[scooke]

I once flew to Ft St John from Vancouver then hitched to Liard Hot Springs Park where I camped the night in -36C, then hitched to Whitehorse where I worked for a few months, then realized that if I was going to see the Arctic before I had to leave the Yukon I'd better go NOW (in March). So I hitched from Whitehorse to the start of the Dempster Hwy, then hitched all the way to Inuvik (got a lift from a former mayor) where I visited for about 24 hours. It was that short because the last truck leaving for the ice bridges broke up was leaving the next day. Spent the next 5 days driving back down to the Lower Mainland. But that included crossing those melting ice bridges... Invigorating and terrifying. At one point, past the rivers, I asked the driver what all those slightly round brownish mounds were alongside the Dempster? Some kind of frost push-up? No! They were caribou carcasses! The right-of-way someone mentioned meant that these trucks would just barrel down the Dumpster and if a herd or bunch of caribou or whatever were in the road, the truck would plow through them. I asked why ... and he told me that if a truck tried to brake but lost control and went off the raised berm road that is the Dempster, the truck would sink too far into the permafrost before they could get a tow truck up there, and it would be stuck there forever, slowly sinking deeper into the permafrost. It was a wild few months in my younger days, let me tell ya!

[aksss]

Not sure when your trip was but I was able to drive to Inuvik during the summer months on the Dempster highway back in late eighties or maybe very early nineties. No ice roads/bridges were required, just a spare tire. I remember bad mosquitos. I can’t recall any ferries after the one in Dawson but maybe there were. Road-tripping up there sure is fun though.

[eric_the_read]

I spent a summer working in a hardware store up in Fairbanks, and my host/landlord decided to take me up to the Arctic Circle in his CJsomething Jeep. We were only a few miles up from the Circle when we kicked up a rock that punctured our oil pan. Thankfully, we were less than a mile from the last service station before the Arctic Circle, so we hitched a ride from a passing truck, and bought a bunch of oil and duct tape and just kept feeding the engine oil every few miles until we got back to Fairbanks.

Never did make it up to the Arctic Circle, though.