Dempster Highway Adventure

What a whirlwind trip!

Trevor got here June 25 and I managed to get a few more things set up out at my site in the Delta on Wednesday. Everything that is except the tree measurement devices which I clearly asked the company in Arizona to send via courier because they were late shipping anyways (supposed to ship early May, actually shipped June 18). Instead they send it ground. From fucking Arizona to Inuvik...are you kidding me? Who does that? That means they won't be here for like 20 days. M. Sc. project suffering... I must say I was pretty angry but I've made my peace. Although if I ever see Bill Gensler walking down the street it'll be go time.

Anyways on Tuesday morning I decided that seeing as though there was a long weekend coming up, I should take advantage and drive the Dempster Highway. I called the rental car place and found out a car could be had from Thursday at noon but had to be returned by Monday at noon. I figured now or never so we booked the car, got food, gathered gear and took off for the drive of the summer. I'll try to load a few pics here (click on them to make them larger), but all of them will be available on to Facebook and via personal showings this fall.

I guess a bit of history lesson is needed. The government decided to build a road from Dawson City to Inuvik through the Arctic in 1958 because of the booming oil and gas exploration that was taking place at that time. After a few stoppages, the road was finally completed in late summer 1979. It stretches 671 km from Inuvik to Dawson. The road (I use this term because people might get the wrong idea if I say highway) is two lanes, gravel surfaced and all weather. The road was named after Inspector John Duncan Dempster of the RCMP who made legendary dogsled journeys from Dawson to Ft. McPherson in the early 1900s.

We ended up leaving Inuvik at 4 on Thursday afternoon and drove into the Richardson Mountains close to the NWT/Yukon border. We stopped on the side of the road to cook some dinner and then proceeded down the hill to the creek to wash some dishes when the wind promptly stopped and the mosquitoes appeared suddenly. It was quite a scene, they almost carried Trevor away, but luckily I grabbed his ankle. Close call indeed. We proceeded to dive a bit further so we could possibly find a higher place to camp for the night where the mosquitoes wouldn't be so bad, but there was no such luck so we stopped at an old gravel pit, hurriedly put up the tent and crashed for the night.

The next day we crossed into the Yukon and soon after, crossed the Arctic Circle. I have been over in a plane and boat before, but never in a car/foot so to mark the occasion, we took a video of us shotgunning beers on the circle. Not bad. The next stop was at Eagle Plains to gas up. This place has a gas station and motel located at the midpoint of the Dempster and was specifically constructed for travellers on the road. Amazing scenery throughout the plains with rolling mountains and moving up and down through valleys where there are trees and high points where there was tundra with the start of blooming wildflowers. We didn't really have a plan other than being back in Inuvik by Monday morning so we were playing it by ear. A couple of close calls on the road occurred such as an eighteen wheeler coming up over a blind hill and almost jackknifing into us...sweet. We stopped at the Tombstone Range (pic to the left, Tombstone is the furthest peak) to get some photos and spoke with a woman at the interpretive centre in the campground who gave us some info on a couple of trails. We decided to make Dawson City that night so we drove straight through and arrived in Dawson at about 9:00 PM. We stayed in the Yukon Territorial Campground located across the Yukon River. I have previous experience with these campgrounds and I still maintain that they are the best territorial/provincial campgrounds I have ever seen. That night we decided to hit the town in Dawson and of course we needed to visit the oldest casino in Canada (Diamond Tooth Gertie's). We promptly drank beers and lost money playing roulette and blackjack (not my best hand below). I really wanted to play poker but the buy-in was $100, maybe next time. Anyways I really wanted to do the world famous Sourtoe Cocktail at the Downtown Hotel. So we made our way down a couple of blocks and managed to just catch the keeper of the toe to do it (we had to do some pleading to get him to stay). Basically some old guy found a human toe pickled in one of the old prospecting cabins somewhere around Dawson City (Klondike gold rush territory) and decided to make it a tourist thing by getting people to put it in a shot of alcohol (Usually whiskey Jack but the choice is yours) and drink it with the toe touching your lips. Well I completed the task and I am now and official member of the club. I have some video footage for those interested.
We went back to the casino to catch the midnight stage show in the way they may have occurred back in the late 1800s for the town (can-can girls and singing from Diamond Tooth Gertie etc). Good fun. After a couple more drinks we returned to camp for the night.

The next morning I woke up pretty early and made some pancakes for breakfast while waking up an extremely hungover Trevor (who claims he partied hard in the old days but seems to have lost his touch after only 5 beers and the Sourtoe Cocktail). The weather was overcast and there was some rain in the air, so we packed up and went across to explore Dawson including some of the chops, the cabin's of Robert Service (to the left), Jack London and Pierre Berton, original buildings from the early days of the town etc. We left Dawson at about 3 and started our drive back to Inuvik. We drove back into Tombstone Territorial Park and decided to do a hike up one of the mountains. We ended up losing the trail about halfway up and scrambled up these scree slopes which were pretty loose and did some technical traverses (I was pretty worried that I was a) going to slip or b) get hit by a rockfall) to make it to the saddle and then walked to the peak. Unfortunately the weather had moved in so there was absolutely no view. We ate lunch at the top and then found the proper trail and made our descent. I managed to snap a couple of photos halfway down when we were out of the clouds. We then decided to drive futher and stayed at Engineer Creek campground for the night. We managed to get a campfire in which was nice.

The next morning we awoke and got packed and ate breakfast and saw a young Grizzly bear in the creek. That was cool because I have very few bear encounters in the field. We then drove all the way to Eagle Plains and got gas before I realized that we had hung up the tent fly to dry that morning and hadn forgotten it. This spurned a three hour 300 km trip back to the camp to get the fly. Then we drove all the way back to Eagle Plains and gased up again before heading out. We needed to make a good pace (faster than I would have liked) and because we needed to return the car by 11:30 on Monday morning (so it could be cleaned) we realized we probably needed to make it to Tsiigehtchic and cross the Mackenzie in order to do this. We ended up driving all the way back to Inuvik that day and so we pretty much drove the entire Dempster (due to our little detour) in 12 hours. It was a nice way to spend Canada Day, but there was no partying to be had, but that's fine with me.

It was a great trip and one that that I hope I can make again at another time of the year (hopefully in the fall). That's the update for this week. Maybe more adventures will be in the works by next posting.

Keep on rocking...