CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Dawson City it runs 929 km to the finish; allow about 22 h 49 of riding. On the way it passes Tombstone Territorial Park, Eagle Plains, Arctic Circle and Inuvik. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,600 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 36 km this is Dempster Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Dawson City was built on a gamble. In August 1896, gold was found in a creek flowing into the Klondike river, and within two years, more than thirty thousand people had come to the swampy flat at the river's mouth, having crossed mountain passes with tons of supplies, floated down the Yukon, and spent everything they had. Most got no gold. A few got rich overnight, and the town rose, with saloons, theatres, hotels and dance halls, to become the largest city north of Seattle and west of Winnipeg.
Read the complete Dawson City write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dawson City is where the day begins. Next is Tombstone Territorial Park.
Where the Dempster Highway climbs out of the boreal forest and breaks through the Ogilvie Mountains, the landscape changes in a rush. Tombstone Territorial Park lies about seventy kilometres above Dawson City's turn-off and protects a wilderness of jagged granite peaks, glacial valleys and open tundra, with Tombstone Mountain itself standing like a dark fang above the rest. The country belongs to the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation, who have hunted and travelled here for thousands of years, and the park was created with their involvement.
Read the complete Tombstone Territorial Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tombstone Territorial Park comes up about 110 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 410 km into the recorded legs you reach Eagle Plains. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Arctic Circle, about halfway. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Inuvik sits at 1228 km, late in the day. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 929 km.
Dawson City → Tombstone Territorial Park is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Tombstone Territorial Park → Eagle Plains is 300 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Eagle Plains → Arctic Circle is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Arctic Circle → Inuvik is 330 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Inuvik → Tuktoyaktuk is 153 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.