Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
This day was a study in riding extremes! Although a relatively short day distance wise, only 528 kms, we saw both the best and the worst a motorcycle adventure can offer, and all points in between! Fortunately, like most adversity, the pain tends to fade with the passage of time leaving only the memories of the adventure. I think that is an incredibly well designed feature of human beings, without it no one would have ever ventured outside of their cave.
Before I regale you with today's tale I should tell you that we are confirmed on The Dalton Highway Express' 2 Day Whirlwind adventure to the Arctic Ocean. See here.
We leave Saturday morning at 0600 from Fairbanks, AK and drive to Deadhorse, AK making stops in between. The road trip going is 16 hrs. We'll overnight in Deadhorse at a construction camp, before going to the Arctic Ocean at 0600 for 1 hour, then departing on our 16 hr return trip arriving back in Fairbanks at 0100 Monday morning. To recap:
32 hours on the bus + 8 hours on a cot = 1 hour at The Arctic Ocean
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me! Also hotel rooms in Fairbanks for all 3 nights so there are no surprises when we return to town in the middle of the night.
All in the costs are about $2000 USD split between us, factor exchange and we're at $1250.00 CDN each, for a round trip of 1000 miles, about 0.80/mile. Pretty cheap when you consider it is to the place both furthest north and west navigable by road in North America!
Curiously, when I am at the Arctic Ocean on August 13th, it will be 2 years less 3 days since I was in Key West, FL at the point most south in North America. (See Rocket to the Keys blog!) Google Maps puts those points as being 9093 km apart!
So it is a calm but cold morning in Haines, AK, which I am thinking is the way most days start around here.
We started off on a lovely little seaside road that became a winding trail through the forest as we turned north. It was foggy/misty/rainy in Haines so we'd started out with rain suits on. We crossed the US/CAN Border about 70 kms from Haines, without issue and having driven into the sun & blue skies we shed the plastic after customs. I thought we were crossing back into the Yukon, but awhile later there was a sign about leaving BC and Welcome to the Yukon. We stopped for a rest sometime later and quick map check shows this little corner of BC, YK & AK is very convoluted and oddly shaped.
Another thing odd is that the highway runs adjacent to and in between mountain ranges, rather than through them, I would imagine there are several advantages such as ease of construction and maintenance. For us the advantages were long constant radius positive camber sweepers, straightaways lasting for miles, elevation changes and a hard blowing tailwind, all surrounded by scenery bordering on the surreal. The road was alabaster smooth and completely devoid of any damage or blemishes.
The wide sweeping valleys rolled all the way up to the mountain peaks, the tops often shrouded in clouds. This was British Columbian tax dollars extremely well spent. Although the following video may not appeal to everyone, anyone who appreciates driving a spectacular road will get it. If it doesn't move you, well, I feel a little sorry for you! We are booting it along this golden stretch of macadam when we drive through an intense, although short-lived, cloud bank.
These elements all conspired to create a riding experience unique in all of my years on the road. The long straights at times encouraged hooliganism, manifested by a hard twisting right hand. I started a passing run on an RV about 2 miles back and was doing just over 200 kph indicated as I passed him as he was struggling up a long hill. The Rocket was still accelerating! I slowed to allow Bill to catch up and he was there in seconds. I am not endorsing this type of behaviour on a regular basis, but when the all too rare opportunity presents itself, I firmly believe you gotta take it.
As a curious aside, when we stopped for a rest and to warm up, while me at least, I placed my wet leather gloves in between the header pipes of my engine. I used to do this on my '04 Rocket and they'd often dry in minutes. This was the first time I did it on my newer '08 R3 and I should have investigated it closer. The old bike had fully enclosed chrome covers over the actual header pipes, this exhaust system only covers the front, leaving the back completely exposed.
Consequently, when I stuck my gloves in there they touched red hot naked header pipe and got melted. The left thumb bore the brunt, although the right fingers are pretty twisted too.
They were extremely uncomfortable the first time I donned them, but over time they started to loosen up again. I have had these gloves since the mid 90's, they prolly have 250 000+ kms on them. I remember melting them once before on my Intruder 1400 and eventually they worked themselves back in. I will go shopping on our non riding day in Anchorage and see what the current state of glove technology is these days.
Here are some pictures captured out of video from my helmet GoPro presented in no particular order.
This ride was on highway 3 next to the Alsek Range of the Saint Elias Mountains between Haines, AK and BC/YK border. While I have recommended many roads over the years, this one is on my Top 10 list for sure! The road condition plummets as soon as you cross into the Yukon. They just don't have the budget to create and maintain roads like in BC.
Here are some interesting Yukon statistics;
The lower 48 state of the USA has 9.833 million sq/km and 324.2 million people for an average population density of 32.97 people per square km (ppsk)
Canada has a similar amount of real estate, 9.984m sq/km but only 36.48 million people, population density 3.65 ppsk.
Alaska has 710 000 people sharing 1.717m sq/km, pop den 0.41 ppsk.
Yukon Territory has 33 897 (23 000 of them in White Horse) people living on 475 000 sq/km. pop density 0.07 ppsk.
34 000 people total! Only slightly larger than Spruce Grove, but smaller than Airdrie, and obviously no tax funding for road repairs.
Enough with the demographics lesson, and back to the road. The further North we got, the crappier the roads. About 200 kms south of our destination today, Beaver Creek, YK, we started to encounter large sections of road that had been washed out by either flooding or rock slide. Both of those perils are common place on this section of the Alaska Highway. Typically you wait until a pilot vehicle comes for you, and then you follow a long line of trucks, car & RV's through the construction site at a fast walking pace. Not a good speed for balancing an 800 lb motorcycle!
We had been steadily climbing this peak and we could see a black ridge cloud spanning it with an obvious rain curtain hanging down. We were gonna get wet, but it would be short lived. We pulled up to a construction site near the peak where the pilot vehicle had just taken off and we fell in line following a car pulling a small trailer. A light rain started falling as we entered the rain curtain at 10 kph driving on a dirt road construction site.
I noticed a few kernels of popcorn were bouncing around, no wait, it is pea sized hail! I kinda chuckled to myself, like, what else is gonna happen? It was comical, for about 15 seconds, then the marble sized hail started falling faster and harder. Suddenly it was an absolute torrential downpour of hail, they hurt where they hit my arms and legs, the back of my neck, my ******, my hands. They were bouncing off my helmet with a firm Thwack! They were bouncing off my gas tank with a resounding Tink!
The road was white, like winter time, in addition to navigating around piles of gravel, and pot holes full of water, you also had to skirt large build-ups of hail. I wasn't chuckling anymore, in fact I was screaming in my helmet, it was very painful all over my body. I weighed my options; pull over, what's that gonna do? Keep going, that's the only choice! I kept twisting and turning my body trying to escape the peppering, but there was nowhere to go.
At times I would lay my left arm across my left thigh, palm up to use a thick leather arm pad to protect my leg, but the road was so rutted I needed 2 hands on the bars to maintain control. There was nothing to do grit your teeth and keep going. It was at its peak intensity for prolly 5 minutes of pure agony, then it started to subside and eventually turned back into rain.
About the time the hail stopped we cleared the construction zone as well, in short order we had passed all of the vehicles ahead of us and were back up to normal speed and under blue skies. Not to put this too indelicately but I noticed my ****** felt very cold, I assumed it was as my jeans are not protected by my schaps they were wet and were cooling in the 120 kph wind flow.
I looked down to verify my theory and was shocked to see the pocket formed between my legs, my ****** and the gas tank was full, level with the tops of my thighs, with hail! Would have been quite humorous, if not for all the shrinkage! I scooped about 6 big handfuls out, then kinda stuck my left leg out sideways to clear the rest. About a half an hour later when we stopped for gas, Bill found he had a pocket of hail accumulation on his backside. Sorta like beach sand, gets everywhere, but not nearly as much fun!
Over my almost 30 years of riding I have experienced all extremes of weather; mile high dust storm in Yuma, AZ, sideways blowing snow in Petawawa, SK, 45 MPH headwinds in Billing, MT, a land fallen Hurricane in South Carolina, and many others. I would put that hail storm in my Top 3!
Great story, in my opinion, but now the bad news. I didn't record it with my helmet cam. I have that GoPro setup for what is called One Touch Record. When I turn it on it automatically starts recording video, but because I can't see it, nor can I hear its beeping, I can't confirm if it is on or off. To turn it on you hold a button on the front for 4 seconds, and 7 seconds to turn it off. Sometimes you get its on/off state mixed up so you are turning it off when you think you are turning in on, and vice versa. As a result you get a lot of boring video between exciting spots.
This was the case here, when I checked the video you can see the big black rain swag and then us pulling up behind that trailer and the first couple of hail stones bouncing around, then up comes the glove and the video ends. I have plans to move that camera to my handlebars so I can verify when it is on, but that has the limitations of fixing the camera forward. Can someone invent a handlebar camera stabilizing mount with a pan handle please? Here is the worst video ever, shot sadly right before one of the most amazing experiences on my bike.
We stopped for a rest just 50 kms short of The Beav and found our bikes to be very dirty. Bill doesn't like a dirty bike so he was quite beside himself. Personally my rules are; no washing of the bike until I get home, I kinda see it as a Red Badge of Courage. My schaps are also very dusty.
As you can see from my pose, we are still going North! To Alaska! (Now To The Arctic!)
We pull into Beaver Creek at either 10 to five or 10 to six, the time these days is hotly contested. We are in and out of time zones in this funky corner of the country, plus it stays light out very late, and only gonna get later! We stay at Ida's Motel, I remember it from passing through here in 2004. The owner is very nice and very accommodating, he even sells us 6 Yukon Gold dust busters as off sales, even though he doesn't have an off sale license!
We cross the highway for the Buckshot Betty restaurant, but sadly there is only one person serving the entire front, her name is Precious, but she is not the most precious waitress ever, she is doing her best, but is just overwhelmed. We are just about to go back 'cross the highway to Ida's Restaurant when we finally get our order taken. I order 2 drinks as I am sure I will never see Precious again!
Takes about 2.5 hours for supper, most of spent sitting quietly. I had tried to save 2 of the dust busters for a nightcap, but as I did not have a fridge in my room I was forced to drink both mine and Bill's while they were still cold.
Did a little blogging and then a lot of sleeping.
Haines, AK to Beaver Creek, YK
528 kms today, 4012 total thus far
8 hours in the saddle (maybe 7, maybe 9, tough to tell. Bill is in charge of the local time)
Before I regale you with today's tale I should tell you that we are confirmed on The Dalton Highway Express' 2 Day Whirlwind adventure to the Arctic Ocean. See here.
We leave Saturday morning at 0600 from Fairbanks, AK and drive to Deadhorse, AK making stops in between. The road trip going is 16 hrs. We'll overnight in Deadhorse at a construction camp, before going to the Arctic Ocean at 0600 for 1 hour, then departing on our 16 hr return trip arriving back in Fairbanks at 0100 Monday morning. To recap:
32 hours on the bus + 8 hours on a cot = 1 hour at The Arctic Ocean
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me! Also hotel rooms in Fairbanks for all 3 nights so there are no surprises when we return to town in the middle of the night.
All in the costs are about $2000 USD split between us, factor exchange and we're at $1250.00 CDN each, for a round trip of 1000 miles, about 0.80/mile. Pretty cheap when you consider it is to the place both furthest north and west navigable by road in North America!
Curiously, when I am at the Arctic Ocean on August 13th, it will be 2 years less 3 days since I was in Key West, FL at the point most south in North America. (See Rocket to the Keys blog!) Google Maps puts those points as being 9093 km apart!
So it is a calm but cold morning in Haines, AK, which I am thinking is the way most days start around here.
We started off on a lovely little seaside road that became a winding trail through the forest as we turned north. It was foggy/misty/rainy in Haines so we'd started out with rain suits on. We crossed the US/CAN Border about 70 kms from Haines, without issue and having driven into the sun & blue skies we shed the plastic after customs. I thought we were crossing back into the Yukon, but awhile later there was a sign about leaving BC and Welcome to the Yukon. We stopped for a rest sometime later and quick map check shows this little corner of BC, YK & AK is very convoluted and oddly shaped.
Another thing odd is that the highway runs adjacent to and in between mountain ranges, rather than through them, I would imagine there are several advantages such as ease of construction and maintenance. For us the advantages were long constant radius positive camber sweepers, straightaways lasting for miles, elevation changes and a hard blowing tailwind, all surrounded by scenery bordering on the surreal. The road was alabaster smooth and completely devoid of any damage or blemishes.
The wide sweeping valleys rolled all the way up to the mountain peaks, the tops often shrouded in clouds. This was British Columbian tax dollars extremely well spent. Although the following video may not appeal to everyone, anyone who appreciates driving a spectacular road will get it. If it doesn't move you, well, I feel a little sorry for you! We are booting it along this golden stretch of macadam when we drive through an intense, although short-lived, cloud bank.
These elements all conspired to create a riding experience unique in all of my years on the road. The long straights at times encouraged hooliganism, manifested by a hard twisting right hand. I started a passing run on an RV about 2 miles back and was doing just over 200 kph indicated as I passed him as he was struggling up a long hill. The Rocket was still accelerating! I slowed to allow Bill to catch up and he was there in seconds. I am not endorsing this type of behaviour on a regular basis, but when the all too rare opportunity presents itself, I firmly believe you gotta take it.
As a curious aside, when we stopped for a rest and to warm up, while me at least, I placed my wet leather gloves in between the header pipes of my engine. I used to do this on my '04 Rocket and they'd often dry in minutes. This was the first time I did it on my newer '08 R3 and I should have investigated it closer. The old bike had fully enclosed chrome covers over the actual header pipes, this exhaust system only covers the front, leaving the back completely exposed.
Consequently, when I stuck my gloves in there they touched red hot naked header pipe and got melted. The left thumb bore the brunt, although the right fingers are pretty twisted too.
They were extremely uncomfortable the first time I donned them, but over time they started to loosen up again. I have had these gloves since the mid 90's, they prolly have 250 000+ kms on them. I remember melting them once before on my Intruder 1400 and eventually they worked themselves back in. I will go shopping on our non riding day in Anchorage and see what the current state of glove technology is these days.
Here are some pictures captured out of video from my helmet GoPro presented in no particular order.
This ride was on highway 3 next to the Alsek Range of the Saint Elias Mountains between Haines, AK and BC/YK border. While I have recommended many roads over the years, this one is on my Top 10 list for sure! The road condition plummets as soon as you cross into the Yukon. They just don't have the budget to create and maintain roads like in BC.
Here are some interesting Yukon statistics;
The lower 48 state of the USA has 9.833 million sq/km and 324.2 million people for an average population density of 32.97 people per square km (ppsk)
Canada has a similar amount of real estate, 9.984m sq/km but only 36.48 million people, population density 3.65 ppsk.
Alaska has 710 000 people sharing 1.717m sq/km, pop den 0.41 ppsk.
Yukon Territory has 33 897 (23 000 of them in White Horse) people living on 475 000 sq/km. pop density 0.07 ppsk.
34 000 people total! Only slightly larger than Spruce Grove, but smaller than Airdrie, and obviously no tax funding for road repairs.
Enough with the demographics lesson, and back to the road. The further North we got, the crappier the roads. About 200 kms south of our destination today, Beaver Creek, YK, we started to encounter large sections of road that had been washed out by either flooding or rock slide. Both of those perils are common place on this section of the Alaska Highway. Typically you wait until a pilot vehicle comes for you, and then you follow a long line of trucks, car & RV's through the construction site at a fast walking pace. Not a good speed for balancing an 800 lb motorcycle!
We had been steadily climbing this peak and we could see a black ridge cloud spanning it with an obvious rain curtain hanging down. We were gonna get wet, but it would be short lived. We pulled up to a construction site near the peak where the pilot vehicle had just taken off and we fell in line following a car pulling a small trailer. A light rain started falling as we entered the rain curtain at 10 kph driving on a dirt road construction site.
I noticed a few kernels of popcorn were bouncing around, no wait, it is pea sized hail! I kinda chuckled to myself, like, what else is gonna happen? It was comical, for about 15 seconds, then the marble sized hail started falling faster and harder. Suddenly it was an absolute torrential downpour of hail, they hurt where they hit my arms and legs, the back of my neck, my ******, my hands. They were bouncing off my helmet with a firm Thwack! They were bouncing off my gas tank with a resounding Tink!
The road was white, like winter time, in addition to navigating around piles of gravel, and pot holes full of water, you also had to skirt large build-ups of hail. I wasn't chuckling anymore, in fact I was screaming in my helmet, it was very painful all over my body. I weighed my options; pull over, what's that gonna do? Keep going, that's the only choice! I kept twisting and turning my body trying to escape the peppering, but there was nowhere to go.
At times I would lay my left arm across my left thigh, palm up to use a thick leather arm pad to protect my leg, but the road was so rutted I needed 2 hands on the bars to maintain control. There was nothing to do grit your teeth and keep going. It was at its peak intensity for prolly 5 minutes of pure agony, then it started to subside and eventually turned back into rain.
About the time the hail stopped we cleared the construction zone as well, in short order we had passed all of the vehicles ahead of us and were back up to normal speed and under blue skies. Not to put this too indelicately but I noticed my ****** felt very cold, I assumed it was as my jeans are not protected by my schaps they were wet and were cooling in the 120 kph wind flow.
I looked down to verify my theory and was shocked to see the pocket formed between my legs, my ****** and the gas tank was full, level with the tops of my thighs, with hail! Would have been quite humorous, if not for all the shrinkage! I scooped about 6 big handfuls out, then kinda stuck my left leg out sideways to clear the rest. About a half an hour later when we stopped for gas, Bill found he had a pocket of hail accumulation on his backside. Sorta like beach sand, gets everywhere, but not nearly as much fun!
Over my almost 30 years of riding I have experienced all extremes of weather; mile high dust storm in Yuma, AZ, sideways blowing snow in Petawawa, SK, 45 MPH headwinds in Billing, MT, a land fallen Hurricane in South Carolina, and many others. I would put that hail storm in my Top 3!
Great story, in my opinion, but now the bad news. I didn't record it with my helmet cam. I have that GoPro setup for what is called One Touch Record. When I turn it on it automatically starts recording video, but because I can't see it, nor can I hear its beeping, I can't confirm if it is on or off. To turn it on you hold a button on the front for 4 seconds, and 7 seconds to turn it off. Sometimes you get its on/off state mixed up so you are turning it off when you think you are turning in on, and vice versa. As a result you get a lot of boring video between exciting spots.
This was the case here, when I checked the video you can see the big black rain swag and then us pulling up behind that trailer and the first couple of hail stones bouncing around, then up comes the glove and the video ends. I have plans to move that camera to my handlebars so I can verify when it is on, but that has the limitations of fixing the camera forward. Can someone invent a handlebar camera stabilizing mount with a pan handle please? Here is the worst video ever, shot sadly right before one of the most amazing experiences on my bike.
We stopped for a rest just 50 kms short of The Beav and found our bikes to be very dirty. Bill doesn't like a dirty bike so he was quite beside himself. Personally my rules are; no washing of the bike until I get home, I kinda see it as a Red Badge of Courage. My schaps are also very dusty.
As you can see from my pose, we are still going North! To Alaska! (Now To The Arctic!)
We pull into Beaver Creek at either 10 to five or 10 to six, the time these days is hotly contested. We are in and out of time zones in this funky corner of the country, plus it stays light out very late, and only gonna get later! We stay at Ida's Motel, I remember it from passing through here in 2004. The owner is very nice and very accommodating, he even sells us 6 Yukon Gold dust busters as off sales, even though he doesn't have an off sale license!
We cross the highway for the Buckshot Betty restaurant, but sadly there is only one person serving the entire front, her name is Precious, but she is not the most precious waitress ever, she is doing her best, but is just overwhelmed. We are just about to go back 'cross the highway to Ida's Restaurant when we finally get our order taken. I order 2 drinks as I am sure I will never see Precious again!
Takes about 2.5 hours for supper, most of spent sitting quietly. I had tried to save 2 of the dust busters for a nightcap, but as I did not have a fridge in my room I was forced to drink both mine and Bill's while they were still cold.
Did a little blogging and then a lot of sleeping.
Haines, AK to Beaver Creek, YK
528 kms today, 4012 total thus far
8 hours in the saddle (maybe 7, maybe 9, tough to tell. Bill is in charge of the local time)
- comments