“Howdy, buddy,” crackled a voice over the CB radio. “I'm right behind you, and
I'm not gonna be able to stop as I slide down the hill over the ridge
ahead.”
I looked up from the passenger seat to see the entire rear-view mirror filled
with a monster juggernaut fender powering towards us in a cloud of dust.
“I'd be grateful,” continued the hoary voice, “if you could pull over to let
me pass.” That would be yes, then.
An everyday occurrence on the Dalton Highway, one of the greatest road
journeys on Earth. Beginning not far from Fairbanks in northern Alaska, this
660km (414-mile) über-road crosses both the Yukon River and Arctic Circle,
finally running out of land on a lonely coastline a good deal nearer Siberia
than anywhere else.
The only overground route to the Arctic Ocean, the Dalton bisects one of the
last true wildernesses on the planet, an Arctic Serengeti teeming with
wildlife. But the highway owes its existence to technology, since it was
dreamt up in the 1970s purely to facilitate the mighty Trans-Alaska crude
oil pipeline.
I drove the Dalton in mid-September with Jeannie, a Wisconsin native who has
worked the oilfields for several years. Meaty as a wrestler, she was an old
hand on the haul road and a steadying presence when the 18-wheelers hurtled
past, catapulting rocks within inches of our windscreen. For the first
couple of hours we rolled through birch, already gilt-edged, stands of
aspen, cottonwood and black and white evergreen spruce.
The highway's silvery companion - the 48in diameter pipeline mostly running
overground on 10ft stilts - proceeded alongside us in a majestic zigzag, a
formation that protects it against earthquake damage. In fact, the pipeline
is much longer than the Dalton, decanting at Valdez, the northernmost
harbour that avoids freezing in the Alaskan winter.
Before oil, it was gold that lured the white man to the Alaskan
hinterland.From the turn of the 19th century to the Second World War,
old-timers from the Lower 48 prospected among the White Mountains around
Fairbanks. Their irrigation ditches are still visible, criss-crossing the
valleys on either side of the Dalton. The highway was built later to carry
goods to and from the gushing oil rigs at Prudhoe Bay and their adjacent
service town of Deadhorse. It was named after James W. Dalton, an Alaskan
mining engineer, but, as Jeannie pointed out, “it's always been the Haul
Road to us truckers”. In 1981 it was opened to limited public traffic.
Since 1994 access has been unrestricted and the road maintained bythe Alaskan
transport department. In winter they flood the surface with water mixed with
gravel to create a smooth, hard surface with good traction; in summer, they
pack it with calcium.
But it's tough, lonely going, whatever the season. We had already seen a
couple of moose and a stream of migrating caribou when, at mile 73, we
stopped under roiling cumulo-nimbus to wait for a young grizzly to get up
from the middle of the road. This is good hunting land, but if you want to
use firearms rather than a bow, you have to walk off the highway for at
least five miles and hunt the backcountry.
The Yukon River is a potent toponym in the history of the American far north,
and here at the Dalton it lives up to its legend. To European eyes a mighty
Everest of a river, it surges through a 3,000ft-wide gorge. We had set out
from Fairbanks in warmish autumn conditions, but around the Yukon the
temperature dropped suddenly.
One of the engineering challenges for the road builders was the extraordinary
temperature range in these parts: between 32C (90F) and minus 50C. The
Dalton's Yukon bridge, which slopes and has the pipeline strapped to its
side, has a differential of 2ft to allow for contraction and expansion. The
permafrost in northern Alaska goes down more than a mile. Barred access to
the fertile soil, most of the spruce are stunted. Life is different up here.
We stopped at the Arctic Circle and picnicked on wild cranberries and salmon
jerky smoked by Jeannie in her backyard (she called it “squaw candy”),
pestered throughout by glossy grey Canadian jays, appositely nicknamed camp
robbers. An hour later, at mile 175, we hit Coldfoot, a settlement
resembling a derelict car park and the last petrol station for 239 miles
(the camp was named after prospectors who got cold feet and turned back).
Here we ate pork belly soup in a truckstop café made from containers
abandoned by the road construction crews. After Coldfoot the valleys
deepened. The forest ended and North Slope tundra began, filmed with ice and
sparkling with carmine bearberries. Northern harriers and rough-legged hawks
circled above a flock of dreadlocked wild Dall sheep.
At the 4,800ft Atigun Pass we straddled the eastern flank of the Brooks Range.
For the first time, full slopes of ice foreshadowed the imminent big freeze.
On either side the mountains folded backwards in smudged gradations of blue
and purple, while close by flocks of ptarmigan hopped in a great collective
whirring among low, stumpy willow bushes antlered with frost. In the
westering light of early evening, alpenglow transformed the blunt tops of
the Brooks, and soon the Northern Lights were flickering across the shadowy
Arctic sky, a rippling, fluorescent curtain that came and went strangely,
almost until dawn.
As the battle for ownership of the Arctic intensifies, the US Government has
indicated that it wants to invest in this, its only Arctic frontier. For
months the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner has bristled with stories about
unseasonably warm regional temperatures, and the shrinkage of the Arctic ice
cap last year opened up the North-West Passage for the first time.
The heady emptiness of the Dalton, meanwhile, appears impervious to change. As
the mountains ended, we entered luminous Arctic flatlands shrouded in the
aspirin haze of autumn. Jeannie bantered about the road conditions with a
passing trucker. She suggested that in a few days, wheel chains would be
required. “Yep,” agreed her interlocutor, “reckon it's the last time we'll
go barefoot this year.”
Deadhorse was a ratty ex-mining settlement only 15 miles from the unsightly
oil works of Prudhoe Bay. We had been on the road for 11 hours.
“What keeps you here?” I asked Jeannie as we drank weak coffee at the general
store before saying goodbye. “It's not what's here,” she said. “It's what's
not here.”
Need to know
A public van service, the Dalton Highway Express (001 907 474 3555, www.daltonhighwayexpress.com),
runs twice weekly between Fairbanks to Deadhorse from June to August. The
500-mile journey takes 16 hours one way and costs about $214 (about £110).
The company offers add-ons, including tours of Prudhoe Bay and camping trips
in the Brooks Range. The Arctic Caribou Inn (001 907 659 2368, e-mail arcticcaribouinn@nana.com)
organises tours to the edge of the Arctic Ocean, passing through the BP oil
facilities at Prudhoe Bay for $36 with a night's accommodation.
Most vehicle rental agencies in Fairbanks do not allow travel on the Dalton
Highway. One that does is Arctic Outfitters (001 907 474 3530, www.arctic-outfitters.com),
which will advise on travelling the highway and offers winter tours. See
also Go North (001 907 479 7272, www.gonorthalaska.com)
for tours of the Brooks Range and camping van rentals for trips up the
Dalton.
A "more than equal" journey may be had by traversing the Alaska Hwy. from Dawson Creek B.C. to just past Whitehorse, Yukon, and heading the 500km north to Dawson City; the hub of 1898 gold fever. Leaving "Dodge" (what Dawson City, Yukon, is called by locals) one may head north up the Dempster Hwy., after a ferry or winter ice road across the mighty Yukon River. The Dempster is what the Dalton can only hope to be. Google that, if you dare.
Tony Tross, Whitehorse, Yukon