Alaska, land of lakes and mountains, rivers and glaciers, is a long way to go for an 8 day ride so I had to pad it out a bit. There is a cute little town on the south eastern corner called Skagway, located at the end of a long fiord like inlet and so full of history that I can’t put it all in this epic. However, to get there I flew from Ankorage via Juneau in a very small plane up over the mountains , and what a sight to behold it was. The jaggard peaks stand above the snow and ice sheets like a super market of mountain climbers dreams, the water and ice dribbling down their sides in tiny rivulets joining together to become glaciers, like giant highways slowly crumbling their way to the sea. The flight took about 40 minutes, and would have to be the most memorable introduction to Alaska one could ever have.
Phil and Rich
Skagway was little more than a fur trappers homestead on some sheltered water until the gold rush of the 1890’s, when some 100,000 stampeders (prospective goldminers) decended on the town turning it into a bustling outpost of 30,000 people virtually overnight. The story of the great trek inland to Lake Bennet and down the river to Dawson is the subject of many books and well worth the read. The conditions and hardships they endured in temperatures of minus 30 degrees are awesome. Less than 5000 made it, the rest eventually surrendered to the elements and returned home. The vast number of people moving both up and down the pass to the summit, and on to Whitehorse resulted in a narrow gauge railway being built in the late 1890’s. That line still operates today as a tourist railway, and winds its way up through the picturesque pass with steam or diesel engines, and with all the nostalgia one could crave for. I had to do the trip twice to fully appreciate the spectacle, and the extent of the engineering and the time frame that it was completed in. Skagway itself, has become a mecca for tourist cruises and the streets with their wooden board walks are almost permanently adorned with visitors plying the many shops full of senseless junk and trivia..
Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, pleasant enough and home to the largest assortment of small aeroplanes I have ever seen. With so many places not accessable by road, and a never ending array of lakes and rivers to choose from, they have abundant opportunities for floats, wheels or skies, or a combination of all three.
The crew in Anchorage
It was time to meet my fellow riders, all American again, a welcoming dinner, and set off on an assortment of bikes. First stop Fairbanks, pretty uneventful , a sealed highway, a few stops for lunch and fuel and not to mention a couple of the riders being picked up for speeding, they have a 65mph limit. Our hotel was palatial and the food endless, and we had our first opportunity to get to know each other.
Tom finds a Sourdough
We mamaged to get away petty well on time, and were now heading up the Ice Road through largely uninhabited and open country, some forest and the pipeline. The road was established in the 1970’s to open up the oil fields at Prudeo Bay and construct the pipeline from Prudeo to Valdez in the South . This was a major engineering achievement due to the remoteness of the area and the weather conditions, minus 50 deg in the winter months. The pipe is heated to 100 deg F, and as many of its footings sit on permafrost, considerable challenges were overcome. Mind you, with the millions of dollars in the oil that flow down the pipe in any given day, any cost would have been acceptable!!.
Alaska has some pretty serious bush fires and this year was to be no exception. The sky was overcast with smoke and mist, the mountains we had hoped to see were shrouded in secrecy and the bikes had a scattering of soot over the seats after the first night. Thousands of acres of bush burn every year, but as very few towns are threatened it doesn’t get a lot of media attention.
Riding the dusty Dalton Highway
We moved on to a mixture of sealed and skatey gravel roads. There is a lot of road works going on, and although the roads are quite wide, with heavy trucks moving in both directions a bit of care is required. On a few occasions the trucks were going faster than I was prepared to go, and being tail gated by an ice road trucker in summer, doesn’t bear thinking about. We crossed the Arctic Circle into the land of the midnight sun, (some one should write a song about that) and on to the Yukon River. The mighty Yukon is about 300 meters wide at that point, fed by the continuously melting ice and snow, it stretches from the east to the west ending in the Bering Sea. It is not deep and filled with gravel banks and shoals. There is a primitive road house and an information centre at Yukon, but little else.
Onward we went, ever northward, with the pipe our ever present companion, not the shinning plumb line affair that you might think, but thrown across the plain like the last strand of spaghetti in a childs bowl, dull and patchworked where time and weather have taken their toll.
Cold Foot supposedly received its name from the stampeders who ventured north after Dawson, so cold in winter, that they walked back out. There is not much there now except a road house and the original accommodation built for the road crews and truckers. They have just opened a magnificent eco centre, hopefully to encourage more tourism to the area. Actually there is a vast array of animals in the local reserve, and of all things they are promoting hunting.
Northward into the Brookes Range and the northern slope, leaving the trees behind the road spreads out over the plain, along with the ever present pipeline, into the continuing gloom of smoke and mist to Dead Horse. The end of the road, Dead Horse is a truly industrial outpost, considerably larger than I had been led to believe, with rows of over snow vehicles, drill rigs and earthmoving gear lined up outside barn like buildings, carrying out all sorts of maintenance on the machinery for the oil installation and mining in the area. It operates all year round with no permanent residents. Everyone is on some sort of contract and the airport operates all year bringing in and out all the staff and contractors. There is one shop, a nondescript two story building housing a massive range of general hardware, a supermarket, post office and gift shop all under the one roof.
The oil installation is strictly off limits to all except staff, however we took a tourist bus through the plant to the northern tip, where those who wished took off their shoes and christened their feet with the icy cold water of the Arctic Ocean . I declined, the shoreline was covered in assorted weed and hidden debris. The option to join the Polar Bear Club didn’t materialise, I had my towel and bathers discreetly packed away in my backpack. It was long walk out to the deep water!!. And the bus driver had forgotten the certificates!, and besides, the Sea Lion Club would have been more appropriate!.
Oil exploration equipment, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
This was it, this is what we had come for, the most northerly part of Alaska accessable by road. The end of the Ice Road, and nothing to look forward to but a good nights sleep and nothing to drink. The whole area is totally dry, mind you we had a pretty big esky, tomorrow was home time. Retrace our steps to Cold Foot, back across the Yukon to Fairbanks and detour off to the east to hopefully catch some scenery through the Isabell Pass, if it is not spoilt by smoke.
Jethro fills up the bikes on the way down from Prudhoe Bay
There is a little pub at Chatanika that has to be on the itinery of any one visiting Alaska. It is what is left of a gold mining town with the remnants of a gold dredge similar to the one at Eldorado in Victoria (Aust). A bit more complete in some aspects, but without the bucket chain. An amazing piece of machinery, that chewed through millions of tons of river gravel releasing millions of dollars of gold. The entire walls and ceiling of the Chatanika bar is decorated in Dollar notes, thousands of them, each with the owners name written in bold letters. Legend has it that the miners would leave the money pinned to the roof so that they would have enough for a drink at the end of the week. Could be right, and there are a few more notes there now awaiting my return.
We had a days rain and fog, the Isabell Pass was shrouded in mist . The rain was warm enough and it managed to clear the air for at least one day, and our trip across the Denali Highway was a picture of delight. Mountains, steams and forests, then up through the picturesque Hatcher Pass where the river appears to run uphill.
However, nothing good comes without a price, one short section of the highway was precariously muddy and slippery causing one of the riders to drop his bike, and in the process break a collar bone. If there is a conciliation anywhere, fortunately it happened on the last day, and within a few hours of the hospital.
And suddenly it was all over, we were back in Ankorage, a farwell dinner and on the plane and out of there, with just memories to show for a marvellous time.
No trip to America can be complete without a visit to San Francisco, though the hair that held the flowers may have receded the city is a joy to behold. Even with a couple of dear friends to keep me company, a week is probably not enough. The Golden Gate bridge is awesome, and the cable trams have an endearing character of their own. Genuine under road cables, dragging along the beautifully restored historical cars, manned by a team of unique drivers. Up and down the hills they go with the drivers standing on the brake pedals like there is no tomorrow, with wheels screeching and motorists just nonchalant about their predicament. You simply have to love your job to drive a cable car!.
I had a borrowed BMW for a couple of days and with the undivided attention of the most wonderful guide, we managed to wind our way through some of the red wood forests and visit Alice’s Restaurant in it’s picturesque setting. Another must if you have the opportunity, very popular on a Sunday for bikes and sports cars, made me reminisce for the late Marysville. California was also in the grip of fires and smoky plumes hang low in the air as far as we could see.
I was fortunate that my stay in SF coinsided with two car shows. The Italliano De Elegance and the Pebble Beach Concours, both held at Monterey about an hours drive away. The array of cars both modern and historical was mind boggling, the money and expertise lavished on these grown mans toys has to be seen to be believed. Alfas, Lamberginis, Bucattis, Maserattis , Rolls Royces, Packards, Bentleys and so many others, so beautifully presented that I had two days of awe that will keep me spellbound for some time.
It was with a great deal of sadness that I waved goodbye to my friends and settled into my seat for the long trip home. Again it has been a marvellous trip, that would not have been possible without the input of those who chose to spend some of their time with me. I am forever indebted.
