The Dempster Canada's road to the Arctic

Don Bromfield took a look at one of Canada’s newest all-weather roads.

- Don Bromfield

November of 2017 saw the opening of the final 140km of The Dempster Highway from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk – ‘Tuk’ – on the Arctic Ocean in Canada’s North West Territories.

Previously this stretch had been an ice road open only in winter, but four years of construction and $320 million completed a full 850km of gravel from near Dawson City, The Yukon’s famous Klondike goldrush town, to the First Nations settlement of Tuktoyaktuk, way above the Arctic Circle. Running parallel to Alaska’s famed Dalton Highway, the Dempster has the advantage of far less traffic and the real bonus of being able to ride a bike into the Arctic Ocean, unlike the Dalton which needs a frustrating bus ride for the final few kilometres.

Sad story

The weather gods smiled on us as we fuelled our bikes.

Joe, my riding mate from Tacoma, had his 800 Tiger and I the KLR at Mile Zero, near Dawson City, before heading north on a great compacted-gravel surface. Our first stop was to be the Tombstone Territorial Park Interpretive Centre 70km away.

Cruising the wide, smooth, gravel road at 80kph was good practice for the 1700km we had to cover before our return to Dawson. As we’d both only just purchased our bikes and ridden up on bitumen roads, the forgiving nature of the surface gave us an easy introduction to the bikes’ gravel manners.

The jagged skyline of the Tombstone Range at the head of the North Klondike River greeted us at the lookout a little further up the road. This area was popular with hikers and saw quite a deal of traffic. That traffic lessened the further north we travelled.

The next section of road saw us climbing into the area of the Blackstone Uplands, known for Dall sheep and the tragic story of the patrol, which, in the winter of 1910-1911, lost its way travelling south from Fort McPherson. All members of the group perished.

Eyes Peeled