For a dusty drive to the outer limits of civilization, the Dempster Highway offers a 460-mile Arctic odyssey virtually unrivaled in North America. With the May breakup of lingering ice, summer vacationers who want to get away from it all can take Canada`s wilderness thoroughfare for an unforgetable journey under the midnight sun.
The Dempster Highway, snaking from near Dawson City in the Yukon to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, is the only public roadway in North America that crosses the Arctic Circle.
Starting near the Yukon`s Klondike Gold Fields, this rustic ribbon of gravel heads northeast across two mountain ranges and winds through two Canadian provinces and two time zones, while switching back and forth across the continental divide three times.
It also cuts across a rich trail of northern history once traversed by dog-sledding Mounties, intrepid fur trappers, obsessed gold prospectors and other characters immortalized in the Gold Rush tales of Yukon poet Robert Service a century ago.
A current Dawson City character is Capt. Dick ”River Rat” Stevenson, who charges visitors $5 to join his Sourtoe Cocktail Club. Your choice of liquor. He provides a ”petrified toe, the legacy of a frozen trapper.”
”I think the biggest thing that strikes people from the outside who come here is the vastness of this place and the untouched wilderness,” said Yukon promoter Harry Waldron.
”I have no doubt that`s why most people come here-for the wild beauty,” said Waldron, 55, the self-proclaimed Keeper of the Arctic Circle, who greets motorists passing that imaginary line on maps at 66 degrees 33 minutes north latitude. He also entertains tour bus groups with renditions of Service poetry.
The Arctic Circle, which is 1,630 miles from the North Pole, is that point above which the sun never sets on the summer solstice, June 21. Inuvik, 124 miles farther north, gets 24-hour sunlight unbroken for 57 days, starting about May 24.
The best time to drive Canada`s ”Road to Adventure” is usually June through September. It takes about 20 hours, one-way, at a leisurely speed.
En route, adventurous motorists have to take two ferries across remote rivers-the Peel and the Mackenzie-that form ice bridges for natives in winter and remain frozen through April.
Completed in 1979 to spur development in the Western Arctic, the roadbed winds through the Ogilvie and Richardson mountain ranges that teem with huge herds of migrating caribou, roaming polar and black bear, moose, muskoxen and Dall`s sheep.
Often elevated on a berm above the delicate permafrost, it is a solitary passage with hardly any services. Eagles soar overhead, and the road is dwarfed by the majestic landscape of boreal forests, rolling terrain, valleys and subarctic tundra.
The incredible journey ends in the broad Mackenzie River Delta that empties into the Beaufort Sea off the Northwest Territories. Beluga and bowhead whales frolic in summer in that ice-clogged sea, which, in turn, stretches away northward along Canada`s high arctic archipelago toward the Arctic Ocean.
”It was very emotional for us to see the Beaufort Sea and to know that only ocean lay between us and the North Pole,” said Dr. Klaus Denmig, 56, a German tourist driving the Dempster last summer with his wife, Christiane, 41. ”It`s a very nice trip, very memorable,” he said, noting that the couple came to see the landscape and the wildlife and were well rewarded, spying two black bears along the way.
The scenery includes spruce, balsam poplar and shrub tundra at treeline, boasting a dizzying array of nesting birds-bald eagles, golden eagles, different kinds of falcons and owls, wheatears, snow buntings and rosy finches, to name a few.
The road passes magnificent mountain peaks, rushing streams and rivers, airstrips that adjoin, or make use of, the highway at times, even a few abandoned trappers or prospectors` cabins.
Last year, 2,031 vehicles traveled the Dempster-756 from the United States, notably Alaska and California-with 32 from overseas, according to figures compiled by the Northwest Territories government.
Despite the recession, which caused a 20 to 30 percent drop in some parts of Yukon`s tourism industry in 1991, officials in both territories are counting on this year`s 50th anniversary celebration of the Alaska Highway to draw visitors.
They expect the Dempster Highway could benefit from the anticipated influx of campers, bus tours and other groups heading north this summer to commemorate the 1942 construction of the highway linking British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska. Events and festivals are planned along the route and around the region.
The Dempster is called Highway 5 in the Yukon and Highway 8 in the Northwest Territories. Both territorial governments put out detailed maps and brochures referencing points of interest along the way by mile and kilometer. The route is similarly described mile-by-mile in ”The Milepost,” a travel guide detailing the U.S. and Canada`s northern highways.
From Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon, it is a six-hour, 300-mile drive to the start of the Dempster, which shoots north off the Klondike Loop (Yukon Highway 2) about 25 miles east of Dawson City.
This junction is the last stop for gas, service, food or lodging for the next 226 miles, all the way to Eagle Plains, the midway point on the Dempster 25 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
At the start, a single-lane, wood-planked bridge takes vehicles over the Klondike River before the highway weaves north into the vast wilderness along the North Klondike River Valley.
The road is generally deserted, with dirt turnoffs few and far between. Sometimes an hour or more goes by before motorists pass other cars or trucks. The route has plenty of campgrounds, but it is advisable to bring extra food, gasoline and water, along with an ax, a shovel, insect repellent and a first- aid kit.
It is also a good idea to take two spare tires and travel at reasonable speeds. Those who rent campers often complain that the gravel works its way into their tires to cause costly delays. Speeding adds to the chances of a blowout.
Still, campers and mobile homes are increasingly popular. Some visitors fly to Whitehorse and rent a vehicle. A typical mobile home 22 feet long and outfitted for the Dempster can cost $2,500 to $3,000 for 10 days, including gasoline, which these behemoths guzzle. Gas costs more than $2 a gallon.
Campers are not for everyone. They plod up hills, sometimes traveling in packs, kicking up clouds of dust that hang suspended over the landscape. One disappointed traveler who rented a mobile home last summer to ride the Dempster described the experience as ”very much like riding inside a snare drum for 24 hours.”
Weather also changes abruptly up here, and even in midsummer, visitors can run into high winds, heavy rains and blizzards. Bring comfortable clothing suitable for driving and a warm fall jacket. Temperatures can vary from minus 40 degrees in winter to 100 degrees in summer.
The northern lights can paint the horizon green and purple with dancing, vertical shafts of color, recalling the ballads of Robert Service. In ”The Spell of the Yukon,” he called it ”the cussedest land that I know,” but added quickly, ”there`s some as would trade it for no land on Earth-and I`m one.”
Along the Dempster you still can follow in the footsteps of some of its history. The highway itself was named for Sgt. W.J. Dempster of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and it picks up the trails Mounties used on their fabled month-long dog team patrols between Dawson and Ft. McPherson, Northwest Territories.
Dempster was known for his skill and ability to travel great distances under unimaginably harsh conditions. He headed more of those dog team patrols than any other man in the early part of the century, including the search for the ill-fated ”Lost Patrol” led by Inspector Francis J. Fitzgerald in the winter of 1910-11.
Fitzgerald and three other men had set off from Ft. McPherson on Dec. 21, 1910, but failed to arrive at their destination, Dawson City. Dempster went after them and found the frozen bodies of all four on March 22, 1911, after they had lost their way on the Peel River.
Dempster lived until 1964, long enough to see this highway named in his honor a year earlier. Work began on the roadway in 1959 and was completed 20 years later at a cost of about $100 million.
At the Eagle Plains Hotel, where travelers traditionally stop to break up their trip along the highway, old photographs tell the story of the Lost Patrol, among others.
Before heading north, Eagle Plains is also a good place to check the status of the two ferries across the Peel and the Mackenzie, which generally start operating around the first week of June. This opens up through traffic by road to Inuvik.
It`s also a good, if spartan, place to spend the night for those tired of driving who don`t want to camp out.
A half-hour drive north out of Eagle Plains brings travelers to the Arctic Circle, where a simple monument marks the spot north of which the summer sun never sets.
There, dressed in a tux, white tie and top hat, Harry Waldron also may be waiting to rise from his rocking chair and hand motorists a proclamation heralding their crossing of the circle.
By night, if he is around, Waldron recites arctic tales and Service poems at the Eagle Plains Hotel lounge to the delight of bus tour groups arriving in groups of about 40 three times a week.
Beyond the circle, at Mile 292, the highway crosses the border into the Northwest Territories, moves from Pacific to Mountain time and heads toward the ferry crossings near Ft. McPherson and Arctic Red River, two isolated river towns where there are limited services.
Ft. McPherson is home to some 700 mostly Gwich`in Indians, formerly Loucheux Dene; and Arctic Red River is home to another 100 Gwich`in. Inuvik has about 3,500 people, including Dene, Anglos and Inuvialuit, or Western Arctic Inuit, formerly called Eskimos.
Inuvik, which means ”Place of Man” to the Inuvialuit, is the end of the road. But it also is known as a jumping-off point to other villages in the Mackenzie River Delta and along the Beaufort Sea, all reachable by air.
Its attractions include an igloo-shaped Roman Catholic church, a log friendship center called Ingamo Hall, midnight sun cruises along the Mackenzie River and Midnight Madness shopping on the longest day of the year, June 21.
This is an excellent year to travel the Dempster Highway because the normal array of seasonal summer happenings in the Northwest is being augmented with an eclectic calendar of events celebrating the Alaska Highway anniversary.
These range from a float plane rally all along the Alaska Highway route, passing through Whitehorse in the Yukon June 24 and 25, and international air shows that will touch down there July 26.
In the Yukon alone, visitors could time their trip to be on hand in Whitehorse for the annual Yukon Gold Midnight Marathon (June 20), the Midnight Sun Golf Tournament (June 20 and 21) or the Yukon International Festival of Storytelling (July 2-6).
Or they could come for Dawson City`s annual Yukon Gold Panning Championships (July 1), Music Festival (July 17-19) and Discovery Days (Aug. 14-17), commemorating the discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1896.
And at the other end of the Dempster Highway, Inuvik holds its Midnight Madness Summer Solstice celebration (June 21), a 4th annual Great Northern Arts Festival (July 17-26) and the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (July 20-24).
