From: “Robert E. Higdon”
Date: August 7, 2014 at 9:50:26 PM PDT
To:
ann.frick@mac.com
Subject: Dalton highway conditions
I posted this last night to a list of riders who have completed the Iron Butt Rally. Good luck to you guys. You won’t need it, but it’s nice to have anyway. 8-)
And when it’s over, you must promise to tell me how it went. I mean it.
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This is from recollections of the past four days. Don’t sue me if you don’t see what I’ve described. The road changes about every five minutes.
The road is paved entirely from Fairbanks to the entrance of the Dalton highway just past Livengood, a distance of about 80 miles.
Miles 0-5 northbound are hilly, dry, and corrugated by trucks braking in every corner.
Miles 6-26 are wide, beautifully scraped, and provide the highest unpaved speed section on the entire highway. This area looks as if it will be paved next year.
Miles 27-32 are paved with interspersed gravel sections.
Miles 33-37 are under construction, but there is no pilot car. I didn’t have any problem when I went through there early last Sunday morning, possibly because the road crew wasn’t working on the weekend. When I returned through this area in mid-afternoon today (Wednesday), it was terrifying. They had soaked the road and had piled on a bunch of new gravel. When I heard of Rex’s accident, I thought this is where he would have gone down.
Miles 38-50 are magnificently paved.
Miles 51-55 are similar to the first section of the highway. This is where Rex bought it. Mile 56 is the Yukon river. It is very hilly on the approach to the river. When I went through it was clean and dry, though I took it carefully because of the steep slopes. Conditions apparently had changed within hours of my passage because Rex may have run into wet conditions that contributed to his accident. I repeat: you cannot trust any report of road conditions on this highway, even those that come from a single day.
Miles 56-65 are under construction without pilot cars. The Yukon river gas station/restaurant/motel is at mile marker 56. To the north they have soaked the road for at least the past four days. I saw three Harleys northbound this afternoon riding as if they were on thin ice. In truth the road is not that bad, but after becoming accustomed to the drier parts of the highway south of the Yukon, it comes as a bit of a shock.
Miles 66-89 are basically hard-pan and gravel. If you want to break something on your bike, you can do it here without any effort.
Miles 90-209 are paved with a few interrupted sections of gravel. This begins 25 miles below the Arctic circle (MM 115) and carries you blissfully to beyond the Dietrich river north of Coldfoot and Wiseman. You could get used to a road like this, but you shouldn’t.
Beyond MM 209 there is no pavement until you reach Prudhoe Bay (MM 414) but for two small sections of a few miles each beginning just south of Happy Valley (MM 334). Last Sunday the road through Atigun pass was capable of being traversed at any speed you deemed desirable (despite some low-lying fog); yesterday afternoon a road grader and a water truck had rendered the south slope into something quite different. Things happen on this highway that fast.
North of Atigun pass the road is in significant part under construction but in excellent shape to Galbraith Lake at MM 275. Here is where the serious road work is underway with a pilot car taking you through the next 15 miles up to Toolik river. On Sunday it was, for me, positively a scary experience. I was so frightened of auguring in because of the endless mud and gravel furrows that the driver of the pilot car stopped and asked me if I were capable of continuing. I told him that I was going to do whatever I could to keep both my bike and myself in one piece and that beyond that I could do no more. Somehow we all got through it. At the end of the section I told the pilot car driver, “I’m coming back through here tomorrow, but I won’t be any faster.” I dreaded the very thought of it.
I dreamed fretfully about those miserable miles that night in Deadhorse. My goal for the return trip, I decided, was to avoid ending the day’s ride in a hospital; my secondary goal would be not to soil myself, at least not more than once. Or twice.
And it shall be recorded that in fact I came back through that same area with the same pilot car the next day at noon and could not have had a more pleasant experience. The road had completely dried out. I stood on the pegs, sang a few tunes, and waltzed through the zone in 32 minutes. It was as if I’d been transported to some other place on a magic carpet. It had not been a happy trip for me to that point, but I was actually laughing my way through what had simply baffled me the day before. That’s the story of the Dalton highway. You never know what’s coming next, not day to day, sometimes not hour to hour.
There is nothing noteworthy going on north of the construction zone but for a short stretch beginning at Gustafson Gulch, though I don’t think it’s named after our Jack Gustafson. On Sunday the water truck had made the road for about two or three miles a thing of malicious wetness (there being a lake to the left of the road where the truck can refuel, as it were); but the following day the truck was nowhere in sight, the road had dried out, and my terrors had mercifully fled.
The last 30 miles into Prudhoe were soaked by water trucks both coming and going. I’d seen a Go Pro video of a rider making at least 45 mph in those final miles a couple of months ago. I was struggling to do 25 or 30 through the slop Monday.
And I will say once again and finally: the only thing that remains the same on the haul road is change. It is a different world up there. And typing this report in a Super 8 in Fairbanks, I am constrained to admit that I don’t miss that world one little bit.
If someone wants to cross-post this to the LDR list, I give my permission. I’m not on that list.
Bob Higdon
#228
Fairbanks AK