Fairbanks is the northernmost city of any size that most riders will ever reach by road, and it wears that with a certain pride. About thirty thousand people live here on the Chena River, in the middle of the Alaska interior, where summer days are close to endless and winter temperatures can drop to minus forty. It calls itself the Golden Heart City, a nod to the gold strike of 1902 that created the town, and the old gold-mining history is still part of the identity.
In June the sun barely sets, and the midnight sun lets you ride, eat and read outside at midnight. In winter the opposite is true, with a short, dim day and a sky that often turns green and purple with the aurora, which draws visitors from around the world. The University of Alaska, in the suburb called College, is a research centre for Arctic science, and the town has a museum with a fine collection of Native Alaskan art and natural history, including the famous mummified steppe bison.
For a rider, Fairbanks is the point of preparation. The Dalton Highway begins about eighty miles north, a gravel road built in 1974 to service the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, running more than four hundred miles to the Arctic Ocean at Deadhorse. It crosses the Yukon River, passes the Arctic Circle sign and rises into the Brooks Range, with astonishing wilderness and almost no services. Gravel can be loose and dusty or slick with mud, trucks are huge and take the middle of the road, and tyres suffer. Fairbanks is where you check spares, stock up and take a deep breath.
Fuel is of course available in town, and it is crucial to fill up fully, since the next services are at Coldfoot, about 250 miles up the road, and the Yukon River Camp. Carry extra water and food, as well as tools. Grocery stores here are large and reasonably priced by Alaskan standards, and the town has plenty of cafés and restaurants serving salmon and reindeer sausage.
The best season is June to August. Mosquitoes can be intense, so a head net is not a joke. By late August the nights return and the tundra starts turning red, and snow can fall in the Brooks Range as early as September.