4/3 So After some much needed sleep, laundry and unfortunately doing bills, I was back on the road, again later in the day. With the sun up all day here my natural tendencies have been allowed to take hold and I've been continuing to do my riding at night. I started my evening off with a stop to see Dan Armstrong at Adventure Cycleworks for a tire change. Dave's setup is little more than him working out of his garage, but he's officially retired and has been supporting motorcycle riders coming through Fairbanks for seven years. The service he offers is great, largely because he's very in-tune to what overlanding riders need, he offers 24/7 service, and he doesn't try and rape his customers like the local shops. As an ex road racer and a guy who's been around the moto block he's fun to talk to, and to top it off he does a very concientous job with the bikes. I pulled up at around 8p and there were two guys who'd just ridden the Dalton getting their bikes power washed and one getting his tires changed, so I got to hang out in the rocking chair, relax, and listen to the stories. When it was my turn Dan did a great job swapping out my very worn tires for some new Heidenau K60 Scouts, and at about 10p I was back on the road.
The ride started with a 80 mi stint up the Steese Highway, which flowed nicely with some great turns & hills , even if the pavement wasn't the greatest. Then I turned off onto the Dalton Highway, aka the "Haul Road", which would take me along the Alaskan Pipeline all the way to The Arctic Circle and the start of the pipeline at the Arctic Ocean, in Deadhorse / Prudhoe Bay.
The Dalton is mostly unpaved, with a good number of potholes, lose gravel and undulations that you need to pay attention to, especially if you're trying to make time, which I was. There's also the 18+ wheelers making their way to and from Deadhorse with supplies (the real purpose of the road, although it is now public). I had an encounter with one of the trucks, and really my only one of note, right off the bat when I came around a blind left-hand sweeper on loose gravel to a truck hauling ass directly towards me right in the middle of the road. I was ready, and quickly moved over to the far right of the road, but got demolished with a big splash of gravel in the process. The fun had begun!
The ride started with a 80 mi stint up the Steese Highway, which flowed nicely with some great turns & hills , even if the pavement wasn't the greatest. Then I turned off onto the Dalton Highway, aka the "Haul Road", which would take me along the Alaskan Pipeline all the way to The Arctic Circle and the start of the pipeline at the Arctic Ocean, in Deadhorse / Prudhoe Bay.
The Dalton is mostly unpaved, with a good number of potholes, lose gravel and undulations that you need to pay attention to, especially if you're trying to make time, which I was. There's also the 18+ wheelers making their way to and from Deadhorse with supplies (the real purpose of the road, although it is now public). I had an encounter with one of the trucks, and really my only one of note, right off the bat when I came around a blind left-hand sweeper on loose gravel to a truck hauling ass directly towards me right in the middle of the road. I was ready, and quickly moved over to the far right of the road, but got demolished with a big splash of gravel in the process. The fun had begun!
The new tires were fantastic and I was able to keep a very quick pace, rarely dropping below 70 mph, even on the loose gravel sections. This definitely wouldn't have been for every rider, but I was very comfortable with the pace, and my bike's long wheelbase combined with the tires really was a great setup for the conditions. Not everything went completely without incident, though, and about 150 miles into it I made a donation to the Haul Road: I'd installed a Touratech "tool box" on the bike before I left. This is a small aluminum case that matches the regular travel cases, and is just the perfect size to house my tool roll, pump, and siphon hose, that fits inside the right pannier rack, in a normally unused space between the rack and the wheel. The Touratech website said I needed to remove the rear fender, which is a small thing that hugs the lower-rear of the tire in the GS, connected to the bike by an arm that's bolted to the swingarm. But the (German) instructions that came with the box said it only needed to be removed for off-road riding, and it does reduce the spray coming off the rear tire, so I decided to leave it on. That seemed to be going well, with the flexible plastic fender, which moves up and down with the rear wheel, only contacting the box once lightly somewhere in Canada when I hit a g-out. But when I slammed into a pothole on the Dalton at 80 mph and bottomed the suspension, the fender hit the case while the wheel continued up, the knobs on the new tire grabbed it and, quick as that, the fender was sucked up by the tire, twisted & broken off, jamming between the tire and rear shock. Not the biggest deal in the World on the grand scheme of things, though!
I definitely enjoyed hauling the mail out in the middle of nowhere under the low Midnight sun, and at one point after crossing into the Arctic Circle I realized that my GPS, which shows sunrise and sunset times, was no longer displaying times for those events...because I'd finally gotten far enough north that the sun wasn't setting any more! I made my first stop at the one and only mid-way gas available, 280 miles into the trip at Coldfoot Camp. It's just workers, a fuel pump, and a couple small bush planes there, but because of the around-the-clock hours many of them work, their "diner" is open 24/7, and so I filled up on coffee and had an awesome piece of blueberry pie (alamo'd of course!) while I chatted with the guy who tends the place at night. He gave me a good tip on the Marion campground, so after refueling my bike & body I travelled a few miles up the road and set up camp. (+284 / 4,130 mi)
4/4 after a few hours sleep and a nice camp fire I packed the show up and continued northward. I soon climbed and crossed over the Brooks Range, and after descending the northern slope the landscape changed pretty dramatically, going from mountainous and covered in spruce, to fairly flat, tundra-covered ground with not a tree to be seen. It was still very pretty, and after crossing the mountains the road travels along then Sagavanirktok ("Sag") River. 520 miles from my prior day's departure from Eielson Air Force Base, I pulled into Deadhorse Camp, in Prudhoe Bay. It's nothing but oil workers there, and even the fuel pump was very hard to find, and unmanned. I did get passed on my way up by a helicopter going the other way over my head, back to Fairbanks, which I later found out was carrying the rider of a BMW GS who'd run off the road. I helped the rider's father and brother, who were both riding with him, get the bike back up the 10-foot embankment to the road, and learned that the extent of his injuries seemed to be limited to a few broken ribs and a broken collarbone. My only personal "excitement" was when I unexpectedly entered my first section of muddy, snotty calcium chloride mud at 80 mph. Definitely slick stuff, but other than an extreme butt pucker no harm was done! I took the fourth picture below from Deadhorse...it was by far the most scenic image I could muster.
After poking around the very un-scenic few blocks that make up Deadhorse Camp I turned the boat around and hauled ass back to Fairbanks and Eielsen AFB, making another stop at Coldfoot Camp for a good breakfast, arriving at about 2 am and clocking over 760 mostly unpaved miles on the day, and almost 1,050 in 27 hours. (764 / 4,894 mi)
No comments:
Post a Comment