The Dempster Highway was originally conceived as part of a "roads to resources" project envisaged by Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker in the late 1950s. He wanted to reassert control over Canada's natural resources, and open up the Canadian north. This particular highway was to be an all-weather road, reaching up into the Arctic Circle: an ambitious and challenging task that ended up 20 times over budget and 16 years late, being completed in 1979, two days after the death of the man who had envisioned it.
The challenges involved in building an all-weather road in such a hostile environment were enormous. First of all an insulating gravel pad was laid down to prevent the permafrost from melting (in the same way that the foundations of houses can warp if the permafrost beneath them melts, so would the road warp). In places this pad is 8 feet thick. Instead of dark tarmac, the surface was covered with light stone and dirt to reflect the sunlight. Bridges were built over rivers, and ferries put in place in the two areas where bridges weren't feasible.
In the end the Dempster runs almost 500 miles from the North Klondike Highway in the Yukon, to Inuvik in the North West Territories. But it's the landscape that it passes through which, I'd read, makes this one of the world's greatest road trips.
My problem in incorporating the Dempster Highway into this holiday was one of temporal logistics. Everything I'd read about it said I should do it, but at the same time it was going to take two days to go up it one way, and two days to go down it the other way, because when you get to Inuvik there's nothing else you can do but turn around and come back again. Also, I'd read that the road was only paved for the first 8 km, after that it's just packed dirt. I'd read of punctures, of no phone signals, no mechanical or fuel services until you reach Eagle Plains over 200 miles from the start. It seemed overly daunting, and in the end I decided it couldn't be that spectacular a drive; seriously, 457 miles of difficult road, gravel, mud, danger... could it be worth it?
But I did want to see what the road was like, and so I'd put aside one day of our holiday to travel some way up it. Today was that day. We took the continental breakfast for a healthy change (I dread to think how many eggs and how much bacon I've eaten over the last couple of weeks), then loaded up Arthur and set off. The beginning of the Dempster is about 20 miles back along the Klondike Highway, past Dawson City Airport. At the entrance to the highway is a sign, and a foreboding looking bridge. It's like heading through the Paths Of The Dead.
I was bothered about Arthur, too. When we took him up Keno Hill earlier in the holiday, it had been a really difficult drive for him, and I didn't want to ride him that hard again. It turned out that the Dempster - even after the first paved 8 km - wasn't too bad at all; in fact it was rather like the road between Mayo and Keno. Taken at a steady pace, it was very comfortable.
My initial impression was that the view from the road was similar to the views from other roads we've driven on in Canada. There were mountains in the background, and those damnable trees everywhere. You develop a kind of Cylon Eyes way of scanning the road ahead when driving in Canada, sweeping the tree line from side to side, watching in case something jumps out in front of you. I've seen plenty of rubber skid marks in the road where someone has had to brake sharply to avoid (or at least hopefully avoid) some wildlife that has broken cover. And so it was for the first 20 or so miles of the Dempster Highway. "Is this it?" I thought to myself.
Then the land begins to change. The trees drop away, and distant mountain ranges appear. This is the start of the darkly named Tombstone Territorial Park, where the North Klondike Mountains merge in with the Tombstone Range. The beautifully clear sky we had today let us see for miles, the landscape impossibly large and distant. Before too long you come upon the Tombstone Territorial Park Visitor Centre, a building fashioned to make minimal impact on the environment. There we stopped for a quick break and a look around, then continued on into the Blackstone Uplands.
And it's here that the Dempster starts to take you by the throat and shake you.
The road slowly twists and turns, revealing new views and mountain ranges, or deep valleys that stretch off into a distance you can barely comprehend. You trade places with the (few) fellow travellers on the highway, each of you stopping in different roadside pullouts to try and photograph some eye-straining panoramas.
Awe is something that you feel, but then it wears off; what happens on the Dempster Highway is that awe is continually renewed with each fresh view. It's almost tiring to be so repeatedly bombarded with such wonderful expanses of nature.
We came upon Two Moose Lake, and I grumbled as I saw an RV pulled in by the side of the road. I thought he was taking a picture of the lake, but as I crept past him I glanced right and saw an adult moose in the bushes. I pulled in slowly and stopped, and we all watched the creature munching and shifting through the undergrowth. And then - well, it was Two Moose Lake after all - a young moose appeared, hopping quickly after its mother, slipping in and out of view. "It's kinda neat, eh?" said the driver of the RV, summing it up perfectly. Sandra had tears running down her cheeks. It made the holiday for me.
Letting the two moose slip back into the bushes, we drove on, stopping a bit further on to eat lunch, both lost in our own thoughts among the massive landscape. I was beginning to see how this road could be an amazing road trip after all, how the two day there and two day back journey could well be worth taking... but that had to be tempered with the fact that, back at the Tombstone Visitor Centre, they'd had information that the highway was washed out in three separate places further north, victim of mountain rains.
We drove on, into the Taiga Range of mountains, an odd range with trees up one side but strangely bald on the other. Their light grey colour was so different to any other mountains we'd seen so far; this far north, and this high up, this is tundra, where vegetation is scant and low-growing. And so at last we came to a point where, reluctantly, we had to turn around and head back. Barely 100 miles we'd made it up the Dempster, only a fifth of the way, so many amazing sights we hadn't been able to see.
On the way back we came upon a deer, standing out in an open tract of land. We stopped and photographed it, it watched us photographing it. We waited for it to do something interesting, it waited for us to do something interesting. In the end we left it alone, and drove on.
We got back to Dawson about 7 pm and filled up with fuel. The 12 year old lad in the gas station asked if we were having a good day, and I told him we were, and that we'd been part of the way up the Dempster Highway that day. "R-sum, so now you have a dirty vehicle?" Indeed, it's true that Arthur has been blooded, finally he's as filthy as some of the other cars we've seen.
For our last night in Dawson we ate once more at the hotel, on the decking in the blazing sunshine, me drinking Yukon Gold and Sandra drinking something she can't pronounce (it's Pinot Grigio). What a great place this has been. It seems to have two hearts, one that beats to the rhythm of the tourists, and one that resolutely beats to the rhythm of the residents, come what may. Good on them, I like that. It speaks of the character and strength that made this place survive when it could easily have dried up and blown away after the Klondike Gold Rush.
Tomorrow we move on to the last stage of our trip. As for the Dempster Highway... yeah, I get it now.
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