Hat Trick Run 2008

[John Stenhouse]

It's Lawrences fault! This is my friend Lawrence who lives on Vancouver Island. In 2004 on a trip round Alaska, he discovered the gravel roads that lead to Deadhorse, Inuvik and Yellowknife.


He started planning and after a couple of false starts we were ready to go in June 2008.
The bikes were a 2005 Tiger bought from Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Tours and a $200 Honda CB750 called Wanda!



In total we spent 34 days on the road and covered 10000 miles. We fell off, fell out, fell in, and had a great time!
We saw Whales, Otters, Eagles, Bear, Moose, Deer, Bison and Caribou.
For ease we took the Inside passage up to Skagway then Whitehorse, Tok, down to Valdez, ferry to Whittier, down the Kenai peninsula to Homer, then Anchorage, Fairbanks, up the Dalton to Deadhorse, back to Fairbanks and Tok, over the top of the world highway to Dawson City, then up the Dempster to Inuvik, back to Whitehorse, then Watson Lake, Fort Nelson, Fort St John across to Grimshaw, then up to Enterprise and Yellowknife.
Then the road home via the Rockies, Jasper, Banff, Golden, Kelowna and finally back to Vancouver.
Here are the piccys taken along the way.

Day one, up the Island to catch the ferry from Port Hardy. As you can see we took a lot of the spares we would need with us, spare tyres, tubes and puncture repair outfits, all of which apart from wearing out the tyres we never needed!


A side trip to Telgraph Cove and
The ferry to Prince Rupert



On the way to the Butzi Rapids

Our arrival in Skagway, the ferry isn't the boat on the right, that's a cruise ship it's behind the bikes, tiny ain't it!



More later!

[John Stenhouse]

Next Installment:

Our arrival in Skagway, the ferry is behind the bikes, tiny ain't it, the behemoth on the right is a cruise ship!


On the way to Whitehorse


The Alaskan border

Check out the plate to see where this is!


On the way to Valdez

Glacier country

Bride Falls on the way to Valdez

Where we took a day out to go Kayaking round the Columbia glacier icefield

[John Stenhouse]

Ice dead ahead Captain!


Arrival in Whittier


This is Portage, from Whittier they send you through the Alaska Railway tunnel, bikes go last, you discover why when you get in there! Drive between the rails they say! What you then drive on is steel checkerplate that has all the oil from the engine of every vehicle ever to drive through, slippy isn't the word, second gear NO throttle just let it make it's way through 2and a half miles of total terror  :shock:


How about this for a campsite view!

Some late night callers


And so to Anchorage


Where I got to play with the pussy!


Deja Vu, saw this in Stretchs trip report, still very weird in the flesh

And on to gravel for the first time

More later

[John Stenhouse]

First Stop on the dalton, the Yukon river bridge

The Haul road itself

Finger Mountain

Yukon River Camp, can't quite get over the chap bringing his gun in to eat, but since the place had a bear break in over winter I guess it makes some sense.

This was brought out to celebrate the summer solstice, the staff were having a party, we got an invite, this was scrummy!

The front of the sign, which by the way is not on the arctic circle at all!

The back

We spent the night of the solstice on top of Gobblers Knob, we were joined by at least a dozen hardy souls who stayed 'til 4am, and as it wasn't getting either darker or lighter we went to bed.

[John Stenhouse]

The reason the road is there at all, the pipeline


Overnight halt at Wiseman


Alaskan humour?

We spent the night in Wiseman with the folk from Texas who cast this, they were super, came all the way from texas for the summer solstice to pour this plaque in Wiseman village


The start of the Atigan Pass, Lawrence and I wondered what these were for, they are at the ends of the pass, I wondered about winch blocks. They certainly weren't for Lawrence to perform on!

The end of Atigan

The start of the Tundra

The last 40 miles was like this, varying depth of gravel which was nasty to ride on


Journeys end, the road goes no further.


The sign everyone has to take

Well this is the Artic Ocean so you have to take the photo

And these poor fools are the swimmers, BBRRRRRR!

We left Deadhorse at midday and rode 'til, 10 o'clock that night stopped for meals and had a whale of a time on the way back, overnight somehow it all became EASY!

This apparently is where the real arctic icrcle is but the hill prevents a safe stopping area

A slightly grubby Tiger having just finished the Dalton


More later[/list]

[John Stenhouse]

This is Santas house, yeah right  :roll: , you Americans are so gullible if you beleive that. Please note clean Tigger not so clean Honda, I wash my bike!


The end of the Alaska Highway, we were eventually to do it all, and yes those mosquitoes are life size  :lol:

So over the top to Chicken

This is a gold dredge, when it finished working it was just abandonned.

The Top of the World highway was a blast, a ridge run with stunning views on either side



Could be kind of dusty though!

[paulie]

thanks for sharing John! makes me want to make the run to Prudhoe so much more!

is there more?

 

[John Stenhouse]

The Yukon again, which we would have to cross to get to Dawson


The ferry


A fresh Anakee for the start of the Dempster

More later

[John Stenhouse]

Oh yes there's more, you lot will be bored with this by the time i'm finished!  :lol:

[John Stenhouse]

This is what happens when you hit a Moose at 60 mph

Juan is from Columbia, the bike was going nowhere, ignition barrel was smashed and the contacts underneath had gone, he was a lucky man apart from some bruising he was fine

The first pass on the Dempster 50 miles in

This was the easy bit!

Red River creek, I wonder why it was called that?  :roll:

Crossing the circle for the second time

From here on the surface was like riding on marzipan, and then it rained!


The Mackenzie river crossing

Then the gravel got deeper

Look at the mud on the truck, you didn't want to be passed by anything or you ended up being covered in that.

Eventually we made it, boy was I glad. On the Dalton I could say I was close to dropping it on two or three occasions, on the Dempster, I was close to dropping it all the time and in control on two or three occasions  :lol:

Inuvik from the air, on the ground you don't realise how much water there is around you. We took this sightseeing trip to Tuk, if you get the chance when your there GO!

This is the start of the trans Canada trail, the ice road starts across from here and is the only time Tuk has a road, in the summer everything is flown in, bread is $19 and milk $12  :shock:

Welcome to Tuk, have a nice day.

[John Stenhouse]

These classics made it up the Dempster

On the way back we stopped to help out this guy who had broken a fuel line.

The Mackenzie river on the way back and yes that truck is stuck!

Then it rained again and it all started to go wrong, the road turned to mush and we came across this brave soul, check out the bike on road tyres! Say Hi Pete. We agreed that travelling together was best as then there were three of us to pick the bikes up. Petes had been down 4 or 5 times mine once and Lawrences once, shortly after this Lawrences fell over on its own with no help from us!  :lol:


We got to Eagle plains that night, it took ten hours to do 180kms. This is the next day and we were all stuck there, the road had washed out 100k further down and we were held up for two days

Still it gave us a chance to wash the mud off. Before and after on a BMW and the wash bay with all the bikes on.



Say hi to the founding members of the eagle plains motorcycle club

The views were great, the weather was fab, the bar was busy and still it took two days to get out of there.



On the road again and Tiggy I discovered had NO brakes!  :shock:
I guess they wore out in the mud, have never had all the pads wear out at once like that.

New set put in at the end of the Dempster and headed off back to Whitehorse

[John Stenhouse]

The survivors gather in the campsite at Whitehorse

Then on to Watson Lakes famous sign post forest

Encounters with Bear and Bison


A bit of on the move photo taking

Arrival in Fort Nelson, we were planning to do the Liard highway, but were told that they had just reopened it after it was washed away and the road was ok til you stopped then you sank! We then decided to go round rather than across

Albertas roads are kind of straight

So we did the Mackenzie highway from top to bottom too

Back across the 60th Parallel again

Waiting for the Mackenzie river ferry again

And so to Yellowknife

More Later[/list]

[John Stenhouse]

The Great Slave lake

Tried to get into the old truck museum but it was shut

Had an idea to see how much weight I had been lugging around so I borrowed one of the self weigh scales, 320kg with half a tank of gas!  :shock:  Tried it later with a full tank  it was 340 so with fat ole me on it all up weight was 435kg. Double eek!

After dropping through Grand Prarie and down to Grand Cache and Hinton we hit the Icefields parkway and the Rockies



These are the Icefields and they are really spectacular, ride that route if you can.

A stop at Lake Louise is a must but very touristy

An overnight stop in Golden, then onto the Trans Canada Highway


Say Hi Mark, he does his own Custom work and this bike was gorgeous

Just before Vernon where we stopped in a small town to see if Lawrence was still banned from the hotel bar, he made a nuisance of himself in 1973 and wanted to see if they remembered, luckily they didn't and we got a drink.

This is Melka lake on the way into Kelowna

Same road, just posted to show Lawrence I was doing the speed limit! He complained I was hanging back just to get him to slow down, my excuse was I was enjoying the scenery

This is Okanagan Lake looking down over Kelowna

Mission Hill Winery and Ken and Betty who we stayed with, thanks guys!

After a stop the next morning at the open air market to get some cherries for Lawrences wife and listen to the amazing Japnese drummers we left via the connector for Vancouver. A quick stop in with friends in the city and the run out to the ferry, we were home!





The ferry Home and the T shirts to prove it!


Thanks for your patience folks that's all, til the next time
John

[Yukon]

John,
Thank you for an amazing ride report.

[fano]

Wow!
This is some serious RR. Nice trip. Thanks for sharing.