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October 4, 2009
Day Seven
Sunday September 20, 2009
With a cloudy sky and cloudy heads, we packed up camp and headed into town for some breakfast/brunch....come to think of it might have been lunch when we finally made it into town. There was a great little cafe open and we were lucky enough to catch them on their last day of the season (we seem to have a knack for that). After the meals and what had to be five or six cups of coffee, we headed past 'Authors on 8th' (the cabins of Robert Service and Jack London; we didn't see Pierre Berton's) and left the historic downtown to venture up the Dome, a rounded peak overlooking the town with an access road right to the summit. Unfortunately, like the Top of the World, the peak was so high up that when we got there we were surrounded by cloud cover. Descending halfway down the mountain to a pullout gave us a view of the giant caterpillar-like piles of gravel left from the dredge's search for gold.
Before finally leaving the last traces of services and stores for several hundred kilometres, we made sure to stop in at one of the great general stores of the north. These places truly carry on the name and the role of the ole time general store. They carry groceries, tools, automotive supplies, and sometimes booze. Our reason for shopping was a second jack. Our experience with helping change a tire on the way to 'the Junction' and the prospect of driving the lonely expanse of the Dempster was enough to convince me that a second jack was a better investment than trying to count on wood or rocks to prop things up while relocating the OEM jack to a lower lifting point. It all sounds a bit redundant but I've changed tires in every sort of weather from the scorching heat of Central Australia to the cold rain of a Canadian autumn and I can honestly say that digging in dirt and mud to fit a jack under a lift point is time consuming and the quickest way to ruin a good travelling day.
Enough preaching though - back to the day's travels. A 30km drive from Dawson is the beginning of the Dempster Highway. Naturally we stopped to get that classic photo of the Dempster sign and read about some of the sites on the info panels....we also had little choice as two large trucks were coming off the highway and the bridge was only a single lane. The first section of the Dempster looks very much like the rest of the Yukon. Hills and mountains, a gravel road following a fast-flowing creek and the bright oranges and yellows of birches in autumn. After 45 minutes or so you enter Tombstone Territorial Park.
Tombstone lies in a transition area. The road wound its way up through the hills, leaving the forested valley behind. What lay before us now was an open tundra plain, skirted by red-coated mountains and filled with low-lying shrubs and lakes. The Demptser Highway, on its 2m berm base, snaked off into the horizon presenting us with a point B barely visible and a thousand picture opportunities ahead of point A.
After many km's of driving and many pictures, the tundra plain was left behind us and we crossed through a range of hills that were snowcapped already. The road descended into another valley, this time framed by black shale cliffs on the westward side and a winding river towards the east. It was at this point that we had our first grizzly spotting. It was a medium sized bear that was foraging for berries or grubs at the side of the road. We drove by slowly and the bear was happy to pose for a few shots.
We continued on and once again the landscape changed as we climbed up towards Ogilvie Ridge and we found ourselves surrounded by rolling hills sparsely covered in short, scraggly conifers. The weather changed dramatically at this point as well, with rain and snow trading turns at pelting down and turning the road to a mess. The previously beautiful, hard packed gravel was replaced with two slushy ruts and a center island of dirt that threatened to scrape at the undercarriage. Visibility was low and for the sake of added control we drove for the first time in 4WD. We plodded along at no more than 60km/h but it paid off where others had issues - a Dodge Ram was spotted off the road, a victim of a nasty slide and a rollover. In the mud coating the driver's door was a simple message - "OK". We eventually made it to the Eagle Plains roadhouse where 5cm of snow and sub-zero temperatures easily convinced us that the price of a room (although expensive) was much better than camping.
A stop in the pub found us chatting to the bloke who'd had the rollover as well as an Australian who'd made it to the Arctic Circle on his motorcycle but been forced to cut short his journey to Inuvik due to the inclement weather. Apparently it is a sketchy situation when ice on a hill leads to a bike sliding downhill on an uphill journey. I did not envy his trip, although I give him kudos for attempting it.
End of day seven
Posted by Dr.Unk at October 4, 2009 2:38 AM
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