Dr. Gregory Frazier took a Best of Alaska Tour with Alaska Rider Tours (MotoQuest) in the summer of 2003 and covered it for Dualsport News. Here is what he had to say.
NOTE: We do not offer camping tours any longer, but stay in comfortable lodge-style accommodations.
Dualsport News, April 2004
Alaska Off the Road
By Dr. Gregory Frazier
Bears, mud, gravel tundra, snow, ice, fire, and fun! Throw in a motorcycle that is manageable both on and off-road, then pick a summer month, and you can find yourself in Alaska.
The trick to off-road adventure in Alaska is putting the pieces together. Alaska is a long distance from anywhere in the "Lower 48." A gentle ride to "America's Last Frontier" can take from a week to 10 days, one way. If you are still looking for off-road riding after you have ridden to the Land of The Midnight Sun, that means you have probably chewed up a set of tires and may be well through a set of sprockets and a chain. You have to figure the same to get back home.
Riding off the map in Alaska
Once you arrive in Alaska you are going to find that for a state as huge as it is, Alaska does not offer a proportionate amount of off-road riding. One reason is that small airplanes do most of the treks into the wilderness. Another is once you venture off the main roads in the summer you will likely find yourself wallowing through black mud, which is what tundra becomes in the summer when it warms up.
There are a number of gravel roads that cut through Alaska's wilderness; the trick is to find them, and to do so when passable. Where and when they are doable, you should not be surprised to see almost any kind of motorcycle crossing them, especially in the summer. Most of the gravel roads are good enough for 18 wheelers, which is why they were probably built in the first place, to haul goods in and out of the wilderness, like supplies to pumping stations along the Alyeska Pipeline.
The best riding months are June through August, yet there are no guarantees you won't ride through rain, snow, or ice in these months. On the other hand, there is a possibility forest fires may close a road during the same week it snows if the smoke is thick enough.
Rent and Ride
Short on time and money? An option is to fly to Anchorage and take a guided tour or rent a dual-spot bike and do your own exploring. For what it would cost to ride your own bike to Alaska you can fly and ride for nearly the same, and instead of spending two weeks getting to and from Alaska you can spend that time adventuring in Alaska. The wrinkle is to find the dual-sport niche and a motorcycle on which to do it. Several motorcycle rental agencies in Alaska have a clause in their rental agreements prohibiting off-pavement use (especially heavyweight bike rentals). Another says "No!" to a run up to Prudhoe Bay on the Dalton Highway, which is about two-thirds gravel.
One company, Alaska Rider Tours, offers both off-road rentals and guided off-road tours, a unique option for the adventure rider. The off-road guided tour includes a run to the Arctic Circle, coupled with several days of rough riding over gravel roads. While not required to ride in a group following the group leader at a sedate pace, this gaggle option is available for the meek and mild. However, if the group wants to try the rough stuff, owner operator Phil Freeman was quick to change the dance floor. The more adventuresome could strike out on their own for the day, rendezvousing at night at the designated motel, bed and breakfast or campground. During the day a shag wagon ferried luggage, tents, food and even a spare dual-sport bike to the evening's resting point.
This tour wasn't catering to the fat cats spreading American Express charge slips around lounges at Marriott Hotels. Instead, each day the riders found themselves well away from the flocks of tourists that poured out of RVs, buses and station wagons jammed with screaming kids. Instead, imagine yourself 40 miles off the paved highway, crossing a glacial stream with 400-lb. bears slapping spawning salmon onto the shore, or a moose wandering though your campsite at night. How about picturing yourself at the Arctic Circle sign after having ridden through a forest fire to get there? The Alaska Rider Tours can put you in those pictures.
Alaska Rider Tours have been at their business for several years, and know their routine well enough to avoid the ugliness of unanticipated dangers while riding in the more rugged areas of Alaska. For instance, each night when riders arrived at the campground they found tents erected with their luggage inside. To insure a restful night while sleeping above permafrost (the ground remains frozen year round, only the surface melts), each tent was provided with a camp cot that kept the sleeper well above the ice below.
Forest fire along the Dalton Highway
To ease the hardship of sleeping in a tent while millions of mosquitoes milled around outside only inches away, the tour houses riders in a hotel on alternating nights.
One of the highlights for a rider who loves being outdoors were the camp meals prepared by Tour Guide Phil Freeman each night. While his assistant Dan Patino arranged plates, seating and logs for tables around a roaring fire, Freeman grilled fresh caught salmon. After 10 hours of riding trails, dirt roads and pavement to reach the campsite, the dinners were the caps on a perfect day. To make sure the cap fit perfectly, Freeman made sure the moose sized cooler was adequately stocked with the beer and wine each rider favored to wash down their surf and turf meal.
When the meals were over, Patino collected dishes and did KP duty while the campers wandered off for hot showers and a well-needed rest.
Often the riders would marvel at the fact it was nearly midnight before they crawled into their tents, and…it was still daylight outside. During late June, the sun circles the upper part of the earth. It never drops fully below the horizon, thereby giving Alaska its name if the Land of The Midnight Sun. Even at 3:00 AM the snowcapped mountains could be seen 20 miles away.
The one event Freeman could not plan for was when Patino dropped the trailer hitch on his hand, deeply slicing open the meaty part of his little finger. The group was close to the Arctic Circle, making the needed medical facility to suture the gash hours away. Quick thinking Freeman knew one in his group was a physician. He asked the doctor for some "on the spot Alaska bush advice." The Doc, an ever-prepared adventurer, produced his travelling medical kit, complete with syringes, pain killer, latex gloves and sterilized tools of the trade, including needle and gut. As the other riders looked on, the hand was numbed and stitched up on top of an outdoor beer table. While Patino did squirm a bit when the needle was stuck into the gash to kill the pain, several of the riders swore it was from his trying to suck the last drops out of the beer he was self administering. Within minutes, Patino's wound was sewed shut, and he was happily trading riding stories with the other riders held his bandaged hand aloft in a half salute to his attending physician.
One of the other pleasantries that came along with the Alaska Rider Tour was not to have to personally maintain the motorcycle each night. After a hard day of riding through streams, over animal trails, up and down jeep trails and endless miles of pavement, the bikes needed routine attention. The tired and worn riders would arrive at the camp or hotel and hand the motorcycle off to Freeman or Patino, then head for the showers and a well-earned cocktail. The Alaska Rider Pit Crew would then check over the motorcycles, making adjustments to chains, tire pressure and adding fluids if necessary while at the same time checking for loose nuts, bolts and spokes, often wiping grit and grime away from seats, fairings and windshields.
There are a lot of niceties that come with a packaged tour like those Alaska Rider Tours offers. Not only are the guides knowledgeable of local attractions, but they can also take you to those out-of-the-way places like ghost towns not on the maps, played out gold mines, and creeks filled up with teaming salmon, well away from regular tourist routes. Combined with timely pick-up and drop-off at the Anchorage airport and prime "safari style" camping, the "turn key" ride in Alaska offers an opportunity for riders to maximize their riding time in American's "Last Frontier."
Pull out the map of Alaska and look at the roads. The system is pretty much a circle around the inner part of the state with some paved roads as offshoots to points like Homer and Valdez, where you have to turn around and ride back. A little closer inspection shows there are some gravel roads, like the Top Of The World Highway through Chicken to Dawson City, of the Denali Highway. These are good, high speed gravel roads, but often you will find wallowing motorhomes, or tour buses filled with senior citizens in your way, especially at the restaurants or scenic turn outs for photographs.
Look a little closer at the map and you will see dotted lines going into wilderness areas. These are less traveled and often lead to gold mines, and they are the ones that dual-sport motorcycles are made for hammering. If you have ridden your bike from the Lower 48 you will most likely find yourself overloaded for these roads, and opting to stick with the Alaska Tourist Trail (RV passable roads). However, these little roads and trails are what you will need to ride if you want to get a taste of what Alaska wilderness really is like.
The Dalton Highway runs to the furthest point north on the North American continent you can ride /drive a vehicle. For the first 100 miles the surface is mixed, some paved, some gravel. From Coldfoot (the last gas) to Deadhorse (also known as Prudhoe Bay) the road can be high-speed gravel or rocks/mud/snow/rain/and ice from your worst nightmare, and that can be in July! It depends on the fickle Alaska weather. You have to cross the Brooks Mountain Range, and while this year the forest below the Arctic Circle was on fire, there was ice and snow in the Brooks Range.
It is not unheard of for a rider to make the run from Fairbanks to Deadhorse in one day, and then return the next. Other stories abound about taking 10-20 hours merely to make the run from Coldfoot to Deadhorse, only 242 miles. The current "high-water" time for the fastest one-way run is about 8 ½ hours from the start to the top, but that was on a friendly weather day.
If you have limited time and a tight schedule, the quick run is up to Deadhorse and back. Plan on two long days, and also plan on riding 600 miles of gravel that can turn to iced glass if it rains and gets cool.
Editor's note: Author Dr. Gregory W. Frazier wrote the book on motorcycling to Alaska, literally. His book, Alaska by Motorcycle, is a traveler's bible, and includes maps and tips from over twenty trips. It is available from the Whole Earth Motorcycle Center for $19.95 (plus $5.00 S/H), P.O. Box 102125, Denver, Co 80250, or for Visa.Mastercard orders 1-800-532-5557
