Arctic Circle Trip - Days: 2 - 4

Wifi has been kinda sparse so you get 3 days in one chunk.

Day 2:

What a day! Pretty solid ride from this morning until this evening.

Started in Prince George with the goal being a campsite Stewart BC, on recommendation from my friend Alan. Rode for a while then had lunch in Burns Lake. The rain was unrelenting from that point on – but the scenery was beautiful.

It was very exciting to reach the Alaska Highway – even in the pouring rain. The raingear was working well but after a solid day of rain I was feeling my socks dampen.

The road so far is beautiful and twisty. The road surface is decent and there was almost no one on it at all.

We turned down the Glacier Highway for Stewart where the road got even nicer. Finally ended up in Stewart after 8:30.

My socks were now more than a bit damp and we made the call to hotel it for another night to dry out. This turned out to be a wise decision. The King Edward is a pretty nice motel spanning the main street of Stewart. Janice, who checked us in, let us park the bikes right on the sidewalk and store our tires in the conference room on the first floor instead of having to carry them up the stairs. We met up with 2 guys who had just been on the Dempster with their BMWs. It had been very wet when they were there and they had horror stories of mud like “4-inch deep wet cement” which clogged their radiator, ripped off their rear mud guard, and ate their brake pads.

We went for a walk around Stewart and inadvertently wandered into an area where many big white cylinders were sitting. Turns out they were sections of wind turbine that just came off a ship in Stewart.

Back at the hotel, Janice told us that Stewart used to be home to over 10000 people who mostly mined for gold. There even used to be a railroad (the street where it used to be is called Railroad St.) Janice showed us some old photographs of Stewart as it used to be. Glad we ended up staying at the hotel after all and learning so much about this small town.

Off to bed now. Sorry for lack of pics, just 'bear' with me.

Day 3

Woke up in Stewart and went into Alaska to see Salmon Glacier. We did not see Salmon Glacier. The cloud was just too low. On the bright side, the road up to the Salmon Glacier lookout was a very nice twisty gravel and dirt road – the first taste of gravel for the trip. Breakfasted in Stewart in a bakery. Some motorcyclists on a Super Tenere were in there and told us that someone on a bike had hit a moose north of Dease lake. We were assured by the lady working in the bakery that the rain was over.

The rest of the day it rained very hard. We made our way up the Cassier Highway. The scenery was lovely but probably 90% of our radio communications were moose based. The rain made certain under construction areas of the road a bit sketchy. We stopped at a place called Bell 2 and talked to a couple bikers and the British owner of the establishment. Bell 2 is a Heli-skiing base, resort and gas station which gives you free coffee if you fill up your tank with gas (but you didn’t hear that from me).

When we made it to the Watersedge Campground in Dease Lake, the rain had stopped. We had a fire and used our camp stove to make ramen noodles, which tasted delicious after all the rain we’d endured. We unloaded the bikes to go get gasoline. The bike handled terribly as the tyre pressures and shock preload were still set up for carrying 100lbs of luggage. As we were leaving the campsite we saw 2 bears looking at us not 500ft away from where we would be sleeping.

We met some new friends in the Dease Lake Campground. A family in a camper (who we ran in to repeatedly throughout the next day at various gas stations); 2 fellas from Florida on a V-Strom 1000 and BMW r1200 GS; and Mick and Jen from Australia had been traveling and working in Canada for the past few months and were doing some siteseeing before heading back to Aus. Before we left, Mick and Jen recommended for the next night we go to 6 Mile River Campground in Tagish instead of Teslin as they had been working there for the past month.

Day 4

Woke up on day 4. No rain. We optimistically packed our rain gear away and rode away on the Cassier. After a while on the road, we started thinking about coffee. Suddenly, a “Free Coffee” sign appeared as if by magic! We pulled into a place called Jade City. My dad vaguely recalled a television program about jade mining. Turns out that we were in the location where they shoot the program called Jade Fever. We had our free coffee and the sales associate graciously topped up our water containers.

We passed through a place called Boyer which literally had the smoothest roads I have ever encountered in my life. This would be a big difference from what would come later that day.

We crossed the line into the Yukon at some point today. Of course we stopped and had photos by the sign.

In the Yukon, they have an interesting method for making roads. They put down a ton of oil then spread gravel on it and pack it down then leave loose gravel on the top until it cures. This is not the most fun thing for a bike. Gravel roads are one thing – gravel on the road is a different matter entirely. As we turned onto the Alaska highway we were met with just that. ½ inch deep gravel on top of a paved road with 2 thin tire tracks to follow. Later that day when we were stopped for construction, one of the construction workers filled us in on the process called chip something or other. All I know is it suuuuuuuucks. Going throught the construction is where we had bear encounter 3, this time it was just a bear running across the road. Still haven’t seen a moose (and I’d be totally fine if it stayed that way!)

Throughout the day we’d come upon sections under construction which were at various stages of curing. Some sections still had a lot of loose gravel just sitting on the surface, some sections had 2 oily tire tracks running down them and some sections were just bumpy.

We stopped at the Yukon Motel and Restaurant for a burger. This had been our original planned stopping place, but we decided to trust our Aussie friends and make for Tagish instead (I tend to trust anyone with an Australian accent for some reason). Along the way we met a man from China who bought his BMW F800GS in California and took 80 days off work to come ride.

We arrived at the campground recommended by Mick and Jen and we mentioned their names. Apparently everyone here loved them and had been very sad to see them leave yesterday. The campground owner says she’ll text them to let them know we arrived. We made friends with Ted, a local, and Peter from Ontario on a trip on his Triumph Tiger.

Peter had just done the Dempster highway but had to turn back after the arctic circle sign because of wet conditions. He said he’d seen a number of bad wrecks up there. He reminds us of something that has been in the back of our mind – failure is definitely an option here. If it rains, we might not make it up to Inuvik. 

Bedtime now. WiFi seems to be rare so there aren’t as many photos as I’d like as it eats data. Will do a photo dump later.