Welcome to the Dempster
07 July 2018
Here there be dirt.
Photos:
Waiting for the ferry
As much as I really wanted to get on the road to Tuk, the infamous Dempster Highway (it is infamous, right?); I needed to take care of a few things first. First, an oil change. I had wanted to change it in Whitehorse, but didn’t quite get around to it. I rode the ferry back to the Dawson City side of the Yukon river and proceeded directly to the grocery store.
Grocery store?
Yep. Changing oil on the road can be really easy, especially if you pay someone to do it. But thats not how I like to do things. So, the thing I needed to get started, was a gallon of water. I wandered around the store for a good 10 minutes, unable to find the water. I settled for a box of granola bars, and as I approached the register, I found the entire pallet of gallons jugs of water. Perfect. Bought the water, got out to the bike, annnnd…nowhere to put it. So, I opened it up and filled my camelbak, then filled part of a platypus bottle, emptyiing hte jug. Then I threaded a bungee cord through the handle and was off.
A perfect fit
The next stop was a little more obvious, NAPA. They sell oil, and they take the old stuff off your hands for free, perfect! I sat down in the parking lot next to the bike, stuck my ever handy PVC pipe trail stand under the side of the bike, and got to work. With the PVC decompressing the rear spring, a 1 gallon jug fits perfectly under the oil drain plug, and a gallon is plenty of space for the 2.5l that the bike holds.
20 minutes later, I was done. Old oil out, new oil in, new filter in, and old oil given to NAPA. I wiped off my hands, disposed of a couple of towels, packed up, and was ready to roll.
When driving the Dempster, the first leg is about 235 miles, from the cardlock gas station at the corner of Hwy 2 and Hwy 5 to Eagle Plains, the halfway point where there is a campground, a hotel, a gas station, and a tire shop. This corner is about 15 miles out of Dawson, so its a convenient place to fill up. Its also a little comforting to know that the tank is as full as it can possibly be before undertaking a trip. My bike has a 5.6 gallon gas tank, and at its usual 50 mpg, I can get a theoretical 280 miles on a tank, but lately with varying winds and load and things, I can sometimes get down to 36 mpg, in which case I can only get 200 miles. So, if all is well, it’ll be a good day without a whole lot of walking. If not, I’ll be sitting in the middle of nowhere. Fun!
Hiding from a passing semi. They don’t slow down.
He’s from France, and the leg on the camper wouldn’t stay up
The other fun thing about this road is that driving conditions vary wildly with the weather. If its dry, all is good. Its just potholes, gravel, and dirt. Lovely conditions. But, if it is wet, it can be very slippery on a motorcycle, which can be fun, or dangerous, usually both. One of the reasons I and others chose this day to embark on this trip is the weather, it was supposed to be clear and sunny for several days.
Engineer Creek, I think
The ride up to Eagle Plains was very straightforward, one road, lots of turnouts for pictures, and not a whole lot of other vehicles to avoid. One of the things there was a few of was people with flat tires. The recommendation from officials about driving this road suggest that you bring at least two spare tires. And this seems like sound advice, I saw several tires being changed. One couple in a pickup truck with a camper in the bed waved me past, but not before I spied that their left rear tire had wrapped itself around the rim after completely giving up. Fortunately, they had three spares. Later on, I arrived on the site of a suburban with a flat tire, and a Chinese engineer from Seattle - and his entire extended family. I stopped to see if they needed any help, but by the time I got my earplugs out they had solved their problem - getting the tire out from underneath the truck. We chatted for a bit, agreed that despite any trouble, we were all happy to be out there, and I carried on.
Eventually I arrived at Eagle Plains. I had plenty of fuel, in fact I never even hit reserve (which means I had over 1 gallon of fuel left). I ran the numbers and and was averaging 54 mpg for the day. Not bad!
In Eagle Plains, the first order of business was food. There weren’t a whole lot of options - one restuarant - sit in the bar, or the restaurant. I walked into the bar, and there was Dave, my buddy from the campsite the night before. And, he had two new friends, Kim and Jolene, whome he had helped change a tire ealier. They invited me over, so I sat down, ordered a Yukon Brewing Lead Dog Ale, and got lost in conversation for the next few hours. By the time it was time to go, you’d think we had been friends for years.
Neither Dave or I had set up a tent. The sun was still out and wouldn’t be going down, so we had plenty of time. We looked at the options available locally, which consisted of a gravel parking lot with a few bushes around it, RV’s, and people running generators. All the ambiance of a Walmart parking lot. Dave and I were really looking for something better. We got back on the highway and kept going north. Dave’s GPS indicated a driveway about 16 miles ahead, so we thought we’d check that out.
There was a fire somewhere, the smoke made whole ride a little surreal
When we got there, it was the most perfect campsite known to man. It was also a storage place for gravel for the road, but that didn’t matter. It was the top of a hill, we had a fantastic view in all directions, and it was relatively flat. It was also several acres, so Dave and I could each have our own huge corner of the camp. I setup my tent, took a few pictures, and enjoyed the view.
My favorite campsite, probably ever
One of the upsides of the site is that it had plenty of wind, which is great for keeping the mosquitos away. The only downside, it made my tent bend funny ways.
The other feature of this site is that it was 2km from the Arctic Circle. For the first time, I discovered the strangeness that is high latitudes in the summer. When I went to bed, the sun was in the west. When I woke up at 1am due to a truck driving up the highway, the sun had moved sort of into the north, but hadn’t gotten any lower, and the light was just as bright as when I had gone to bed. That threw me for a loop for a moment, especially with the truck driving by. Who drives a truck out here at 1am?!