Dempster Highway: Eagle Plains to Tuktoyaktuk

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Eagle Plains

   Eagle Plains is a small dot of civilisation on the Dempster Highway, a gravel road that runs from near Dawson City, in the Yukon, all the way to Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories, over seven hundred kilometres. The road crosses the Arctic Circle about thirty-five kilometres north of here, and at Eagle Plains you stand on a high plateau of tundra and stunted spruce, with the Richardson Mountains on the horizon to the northeast.

   Read the complete Eagle Plains write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Eagle Plains is where the day begins. Next is Arctic Circle.

2. 2. Arctic Circle

   The Arctic Circle is a line that doesn't exist, and yet people stop for it. On the Dempster Highway there is a rest area at the point where the road crosses 66 degrees 33 minutes north, with a sign, a board of information, and a gravel parking pad. It is not a dramatic place, apart from the landscape: a wide valley of tundra, scrubby spruce and low hills, with the Richardson Mountains on the far horizon. Above this line, in midsummer, the sun does not set.

   Read the complete Arctic Circle write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Arctic Circle comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Inuvik.

3. 3. Inuvik

   Inuvik is the end of the road, quite literally. The Dempster Highway, a gravel road that runs for about 740 kilometres from near Dawson City through some of the wildest country in North America, finishes here, in the Mackenzie River delta, at the edge of the Arctic. The town was built in the 1950s to replace Aklavik, which was prone to flooding, and it was planned from scratch as an administrative centre, with a distinctive layout and utilidors, insulated pipes above ground that carry water and sewage, because the permafrost makes burying them impossible.

   Read the complete Inuvik write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 366 km into the recorded legs you reach Inuvik. Next is Tuktoyaktuk.

4. 4. Tuktoyaktuk

   The road ends at the Arctic Ocean, and that is why people come. Tuktoyaktuk, which everyone calls Tuk, is a small Inuvialuit community on the shore of the Beaufort Sea, at the top of the Mackenzie Delta, and for most of the twentieth century you could only reach it by boat, plane or a winter ice road across the frozen channels. In November 2017 the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway opened, a gravel all-weather road of about 140 kilometres, and the Dempster Highway, which starts near Dawson City in the Yukon, finally had an end on salt water. Riders who have done the whole thing talk about it the way people talk about a pilgrimage.

   Read the complete Tuktoyaktuk write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Tuktoyaktuk closes the day.