Jul 18, 2010

The Dempster Highway

The Dempster Highway snakes into the Northwest Territories

Leaving Dawson City, I had no idea what I was in for. . .

The Dempster Highway is a 457-mile dirt road linking the arctic hamlet of Inuvik with the rest of Canada. A gravel berm rolling across
hundreds of miles of taiga and tundra, across the Arctic Circle, across mountain ranges, interrupted only by the ferry crossings on the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers. Through the Yukon and into the Northwest Territories. On and on and on.

This is a road trip in the most elemental sense: the road itself is the journey. Simply driving 900 miles of rough gravel through absolute wilderness is a mental exercise. On one morning, entering the Richardson Mountains, the landscape was primeval to the point of exciting mirages of mammoth herds grazing the tundra. The Dempster actually traverses areas untouched by the last ice age, untouched since we walked across from Asia. Back then it was called Beringia, but the landscapes do create a weird, dawn-of-time atmosphere.

Driving the Dempster was a good time. Flying along on top of a 8-foot-thick roadbed, I felt like a train driver blasting north. The views in my side mirrors alternated between a half-mile dust plume and a mud-caked trailer. Fifty miles roll by without seeing a car before a distant brown cloud catches the eye. Headlights emerge from a cloud of dust and flying rocks as a tractor trailer barrels across the plains. Most of the terrain is tundra - a ground-hugging mat of grasses, lichen and mosses broken by clumps of willow and dwarf birch. In the western arctic tundra alternates with taiga (or boreal forest), here dominated by thousands of miles of spindly black spruce. The northern taiga is an incredibly hardy world, where difficult growing conditions and short summers produce short, stunted spruce that may be more than 200 years old. It looks and feels ancient.

The Arctic Circle: 66 degrees and sunny

Then there's the whole arctic thing. Only two roads on the continent cross the Arctic Circle, the Dalton Highway in Alaska and the Dempster. Another reason why there isn't much traffic (there just isn't a lot going on up there.) Although I basically went for the chance to play cornhole at 68 degrees north latitude, it was amazing to cross that storied line. It also opened my eyes to what the true Arctic really is. Far from ice floes and polar bears, the Mackenzie River actually creates a microclimate able to support trees well north of normal treeline. It was more mountains, tundra and taiga, and the realization that the Arctic Circle is yet another human imposition on the land, nothing more than an arbitrary line. But it is cool to drive that far north. . .

When the Canadian government finished the highway in the late 70s, they also built Eagle Plains. A micro-civilization in its own right, it's a truck stop, gas station, restaurant, campground, hotel and bar located 230 miles up the road. High on a hilltop of wind-bent spruce (eagles? plains?) shines this beacon of commerce. I camped there on my way back down, leery of the bug-ridden, creek-side government campgrounds. From my journal, 7/7: Nobody wanted to repeat Night of the Living Mosquitos, so we camped at Eagle Plains. Built in the 70s and never updated. Like camping at a remote roadhouse but with a great, old-school lounge. Heads on the walls, cold beer bottles, a pool table and country music.

In the yard at Eagle Plains

Another stop on the road before Inuvik is Fort McPherson, a Gwich'in First Nations settlement and old trading post. These days, a cluster of houses and several pickup trucks augment a gas station, supermarket and picturesque cemetery. And on the local AM radio station: Good morning to everyone, good morning to everyone. . . Gladys Nightspruce sends her greetings to everyone in town, especially Patsy, remember Gladys is in a nursing home in Whitehorse. . . Tommy Goodall, your sister is looking for you, please call home, your sister wants you. . .
And Tsiigehtchic, a seasonal fish camp-turned-town of 200, at the confluence of the Mackenzie and Arctic Red Rivers. I stopped here in search of dryfish, a traditional preparation of coney (a local, freshwater whitefish.) I asked a kid on a bike and he pointed to a faded blue house. At the door, an old man seemed not at all surprised by a vanload of foreigners in an otherwise deserted street. He sold me a greasy brown bag for $10. Tough, but palatable and mild.

Finally, after hundreds of miles of mountains, rivers, valleys and entire hillsides covered with purple-red fireweed, we hit the city limits of Inuvik. Civilization hit all at once: first pavement, then a cop with a speed gun. A modest grid of gritty humanity followed soon after. For all the dust and mud, the listlessness and loitering, apparent lack of town planning and jacked-up trucks, Inuvik is not without a certain charm. It's blessed with a beautiful setting on the Mackenzie River delta and a cafe with very good coffee. Based on what I saw in the Mad Trapper Pub, there are at least three people in town who play musical instruments. And almost everyone I met was friendly. Sitting in camp, drinking a Coors and barbecuing a whole arctic char, gazing out across the delta, I thought for about five minutes that I could live there. But it takes more than great pike fishing to make a home.

Later that night, after the Mad Trapper, I was awakened by a wind storm at 3:30. As I ran around the massive cook tent, hammering down extra ropes in the twilight, I kept looking over at the ball of fire hanging in the east. Where the hell am I?

Permafrost solutions in Inuvik: houses on pilings and above-ground plumbing


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