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gravel road. It isn’ t even your average bad gravel road. It’ s alive.
In dry conditions, it’ s hard-packed and dusty, offering fleeting moments of confidence. But throw in rain, and I was told that at some point it would rain, and the calcium chloride used to bind the gravel turns into a grimy, viscous goo that coats your tyres, clogs your boots, and turns even modest inclines into something best attempted by ski lift.
Riders had told me that here was a road that has numerous bad stretches. On one stretch just south of the Ogilvie Mountains, a rider said he’ d“ caught his front tyre in a rut so deep it had its own postal code”. He went on to say the bike had bucked like a horse realising it was being ridden by an amateur.
“ I saved it, barely,” he continued laughing aloud in that unhinged, post-adrenaline way that makes wildlife slowly back away from humans.
But despite the terrain, or maybe because of it, the Dempster gets under your skin in a way few other places can. Tombstone Territorial Park hits you first, jagged peaks rising like broken teeth out of a velvet green carpet. Beyond that, the scenery softens and spreads, rolling tundra, spongy muskeg, lonely rivers twisting across permafrost. There are stretches where you ride for an hour without seeing another vehicle, another person, or another sign of civilisation besides the road itself.
It’ s beautiful. It’ s isolating. It’ s everything a real adventure should be.
And it’ s the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.
I’ d been warned, of course. Everyone talks about the bugs in the north. But no one explains it well enough. No one prepares you for the scale. The commitment. The tactics.
They wait in the underbrush. They ride on the wind. They attack in squadrons, bouncing off your helmet visor like rain. And the second you stop riding, whether to refuel, adjust your gear, or simply admire a rare arctic bloom, they descend. Not
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