PA1: The Dalton Hwy

Having spent the best part of two days waiting around in various airport terminals and sitting in four planes I finally reached Deadhorse on the North Slope of Alaska.

Deadhorse airport is not exactly Gatwick; luggage is loaded into the bucket of a digger, which drives to baggage collection and then deposits them onto a large sloped metal plate in front of you. 

Deadhorse is solely a residence for the various oil companies and their staff. Chatting to different workers I established that they get contracted for example 5 weeks on, 2 weeks off, or 3 weeks on, 1 week off etc. They work every day of their ‘on’ weeks. No weekend breaks. There is absolutely nothing to do in Deadhorse besides eat and sleep anyway. They work 10 to 12 hour shifts and make an awful lot of money. Oil is the lifeblood of the state of Alaska. 

All the camps (hotels) offer a 24 hour all-you-can-eat buffet. Workers are either ‘day sleepers’ or ‘night sleepers’ (an abstract concept in summer with 24 hour daylight) depending on their shift, so there is always someone either fueling up for a shift or winding down after one. Everyone covers their shoes with plastic booties to prevent muck getting indoors and you have to put on disposable gloves before you can touch anything edible. Camps also have a ‘spike room’ where you help yourself to anything you might need during the day. There are no grocery stores. No alcohol is allowed in Deadhorse; the combination of hungover workers and heavy machinery isn’t a great one. 

Obviously workers rotating in from a break try to smuggle in booze. I heard one guy talk about how he snuck in a case of whisky which was unfortunately smashed during baggage handling and leaked everywhere at the airport.

The post office didn’t open until 13:00, so I had a bit of time to kill before I could get my supplies and start pedalling. Since the roads north to the oilfields are restricted access, I was pretty much limited to exploring the tracks inside Deadhorse. It took all of half an hour to ride around the whole camp. Everything appears to be constructed from shipping containers or similar. Essentially whatever can be loaded onto the back of a truck and driven up the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks. Because of the boggy nature of the environment, everything is built upon a foundation of gravel, which rises above the level of the surrounding land.

Having made the most of the buffet and rammed as many supplies as I could fit inside my bear canister, it was time to head south. The first 50 miles or so of the Dalton are paved, so I had a pretty smooth start. The weather was around 15-17 degrees and sunny. A nice day out. Not at all a Jack London style slog through a screaming arctic blizzard for me!

Immediately I was surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes. Not the mini ones you get in the UK that sneak a little bite in without you noticing, but big black blighters that have a sturdy proboscis intended to pierce the hide of a caribou or moose. You feel every bite. It didn’t take too long for a relatively calm and rational person to descend into fits of flailing around madly trying to swat assailants, swerving all over the road as a result.

First I tried pedalling faster to escape the buggers. I was lucky to have a cyclist’s best friend, a following wind pushing me along. Unfortunately this also assisted the mozzies to keep pace with my efforts.

Thoroughly demoralised, I wondered what kind of moron would try to cycle from Alaska to Argentina. I had only done 30 miles or so.

As far as the eye can see there is just the road, flat boggy tundra and the Sag river meandering nearer and further away.  Every 15 minutes or so a big truck comes past, but otherwise I’m alone. You can see them coming for minutes in advance and the sound of their engines carries for miles.

Due to the heat the horizon shimmers. In the distance I began to make out a shape, not a truck or a car, but a vertical shape eventually resolving itself into a cyclist. They seemed to take an age to get within speaking distance. 

Ross, an American from Washington state, had just cycled here from Argentina. It took him 4 years, including 2 years stuck in Colombia while COVID raged around the world. He had also spent a fair bit of time off the bike just hanging around places.

Ross had an old mountain bike from the 1990s, onto which he had fashioned his own panniers, made from those big plastic buckets you get in hardware shops full of tile grout or plaster. I reckon his entire rig probably cost him less than 250 dollars to put together. He had the look of a real vagabond with baggy trousers and a button up shirt a couple of sizes too large, kind of hippy style. Hair tied back in a man bun. By comparison I felt like I was trying too hard with all my fancy expedition kit.

I quizzed him about his journey up the Dalton and whether he had seen any big furry predators around. Apparently there were some musk oxen down in the mountains, which were smokey from several forest fires around Fairbanks.

We went our separate ways. His journey of 4 years about to end, mine barely off the ground and hanging by a thread.

I camped after 50 miles. The tundra is too boggy to pitch on, so I found a bit of a gravel side path.

The next day the paved road ended and the hills started. My loaded bike still felt far too heavy and I managed to jam the chain between the cassette and spokes a couple of times, inevitably requiring me to reach down, grab the chain and pull it out. Needed to adjust my rear derailleur a bit.

Another photo of a dirt road and a bicycle. The Sagavanirktok river, or ‘Sag’ in the background.

Mosquitoes continued to be the bane of my existence. I met my first moose fly (horse fly), which immediately tried to take a chunk out of my hand. Unlike the mozzies, wind doesn’t seem to keep them away as well and swatting at them does nothing. They also hurt a lot more than a mosquito bite.

Mosquitoes and moose flies are often cited as the reason Alaska is so unpopulated, despite the fact that the US government offers a cash incentive to any family relocating here. Apparently it’s a similar situation with midges in Scottish Highlands.

A lot of the herding behaviours of moose and caribou have been linked to the activity of insects. A significant amount of blood can be lost from an animal over a day of getting bitten, which will have a tangible impact on the survival chances of the individual.

Not all of the wildlife wanted to drink my blood. I saw my first long-tailed jaeger, which is a beautiful seabird with a unusual looking long tail. Apparently they spend most of the year out on the ocean but come onto land during the summer to hunt. 

I met a caribou, which kept running ahead of me and stopping, then getting scared and running away again, trying to cross the road but unwilling to let me get close. No sign of a herd.

Spotted a few musk oxen with their young by the river side. They look a bit like a buffalo that hasn’t splashed out the cash on a haircut for several years. 

There were plenty of arctic ground squirrels, which apparently have the longest hibernation time of any animal on Earth, 8 months.

One of the oil workers pulled up next to me and told me there was a wolf down at pump 3, but it shouldn’t be a problem because it had just eaten a caribou. Unfortunately I didn’t see it.

Made about 55 miles and began looking for a campsite. Saw a guy by the roadside holding a stop sign. Because of the distances involved and how deserted it was, we had minutes to regard each other while I slowly pedalled closer, which was somewhat awkward. 

Apparently there were roadworks ahead and I couldn’t pedal through until they stopped work. 

It started raining. I was planning to camp soon anyway, so I did a u-turn and set up my tent about 500m back from him. 

The next day I confidently pedalled out of camp and came upon the exact same bloke and his stop sign.

Apparently once again I definitely couldn’t pedal through due to road work and I needed to get a lift from a worker’s truck. I could wait around 11 hours until they finished again, or just accept the free ride and live with it. 

I considered the implications of sacrificing my claim to having pedalled every mile to Argentina, against the convenient choice of just bunging my bike in the back of the pickup and getting on with my life. 

I must have smelled pretty bad by now, so it wasn’t a huge favour to the driver. We had a good natter about life on the North Slope and how crappy the mosquitoes were. Apparently one of her colleagues had already made 150 thousand dollars and he had only taken the job this summer. Did I go wrong somewhere in choosing a career in education?

We laughed at the poor guys working on the road with shovels absolutely crawling with mosquitoes, but at least they were getting paid well for it. Unlike some idiots who came here just to pedal down the road…

Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to since arriving in Alaska assumed I’m planning to visit Denali national park, considered one of the most majestic in the United States. In the south another attraction is the Kenai peninsula, with it’s glaciers and seaside towns.

My planned route, aimed at squeezing all of North America into 90 days, turns left at Fairbanks and runs into Canada. 

I could beetle on with a route that made sense to me sitting in front of Google maps back at home, trying to make an inflexible plan work, or I could abandon my schedule and dive into the natural beauty of Alaska, with the intention of somehow making up the distance in some fashion later on. Considering that I burned all that jet fuel getting here and I probably won’t make it all the way out to Alaska again, I decided to stop worrying about pacing the miles and start just going with the flow. Who gives a damn, I’m supposed to be having a great time enjoying the good stuff and being free.

About the same time as I had this revelation I entered the Brooks mountain range. Mountain views on either side reminded me why I love touring; The fact that my little legs spinning round can get me to a place so beautiful always blows my mind.

The wind picked up and I stopped getting mosquitoes on me for the first time in 3 days. Absolute bliss. I found a stream and splashed some water on myself without worrying about getting bitten all over. 

The mountains became progressively more dramatic over the course of the day until I found myself at the bottom of the Atigun pass. Not wanting to finish my day hauling myself over a mountain range I decided to plonk down my tent at the bottom and make my move in the morning.

Kai, a guy I chatted to by the roadside had helpfully told me that the pass ‘goes waaay up man, like waaay up there’. An oil worker in Deadhorse had said that I would enjoy the descent on the other side of Atigun, which I took to mean that I would hate the climb.

After a lay in and a leisurely breakfast I took a stab at Atigun. It wasn’t my cleanest run at a mountain; I kept stopping and starting, leaning on the bars panting and over thinking how much further to go, before setting on up again. I did pedal every bit of the climb though. 

I really did enjoy the descent on the other side, which kept going for about 40 miles after the mountain pass. An occasional hill was followed by another long descent where I could click into top gear and spin away happily.

Suddenly, there were trees! I never fully appreciated how much trees make the countryside until I saw my first spruce after days of tundra. It felt like I was returning to Earth after living on some alien planet.

I plonked down my camp about 20 miles short of Coldfoot, where I could look forward to hot food from the all-you-can-eat buffet, flushing toilets and running water (and perhaps a nice cold beer?).

Coldfoot is set up as a stop for the big trucks, roughly halfway from Fairbanks. In summer it is a natural overnight stop for motorised tourists heading up the Dalton Highway. Lots of motorcycles, 4x4s and camper vans. 

Unfortunately I had arrived the day after 4th July and apparently a bunch of bikers had drunk up all the beer. I almost fell to my knees and howled.

I stayed the rest of the 5th and all of the next day just sitting around eating the buffet and doing basic chores like laundry and tweaking bits and pieces on the bike

You get to meet all kinds of travellers on the Dalton. People who have come up from Oklahoma, Los Angeles, Brazil, Mexico or even Argentina are funnelled into this narrow corridor as they approach the most northerly point of their journey.

The majority are motorcyclists. Because they can’t fly their bikes up to Deadhorse they mostly ride all the way up here from their home state, then doodle around Alaska a bit and head back down again. Most have come up through the same roads I’m planning for Canada, so I’ve been able to glean lots of information about the conditions I can expect.

A passing comment like ‘I didn’t see much water for quite a few miles on this stretch’ can be really useful for my planning.

The adventure motorcycle crowd are kindred spirits despite the fact they deal in horsepower rather than Mars bars; most of them give me a wave and a beep of the horn as they come past. Sometimes I get a first punch in the air in encouragement when I’m slogging up a hill.

I met Scott and Andy, who had come up to ride the Dalton, see a bit of Alaska and then return home again. We had a natter in Coldfoot before they went North and then they caught up with me pedalling south and handed me a packet of Reece’s.

Down near the Yukon River I met Dan and Philip on Yamaha Tenier motorcycles. We spent a long breakfast poring over maps and having a far ranging conversation which pretty much put the world to rights.

I met a retired couple from Denmark riding a pair of 1937 vintage motorcycles. Again riding all the way to Ushuaia, Argentina.

After leaving Coldfoot I ran into Rufus, a Brit riding a BMW 1200 GS. He is also riding from Alaska to Argentina.

Apparently he had given bicycle touring a shot in the past, but when he found himself riding through the barren wilderness of Australia for days on end with a headwind he just caved in. The lack of any mental stimulation and the constant physical exertion just took its toll. He’s ex-army, so not exactly a softie!

I ran into a retired Dutch couple who had been driving their truck/ campervan thing around the world for the past 10 years. They have essentially done the entire planet by now. They were going to drive home to the Netherlands via East Asia, but are considering giving it a miss due to current tensions with Russia.

They have come up from the direction I’m going, and assured me that I don’t need to worry too much about this 90 day ESTA thing; apparently if you pick a quiet border crossing and ask nicely they will usually give you a fresh 90 days for the lower 48 states. They were confident enough that they were relying upon it themselves. The guy really bought into the whole ‘no problem can’t be overcome’ attitude.

Unfortunately due to the disparity in the speeds of our conveyances, it’s unlikely that I will run into any of these people again.

I can’t claim to be the toughest Pan-American traveller; apparently there is an American on foot pushing a trolley containing his belongings all the way from Argentina. Last I heard he was near the Alaska/ Canada border and presumably not doing much more than 20 miles per day.

After Coldfoot it was pretty hilly for the rest of the way. I got into a steady routine of plugging away uphill and then blasting down the other side. After a few unrelenting days of climbing I began to curse every time the road dropped off dramatically, knowing that I would have to earn it back by clambering up the other side. A bit of a glass half empty attitude of ‘what goes down, must come up’.

Perhaps my most unpleasant climb was the unfortunately named Gobblers Knob. The gradient and my energy levels were such that I was going at a crawling pace. No wind, so the mosquitoes were out in force. Nothing to be done but endure, or rather let out a constant string of four letter words and swat about furiously while trying to maintain progress.

This same problem cropped up quite often, especially whenever it came time to fill up my water bottles. Rivers mean mosquitoes, so I would dress up in long sleeves, trousers and don my head net.

Taking my bottles down to the bank I would spend what felt like 15 painstaking minutes of pumping water by the tablespoonful into all of my bottles, getting completely covered in mosquitoes. Inevitably I’d be at the bottom of a valley, which I would then have to slowly climb out of while the mossies easily kept pace.

I reached the boundary of the Arctic circle. While scrambling up a side track to celebrate my small victory in front of the sign I was set upon by three really friendly guys from Nepal. Apparently the guide had just been telling the other two about these crazy people who go on long adventures when I showed up. The two guys were park rangers from the Everest area, and they assured me that some people cycle up to base camp, often taking a folding bike. They were just the nicest people and were really interested in every part of my trip. Apparently I need to go to Nepal as soon as I finish this ride!

Finger mountain was a pleasant surprise; lots of rocky tors on the hilltops. A bit like Dartmoor if you squint… Apparently freezing water forces the rocks out of the ground in a process called ‘frost uplift’.

The Yukon River was absolutely vast, making the Thames look like a trickle. I met a canoeist who had just raced 1000 miles downstream.

Another day and plenty of hills got me to the end of the road. 11 days from the start, including my rest day at Coldfoot. Not a particularly competitive pace, but I got there without injury or mechanical dramas.

Thanks for reading through this rather long first entry. It’s taken ages to write and edit on a phone, so I hope you’ll understand if I keep it brief in future!

At this stage I’m really enjoying not being tied down to any particular schedule. I can’t predict what I will want to do or where I will want to go. I certainly don’t see much joy in slavishly following a fixed track for the sake of it, so I’m deleting ‘the route’ page on the website. I’m pretty much self sufficient on my bike, so I’m just going to go to wherever the next place is.