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 Whitehorse it runs 447 km to the finish; allow about 6 h 36 of riding. The stops in between: Haines Junction and Kluane Lake. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,500 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Whitehorse sits on the Yukon River in a broad valley under bare hills, and with some twenty-three thousand people it holds around three quarters of the territory's population, which gives you a sense of how empty the rest of it is. It is also where everything you need is available, fuel, repairs, food and beds, before the long road west. The Alaska Highway runs straight through town, and the town sits at about Mile 918 of that famous road, counted from Dawson Creek in British Columbia.
Read the complete Whitehorse write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Whitehorse is where the day begins. Next is Haines Junction.
Haines Junction exists because a road did. In 1942, when the US Army pushed the Alaska Highway through the Yukon in a matter of months to supply Alaska during the war, this spot became a junction where the Haines Road, running down to the Alaskan coast, branches off the main highway. A construction camp turned into a village of about eleven hundred people, and it has been the gateway to Kluane ever since.
Read the complete Haines Junction write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Haines Junction comes up about 155 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kluane Lake.
Kluane Lake is the biggest lake in the Yukon, a long cold sheet of water in the shadow of the Kluane Ranges, and its colour is a milky turquoise from glacial silt carried down by streams from the big ice fields to the west. It lies on the Alaska Highway, with the little settlements of Destruction Bay and Burwash Landing strung along its shore, and with the St Elias Mountains rising behind to heights that include Mount Logan, the highest peak in Canada at nearly six thousand metres, hidden behind other peaks and rarely visible from the road.
Read the complete Kluane Lake write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 230 km into the recorded legs you reach Kluane Lake. Next is Beaver Creek.
Beaver Creek is the last Canadian settlement on the Alaska Highway, a few kilometres from the American border and the westernmost community in Canada. It is a small place of motels, a gas station and a customs post, set among spruce, willow and low hills at the northern edge of the Kluane region, in country where the winter lasts for half the year and the temperature can fall below minus forty.
Read the complete Beaver Creek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beaver Creek closes the day.
Whitehorse → Haines Junction is 155 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Haines Junction → Kluane Lake is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Kluane Lake → Beaver Creek is 217 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.