Why this ride
The highest point is about 1,450 m. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Dalton Highway: Coldfoot to Deadhorse
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 856 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 11 h 43
- Journey
- One way; return travel is separate
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Scenic road chapters
Coldfoot → Atigun Pass
260 km on Coldfoot → Atigun Pass.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 260 km
Atigun Pass → Deadhorse
596 km that neither climbs nor drops much. The road settles into the ground rather than fighting it. This is where a day makes up time without anyone trying. Third and fourth, and very little else.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 596 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Coldfoot
Coldfoot is a truck stop and a handful of buildings on the south side of the Brooks Range, at mile 175 of the Dalton Highway, and it is the last place with services for two hundred and forty miles. The name is said to come from the early prospectors of the gold rush in 1900, who arrived, saw the cold and got cold feet. Only a few dozen people live here year-round, and in summer the population includes truckers, pipeline workers and a few travellers.
Read the complete Coldfoot write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Coldfoot is where the day begins. Next is Atigun Pass.
2. Atigun Pass
The Atigun Pass is the highest road pass in Alaska, 1,444 metres above sea level, and it carries the Dalton Highway through the Brooks Range, the last great barrier before the North Slope and the Arctic Ocean. The mountains here are bare, with jagged grey rock and green tundra, and the continental divide runs across the top, so that rivers on one side flow to the Pacific and Arctic waters on the other. The trans-Alaska pipeline climbs beside the road, running above the ground on steel supports so that its heat will not thaw the permafrost, and it is both a marvel of engineering and a reminder of how remote this country is.
Read the complete Atigun Pass write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Atigun Pass comes up about 260 km into the recorded legs. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Deadhorse, mostly downhill.
3. Deadhorse
Deadhorse is not a town in the usual sense. It is an industrial camp at the end of the Dalton Highway, a place of warehouses, trucks, workers' lodges and a single general store, serving the Prudhoe Bay oil field on the Arctic coastal plain of Alaska. About 414 miles of gravel and dirt road run north from Fairbanks, crossing the Yukon River, the Arctic Circle and the Brooks Range at Atigun Pass before the land flattens into tundra, and the whole way the Trans-Alaska Pipeline snakes beside you, sometimes above ground on its zigzag supports, sometimes buried.
Read the complete Deadhorse write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
The route ends here after 856 km.
Leg by leg
Coldfoot to Atigun Pass
Coldfoot → Atigun Pass is 260 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Atigun Pass to Deadhorse
Atigun Pass → Deadhorse is 596 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.
More motorcycle rides nearby
- Dalton Highway: Arctic Circle to Atigun Pass · 467 km
- Dalton Highway · 799 km