting the vehicle?” The gentlemen was told he was welcome to purchase the supplies inside and change it himself in the parking lot. The only upside was that we finally found the overlanders! Well over a dozen RV’s littered the parking lot, as well as a couple of overlanding vehicles, including the couple from offthemaps, who we pulled up alongside way back in Sault St. Marie almost a month ago. Bethany and I began wondering if we should instead spend our time at the wal-mart if we want to meet people moving forward.
Biking through the rain that morning to get groceries while the oil change happened, we were reminded just how chilly it was, and this during the peak of the summer. It seemed crazy to us. As we pulled up to church, a few congregation members greeted us and held the door as we moved our bikes in out of the rain. Upon hearing we were from Wisconsin, the next question was, “Did you bike all the way up here?” “Do I look like I’ve biked 3 thousand miles?” The great basilicas and cathedrals of eastern Canada only accentuated the difference in size of what had to be the smallest sanctuary I’d ever been in for a service. A grand total of at most 30 people were present; naturally Bethany and I were asked to stand and introduce ourselves before the service kicked off. We stayed for coffee and leftover treats from a member’s wedding, where we received a strong recommendation to stop for a burger at the Braeburn lodge north of town. Our guidebook recommended the lodge for it’s cinnamon rolls. We naturally snagged one of each:
Dawson City is the textbook definition of a boomtown, and the legacy of that distinction, both for good and ill, permeates what remains of it. Just a few kilometers outside of town lies discovery claim, the site where ‘Skookum’ Jim found a few gold nuggets, setting off the 1898 Klondike gold rush. The US, currently in a depression, supplied many of the thousands who rushed to strike it rich, despite all the likely claims being staked before news even reached the USA. Those hoping to make a buck had to cross the Chilkoot pass in the dead of a winter: a 5 day hike over a mountain pass. All were required to bring a years worth of food with them as the local area lacked the wildlife to support the teeming masses making their way in. Often men [and a few women] would have to cross the pass up to ten times to carry the requisite ton of goods with them. Most left penniless within a year, selling their goods back to outfitters for almost nothing. The outfitters in turn resold it for full price. Outside of the few lucky first claimants, only the outfitters truly struck it rich. For a brief period, Dawson was the largest city north of Seattle and west of Winnipeg.
In essence, Dawson City is now run by Parks Canada, trying to preserve much of the legacy from the boomtown era, including several original buildings built directly on the permafrost, now leaning precariously on each other for support like a pair of drunks. Many initial buildings were lost as the permafrost underneath them melted.
If you are German and overlanding, this is what you drive
Or could you be one of 90 entrants pan-am’ing your old volvo.
Several kilometers leading into Dawson city are via a valley, and either side of the road is lined with undulating hills of loose rock with scattered saplings and little streams of water between them. After the initial rush, the era of the panhandler and their numerous [many abandoned] claims were ceded to the great dredges. Dredge #4, the largest of the 30+ dredges that worked the valleys of the Klondike, stands as an overbearing sentinel to those times. As we soon learned on our excellent tour, only 3% of gold in the Klondike was in nugget form, and only 3% of that was larger than a grain of rice. Dredging was a relatively new practice, taking off in New Zealand at the turn of the century, to great success. Dredge #4, partially funded by the Guggenhiem and Vanderbilt families, cost $250k when it was built, and made that back in 3 months. [with gold at $10/oz.] The dredging business took off like wildfire, and in the words of our guide, “If you were an engineer in 1904, you were either working on the Panama Canal or the Klondike dredges.”
Our Skookum tour guide
In some ways, the dredge reminded me of the grain elevators in Inglis; of course, they were peers in terms of industrial construction. Also like the elevator, working here came with peril: while only one life was ever lost on the dredges, the majority of the machinery could not be oiled, as oil mixing with the water would change the surface tension, preventing the gold from sinking in the sluices as needed. On average, a worker would go deaf within three years.
Following the tour, we made our way to the site of discovery claim and walked around where the first gold was found. While touring, we couldn’t help but keep our eyes peeled for any sparkling flecks in the ground, no doubt like every other tourist who had been through the area.
Hanging out on Dome Hill over Dawson
Someone laying it on a little thick….
The Alaska Highway, which we’d followed from the British Columbia border to Dawson, continued on past Dawson, and included a ferry crossing across the Yukon river, upon which Dawson resides. There’s something a bit weird about looking at your GPS and seeing the white land with the orange road along it, but with a blue horizontal strip across the screen representing the river and the orange line of the road just disappearing over the blue.
Just across the river was the Dawson hostel. We opted for it over the adjacent provincial park, as we hoped we would finally meet people while staying at a hostel. The guidebook let us know it was only $14 to pitch a tent instead of the park’s $12, and run by a noted Yukon author. Well, technically it was true, but it was $14 for 1 person or $20 for two in a tent. Sneaky. It was worth it for the experience alone. I like to imagine this is what a hostel built by my dad would be like:
Everything seemed to sprawl out organically, full of re-purposed items. Each cabin had its own deck loveseat, they just tended to be the backseats from minivans. Want to enjoy the view of the river? Have a seat on the broken exercise bike on the lookout! The kitchen area had a couple of stoves, but they were pretty small and hard for more than one person to use at a time. But the wood was free! You just had to break the pallets up yourself, and a sign helpfully warned you to watch out for nails. No axes handy though [we did find a dull one later], so find a wedge and get your legs warmed up. The bathhouse had a stove in it and large drums of river water, so you could heat up your water in pails on the stove then take a Japanese style bath. In our effort, the fire in the barrel stove did an excellent job of turning the room into a sauna, and the water [now just lukewarm] kept us cool. The laminate flooring stapled down helped the water lazily flow toward a drain. The way the buildings seemed to be built into the hillsides made me feel like we were hosteling in the Shire.
So naturally I had to chop my own wood.
As we made dinner, a young couple we’d seen while setting up meandered by, and we struck up a conversation. Turned out Steve and Erica were in the same boat as we were: newlyweds on their honeymoon, they were doing an overlanding jaunt from Fort Saint John [also along the Alaska highway] on up to Alaska for six weeks, frequently sleeping in their pickup along the side of the road, but the desire for a warm shower and other people to talk to drove them to the hostel. [as well as sparse pickings for firewood; Steve and I commiserated over using our electric fans to keep fires going] We spent the evening sharing stories. Before we knew it, it was 10:30 but the sky remained bright. Steve mentioned that a paddleboat graveyard existed just outside of the adjacent provincial park, so we made our way through the park and up the river. We initially didn’t see anything, but rounded a bend and pulled up short as the dusk illuminated a hulking skeleton of a massive boat. As we walked along it, Steve pointed out the remnants of another ship behind the first, so we walked through the growth and found another two ships snug up against the first, their huge iron and wood paddle wheels standing guard. Climbing up along the wheels, we could look out over all three boats, slumped against each other as time wore them away over the last six decades.
40km east of Dawson is the start of the Dempster highway. During the planning stages of our trip, we’d planned to head up to Yellowknife, but had heard about Dempster. Then we saw a photo from fellow overlanders from their trip along the Dempster and quickly realized it needed to be part of our trip. Stretching north 757 kilometers (450 miles), the Dempster highway meanders through permafrost, along the northern tip of the Rockies, past the Arctic circle, through arctic mountain passes, eventually reaching Inuvik in the MacKenzie delta.
Bullet holes are a thing on signs up here….
fresh and clean before at the start
Guides to the highway stress that you need two spare tires, as the shale rock used for the construction is sharp and made to murder your tires. With a small amount of trepidation, we started the highway. Not 30 minutes in we saw our first casualty: a European couple’s Mercedes-Benz camping van was along the side of the road with it’s hazards on. An RV was backing up to hook up to their tow line. “We were going over bumps, and it just died.” the driver said with a fair amount of exasperation in his voice. We pulled off less than an hour later at Tombstone territorial park. Rain from the previous night had muddied the road, and already the rear of Sweetcakes was caked.
Cleaning up the rear window
“Were you tenting last night?” “Yes” “Loads of rain last night huh? Did your tent blow down?” “Huh? No, it’s just a pain breaking camp in the rain is all.” “Oh; this is just a really rainy summer; never seen anything like it!” So went the conversation with the ranger at Tombstone the next morning as I sipped my lavender tea. “This is nothing compared to what we saw on PEI” I thought to myself. I learned that much of the Yukon is semi-arid though, so this was quite unusual. It was reflected on the road, as we ascended into the Klondike mountain range pass. To avoid the same issues Dawson had with its architecture, the Dempster highway is 8-12 feet thick throughout the permafrost to prevent melting. Most of the highway was made from local materials, so early on a strong, smooth, water-resistant clay made up the road. As we made our way into the mountains, the distinct black shale showed up. It was just after Eagle Plains, the midway point, that we encountered freshly grated and fresh dirt. Descending the mountain pass, we made our way through fog [clouds] that whipped past the vehicle. Periodically there would be stretches of road that doubled as emergency air strips. We were in the middle of one of them along a gradual curve when Sweetcakes started a long slow slide towards going sideways. She pulled out of it without any real trouble [lightly steering into the slide worked fine] and we slowed to a stop and took it to 4WD. From then on, the hassle shifted from mud on the road to mud on the car.
Keep an eye for a later pic when we were coming back. Night and day
Wild Horse along a river bed.
Road conditions when things started getting squirrely
An unobtrusive roadside pull-off marked the Arctic Circle boundary. The top of the information kiosk had been lost to a particularly strong winter storm some time before. This first time, the fog and wind hid the greater view from us, but coming back several days later we could see the true view:
Rock River provincial park had a kitchen shelter with a large stove and ample firewood. A roaring fire and hot dinner in front of the laptop had us in bliss when we heard the screen door behind us open up. Earlier, I’d gone around the campground and invited the scant few other occupants to join us in the shelter if they wanted to warm up due to the rain. I was going to meet other travelers damnit! The two people coming in hadn’t been in camp when I’d made my rounds though, and as they started offloading their thick coats and layers, we realized they’d rolled in on bikes. “We’re biking south from Inuvik”, Andrew informed us. “How far are you guys going?” “Oh, Ushuaia, Argentina.” he replied. A gigantic grin split my face and I was nearly bouncing as I replied, “so are we!” We’d bumped into fellow overlanders, four days into their journey, one that puts ours to shame a bit. Andrew and Amanda [letsridebikes.ca] had abandoned most worldly possessions, retired early, and are looking to take the next decade to see the world on their bicycles. “I just want to let you know, coming in to a hot fire completely made my day.” Amanda said, sitting on a log propped in front of the fire, her hands outstretched towards the heat. “Here, try this bison sausage. No, take the whole thing, we’ve already shipped 25 lbs of food to Eagle Plains and I need to offload this stuff before we get there.” Andy said, wagging the stick at us. We kept the fire roaring as they warmed up and dried out their clothes, sharing stories into the night.
Passing them a few days later on the way South, we left them a goodie bag. Hope they found it! :)
The Northwest Territories have the single best license plate I’ve ever seen:
Even the cops are into camping up here…
The skies kept clearing up as we approached Inuvik, the sun itself eventually forcing its way through and greeting us as we rolled into town at the summer end of the Dempster highway. [The winter end continues on via ice road [truckers and non] to the town of Tuktoyaktuk, along the coast of the Beafort sea] Aluavik was the First Nations settlement that was moved slightly and expanded to create the permanent town of Inuvik. About half the population is First Nations. “So, are you from the area?” I asked Rebecca, the Parks Canada rep in the visitor’s center in Inuvik. “Yeah.” “Wow, that’s really cool!” “Yeah, everyone keeps telling me that.” “Oh, I guess if you grow up here it doesn’t seem all that special.” “Mmmhmm….” I shuffled my feet a bit and made my way back to the exhibits. Times like these I’m glad not in the dating scene. Yeesh, three strikes.
Afternoon sky in Inuvik
Naturally, the first question we had about Inuvik was, “Are there any car washes around?”
The town itself had a small tourist row of shops, but the main attraction up here was the landscape. Bethany and I found a beautiful site overlooking a lake and we made good on my bucket list draw to Inuvik: getting into an Arctic Lake.
Victory!
I was struck by how different the drive south on the Dempster felt without rain and only partly cloudy skies. Whole stretches of the drive provided views the opposite of what we’d seen before.
“I noticed all the stickers you had on the back, have you been traveling a while?” I asked the genial [of course] Brit in the TDI Land Rover. “Yep, South America last year on up this way!” Bill from latinamericaroadtrip.wordpress.com replied. “Is that your 4Runner? Saw another couple with one of those down south. Good vehicles.” We commiserated about overlanding, the wide valley and mountain range behind us forming an incredible backdrop. Swapping cards, we promised to stay in touch.
“Is that a cyclist?” Bethany questioned. About half a kilometer ahead a person with a tan top and black shorts was really pushing themselves. “Uh…I don’t think so, I think that’s wildlife…” I said, squinting to make them out. As the image resolved with proximity, we realized it was a rump, bouncing up and down as the animal was galloping down the road. With about 150 meters to go, we realized it was a large grizzly cub, who promptly turned 90 degrees and ran off into the brush. It’s pretty crazy how the wildlife blends into the brush within the first few strides.
Engineer Creek sits at the base of Sapper hill, named for the legions who helped build the highway, one of which we met at Eagle Plains on our way North. “Heads up, we saw a grizzly cub just a few KM north of here.” We said to Natalia and Lorianne, two graduate students taking water samples from the nearby rivers. Noticing the bear mace they each kept on their belts, I was more worried for the bear that thought they’d make a tasty treat. “Actually, Zurich is very nice. Last year at Christmas, I was wearing a t-shirt. No snow at all!” Phillip, a fellow overlander, told me to my astonishment. He and Lisa were from Switzerland, spending six weeks in Canada, currently on their way north to Inuvik. The six of us spent the evening sharing stories and playing the Great Dalmuti. I consistently learned that I knew nothing about Switzerland.
As we pulled onto pavement at the start of the Dempster once again, Bethany and I high five-d each other. We’d made it through the entirety without a flat tire, a scratch or chip to the windshield. Sweetcakes hummed along the concrete, periodically throwing the last remnants of gravel into the wheel wells, making periodic clunks. The dust settled back to the road in our wake, blue sky overhead, as we reluctantly rode back to civilization.
Same spot as the prior pic I told you to keep your eyes out for. Night and day. :)
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