The ride out of Yukon into British Colombia puts me onto the Alcan Highway, a significant upgrade from the logging roads that I’ve been on recently. The road south now cuts across the north-eastern part of British Colombia towards Alberta. This road opened up the way from the lower 48 to Alaska in 1942 and is now a modern road along which at this time of year armies of RAM1500 utes and massive camper vans now plough. The ride to Fort Nelson is punctuated by sightings of the odd bison or bear and unfortunately not insignificant amounts of rain.
Running the gauntlet of a wild and dangerous bison near the Liard Hot Springs.
The ride through the lower half of the highway was very pretty if a little more trafficked than the rest of the ride as the river ferry started operating and some of the spring camper and truck traffic started making its way up the highway. From Eagle Plains there were five days of riding through the mountains and the biking-legs kicked in a tad and I rediscovered just a little bit of the long-lost touring stamina.
63km: From Eagle Plains along the top of the range.
73km: Roller-coaster over the Ogilvie Range.
85km: Gradual up long-side the Peel River then up a pass.
77km: Up the long final pass all day.
112km: Down the last 72km of the Dempster Hwy then along the North Klondike Hwy to Dawson City.
Found this photo on the wall of the Eagle Plains restaurant. This is how they used to bike the Dempster. Truly hardcore! That tent would be 10kg.
The beautiful road through the shallow valley on the way up to the final pass of the Dempster.
The lovely Co-Motion near the Tombstone Mountain campsite about one day’s ride (75km) from the bottom of the highway.
Featuring the marvelous Latin rhythms of Joe Arroyo’s ‘El Caminante‘
Sometimes you just get really really lucky with a hotel (as I did at he lovely Downtown Hotel in Dawson City). Leg Heaven feels a little bit like this.
Dawson City is a cute gold-rush nostalgia town in northern Yukon; with great pizza, lashings of beer and a large spa bath.
After a little pit-stop in Inuvik am onto the Dempster Highway proper, the northern road to Tuktoyaktuk only having opened as an adjunct to the Dempster in 2018. The first part of the highway south is a flattish undulating forest road down to the two river crossings 61km apart at Mackenzie River and Peel River. It is Spring so the thaw is on and the vehicle transport ferries are not operating due to the ice flowing down into the delta, draining a fifth of Canada the guide tells me.
Peel River Crossing
Having jumped in a little boat with one of the local trappers to cross the Peel River, your correspondent heads up into the mountains. [below is a link to a video from the first part of the highway].
The first of the mountain legs beyond the Peel River crossing. Lovely barren hills of the Richardson Mountain Range. Gradients not pleasant on the legs though. Absolutely no polka-dot jerseys to be seen here. The mountains are hellish for this out-of-condition rider and the gradients are truly debilitating in places. But southwards we forge.
The barren snow strewn Richardson Mountains in Northwest Territories. Vry beautiful but his was an ugly little pass.
Crossing out of The Northwest Territories into Yukon with a stunned selfie.
The road continues to be a joy as the ferries that cross the Mackenzie and Peel rivers have not started operating for the summer season yet due to ‘the thaw’. As a consequence there is no vehicle traffic at all apart from locals and the occasional territorial truck; maybe half a dozen a day. So I pretty well have the road to myself every day! Perfect timing. Above is the (mandatory) photo at the marker for the crossing southwards over the Arctic Circle (‘pink-nosing’ as opposed to the ‘blue-nosing’ of naval parlance I suggest).
Rarely in the history of international bicycle touring has a sign-post been greeted with more joy and unbridled relief than this sign 2km out from the lovely Eagle Plains restaurant and lodge (170km south of Peel River crossing).
Here at Buff3ysbicycling blog as key influencers in matters culinary, we like to keep our fingers on the collective pulse of food fashion. On our left we have a rich concoction of deb instant potato with delicate shards of spam. This is beautifully complimented with Nescafe. Add some butter and salt to the potato to taste, particularly if you feel any compulsion to gag or throw-up.
Stage One of the ride runs across a road from the Arctic coast that has only been open since 2018. It runs for 148km southwards to Inuvic and offers up short yet horrid little climbs every 500metres or so. Up a nasty little gradient for a few hundred metres, then down again…all day. No land-speed records broken here I’m afraid as the legs are pretty well toasted after sadly pathetic distances each day (50km+60km+38km). But no matter, will enjoy the gob-smacking scenery and just churn out the 50km days across the tundra until some semblance of condition returns to the legs .
My camp out on the tundra south of Tuk. Quite a challenge to find a place that is not soggy. The Nemo2P tent is smaller than the MSR HubbaHubba and heaven knows how two people might fit into this thing. But the star is the EXPED mattress (very comfortable). Great to be sleeping each day after giving it a bit out on the road, only interrupted by the occasional distant shotgun pop while people blast away at the odd duck.
The midnight sun over the Arctic Ocean at Toktoyaktuk
Not great camerawork but what can I do? I’m a hardcore adventurer, not a cameraman
And so it begins. This crisp clear day in late May finds Buff3y the Hardcore Adventure Cyclist at the top of the Dempster Highway, at the top of the continent of North America. I had a bit of a test ride with the fully packed bike on the way up here to Tuktoyaktuk and regret to inform of a decidedly softish core to the legs. It has been seven years since I last headed out on the long-road and can unhappily report here that the concept of muscle memory is completely bogus; the sweet memory of plowing up Andean switch-backs sadly a very distant one.
Buff3y in silly (but exceedingly warm) hat
The Bear Deterrent (which cost freakin’ C$75) has to be sprayed directly into the grizzly’s eyes or a scene from Revenant will most likely ensue.
Wheel-Dipping Ceremony in Tuktoyaktuk at the Arctic Ocean, Far North Canada
The hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk is nestled up against a still-frozen Arctic Ocean in far-northern Canada (refer video of idiot trying to dip wheels in the ocean). It plays host to the early warning station for tracking in-coming military hardware that might lob in from Russia and land on Canada or the USA. It is also strewn with the remnant tanks and other infrastructure from the 1970’s oil boom. The simple wooden houses are super-insulated and one is a guest house that not only accommodates but serves up a bowl of beef stew to a tired cyclist.
I caught a ride up here after the experimental 50km test ride on the loaded bike out of the town of Inuvik, 148km to the south. The legs go to complete jello after a depressingly short distance along the gently rolling dirt road so am delighted to see John and his magnificently warm Ford something-or-other truck arrive. John is a Tuk local who points out every type of bird and squirrel he somehow manages to see from hundreds of yards away, while we trundle over the smooth dirt highway that will be my route southwards in a day’s time. The tundra is still covered with snow and the sea is frozen in many places and the whole vista is dazzlingly clear and incredibly beautiful.
The ride south will start with the 148km leg back down to Inuvik. Just south of Inuvik there are two river crossings by ferry. It is mid-May so ‘the thaw’ is on and these ferries only start operating after this thaw has done its thing, allowing me further south. The Dempster then crosses southwards over the Arctic Circle and into Yukon finishing just 40km short of Dawson City (a town I remember fondly from previous travels in this part of the world).
After that the plan is to follow the line of the Rockies south-eastwards into Montana and points south.
Buff3y the Hardcore Solo Adventure Cyclist is heading out on the long road again. Yes, against the clear, repeated and quite sound advice of his cardiologist and bank manager, Buff3y is heading to South Africa after April and will be heading north. Stay tuned.
buff3ysbicyclingblog.com got nabbed by some blog buy-back mob when I foolishly failed to renew the domain subscription. Have, therefore, put the blog up on buff3ysbicyclingblog.info
(Am decidedly softcore so do need to get out there pedaling and posting. The Americas trip will have to suffice for the time being)
It’s great to see that people out there in the blogosphere still appear interested enough in the daring exploits of Buff3y The Hardcore Adventure Cyclist to be clicking on the blog despite it now having been three whole months since he concluded his conquering of The Americas. I would stress here that I remain completely unwilling to concede that the recent blog hit statistics might be due to people searching for ‘pants’ or ‘mariachi’ and being misdirected to the blog of a touring cyclist. That just does not happen.
Am a little bit concerned at the lack of feedback at the moment and more specifically, the lack of gushing praise for my blog and bicycling. I can see that many many people are looking at the blog. You are not, however, adequately sharing the joy of the experience with the buff3ysbicyclingblog community. Therefore to assist in rectifying this short-coming, I have below provided some pointers on the type of comment that is required to help you along:
– “Buff3y, you are truly remarkable! It is difficult to imagine how a human can ride a bicycle for such a vast distance and also produce such an entertaining blog at the same time.”
– “Buff3y, we love you!”
– “Buff3y, you look so trim and fit and could be 25 years old”
buff3ysbicyclingblog 