Anchorage to Deadhorse

<-Gun fun

Arctic Circle

Anchorage

Coldfoot

Yukon River Bridge




Finally I've obtained internet access. This posting covers from July 23 to 29. I don't have time to post the photos in order now since I must leave to jump in the Arctic Ocean (naked). When will I next get that chance?
PHOTOS:
The top two are my ridiculous and expensive room in Coldfoot, 240 miles South of the Arctic Ocean and Deadhorse, Alaska
The dozer is left over from the Alaska pipeline construction which finished in 1974
The sun behind the mountain is a photo of one of many, many mountains north of the Arctic Circle that are too massively large to do justice with just a picture. The scale is breathtaking! This is the Brooks Range of the Rocky Mountains.

The famed Yukon River. I've wanted to see it since I first read about the Alaskan Gold Rush as a boy. It was even more impressive than I hoped.
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Anchorage 7/20-7/27

The Queen’s English has thousands of words that our USA English doesn’t. I’ve asked my British companions to help make me fluent during the next five months. I’ll italicize their British words and add a definition, if needed, throughout this blog.

As a city Anchorage leaves a lot to be desired. Though it is situated in a magnificent natural heaven it is a haphazardly planned congregation of half-ass buildings. It ranks below most towns in West Virginia for architectural sensitivity. Adjacent to the rather ordinary Hilton are a collection of one story cinder block shops, with a sprinkling of two story retail ventures that are from the design period known as Early American Ghetto. Aside from the horrid look of the city the people are quite friendly and outdoorsy. One of the lads asked the cute hotel receptionist to come to our barbeque. She couldn’t because she was going fishing! Everyone hunts, traps, fishes, or all three. If Western civilization were to collapse, these people will survive. Until then I’ll plan no more trips to Anchorage.



Gun Club
Our group of adventurers was invited to a gun club by the President of the Anchorage Machine Gun Club. He is also a member of the Pterodactyl Motorcycle Club, which is how we met him. Anyway he set up a three hour orgy of guns, and bullets. Seventeen of us were given a metal ammo box full of various bullets. There was a string of 50 caliber shots, for use with the same machine gun Rambo made look so cool, dozens of rounds for use in one of the many Uzis, or the AK 47s, Glocks, Mac 10s, or the M-16. We also had a large selection of 'big handguns' – ‘Make my day, punk’. My personal favorite was a genuine Hawking rifle. It was the weapon of choice for mountain men during the Indian wars. It could stop a bear, drop a deer from long range and of course dissuade Indians from dismembering you and your family.
For me (not a member of the NRA), the biggest surprises were how loud the bloody things were (except the muzzle-suppressed Walther PPK [Bond, James Bond]), and how flawed most of the gun owners appeared. While it was very kind of them to bring out all of their heavy weapons for us to play with, it was apparent that they were obsessed with their fire power. An extremely short bald guy had 31 pieces there. He has more at home. Alaskans can and do carry guns on their hip like they did in the old west. This is the west, but it's the 21st century. One woman brought her three machine guns. She said they make her safe at home. I don’t but it. I think she has some twisted sexual fascination with metal muzzles and full clips. But to be completely honest I felt extremely manly while emptying the full clip of my Mac 10. In fact I could actually feel my manhood growing as I fired. I reached down and am sure it added a full two inches to my flaccid length, thus bringing me to an astounding 4 full inches! This may explain the tenacity of the gun lobbies.

Photos to follow

Cookout with the members of Club Pterodactyl Northern Command

Kevin and Julia Sanders, the owners of our expedition company set Guinness World Records for long distance motorcycling by doing this route from Alaska to Argentina in some ridiculously short period. I think they averaged over 1000 miles a day. Anyway, they met 'Fighter' and Al years ago and visit the Pterodactyls every two years. I’ve motorcycled since 1970 but this is the first time I’ve dined with a biker gang. Just as I thought – they’re harmless. Fighter drives tour buses of our grandmothers on Alaska Adventure tours. You know the ones; they stop at gift shops in remote areas and buy cheap trinkets to remember it by. Al was the most interesting. He’s an engineer that just got back from 19 months building support facilities for our efforts in Afghanistan. The cookout was at his house where he had an immaculate three car garage. It housed a wall of impressive tools and six beautiful motorcycles. Some vintage, some modern, all clean and ready to ride. The only car he would allow in his garage was his 400 horsepower Audi TT. His philosophy was revealed by a beautiful framed poster hung in the bathroom - Picture a modern villa, perched on a cliff beside a tropical ocean. To one side is a detached 10 car garage with each space filled with a rich man’s dream car – Bentley, Masserati, Porsche, Avanti and others. At the manse’s front door a Lotus, with swing-up doors, deposits a long legged Brazilian model in a short skirt. The poster’s caption: “Justification for Higher Education’



First Day: The Ride Begins – Anchorage to Fairbanks (354 paved miles) Sunday July 26

Although it was cold and rainy most of the day it was pure joy to finally begin the adventure I’d thought about for over two years. In fact I was so keyed up the night before I couldn’t sleep. At eight in the morning we took off. By 10 am I was so sleepy I’d lift my visor so the cold rain could smack into my face at 60mph. It was either that or fall off the highway. By 4PM the rain stopped and things got really lovely and my mate [friend] and I stopped for a kip [nap] in Denali Park.
Day 2 – Fairbanks to Coldfoot. The beginning of the dreaded Dalton Highway. 265 miles/80 unpaved.
This road is feared by motorcyclists the world over. It is only open 4 months during the year, is mostly unpaved and loaded with crazed truckers fueled by massive doses of amphetamines, trying, through a combination of drugs and high speed, to do a year’s worth of trucking supplies to Prudhoe Bay (PB) in just four months. Deaths of bikers on this route are legendary. The mica-schist used for the loose roadbed is not cohesive. A little rain makes the glass-like mica slivers turn into a substance the road builders themselves named ‘Tiger Shit’. The only way to reach PB without a wreck is in a Hummer. Stories are swapped in biker circles about the mayhem the Dalton causes motorcyclists. One recent incident we heard concerns a well known former motocross racer that lost control in the 'tiger shit', crossed into the path of an oncoming big rig and decided to go off road. Unfortunately, off-road was also off-cliff. Before they could recover the guy’s body 3 days later, at the bottom of the 92 foot cliff, it had been dragged away and eaten by a brown bear. Parts of the bike are still lying at the bottom of the cliff – Brown bears (also known as Grizzly bears or just Griz) are carnivores.

Coldfoot

I’m staying (I should say stying) in the most expensive hotel room we’ll use on the entire trip. Coldfoot is east of Bum Phuck and west of Slapdick. I mean there is nothing around for hundreds of miles. It’s 88 miles North of the Arctic Circle, 245 miles to Deadhorse and 256 from Fairbanks. Between those two remote points Coldfoot provides the only hot food, gasoline, rooms or beer. My $200/night room has bare particle board walls, no TV, AC or turn down service. The 60 year old carpet sticks to your feet and drapes smell of urine. You couldn’t be in more uncomfortable living conditions unless you were OJ’s current cell mate.
If my lovely wife finds out I stayed in such a place she’ll insist I be fumigated before coming home. It may be the most disgusting room I’ve ever stayed in, but I pray there is a vacancy when we return here after reaching Deadhorse. Travelers have no alternative. Stay here and like it, or sleep in the woods with the voracious Alaskan mosquitoes. Stories of the size and quantity of these bloodsuckers are not exaggeration. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. When our group stopped to take a photo at the Arctic Circle monument one unlucky lady was swarmed by a huge cloud of them. She had on an elaborate mosquito net hood that covered her whole head and neck. Evidently these bastards have evolved quite nicely. They worked in concert with a few hundred lifting the back portion of the netting while the remaining thousands flew under and attacked. We called in a medical evacuation but by the time the chopper flew in she was bitten so many times she became toxic. Her eyes, once a pale blue may never see again.

Trapper
In a little café at the bridge over the famed Yukon River we had our lunch. I was intrigued when, in through the side door, walked a short man wearing a three-year beard, A Buck knife strapped on one side and a long barreled 45 on the other. He spoke to no one, helped himself to coffee and a sandwich, then left. I had to ask the proprietor who he was. He said he’s a homesteader and trapper up here. I asked hat he traps. He said 'Everything'. Fascinating.

Yukon River Bridge
Built in order to build the 800 mile pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez the bridge provided the first road connection for this route. Previously you had to be paddled across in canoes by the local indians.

Day 3? - Trip to Deadhorse from Coldfoot – 247 all unpaved miles
As discussed above, the Dalton highway is deadly for bikers. The stretch from Coldfoot to Deadhorse is considered the most treacherous in all of North America. The road was never intended for two wheel travel. It is purely a supply road and since it is only thawed out for four months it must be repaired and stabilized during that time. Road crews are housed in temporary camps where they live and work in 8 week shifts followed by two weeks off. The loosely compacted road and the extreme winter temperatures combine to heave large sections of the gravel roadbed over the cliffs. These sections are replaced by dumping truckloads of slippery mica-laden gravel in the missing portions, watering it and then compacting it. Motorcycles, like the cars up here, have no choice but to try to ride over these great bloody (miserable) sections. Cars with their four wheels merely get wet and muddy. Motorbikes tend to loose control and topple over. Added to these conditions is 'Atigan Pass'. This portion of the Dalton Road goes over the northernmost range of the Rocky Mountains in a steep and narrow ascent. A few portions of this Pass have guardrails on the cliff side of the road. It is the most twisted, dented, and mangled guardrail I’ve seen in my travelling life. It looks like it was made from duct tape that someone had balled up and then tried to unravel. No section of it is undamaged.
See photo above

To my great surprise and relief I made it here without falling (though through three portions of the Tiger Shit my front end went wobbly and the only way to stay up was to stand upright on the foot pegs and go faster! When we arrived in Deadhorse we leaned that two of our seventeen had crashed. Strangely they were seriously experienced and accomplished riders. Only one was hurt. He only had gravel forced under his forearm's flesh when he tried to brace his fall. After soaking it in warm water the medic here was able to remove most of it. In the morning Mac and I will leave early for the return south to Coldfoot Camp. Since the sun does not go down here we figured we’d leave at 4AM and get in some miles before the bastard road crews start at 6AM. Wish us luck.