I'm sitting in my hotel room in Deadhorse, Alaska having just visited the Arctic Ocean. It's half past midnight and still not really dark outside. Getting here was a bit of a test though, for me probably more than the bike.
I met Jim as we'd planned on the ferry, outside a Harley dealership in Fairbanks on Saturday morning. The distance from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, which is as far north as you can go without a plane, is about 500 miles so we planned to split the ride over two days, and camp around halfway at a site called Marion Creek.
Jim is very organised and had prepared well for his trip. He had an idea of the route and had booked himself on a tour out to the arctic ocean, and had a hotel room arranged. He had a CB radio, about thirty years of bike experience, military training and just about every conceivable thing that might be needed in an emergency. I, on the other hand, had chocolate and optimism.
Jim must have felt a bit short changed in the arrangement. The first hour was spent with me using his cellphone to call and book an arctic tour, then a hotel room for the following night. Finally we hit the road, which was fine for fifty miles or so. Then we got off the decent stuff and onto the Dalton Highway. The James W Dalton highway has been open to the public since about 1995 - before that it was a haul road used by the oil companies. It doesn't really qualify as a road, more of a glorified dirt track in most places. It runs 414 miles from Livengood north of Fairbanks, to Deadhorse just short of the Arctic Ocean.
As soon as we hit the Dalton the road became a gravel/dirt track which had turned into a mud bath because of all the rain. It hadn't really stopped raining for the last two days. About two minutes into it, the bike was fishtailing and sliding about, and as Jim was in front and I was a bit too close to him, my visor was completely covered in mud. Once I had the hang of letting the bike slide around, and had wiped the mud off my visor, things got a little easier. It was still cold and soaking wet though, and at Finger Mountain we'd both had enough for a bit. We pulled into a layby and Jim went rushing straight over to a tour bus and stuck his hands into the radiator to warm them up. I joined him and pretty soon we were getting some odd looks from the bus passengers.
Reluctantly pulling away we decided to try to reach the Arctic circle for an obligatory photo at the Circle signpost. We rode most kinds of road surface to get there - potholes, mud, gravel, and washboard, which is where an unsealed road gets rutted. The washboard surface really gets your teeth rattling! After pictures at the Arctic Circle, the latitude line above which the sun nevers sets at summer solstice, we pushed on to Coldfoot for a hot meal before stopping for the night five miles up the road at Marion Creek campsite. We were cold, wet and filthy and there was good company (a couple of other motorcyclists on their way south) and a nice warm restaurant and hotel at Coldfoot. The reluctance to go camping was palpable. Still, when we arrived we found there was an official campsite host in his RV. We had a chat and he told us the rules of the site, and warned us about bears. Apparently, a grizzly had killed a moose there the previous week and "covered" the kill, meaning he intended to come back to it. We were asked to report bear and wolf sightings, to avoid the creek and told "don't take any ham sandwiches in your tent".
Jim got a fire going and we set up our tents. He produced a bear strength pepper spray and I showed him my bear-scare foghorn thing. We talked into the small hours and at about midnight, when it was still twilight, we turned in. About fifty seconds later there was a snorting noise nearby and after panicking a bit I realised it was Jim snoring. Military training - when it's time to sleep it's time to sleep!
Fearing a kind of reverse-Goldilocks affair the next morning where the bears break in and steal our porridge, we had a couple of snack bars and hit the road. The riding was the hardest yet, again crossing tough sections of track. In order to reach Prudhoe Bay, the road (with the trans Alaska oil pipeline running alongside) has to cross the Brooks Range, a massive chain of mountains. It does this at the Atigun Pass, which was the highlight of the trip so far for me. Riding above the low clouds wreathed around the peaks, up above the snow line, in freezing conditions on that gravel road is a memory that will stay with me for a while.
After the Brooks Range there is a hundred miles or so of flat tundra, covered with Caribou and strange people in camouflage carrying bows. Obviously it is not sporting enough to use an uzi or a rifle to kill things. Maybe this is why there is far more wildlife in the Yukon than in Alaska. I thought we were going to get shot at when we rode past a herd, and Jim's deer whistle scared them away from the hunters by the road side. How we chuckled...
Arriving in Prudhoe Bay both Jim and I nearly crashed as the bikes got sideways on some calcium carbonate slurry stuff that they were spraying on the roads. It was not a nice end to a tough ride. I was too tired to punch the air or anything, so just settled for a smile and a hunt around for a soft pillow for my bum.
It turned out that I had a great deal on my last minute hotel, it was much cheaper than the one Jim was in and (horror) included free food for guests 24 hours a day. It's a good job it's a one night stay. Jim was justifiably a bit cheesed off but I got him a doggy bag of lunch and we went on the Arctic Ocean tour. The last eight miles of land is owned by the oil companies so if you want to see the Ocean you have to take the tour. It was pretty interesting but a blatant sales pitch. I was going to dip my toes in the Arctic Ocean rather than actually swim, but it turned out that there was no swimming allowed as a Polar bear had been seen in the area the day before. I guess it would be bad PR if the tour guests went swimming and came face to face with a living Fox's Glacier Mint ad.
After waggling my fingers in the water - which actually was not as cold as some dives I've done - we went back to the hotel and I fuelled the bike at the tiny fuel outpost. It's a couple of oil drums and a small shack with a credit card machine.
Tomorrow and pretty much every other day from now on will be all about the journey south. I feel pretty good as I've made at least one of the two goals on this trip. The other one lies at the other end of the world.
More pictures at http://frase.smugmug.com and I'll upload more when I can.
Frase.
No comments:
Post a Comment