Crossing The Circle
By Bob Mabey
Trip date July 2005

There are two roads in North America that allow you to cross the Arctic Circle on or in a wheeled vehicle. They are the 360 mile Dalton Highway, or “Haul Road”, from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Prudhoe Bay, and the 482 mile Dempster Highway from just outside Dawson City, Yukon, to Inuvik, Northwest Territories. In 2002 we’d been unceremoniously rejected when we poked our noses up the Haul Road. After two days of waiting in the warm and dry BOQ at Fort Wainwright for the rain to stop, a few miles of mud and driving rain let us know that it wasn’t going to happen that year. Getting caught on the Haul Road by bad weather was one thing, but knowingly starting out in horrible weather was another. We turned back and rode in the rain all day to Anchorage. Three years later we w

It made places like Montana seem crowded

ere on the Klondike Highway at the Dempster cutoff and the weather was great. We went for it.

The Dempster was completed in 1979, after twenty one years of survey and intermittent construction, and dedicated in 1963 to Corporal (later Inspector) W.J.D. Dempster of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police whose search for “The Lost Patrol” in 1911 is one of the great Canadian legends. Much like the Dalton, the building of the Dempster was driven by the discovery of rich deposits of hydrocarbons, in this case on the McKenzie River Delta. Unlike the Dalton, the Dempster is a public highway and not a privately maintained trucking route. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have to look out for trucks!

Al, Tim and I on our GS’ were ’02 Haul Road rejects. Along on this trip were Dennis on his trusty ’83 Gold Wing, Ken on a new Triumph Bonneville, and my son Sean on his K1200RS so we were hardly more mud worthy than last time. The talk had been that we’d decide what we wanted to do when we reached Dawson City. They could try the Dempster with us if they wanted or ride the pavement out of Dawson while we gave it a shot. It looked like no sweat there at the junction so they decided to go with us. We struck out for the Arctic Circle, about 300 miles away.

The vastness of the country was mind boggling. It made places like Montana seem crowded. The Tombstone Mountain area, about fifty miles up the Dempster, was immediately added to my most awesome all time views list. Another great vista was of the Peel River drainage while traversing the seventy mile long Olgilvie Ridge to our camping spot at Eagle Plains. All the time the thought lurked in the back of my mind that the long grades could be a real challenge if it got wet….

The Peel River from Ogilvie Ridge

We’d forgotten that the days never end up here and had been on the road for eighteen hours or so. Our spot in the scrub pines at Eagle Plains was a “mosquito camp” so the head nets came out. Being on a ridge with some breeze helped, but they were hungry. We were too and grabbed a shower and some dinner at the Eagle Plains motel/restaurant/garage, etc. It would only be thirty or forty miles to the circle in the morning. About this time Al discovered that he had a flat tire.

Made it, but here comes the weather!

The round pea gravel on stretches of the Dempster and other gravel highways was dangerous because it can be like riding through ball bearings. The “fractured face’ gravel compacts better, but plays hell with the best of tires. Al pulled out a piece of this that looked like a small arrow head and plugged it with his Stop & Go kit. A few days later between Carmack and White Horse I had that special kind of feeling that you get when a tire starts to go flat and found the same thing. In addition to the actual leaking cut, my rear tire looked, at close inspection, like someone had been at it with a razor blade. We’d been concerned that Ken might have a flat on the Bonnie with its tube-type tires, but Al and I were the only unlucky ones on this trip. Once again, don’t head this way without an air pump and a Stop & Go kit. The operation is a simple one, but you may want to check the kit out under more pleasant conditions rather than while you’re lying in the mud in a cloud of mosquitoes.

Adding Fuel on the Dempster Highway

When we woke up at Eagle Plains the weather was looking a bit threatening so we grabbed a quick breakfast at the café and mounted up without breaking camp and headed for the Arctic Circle. We were soon taking the obligatory pictures of each other and the bikes in front of the sign saying we were there. By the time we took one of us all together, separately, etc. the weather really looked to be closing in. By the time we loaded up back at Eagle Plains it was starting to sprinkle. By the time we were back up on Olgilvie Ridge it was getting nasty. The road was starting to get slick. The plan was to go as fast as each of us felt comfortable in order to get out of there while we could. Al, Ken and Sean disappeared in the drizzle and clouds while Tim and I hung back with Dennis in case he had problems on the big Gold Wing. It got wetter and it got slicker. Dennis slowed way down, but didn’t stop. It was getting to the point where if any of the three of us had gone down we would have had a hard time getting the bike upright again. Fortunately, we had few other vehicles chewing up the mud. They say that most of the heavy trucks run the Dempster in the winter to take advantage of the frozen ground and the ice roads beyond Inuvik. Once down off Olgilvie Ridge things dried out a bit. We were glad for that and arrived in Dawson City for a late dinner.

Clean up in Dawson City

The bikes and my riding buddies had performed flawlessly. Ken, Dennis, and Sean deserved special notice for doing the Dempster on street bikes. Every time I take a short ride on my Bonnie I marvel at Ken’s accomplishment and my neck aches thinking about it. The other GS riders at the Down Towner Hotel in Dawson City (possibly the GS capitol of North America) were most impressed that Sean had taken the KRS to the circle with no problems. Dennis, the original “lets ride to Alaska” guy had finally made it on the faithful Gold Wing (it’s now in Germany with his son and Dennis is mounted on a new KLR). The 3500 mile ride back to Utah was wet/dry, hot/cold, always beautiful, long, but too short. But that’s another story and riding the Dempster to the Arctic Circle was definitely the high light of this one.

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