My duty shift, my scheduled line of flying for July 2009, ended while I was in the Middle East. I was given a choice of travel. I could take a coach seat on United Airlines' Boeing 777 for fifteen hours from Dubai nonstop to Washington, DC, departing in a few minutes around midnight. Or I could wait until after breakfast and take a first class seat, along with my own bed in a private bedroom, on my airline's Boeing 747, that would deliver me to Anchorage, my preferred destination. I would be the only passenger. It was an easy choice for me. I chose the privately owned 747. The rest of my crew chose United Airlines and we went our separate ways.
Our first attempt at departing Sharjah ended planeside before we even stepped off the crew bus at the base of the stairs. A major typhoon was headed for Hong Kong, canceling all flights to Hong Kong. We returned to the Lotus Hotel in Dubai, about an hour's drive from Sharjah Airport.
The following morning we tried again. On the takeoff roll at 100 knots, a loud explosion rocked our jumbo jet. The takeoff was immediately and successfully rejected and we taxied back to the cargo ramp. The crew of a Lufthansa MD-11 reported that they saw a long flame of fire shooting out the back of our number three engine. Visual inspection revealed that we had ingested a bird in the number three engine, causing the explosive compressor stall we heard and felt and the flame of fire reported by the German crew.
With some assistance from our mechanic, I stepped inside the jet engine inlet. While holding a long pair of needle nose pliers, I snaked my right arm in between the sharp blades of the N1 fan as deep as I could reach. Straining and stretching in the shimmering heat of the Arabian Desert at the peak of summer, holding the pliers with the tips of my fingers, I was able to delicately remove the remains of the bird from the stator vanes with the very last millimeter of the pliers. I stored some of the bones and feathers of the bird in a clear Ziplock bag for further investigation. More inspections, including extending the wing leading and trailing edge flaps, took a couple of hours and revealed no damage. After several telephone calls and writing of reports, off to Hong Kong we went, dodging thunderstorms along the way. I spent the night at the Regal Hotel, conveniently located inside Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Airport. The next morning we flew to Nagoya, Japan, refueled, and continued to Anchorage.
It was on the last flight of this journey, as I looked out the window at the glaciers and snow capped mountains of Alaska from the upper deck of the 747, that I formulated a plan of adventure in my mind. I would attempt to ride a motorcycle to Inuvik. I had been thinking about riding to Inuvik for about four years but had been putting it off, as it requires a commitment of about ten days, good weather, and should only be attempted in June, July, and August. I also feared hundreds of miles of dreadful mud. And there are no guarantees. Although rare, sudden major snow blizzards have happened all months of the year without warning, stranding backcountry travelers for days and weeks.
I chatted with my friend Scott about attempting to ride to Inuvik today. I asked if he knew anyone who could loan me a motorcycle. Despite the magnitude, the distance of 2,000 miles, half of it in gravel, and the high risk of the ride I had in mind, Scott didn't hesitate to let me borrow his new 2008 Kawasaki KLR 650.
“So where's Inuvik exactly?”
“Northwest Territories, Canada, near the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean. It's the Canadian equivalent of Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay.”
Scott understood his motorcycle would no longer be new after this ride, but it didn't diminish his enthusiasm. I explained that if everything went well, the bike would be covered in mud and likely never regain the showroom shine it had right now. If things went badly, his bike would be damaged and possibly destroyed. Of course, I would pay to repair any damage and replace the bike if it was destroyed. In addition we agreed I would pay $1,000 for the use of the bike for the trip. This was about half of what it would cost to rent a similar bike from Alaska Rider.
I wasn't in the mood to buy yet more motorcycle clothing so I called my friend Guy to borrow some riding gear. Guy flies Lockheed C-130 Hercules for the Alaska Air National Guard, MD-11 freighters for UPS, owns some airplanes, including a twin-engine Grumman amphibian, and a couple of dual-sport motorcycles. He has several adventure suits hanging in his garage in Anchorage, which I've borrowed before. We've been on a few adventures together. I left a message on his cell phone but he could have been anywhere in the world.
Guy didn't call me back in a couple of minutes, so I went to Alaska Rider to get suited up. I bought an all-weather expedition-riding jacket, a Scorpion Commander with a storm collar and matching Scorpion Invasion pants from Nicole, as well as a dry/wet bag, a waterproof duffle bag with a rubberized heavy-duty zipper. A veteran of Inuvik herself, Danish speaking, heavy equipment operator Nicole could hardly believe that I was going to Inuvik on the spur of the moment. These trips are usually planned weeks and sometimes months in advance. Nordic, beautiful, yet tough as nails, Nicole caught my excitement and loaned me a full-face helmet. She had her assistant Rob install a new face shield so I would have a clear view. For free she gave me a pair of 100% waterproof over gloves and pair of tie-down cargo straps for my new bag. I also bought a pair of matching Scorpion Stinger goatskin leather gloves but I wore them for only about ten minutes as the internal armor proved uncomfortable. Instead, I wore my comfortable, lightweight, Moose Racing gloves that I carry around the world everyday. They've seen action with me in Baja, Mexico, Moab, Utah, and the Namib Desert in Africa.
We performed the first oil change with Mobil 1 synthetic oil as the bike had 537 miles, slightly more than half the break-in period. Scott loaned me his pair of motocross boots and now I was fully dressed.
I sat on the seat for the first time and discovered that it was 35 inches above the ground, a considerable stretch for my 28-inch inseam. I started the engine for the first time and headed to a full day's ride, to a remote destination many riding days away. I departed Scott's home in Eagle River under a solid overcast of low, dark clouds, drizzling rain, and cool temperatures. I had been on the ground in Alaska just a short time.
Other than the gloves, all my gear was new and unfamiliar. I was riding a motorcycle for the first time in nine months, since October 2008, when I rode a new BMW F650 GS in Namibia. BMW cars and motorcycles enjoy a good reputation with legions of devotees. Unfortunately, that particular parallel twin cylinder motorcycle was an unstable design with a bad nose wheel shimmy. It had been rushed to market without sufficient testing and refinement.
In sharp contrast, this 2008 Kawasaki KLR 650 was a dream machine, rock solid and stable, like a freight train on railroad tracks, yet nimble and light enough to be fun and highly maneuverable.
A few years ago I rode another borrowed Kawasaki KLR 650 from Wasilla to Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay and return, more than 1,600 miles, and about half of it on gravel. That bike was about 10 years old and I thought it handled very well.
Today's new bike had numerous technical advancements that further improved stability, cornering, handling, braking, power, torque, fuel mileage, reliability and decreased noise, vibration, and rider fatigue. The riding position was upright and very comfortable, even after some long days in the saddle, day after day. The standing position was comfortable as well as I could rest my knees against the big, fat, 6.1-gallon fuel tank that was carved and contoured to accommodate the rider's legs. I was one with the machine. KLRs have a multitude of loyal enthusiasts, from weekend off-road travelers to global circumnavigators, all with a passion for discovery, freedom, and adventure, all getting riding pleasure from their machines. It's the best-selling dual-sport motorcycle and has been for many years.
The drizzling rain eventually tapered off and I enjoyed spectacular, familiar views along the Glenn Highway. I had the Talkeetna Mountains to the north and the Chugach Mountains to the south. I followed the Matanuska River to its source, the Matanuska Glacier, 24 miles long and 4 miles wide, the largest glacier accessible by motorcycle in Alaska, where I had done some ice hiking in 2008. I spent the first night on the road in Glennallen at the Caribou Inn. I got several compliments from people at gas stations and at the hotel at how clean the bike looked.
“Your bike is so clean. Is it new?”
“Yea, it's new. But it's not my bike. It's my friend's.”
I savored the clean compliments, as I knew it wouldn't happen again. Tomorrow I would be in the gravel and the bike would be covered in mud for the rest of its life.
Another bike parked in front of my cheap hotel caught my eye and I gave it a close look. It was a shiny, new BMW R 1200 GS with numerous additions, modifications, and gadgets from Touratech, the leading German company that customizes motorcycles for world travel. It had coils of rope to be used in case of self-rescue, lending it a rugged, independent, post-apocalypse look.
I talked with Guy on the telephone that evening. He and a group of bikers were spending the night in Paxson, seventy mile north of my location on the Richardson Highway. They were homeward bound on a trip to Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay.
As I passed Gulkana Airport the following morning, I saw a Boeing Chinook 47 helicopter from Columbia Helicopters. Both main rotors were turning while it was refueling. It could have been on a firefighting mission as I was sometimes riding in and out of smoke from numerous distant forest fires.
Shortly after lunch in Tok, I entered the gravel, dirt, and mud, in which I would ride for the next week.
When I came to the tiny town of Chicken, Alaska, population 17, high in the mountains, I decided against stopping and buying gas. I pressed onward, planning to buy gas in the even smaller community of Boundary, just about ten miles from the Canadian border. I discovered that Boundary was merely a cluster of rustic buildings, long abandoned. The gas pumps still stood, but gas had not flowed in several decades. There was a gravel airstrip with a rag tag, shredded windsock blowing in the stiff breeze. There was the Boundary Lodge, the Boundary Saloon, and the Boundary auto repair shop. I was the only person in the whole town. A few cars and trucks from the '40s and '50s were strewn around. There was some heavy wooden furniture on the deck in front of the General Store. It looked like someone had spent considerable time and effort to make a town. Perhaps in its heyday it was thriving and successful, but now it was just a faded, deserted, windblown dream.
I crossed the border into Canada after showing my passport and answering a rapid list of questions from Royal Canadian Mounted Police lady officer. I continued along the enchanting Top of the World Highway, a big name for a long, winding, one-lane dirt road in the middle of nowhere. I could see mountains to the horizon in all directions.
When I got the Yukon River, I had a to wait a few minutes for the ferryboat to arrive. The friendly Canadian Indian deckhands pointed where I should park the motorcycle among the RVs and big semi trucks. In Canada, natives are called First People and their tribes are called First Nations. The crossing of the Yukon River to the historic gold rush town of Dawson City transported me back in time.
There's a collection of adventure books published in the 1950s and '60s called the We Were There series. My school library in the Congo had them in picture cover hardback edition. I read perhaps a dozen of them around the ages of 7, 8, and 9. I remember We Were There in the Oklahoma Land Run, We Were There with the California Forty Niners, We Were There with Mayflower Pilgrims, and We Were There at the Driving of the Golden Spike. I particularly enjoyed We Were There in the Klondike Gold Rush, where the main setting of the book is the Klondike River at Dawson City. Dawson City sits at the confluence of the Klondike River and the mighty Yukon River.
Walking around the dirt streets and wooden sidewalks, admiring the false front facades of some of the original buildings, I was delighted to have the primal feeling of discovery, awe, and adventure. I visited the SS Keno, a dry-docked, steam-powered riverboat, a sternwheeler that used to haul passengers and cargo on the Yukon River. I rented a room at The Bunkhouse overlooking the Yukon River, the cheapest boardinghouse in town.
I went to the Western Arctic Visitors Center on Front Street to meet with a travel counselor, get a safety briefing, and watch a video on the Dempster Highway that I was about to embark on the following morning for the next few days.
From brochures:
“In 1958 the Canadian government made the historic decision to build a road through the Arctic wilderness from Dawson City to Inuvik.
The highway begins about 25 miles east of Dawson City, Yukon on the Klondike Highway and extends 457 miles to Inuvik. Much of the highway follows an old dog sled trail. The highway is named after Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspector William Dempster, who as a young constable, frequently ran the dog sled trail from Dawson City, Yukon to Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories. During the winter months, the highway extends another 121 miles to Tuktoyaktuk, on the northern coast of Canada, using frozen portions of the Mackenzie River delta as an ice road, the Tuktoyaktuk Winter Road. This portion of the road has been made famous in recent years by the show Ice Road Truckers on History Channel.
The Dempster Highway, Canada's first and so far only, all-weather road to cross the Arctic Circle, was officially opened in 1979, after twenty years of construction. It was unveiled as a two-lane, gravel-surfaced, all-weather highway. The Canadian Armed Forces built the two major bridges over the Ogilvie and Eagle rivers. Ferries handle the traffic at the Peel River crossing near Fort McPherson and the Mackenzie and Arctic Red Rivers crossing near Tsiigehtchic.
The design of the highway is unique, primarily due to the intense physical conditions it's put through. The highway itself sits on top of a gravel berm to insulate the permafrost in the soil underneath. The thickness of the gravel pad ranges from 4 foot up to 8 foot in some places. Without the pad, the permafrost would melt and the road would sink into the ground.
In addition to services in Fort McPherson, Tsiigehtchic and Inuvik, there is one location with commercial services along the highway, at Eagle Plains. It's an important fuel and food stop because of the great distance, and harbors stranded travelers when the highway is closed due to extreme weather conditions.”
I read original, hand-written reports from bikers who had traveled on the Dempster in the previous few days. If the weather remained dry, I had a good chance of completing the journey as intended. If it rained or snowed, I would be forced to turn around. If conditions got very difficult, I would become stranded. I checked the weather forecast carefully. It looked okay, just okay, not great, nor really bad.
I walked to Diamond Tooth Gertie's Casino and Dancing Hall, paid six Canadian bucks to get in, and joined the festive atmosphere of drinking and gambling among the RV crowd. The show of dancing French Can Can girls lifting and waiving their frilly skirts was excellent, funny, and entertaining, and the audience of mainly senior citizens loved it.
I met two friendly bikers at my boarding house. One from San Francisco on a KTM 950 Adventure and one from Kansas City on a Honda with an auxiliary two-gallon fuel tank mounted in the rear. Neither had any plans or desire to attempt the Dempster Highway.
As I passed the Dawson City Airport I saw a Douglas DC-6 refueling in Canadian air tanker, fire bomber colors.
My first day on the Dempster was the longest portion between gas stations, 233 miles. The 6.1 gallon claimed capacity of my fuel tank is just that, claimed. In reality, usable fuel may be somewhere around 5.6 or 5.8 gallons. In a low fuel emergency, tilting the motorcycle on its left side to the horizontal position may slosh some fuel trapped on the lower right side to the fuel valve on the left side of the tank. I had been tracking fuel consumption very carefully. I had two spare aluminum bottles with me and determined that it wasn't necessary to fill them with fuel. My best fuel mileage was 60 miles per gallon. My average fuel mileage with normal riding was 55 miles per gallon. My worst fuel mileage with aggressive riding at 6,000 RPM varied from 43 miles to 47 miles per gallon. Oil consumption was very low. I had to add a small amount of oil on the eighth day of riding.
Running out of fuel would expose me to bears and thick hordes of mosquitoes.
I encountered black bears, caribou, and fox crossing the road in front of me. It was thrilling to see them in nature, in their territory. The wild animals were clearly not afraid of me. They were in no hurry to move away. They would pause and take a good look at me. I would slow down and take a good look at them.
The air temperature was chilly in the 40s and 50s Fahrenheit but I was warm, dry, and comfortable in my new gear.
At the Eagle Plains gas bar, that's what Canadians call a gas station, a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter was refueling a short ways from me and two bikes were next to me, a Suzuki V-Strom 650 and a BMW F800 GS. I was happy to chat with the riders to learn of the conditions ahead.
I spent the night at the Eagle Plains Hotel, taking in all the animal trophies and historic photos mounted around the walls, learning about the Lost Patrol of 1911, and the construction of the Dempster Highway.
The following morning dawned cold, gray, windy, and wet. Light rain had drizzled on and off through the night. The road was muddy. As I crossed the Richardson Mountains, I entered a solid layer of low-lying clouds. Visibility dropped to just a few feet. I was in the mountains but I could see nothing but whiteness. The lack of a horizon made it difficult to keep my balance and remain upright. It wasn't raining but the bike and my clothing were covered in water. I was grateful my gear worked to perfection and I remained dry. I was forced to go slower and slower until I was inching along in first gear, tip toeing through the mud, continuously working the clutch with my left hand. It was exhausting and I was breathing hard, which caused my helmet visor to fog up. I had to lift the visor up to see the ground. That caused the wetness of the clouds to settle on my face and eyeglasses. The mud mixed with calcium was extremely slippery. The road crews spread calcium from big trucks to harden the road surface. In theory, that works well in the long term. But until it has an opportunity to dry, the mud and calcium make a mess that's even more slippery than mud alone, if you can imagine that. If I lost my balance and fell over, it didn't seem I would have enough grip and traction to pick the bike up again. The bike was caked thick with mud, adding weight, but the bike still handled well. As one burly, bearded, swearing, road worker told me about the calcium with a strong Canadian accent and a twinkle in his eye, “We do that special for the motorbikes, eh?”
On previous motorcycle journeys I've been challenged by a variety of perils, from raging wild fires with ferocious flames roaring across the road, to utter stillness with subfreezing temperatures. Now, it seemed the clouds and the mud were about to deter me from reaching Inuvik.
As I began to have doubts about the outcome of this journey, I crested the mountain range, the road began to descend, and the visibility began to improve. It was a huge relief to be able to see more than just the ground looking straight down. I could hold my head up, look forward into the blank whiteness, and use my peripheral vision to see the edge of the road. But then it was frightening to see that some of the slippery, muddy edges led to long drops to valleys far below. Eventually, I was completely out of the clouds and the visibility returned to normal. I could enjoy the scenery again. But I remained in varying amounts of mud for the rest of the day. It was a difficult challenge, and as the fear gradually wore off, I welcomed the adversity. My anxiety turned to pleasure. At this late point in the mud wrestling, there was no choice but to keep going north towards Inuvik. With each slowly passing mile that I didn't fall, my confidence was bolstered in the bike and myself.
Arriving safely to Inuvik felt victorious. I rode past the Nova Inn where I would spend the night and went straight to the Visitor's Information Center, which I'd heard was an excellent little museum. The native lady on duty warmly welcomed me. After I had a leisurely look around the top-notch museum, she briefed me about various things to see and do in and around Inuvik, and gave me an Arctic certificate proclaiming that I'd successfully traversed the Dempster Highway by motorcycle. Hokey-pokey tourist stuff with my name printed in bold, but I felt happy and lucky to be alive and well.
The survivalist BMW that I had admired in Glenallen was parked in front of the Nova Inn. It no longer looked shiny but it wasn't caked in mud like my bike. Clearly, the rider had gone to Inuvik's only car wash. The right side of the bike was scraped, the heavy-duty engine guard ripped apart, and the right cylinder head was lined with deep gouges. I felt bad for the rider who had taken a spill in the past 72 hours. That could have easily been me. I hoped he wasn't hurt. At least he was well enough to wash his bike, I thought.
The next day I joined a tour group with six others. At Inuvik Airport our flight was delayed, so I enjoyed a bowl of chili made from muskox from the Cloud Nine restaurant while viewing Boeing 737s from First Air and Air North come and go on the ramp. First Air Combi 737-200s have a main deck cargo door, carry cargo in the front half, and passengers in the back half. They're equipped with gravel kits so they can operate from runways made from gravel or ice. First Air is native owned and operated.
We climbed aboard a Beech 99, a 15-seater, twin-engine tuboprop similar to a Beechcraft King Air. Our two pilots, who looked to be in their mid 20s, were awesome. We followed the meandering Mackenzie River, gently banking right and left above the treetops to follow the contours of the river. When moose were spotted, they would circle around to give everyone a good look. When we reached the Beaufort Sea, they found a pod of Beluga whales and performed figure 8s for world-class sightseeing. The 30-minute flight to Tuktoyaktuk took nearly an hour due to the wonderful sightseeing.
I had a strong feeling the other passengers were going to ask the pilots about our altitude. Sure enough, we were barely out of the airplane when a rider from Edmonton on a KTM 950 Adventure asked, “Hey, how low were we flying?”
With straight faces, both pilots replied in unison, “Five hundred feet.”
A village leader, Boogie, took us on a two-hour tour of Tuk, as the local Inuvialuit call it. I had seen several tourists wearing Tuk U tee-shirts in Inuvik. It made me smile, but I had no inclination to buy one. Boogie is a charming, engaging, elder statesman. Over the course of his career, he successfully negotiated the current excellent state of affairs between his people, the coalition of all native tribes of Canada, and the government of Canada. While still not ideal, it's the best relationship of any aboriginal group and national government on the planet. In Alaska, they're called Eskimos, or more precisely Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut. In Siberia, they're called Yupik and in Greenland, they're called Kalaallit. It's the more or less the same tribe, and they speak the same language with different dialects. To the outside world, they're all Eskimo. Boogie has proudly never worked for the oil and gas companies, nor the gold and diamond mines, the dominant employers in the Great White North, and has never accepted free government money for anything. He's primarily a subsistence hunter and fisherman, cleverly making his way in a complex world, firmly rooted in the ancient traditions of his ancestors, enjoying blanket tosses and drum dances, traveling by seal skin kayaks and dog sleds, camping in igloos, hunting with harpoons, fishing with ivory hooks, and dressing in bear skin parkas. He also speaks fluent English, has been the keynote speaker at numerous world conferences, navigates with ease the world of iPhones, high-speed Internet, skiplanes on the ice, snowmobiles, and runs his own business guiding tours and hunting expeditions. Boogie goes to the safari hunting shows in Reno and Las Vegas and promotes his guiding services to wealthy, big game hunters. He's the only person I know who can organize a 12-day, polar bear hunt by dog sled on the Arctic ice cap without having to rent, buy, or borrow anything.
In true pilot fashion, our two young pilots got a free ride on the Tuk village tour.
“Hey Boogie, we don't want to just hang out at the airport for two hours. Do you have two empty seats in your van? We've never been outside the airport. Would it be okay if we just kind of tagged along?”
I had to smile. These guys were just like me.
We went inside the community icehouse, an underground deep freeze used to store perishable food. It was 35 feet down a vertical wooden ladder into the permafrost, with three corridors and 19 rooms per corridor, like a hotel with no doors. It was pitch dark, no electricity, handheld flashlights only, and some of the walls, floors, and ceilings were made of massive, solid, clear ice. The dirt was hard and frozen solid. The entire complex was created by digging and carving only. There's no structural support like in a mine.
Back in daylight above ground, I removed my socks and shoes and walked into the Arctic Ocean up to my knees. The water was clean and cold.
We took a small boat from Tuk to Inuvik, five hours on the Mackenzie River with a 250 horsepower Suzuki outboard engine, driven by Isaac, our 19-year-old Inuvialuit guide. We were invited by his Auntie to Whitefish Station, a privately owned whaling camp on Kugmallit Bay. The family had harvested two beluga whales a couple of hours earlier and were rejoicing, the equivalent of us winning the lottery. They had been at the camp for several weeks this season and these were their first whales. Fourteen year old Ashline Hendrick showed me around the primitive little camp, showed me the big sections of whale meat drying in the sun on logs on the ground, showed me inside the smokehouse where various types of fish hanging on sticks were getting smoked and dried, and then asked if I wanted to eat muktuk, her name for whale. I said sure. She took a big, sharp knife and sliced a piece of whale tail off the whale and handed it to me, skin, blubber, cartilage, and all. I ate it and liked it. Think gummy bears and think sashimi. Then I ate a section of red whale meat, which tasted like fine beef, filet mignon.
Her brother and his cousin showed me the small skiff they used in the hunt, much smaller than the whale, and the harpoon, which was a sharp stick with a homemade barb. The two whales, many pounds of food, will nourish and sustain this family group for a good, long time.
Isaac said outsiders generally don't visit whaling camps so it was a rare situation. Isaac entertained us with hundreds of colorful stories about his life, his girlfriend, his family, and the Arctic environment surrounding us while driving the boat. He seemed like a younger version of Boogie, charismatic, smooth talking, completely at home in both the ways of his ancestors and in the modern world, a winner in both cultures.
Listening to Isaac and Boogie tell vivid stories reminded me of a black and white documentary movie I saw at school in 1974. It was filmed in 1920, the first documentary film ever made, called Nanook Of The North: The Story of Life and Love in the Actual Arctic. The two-hour movie wasn't supposed to be funny, but it made me laugh hard. It was bogus anthropology. It purported to be real, and of course, in many ways it was, since it was filmed in Arctic Quebec. It attempted to show the world a typical year in the life of an Eskimo family. But the presence of a heavy, bulky movie camera meant that some scenes were choreographed, staged events. And the gringo filmmaker decided how to portray Eskimo culture to movie theater audiences, not the Eskimo themselves. Despite all the shortcomings and critics, it was a valiant effort, a groundbreaking movie, and I'm pleased I saw it when I did. I'm even more pleased I met Ashline, Isaac, and Boogie for a genuine, positive, glimpse of Inuvialuit culture today.
The next day I joined a tour group in a seaplane chartered from North-Wright Airways, from Shell Lake near Inuvik to Herschel Island, in the Beaufort Sea, three miles off the Yukon coast, near the Alaskan border. It was a two-hour flight each way. Scott, our young bush pilot, three other passengers and I took up the five seats in the single-engine, Cessna 206 on Edo floats.
Despite its small size, just nine miles by five miles, and 600 feet at its highest point, Herschel Island has been a landmark in the Western Arctic. It's occasionally home to grizzly bears, polar bears, fox, and herds of caribou and muskox. During the winter the sea freezes and the animals travel at will.
In the 1890s Herschel Island was an important whaling station. Whaling ships on the hunt for bowhead whales would spend the winter in Pauline Cove to maximize the short summer hunting season. At its peak, there were 1,500 people on Herschel, most of them living on ships at anchor.
On the day I visited there were four people on the island, two Park Rangers and two Ph.D. candidates studying the relationship between the Red Fox and Arctic Fox. We landed and took off from the calm waters of Pauline Cove.
The two Park Rangers invited Scott and I to their quarters for hot tea and to talk story. One of our passengers was a journalist writing an article about Herschel Island. I sat and listened to her interview of the two Rangers, Eric and Jordan McCloud, who were cousins. They were direct descendents of the former inhabitants of Herschel Island going back several thousand years. They were expecting their extended family to arrive that day, traveling by small boat in the open waters of the Arctic Ocean. Their family owns the only private home on Herschel, and uses it during the summer for hunting and fishing. In the past, natives lived year-round on the island, due to abundant food from land and sea. In modern times, no one spends the frigid winter on the island, not even the Park Rangers.
I asked the Rangers how long a trip it was for their family.
“If the weather is good, one day. If the wind picks up and the waves get big, up to three or four days. If the weather gets really bad, they'll have to turn around and return to Aklavik. Around here, everything is dependent on the weather.”
On the flight to Inuvik I spotted a small boat chugging away at sea, which I surmised was the McCloud family on their way to their summer home. I also spotted a pod of Beluga whales and Scott circled over them for good viewing.
The next day I got on the bike and headed for home in good weather. It was great to see the Richardson Mountains free of clouds. In hindsight, spending three nights in Inuvik instead of the customary one night for bikers proved to be a fortuitous decision. The mud had dried just enough to be ideal. It went from a slimy, slippery mess to moist dirt and gravel, what bikers call hero dirt, providing a fair amount of traction for the stock trail tires of the Kawasaki. I could ride in ease and comfort; make good time, and all while enjoying the glorious scenery and the wide-open spaces.
While waiting for the ferryboat to cross the Peel River, a mild mannered grandmother, from the Beech 99 flight two days earlier, got out of her RV, approached my motorcycle to visit, and said, “Five hundred feet, my ass!” It was so funny.
When I stopped to buy fuel in Eagle Plains, I was in good shape and felt energized. No need to spend the night here again, I thought. I'll press on to Dawson City. The weather was still good. In fact the road had become so dry that big trucks passing me in the opposite direction would kick up flying gravel and enormous clouds of dust.
In the repair shop area of the gas station I spotted a wrecked bike. It was another BMW R 1200 GS, also extensively equipped with Touratec gear, this one with a license plate from Washington State. This bike appeared to have tumbled end over end, impacted terrain a couple of times, and was caked in mud. Many components of the bike were damaged or destroyed.
I chatted with the two ambulance drivers who rescued the biker. The accident happened a month earlier, in June 2009, and the biker survived with 14 broken bones.
I arrived to Dawson City unscathed, grateful for good road conditions, a great motorcycle, mild temperatures, and clear skies.
I enjoyed a warm bowl of chowder with halibut, red salmon and cod, at Sourdough Joe's Restaurant. “Sourdough” Joe Ladue was one of the original scam artists in August 1896 when gold was first discovered in Bonanza Creek. Most of the people who made money in the gold rush era were those who preyed on prospectors in pressing need of goods and services. Even from his grave, Joe was still separating hungry travelers from their money.
The next morning I returned to the Western Arctic Visitors Center, wrote a few sentences on road conditions in the public travel journal, and answered a few questions from the enthusiastic travel counselor. She gave me a Dempster completion certificate when I showed the stamps in my Dempster Passport, gathered from various places along the route.
I had made numerous friends with both locals and fellow travelers along the way, some of who exchanged email addresses and sent me excellent photos, as I carry no camera. I was tempted to accept an invitation to visit over a cup of coffee this morning from John and Bev who were camped in their RV on Bonanza Creek Trail. I also wanted to dig for gold at Public Claim # 6. But my chances of finding gold in a public claim that's been picked clean for over a century were slim to none. Digging at a good, high-yield claim would cost claim fees, big bucks, and take a few days, at least, to make it worthwhile.
During my ride, more and more mud continued to cover the bike. I tried to think of a way to make Scott have positive feelings about the mud and dirt when I returned the bike to him. Money alone wasn't going to cut it. I needed something light, fun, and whimsical. Minutes before departing Dawson City, as I walked by Gold Trail Jewellers on Front Street, the thought came to me. A gold nugget! That would do the trick. Now, it would have been nicer if I had dug in the dirt and found it myself. Who knows, I might find just enough gold to catch gold fever. I would become one of those wilderness hermits, off-the-grid types, with a big white beard, suspenders, and a Yosemite Sam hat folded back at the front, living my days lost in my dreams in an endless quest for the lustrous metal.
I looked at my watch. I had a motorcycle to ride, many miles to go, and an airplane to catch to return to my working life. No time to dig for gold today. So I bought a nugget from Andrew and Alexandra, the eastern European owners of Gold Trail Jewellers. It weighed 4.5 grams, large enough that you could see it without a magnifying glass. It wasn't gold foil or gold flake, it had a nice heft to it, a real gold nugget, found by a fourth-generation prospector, (when and where do those miners have time and opportunity to raise kids and grand kids?) on a creek a few miles from Dawson City.
With the gold nugget safely in my pocket, I rode from Dawson City to Eagle River in one day, 487 miles or 784 kilometers, all of it very scenic, including an amusing stop for lunch in remote Chicken.
The last few hours of my ride to Eagle River were cold and in the rain, which washed away nearly all of the mud of the Dempster Highway. It was still dirty but not caked on thick like it was.
It was great fun to tell Scott and his family of my eight days on his motorcycle. I gave him the gold nugget and told him not to think of the mud on his no-longer-new motorcycle as bad. Instead, think of the mud as treasure, as good as gold. Scott told his kids, ages 5 and 7, "Hey kids, we got real gold here. Come take a look. Do you want to take this nugget to school for Show and Tell?" It was all quite funny. I told Scott if the world economic crisis got much worse and confidence in paper currency was lost, the world might revert to gold. He could take a sharp hunting knife to the nugget and cut tiny slivers to fill the tank in his pickup truck or buy groceries to get through the winter, just like in Dawson City's heyday.
I flew from Anchorage to my home near Tampa. Then I went to work, from Newark to Liege, Belgium to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf to Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.
Today I rode a 21-speed mountain bike, a bicycle, on the corniche along the waterfront of the Gulf of Oman, the knobby tires digging in the beach sand. It was blistering hot and I longed for the ice and cold of the Canadian Arctic.
Answer:Steve, All you gotta do it lower it! We have several lowered KLRs, and they work great.