here was a biker from Texas and a
young German lad in the front room,
Gabe and me in the back room, Ed
from Los Angeles camping in the
garden and Ryan, our host, sleeping
on a bed in his pickup truck. We hit
the town. What a night, ending up
in F Street Station, the traditional
hangout for bush pilots, the walls
papered with flight memorabilia.
Serendipity is wonderful. Ed on
hearing that I would be going through
LA insisted I stay with him and
has since then become a very good
friend. I also stayed with Ed and his
partner in Istanbul, she was studying
Armenian Folk Music, when I was on
The Mongol Rally, another story.
“Watch for the trucks they have the
pedal to the metal and don’t give way,
they throw up rocks which can do
serious damage to you and the bike,
don’t fall off the road it’s built on top
of the permafrost with some serious
drops each side, if you have any sort
of mechanical difficulties or medical
problems it can take hours or even
days to get help.”
Five hundred more miles to
Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay; a road
mostly dirt, built to service the
Deadhorse oil camp from where the
Alaskan oil is piped down to Valdez
1100 miles away. This road features
very heavily in Ice Road Truckers
television program. Tree Tops,
the last gas station, sounding like
something from Lord of The Rings,
before we hit the Dalton. Next gas
would be at Yukon River Camp, but
they don’t always have any.
Onto the Dalton, the truckers call
this The Haul Road.
Mile 56, Yukon River Crossing,
the sloping ½ mile long bridge
constructed of wooden planks,
fortunately it was dry, but had it been
wet, oh boy!
Mile 115 the Arctic Circle and a
great photo opportunity, Mile 175,
Coldfoot Camp, what an incredible
ride halfway and our bed for the
night.
This is just a truck stop with gas,
food and some containers bolted
together to make some sleeping
quarters, on the door a poster with
a picture of a Black Bear, bizarre
because part of me wanted to open
the door to be confronted by a bear.
Onto the bikes and a beautiful day,
no human habitation for the next
240 miles. Mile 235, the last tree and
rather sad looking. Mile 244 Atigun
Pass, elevation 4739 ft going over the
Brooks Range and the Continental
Divide, rivers to the north empty into
the Arctic Ocean whilst rivers to the
south empty into the Bering Sea.
If you reckon you are doing
something extraordinary forget it,
there is always someone else doing
something more extreme. Seeing a
man on a bicycle we stopped to chat.
He had been having problems with
bears having to camp on the side of
the road at night.
He suggested that bears call a man
on a bicycle, ‘meals on wheels’ and
that they call a man on a motorbike
‘fast food’.
A stunningly spectacular ride
with the only problem being a
construction crew with their graders
and water tankers. Trying to keep the
bike shiny side up was horrendous.
The graders loosened the gravel so
we’d have to criss cross piles of deep
loose gravel, a nightmare, but worse,
having regraded the road they then
water it to compact it. Man, that is
like being on ice.
The further we went we reached
the tundra. The moose and caribou
no longer, the coastal plain home to
the musk ox and yet still bears.
At mile 415 we reached Deadhorse
with the Tiger running on fumes.
The road ends 7 miles short of
Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean.
BP charge $60 to get a bus out there.
Security was tight but to simply
walk along a beach covered in bear
footprints, to dip my toes in the
Arctic Ocean, to watch a family of
Arctic foxes was worth it.
Seven thousand miles, over four
months, I had a massive smile on my
face. Only 20,000 miles to Ushuaia
and Drakes Passage.
A beautiful Italian lady said to me,
‘You are rich signor, the adventurer
has no age, adventure is in the soul’,
how true and I was nowhere near the
end … JA
John has plenty of tales of adventure
and travel, mostly by motorcycle, his blog,
tranquilojonny.com is worth a read.
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