Adventure Touring is the act of taking an inappropriate motorcycle, giving it taller suspension and knobby tires, then loading it down with too much stuff and riding over bad roads to eat delicious food in a place you've never been to. By the second day of riding I was chanting a mantra over and over again, sometimes singing it, sometimes just muttering it under my breath...
"light on the bars, gas constant on, weight on the pegs, let the bike dance and you'll stay upright"
I've literally spent my entire riding career avoiding dirt and gravel on tarmac and yet here I am riding headlong into what's regarded as a dangerous road on an overloaded bike with floppy suspension and a defective front brake.
Light on the bars, gas constant on, let the bike dance....
Whoops there it goes again. The packed dirt gave way to deep rutted mud and the bike is trying to throw me off.
Gas constant on, let the bike dance.
Why am I doing this? This is the dumbest vacation idea ever, I'm going to hitch a ride on the support truck.
Let me rewind to where all this began. In 2018 my Dad had the idea to ride up to the Arctic Circle by way of Canada. When he got back he talked about how stupid it was to take an FJR on those roads and how a proper adventure bike would be better. Over the next months he convinced (bribed) me to throw my hat in the ring and take an adventure with him. Since I can't be away from work for long enough to ride from Oregon up, we'd fly into Anchorage, rent bikes, and go with a group. After all my Dad reasoned, it can't be that dangerous if a company is willing to organize tours to do it. If people were getting hurt or dying all the time the company would go out of business, right?
The broad strokes of the plan were simple enough. Fly into Anchorage and join the MotoQuest group. Ride up the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay (DeadHorse), then back down through the scenic route. Simple enough right? Ruin someone else's bikes on the rough "haul" road.
On the day we left Anchorage the staff at MQ hurriedly checked our bikes out to us and told us how to use the electronics ("don't touch them, leave them set how they are"), except me because I was issued the oldest bike in the fleet, a 2015 V-Strom with no electronics to set. Old Becky had some scuffs, the front brake badly needed service, she didn't idle quite right, but at least she has a set of brand new Shinko Adventure Trail 50/50 knobby dancing shoes.
We set out from Anchorage and gradually picked up the pace. Our group had gotten on the road later than scheduled and we were trying to make up time. Being that this is the rain forest of Alaska we got rained on every few miles, but kept up a good pace mostly. I say mostly because when the guides stopped us for a break it seemed to drag on way too long and we'd lose road time, a pattern that continued throughout the tour. Our pace picked up even more the closer to Fairbanks we got, which proved to be what I would consider sketchy on knobby tires in the rain. At least the traction with them was the same wet or dry, just alright.
Our first night on the road was in Fairbanks at a resort called Pikes Landing. Its a stopping point for cruise ship passengers transiting by bus as well, and as such they pulled out all the stops to gouge us and serve us the cheapest food possible.
Sunday morning we got on the road for what would be our first taste of the dirt. After a quick stop at a tourist view point for the Alaska pipeline we hit the first of many road construction stops.
The tarmac and the hillside had been totally ripped away. What remained was thick, deep, gooey mud with deep ruts from trucks. In this deep mud four of us dropped our overloaded bikes. The members of the tour and another person caught in the construction helped us right our bikes and get going, only to hit a similar goo pit a few miles down the road.
The tarmac and the hillside had been totally ripped away. What remained was thick, deep, gooey mud with deep ruts from trucks. In this deep mud four of us dropped our overloaded bikes. The members of the tour and another person caught in the construction helped us right our bikes and get going, only to hit a similar goo pit a few miles down the road.
With my morale killed I nearly missed out on the fairly good curvy roads and amazing scenery that followed, although the pavement would have made a sportier bike shudder. By mid-day we arrived at the start of the Dalton Highway, took pictures, got swarmed by mosquitoes, and eventually got moving again.
The Dalton Highway (aka "The Haul Road") was built in the 1970s to support the oil fields to the north and the construction of the pipeline. It is mostly unpaved, it is built significantly above grade due to heavy vegetation, soft soil, snow, and flooding, and is generally always under repair during summer months. On the highway the vehicle with the most lug nuts has right of way, especially on the up to 13% grade hills where stopping for another vehicle is not a realistic option. The Dalton still supplies DeadHorse and the camps (part truck stop, part motel, part restaurant, part general store) along the way.
Why would anyone want to go up the Dalton? Because the land there is empty and beautiful. Because despite the treacherous road conditions it can be fun riding. Because its literally the road that ends at the arctic ocean and you get to say you've been there and done that.
We had lunch at Yukon Camp, which was really the first "wow that was good" meal on this trip. The burger I had was built on a freshly baked bun and all the ingredients tasted fresh. A far cry from the $20 breakfast at Pike's Landing that included microwaved Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches. After lunch and a Red Bull I felt a lot better from the mud and falling bike of the morning and we pressed on.
The weather had warmed up considerably so I stripped the rain/thermal liners out of my jacket. To teach me a lesson in irony fifty miles later I was treated to an arctic thunderstorm which was as beautiful as it was wet. This pattern would repeat itself a few more times until I just gave up on pulling my liner out and would sweat it out for a few hours until the daily thunderstorm came to cool everything down. Just beyond the thunderstorm was the Arctic Circle monument (a sign) where we stopped again for pictures. It was near the circle I saw the only bear on the trip. It crossed the road quite far ahead of me so I didn't manage a picture.
A few cycles of rain, mud, road construction, and nice packed dirt road and we pulled into Coldfoot Camp. Out here gassing up is quite an ordeal because they don't have card readers on the pumps. You have to go into the store, give them your card, come out and pump, go in and pay. Sounds bad? Now imagine doing that with thirteen riders and a support truck.
Coldfoot Camp like Yukon Camp is a truck stop with modular housing units spread out haphazardly. Sounds awful until you show up beaten up from the road with your morale in the gutter, and your tiny room in the rusting modular housing units has a hot shower waiting for you. The food that night might as well have been prepared by a professional chef.
This far out I was expecting canned and frozen everything but this was fresh food, not freezer section. I suppose that's the advantage of being right on the main shipping lane for food for DeadHorse. With a hot shower and a good meal I felt a lot better but was still quite sore from 200 miles of rough road and worried (OK, scared) of the next day of riding.
It would be lying to say I was having a good time at this point. My dirt riding form is terrible so I was tired out from fighting the bike. I was mentally worn out from being "on" all day. Most of all I was scared that the road ahead would be as bad as the construction zone where I'd dumped my bike. On the bright side though my Scorpion Yosemite gear was keeping me warm and dry, and my belly was full.
After a night of waking up every hour thinking it was dawn and time to get up, it was finally time to get up. Today was the big day, ColdFoot to DeadHorse. The crown jewel of the trip awaited: getting my swag to say I'd been there done that.
The road north of ColdFoot is paved for a few miles and then pleasant packed dirt for a while. Even I was able to maintain pretty good speed until I saw the base of the mountains ahead, and pulled over to let a heavy truck pass. I watched it climbing the pass thankful it wasn't going to ride my tail all the way up, or I wouldn't be breathing its dust. Next was my turn and I ascended the first part of the mountain.
Throttle on, light on the bars, weight on the pegs, let the bike dance.
Going up the hill was only a little treacherous as my bike wiggled and wobbled in the loose gravel. At the top of the first section I found most of the group stopped to regroup and take pictures. Pictures taken we continued on up the pass.
As I reached the top I thought, "wow, the vaunted Atigun pass really wasn't that bad", and then I started down hill. The group was regrouping part way down at a pull out so I aimed my bike at the group and crossed some loose rock and a ditch... and promptly dropped my bike again.
So much for my pride. The other riders helped right my bike and I set about taking pictures. The downhill and the next hour of riding was over loose gravel, ranging from deep ball bearing sized to deep loose baseball sized stones. I knew I was in for another stressful day.
At lunch I discovered another odd quirk of Alaska. When you get a bagged lunch from one of the camps, they give you the components of the sandwich all individually wrapped. Great idea if its in a truck, but stuffed in a pannier it was just as smushed as an already assembled sandwich. Oh well, its still belly fill.
Continuing on from our lunch stop at Galbraith lake we rode over varying road conditions, through construction zones, and left the mountains behind. I won't sugar coat it, this is where Alaska gets ugly. The tundra hadn't greened up yet for the season so we were riding through endless rolling brown terrain. We got to see a herd of Musk Ox though, which was cool. Musk Ox are easy to miss if they're sitting down, they look like a pile of rags.
About seventy miles from DeadHorse I pulled over and plugged in my heated gear. The temperature was dropping from the balmy 60-50s over the tundra to the 40s, and the arctic wind was picking up. We hit some of the worst road construction the last forty miles in, with the surface incredibly loose and hard to maintain stability on. My heated gear kept me toasty, but the wind picked up to the point where it was tossing the bikes around.
By the time I got to DeadHorse Camp on the edge of town I was ready to ride to the airport, dump the bike, and hop on the next flight to Anchorage. The group mostly then rode to the general store for obligatory pictures and to get gas at one of two stations there, which of course we had trouble with the card machine. The photo op and gas stop seemed to stretch into an infinity of misery, I retreated into my shell so I wouldn't demoralize the others. Eventually we made it back to DeadHorse Camp and I degeared. Once again the simple accommodations were really all that I wanted.
At dinner I found another one of those quirks of the North Slope, they ask you to use hand sanitizer and glove up before serving yourself in the buffet line. The reason being that if oil workers who fly in for two weeks at a time and work twelve hour days get sick from the buffet line it costs the company quite a bit of money. Once again, the food was excellent. I had roast lamb and all the fixings, and some surprisingly good carrot cake.
I must say that all the camp staff, the general store workers, and even a handful of oil workers we ran into in DeadHorse were all quite hospitable to us. Even when we were bumbling around with our minds half frozen they politely pointed us to the right door or told us where to go.
With my stomach full and better mood I had an epiphany about adventure riding. We are doing this difficult thing which could result in our injury or death, which at any point we could throw in the towel, load our bikes on the support truck and quit. But the reward of the scenery, knowing that you'd really rode all the way to where the road ends, and the feeling of experiencing new and different things, you can't necessarily get from an "easy" touring trip. You don't know what you're made of until you choose not to run away.
When I get home most of my non-rider friends ask how my trip went and then their eyes glaze over after a minute of me talking about the mountains and the difficulties, because they don't get it. They say "Hey Tim, are you some kind of danger Junky?" But I can't even answer them. They don't get that its about the internal struggle between the easy path and the hard path. They don't get that its about meeting people from different walks of life in a different time and place. They don't understand what its like having someone you met forty eight hours ago pull your bike off of you and ask if you're OK, and really care, because we have the tenuous bond of adventure.
That night the wind may have howled, and the sun never set, but I slept like a rock. In the morning we boarded a tour bus and learned about how the town and the oil fields operate. This was the off season in DeadHorse due to the low price of oil and because it was summer. During the summer they can't move heavy equipment to certain sites because there are no permanent roads across most of the tundra, and this must be done on ice roads built during the winter. The most important part of this tour was the point where we stopped at the ocean and touched it. With that ceremonial act done we loaded the bus and went back to the camp to gear up for the day. Knowing that I'd have to ride back over the same windy, muddy, loose, roads while dodging big rigs and road graters, I was not looking forward to it.
I can say that the way back wasn't nearly as bad. Some of the awful construction zones were less awful, although due to one of those muddy stretches I couldn't pull over to photograph the only caribou herd I saw on the entire trip. After two days on bad roads I was starting to get the hang of it, that might have contributed to it not being as bad. At one rest stop we ran across a rider heading north to Prudhoe from of all places Portland, Oregon. He'd sold all his possessions, quit his job, and set out on the road to ride to the top (Prudhoe) and then to the bottom (Tierra Del Fuego). Like Cortez burning his ships, this man had no easy out button if it proved to be too much. His level of commitment was somewhat higher than ours, with our support truck.
At lunch Dad asked me to jackrabbit ahead and get pictures of him riding standing on the pegs up the pass, so I did so and got pictures of most everyone else too.
On the other side of the pass I stopped to photograph the bike next to a river, with mountains on either side, and a thunderstorm ahead. After riding through the arctic wind on mud, riding the last twenty miles in a rainstorm on packed dirt and pavement was so easy I had to chant my other mantra: complacency kills.
That night in Coldfoot was the emotional high point of the trip. We'd survived the Dalton highway all the way to DeadHorse. Even though we still had to backtrack on the Dalton another two hundred miles south, it was the slightly easier section. Even the road construction had improved on two of the really bad areas that we'd hit on the way up, and the delays were minor. At the end of the Dalton my luggage rack failed, fortunately we had a support truck, so my panniers and broken rack went on the truck. Hooray for a lighter bike.
We made it back to the outskirts of Fairbanks and slabbed out through a beautiful river valley to Chena Hot Springs. By this point I was mentally shot and standing in line to clean Dalton dust off my radiator nearly drove me mad.
The Chena Hot Springs Resort is what I'd call Disneyfied Alaska. This place is for people who want their Alaskan adventure packaged up and delivered to them by bored teenagers in a organized and sterile setting. The rooms were 5 star compared to the ColdFoot and DeadHorse Camps, but the place just lacked personality. Where the hospitality of the North was warm, the hospitality here was cooler. At this resort you have to pay extra to get into the hot springs, which is an artificially created rock lake the spring is fed into. All complaints aside I felt a lot better after a dip in the rock lake.
At the ride briefing the next day our guide said we were doing some tourist stuff and he wasn't kidding. Our route took us to North Pole Alaska, which is a place on the outskirts of Fairbanks where the light poles are shaped and painted like candy canes and there's a a place called Santa's House where its Christmas every day. Inside some of our compatriots took pictures with Santa and did other tourist stuff. Dad and I hung out outside and waited to go.
It was warm so I stripped out my liner (this was the last time I did so) and once back on the highway just past an Air Force base we hit one of the most vicious thunder/hail/rain storms of the trip. I pulled over to put my liner in but got wet because in my haste I hadn't zipped it in completely. At lunch at the Buffalo Drive in at Delta Junction I had a chance to dry out and ate one of the best cheeseburgers I'd ever had. Later that day at a photo stop a fellow rider noticed that my right fork was leaking badly and had soaked the brakes in oil. So we loaded the VStrom up on the trailer and I got upgraded to one of the spares, a BMW F700GS. Ironically my upgrade was caked in dust from the Dalton.
The BMW was a totally different animal. Where the Strom had bouncy suspension the GS had firm sporty suspension with electronic rebound control. Where the Strom had brakes that badly needed service, the brakes on the GS were functional and the ABS non-intrusive. The GS has three engine/traction control settings: rain, road, and enduro, which I tested and was pleased with. The only thing it lacked was good wind protection and a nice seat. I got used to both inadequacies quickly as I turned the last forty miles of the day through curvy paved roads into a test course.
That evening we stopped at the Tangle River Inn, a lodge with cabins on a lack on the Denali Highway, truly in the middle of nowhere. The mosquitoes were so thick you could see the moving clouds of them from a hundred yards and the hot water took some time to get to the shower, but this was one of the nicest stops we made. The view from the dining room, the great staff (only three of them), and did I mention the great views? This is the kind of place you go for isolation, great fishing, or maybe some time truly alone with your significant other.
On the Denali highway the next day the weather tempted me to take my liner out, but I didn't fall for it. Good thing because a few miles in we hit another hail/thunderstorm which was beautiful. I pulled over after the storm and once again photographed people riding by.
We did a little touristing by stopping at world renowned and easy to miss from the road place called the "Sluice Box Saloon", where visitors write on dollar bills and staple them to the walls and ceiling.
Denali had some dangerous points of road construction (there were even signs advising motorcycles that it was dangerous), and as always amazing views of the endless mountains. At the end of the Denali highway was psychologically the end of the adventure. Its strange to say that because we still had quite a bit of riding ahead, and the beautiful views never ended.
Our last night on the road was at a place called the Swiss Alaska Inn. The rooms were nice and the breakfast was fantastic. Dad and I went for a walk the night we got there and a local resident (turned out it was the owner) pointed us to a shortcut to downtown (walk to the blue house and turn left on the ATV trail, then walk over the tracks). Once downtown we found the power out, but that didn't stop the brewery from pouring beer and cooking with gas. We were once again in the warm hospitality of the North.
The last day on the road was slabbing back to Anchorage with a quick stop at the Mt Denali viewpoint.
We got rained on and eventually ended up back in the city traffic. At MotoQuest HQ we were greeted with cold beers and an Uber minivan back to our Hotel. Dad called this day the long goodbye, between the bike check in process, then the last group dinner, then the group walking to the Captain Cook monument to watch the sunset/sunrise.
In closing I'll share the other epiphany I had. In 2018 when Dad rode to the Arctic circle on his overloaded FJR, that was tough and dumb and I'm impressed he did it now that I've ridden that road. The other thought I had, and kept having everywhere we went, is just how hard travel must have been for the gold miners and pioneers before modern equipment. The terrain is just not friendly to wagon travel, the ground is either too soft or too vegetated. They must have been extremely tough and motivated people.
Will I go back? Yes, maybe. Alaska is a beautiful place and I'd like to see more and maybe share it with someone. Will I go back to DeadHorse? Probably not, once is enough.
What didn't I like? The misery and the hurry up and wait. When the group stopped it took forever to get the group and guides going again.
Do I recommend it? Yes and no. If adventure where you're going to be miserable and possibly hurt yourself, and certainly damage your bike is your thing, then go.
Why would anyone want to go up the Dalton? Because the land there is empty and beautiful. Because despite the treacherous road conditions it can be fun riding. Because its literally the road that ends at the arctic ocean and you get to say you've been there and done that.
We had lunch at Yukon Camp, which was really the first "wow that was good" meal on this trip. The burger I had was built on a freshly baked bun and all the ingredients tasted fresh. A far cry from the $20 breakfast at Pike's Landing that included microwaved Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches. After lunch and a Red Bull I felt a lot better from the mud and falling bike of the morning and we pressed on.
The weather had warmed up considerably so I stripped the rain/thermal liners out of my jacket. To teach me a lesson in irony fifty miles later I was treated to an arctic thunderstorm which was as beautiful as it was wet. This pattern would repeat itself a few more times until I just gave up on pulling my liner out and would sweat it out for a few hours until the daily thunderstorm came to cool everything down. Just beyond the thunderstorm was the Arctic Circle monument (a sign) where we stopped again for pictures. It was near the circle I saw the only bear on the trip. It crossed the road quite far ahead of me so I didn't manage a picture.
A few cycles of rain, mud, road construction, and nice packed dirt road and we pulled into Coldfoot Camp. Out here gassing up is quite an ordeal because they don't have card readers on the pumps. You have to go into the store, give them your card, come out and pump, go in and pay. Sounds bad? Now imagine doing that with thirteen riders and a support truck.
Coldfoot Camp like Yukon Camp is a truck stop with modular housing units spread out haphazardly. Sounds awful until you show up beaten up from the road with your morale in the gutter, and your tiny room in the rusting modular housing units has a hot shower waiting for you. The food that night might as well have been prepared by a professional chef.
This far out I was expecting canned and frozen everything but this was fresh food, not freezer section. I suppose that's the advantage of being right on the main shipping lane for food for DeadHorse. With a hot shower and a good meal I felt a lot better but was still quite sore from 200 miles of rough road and worried (OK, scared) of the next day of riding.
It would be lying to say I was having a good time at this point. My dirt riding form is terrible so I was tired out from fighting the bike. I was mentally worn out from being "on" all day. Most of all I was scared that the road ahead would be as bad as the construction zone where I'd dumped my bike. On the bright side though my Scorpion Yosemite gear was keeping me warm and dry, and my belly was full.
After a night of waking up every hour thinking it was dawn and time to get up, it was finally time to get up. Today was the big day, ColdFoot to DeadHorse. The crown jewel of the trip awaited: getting my swag to say I'd been there done that.
The road north of ColdFoot is paved for a few miles and then pleasant packed dirt for a while. Even I was able to maintain pretty good speed until I saw the base of the mountains ahead, and pulled over to let a heavy truck pass. I watched it climbing the pass thankful it wasn't going to ride my tail all the way up, or I wouldn't be breathing its dust. Next was my turn and I ascended the first part of the mountain.
Throttle on, light on the bars, weight on the pegs, let the bike dance.
Going up the hill was only a little treacherous as my bike wiggled and wobbled in the loose gravel. At the top of the first section I found most of the group stopped to regroup and take pictures. Pictures taken we continued on up the pass.
As I reached the top I thought, "wow, the vaunted Atigun pass really wasn't that bad", and then I started down hill. The group was regrouping part way down at a pull out so I aimed my bike at the group and crossed some loose rock and a ditch... and promptly dropped my bike again.
So much for my pride. The other riders helped right my bike and I set about taking pictures. The downhill and the next hour of riding was over loose gravel, ranging from deep ball bearing sized to deep loose baseball sized stones. I knew I was in for another stressful day.
At lunch I discovered another odd quirk of Alaska. When you get a bagged lunch from one of the camps, they give you the components of the sandwich all individually wrapped. Great idea if its in a truck, but stuffed in a pannier it was just as smushed as an already assembled sandwich. Oh well, its still belly fill.
Continuing on from our lunch stop at Galbraith lake we rode over varying road conditions, through construction zones, and left the mountains behind. I won't sugar coat it, this is where Alaska gets ugly. The tundra hadn't greened up yet for the season so we were riding through endless rolling brown terrain. We got to see a herd of Musk Ox though, which was cool. Musk Ox are easy to miss if they're sitting down, they look like a pile of rags.
About seventy miles from DeadHorse I pulled over and plugged in my heated gear. The temperature was dropping from the balmy 60-50s over the tundra to the 40s, and the arctic wind was picking up. We hit some of the worst road construction the last forty miles in, with the surface incredibly loose and hard to maintain stability on. My heated gear kept me toasty, but the wind picked up to the point where it was tossing the bikes around.
By the time I got to DeadHorse Camp on the edge of town I was ready to ride to the airport, dump the bike, and hop on the next flight to Anchorage. The group mostly then rode to the general store for obligatory pictures and to get gas at one of two stations there, which of course we had trouble with the card machine. The photo op and gas stop seemed to stretch into an infinity of misery, I retreated into my shell so I wouldn't demoralize the others. Eventually we made it back to DeadHorse Camp and I degeared. Once again the simple accommodations were really all that I wanted.
At dinner I found another one of those quirks of the North Slope, they ask you to use hand sanitizer and glove up before serving yourself in the buffet line. The reason being that if oil workers who fly in for two weeks at a time and work twelve hour days get sick from the buffet line it costs the company quite a bit of money. Once again, the food was excellent. I had roast lamb and all the fixings, and some surprisingly good carrot cake.
I must say that all the camp staff, the general store workers, and even a handful of oil workers we ran into in DeadHorse were all quite hospitable to us. Even when we were bumbling around with our minds half frozen they politely pointed us to the right door or told us where to go.
With my stomach full and better mood I had an epiphany about adventure riding. We are doing this difficult thing which could result in our injury or death, which at any point we could throw in the towel, load our bikes on the support truck and quit. But the reward of the scenery, knowing that you'd really rode all the way to where the road ends, and the feeling of experiencing new and different things, you can't necessarily get from an "easy" touring trip. You don't know what you're made of until you choose not to run away.
When I get home most of my non-rider friends ask how my trip went and then their eyes glaze over after a minute of me talking about the mountains and the difficulties, because they don't get it. They say "Hey Tim, are you some kind of danger Junky?" But I can't even answer them. They don't get that its about the internal struggle between the easy path and the hard path. They don't get that its about meeting people from different walks of life in a different time and place. They don't understand what its like having someone you met forty eight hours ago pull your bike off of you and ask if you're OK, and really care, because we have the tenuous bond of adventure.
That night the wind may have howled, and the sun never set, but I slept like a rock. In the morning we boarded a tour bus and learned about how the town and the oil fields operate. This was the off season in DeadHorse due to the low price of oil and because it was summer. During the summer they can't move heavy equipment to certain sites because there are no permanent roads across most of the tundra, and this must be done on ice roads built during the winter. The most important part of this tour was the point where we stopped at the ocean and touched it. With that ceremonial act done we loaded the bus and went back to the camp to gear up for the day. Knowing that I'd have to ride back over the same windy, muddy, loose, roads while dodging big rigs and road graters, I was not looking forward to it.
I can say that the way back wasn't nearly as bad. Some of the awful construction zones were less awful, although due to one of those muddy stretches I couldn't pull over to photograph the only caribou herd I saw on the entire trip. After two days on bad roads I was starting to get the hang of it, that might have contributed to it not being as bad. At one rest stop we ran across a rider heading north to Prudhoe from of all places Portland, Oregon. He'd sold all his possessions, quit his job, and set out on the road to ride to the top (Prudhoe) and then to the bottom (Tierra Del Fuego). Like Cortez burning his ships, this man had no easy out button if it proved to be too much. His level of commitment was somewhat higher than ours, with our support truck.
At lunch Dad asked me to jackrabbit ahead and get pictures of him riding standing on the pegs up the pass, so I did so and got pictures of most everyone else too.
On the other side of the pass I stopped to photograph the bike next to a river, with mountains on either side, and a thunderstorm ahead. After riding through the arctic wind on mud, riding the last twenty miles in a rainstorm on packed dirt and pavement was so easy I had to chant my other mantra: complacency kills.
That night in Coldfoot was the emotional high point of the trip. We'd survived the Dalton highway all the way to DeadHorse. Even though we still had to backtrack on the Dalton another two hundred miles south, it was the slightly easier section. Even the road construction had improved on two of the really bad areas that we'd hit on the way up, and the delays were minor. At the end of the Dalton my luggage rack failed, fortunately we had a support truck, so my panniers and broken rack went on the truck. Hooray for a lighter bike.
We made it back to the outskirts of Fairbanks and slabbed out through a beautiful river valley to Chena Hot Springs. By this point I was mentally shot and standing in line to clean Dalton dust off my radiator nearly drove me mad.
The Chena Hot Springs Resort is what I'd call Disneyfied Alaska. This place is for people who want their Alaskan adventure packaged up and delivered to them by bored teenagers in a organized and sterile setting. The rooms were 5 star compared to the ColdFoot and DeadHorse Camps, but the place just lacked personality. Where the hospitality of the North was warm, the hospitality here was cooler. At this resort you have to pay extra to get into the hot springs, which is an artificially created rock lake the spring is fed into. All complaints aside I felt a lot better after a dip in the rock lake.
At the ride briefing the next day our guide said we were doing some tourist stuff and he wasn't kidding. Our route took us to North Pole Alaska, which is a place on the outskirts of Fairbanks where the light poles are shaped and painted like candy canes and there's a a place called Santa's House where its Christmas every day. Inside some of our compatriots took pictures with Santa and did other tourist stuff. Dad and I hung out outside and waited to go.
It was warm so I stripped out my liner (this was the last time I did so) and once back on the highway just past an Air Force base we hit one of the most vicious thunder/hail/rain storms of the trip. I pulled over to put my liner in but got wet because in my haste I hadn't zipped it in completely. At lunch at the Buffalo Drive in at Delta Junction I had a chance to dry out and ate one of the best cheeseburgers I'd ever had. Later that day at a photo stop a fellow rider noticed that my right fork was leaking badly and had soaked the brakes in oil. So we loaded the VStrom up on the trailer and I got upgraded to one of the spares, a BMW F700GS. Ironically my upgrade was caked in dust from the Dalton.
The BMW was a totally different animal. Where the Strom had bouncy suspension the GS had firm sporty suspension with electronic rebound control. Where the Strom had brakes that badly needed service, the brakes on the GS were functional and the ABS non-intrusive. The GS has three engine/traction control settings: rain, road, and enduro, which I tested and was pleased with. The only thing it lacked was good wind protection and a nice seat. I got used to both inadequacies quickly as I turned the last forty miles of the day through curvy paved roads into a test course.
That evening we stopped at the Tangle River Inn, a lodge with cabins on a lack on the Denali Highway, truly in the middle of nowhere. The mosquitoes were so thick you could see the moving clouds of them from a hundred yards and the hot water took some time to get to the shower, but this was one of the nicest stops we made. The view from the dining room, the great staff (only three of them), and did I mention the great views? This is the kind of place you go for isolation, great fishing, or maybe some time truly alone with your significant other.
On the Denali highway the next day the weather tempted me to take my liner out, but I didn't fall for it. Good thing because a few miles in we hit another hail/thunderstorm which was beautiful. I pulled over after the storm and once again photographed people riding by.
We did a little touristing by stopping at world renowned and easy to miss from the road place called the "Sluice Box Saloon", where visitors write on dollar bills and staple them to the walls and ceiling.
Denali had some dangerous points of road construction (there were even signs advising motorcycles that it was dangerous), and as always amazing views of the endless mountains. At the end of the Denali highway was psychologically the end of the adventure. Its strange to say that because we still had quite a bit of riding ahead, and the beautiful views never ended.
Our last night on the road was at a place called the Swiss Alaska Inn. The rooms were nice and the breakfast was fantastic. Dad and I went for a walk the night we got there and a local resident (turned out it was the owner) pointed us to a shortcut to downtown (walk to the blue house and turn left on the ATV trail, then walk over the tracks). Once downtown we found the power out, but that didn't stop the brewery from pouring beer and cooking with gas. We were once again in the warm hospitality of the North.
The last day on the road was slabbing back to Anchorage with a quick stop at the Mt Denali viewpoint.
We got rained on and eventually ended up back in the city traffic. At MotoQuest HQ we were greeted with cold beers and an Uber minivan back to our Hotel. Dad called this day the long goodbye, between the bike check in process, then the last group dinner, then the group walking to the Captain Cook monument to watch the sunset/sunrise.
In closing I'll share the other epiphany I had. In 2018 when Dad rode to the Arctic circle on his overloaded FJR, that was tough and dumb and I'm impressed he did it now that I've ridden that road. The other thought I had, and kept having everywhere we went, is just how hard travel must have been for the gold miners and pioneers before modern equipment. The terrain is just not friendly to wagon travel, the ground is either too soft or too vegetated. They must have been extremely tough and motivated people.
Will I go back? Yes, maybe. Alaska is a beautiful place and I'd like to see more and maybe share it with someone. Will I go back to DeadHorse? Probably not, once is enough.
What didn't I like? The misery and the hurry up and wait. When the group stopped it took forever to get the group and guides going again.
Do I recommend it? Yes and no. If adventure where you're going to be miserable and possibly hurt yourself, and certainly damage your bike is your thing, then go.
Great story and great writing! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. Great story and as a former v-Strom owner who took it off road once, it was crazy to use that bike for a trip like that.
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