Deadhorse, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska

SO THIS is a glimpse of what it must be like on a space station: life encapsulated in an artificial environment, surrounded by a hostile natural space.

After 40 nights of sleeping on the ground, I bought a room last night in a kind of Lego building in Deadhorse. The Brooks Camp, erected five years ago, is a complex of pre-fab housing modules stacked into a four-story Arctic fortress. It’s home to 300-plus men and women who work up here on the far end of the North Slope.

It was after 5 p.m. when I got here. Temp was 42F, wind howling. No idea what the wind chill might have been but I was cold enough to plug in my heated jacket liner for the last dozen miles of the Dalton Highway. The prospect of even 12 miles with no heat sounded like a long ride at that point. I’d been cold for a while.

How ’bout that rugged little piglet? On 5.1 gallons she came 257 punishing miles up from Coldfoot.

I filled up here in Deadhorse today, but it’s been raining off and on, not a great time to head south. I’ll stay a second night, give the road a chance to dry.

Space station, except with oxygen and gravity. I could get used to life at Brooks Camp.

It’s not a hotel, not a motel. It’s exactly what they call it: an Arctic camp.

I was advised to bring my side cases inside, to avoid the possibility of a bear wandering by and taking an interest in tearing the motorcycle apart to get at my food store.

Primo parking spot, right by the front door.

Camping here is worth every penny of the $125 a night. This is my actual opinion, for what it’s worth. I’m nobody’s pitchman. I pay full freight, like everybody else.

The $125 covers everything: a small room with a private bath, roughly 140 square feet total; all-you-can-eat meals (Sundays are prime rib night, I ate way too much.)

Laundry room’s free, even the detergent. Washers and dryers everywhere, no waiting.

They have a place called the Spike Room, for between-meals feeding. It’s basically a 24-hour convenience store with no cashier. Take whatever you want.

Yes, you’re out in the middle of nowhere. And while nowhere, you’ll be well fed.

Scattered industrial infrastructure, that’s all you see everywhere you look in Deadhorse. It’s a working town’s working town.

All related to oil, as you might expect.

Couldn’t get out onto that distant point of land. Assorted building and tanks. Access was restricted.

Just about every property is. Some even have manned checkpoints you have to get through.

I was advised to shoot photos from the road, not wander onto private property. Everything I wanted to see I could see from the road, so that worked out.

Did some hiking in the Prudhoe Bay National Forest, saw all five trees, so that was good.

Deadhorse is only about 300 air miles west of Tuktoyaktuk, but it’s a 1,500-mile ride. Did we really leave off that part of the story way back in Dawson City?

Man, the Yukon seems so long ago.

I caught the ferry over the Yukon River, rode west on the Top of the World Highway, crossed back into the states at Poker Creek, Alaska, population 3. Four while I was there.

The border closes at 9 p.m., miss it and you need to camp on the Canadian side and wait for morning. I crossed with a few minutes to spare.

Saw caribou everywhere on the road, easily 75 in the span of an hour. Saw a few dozen at once, skylighted as they ascended a ridgeline, one behind the other.

I’m carrying a pocket camera, no long lens, so…

Cropped this one in close… not bad…

Lots of ‘bous around so I took it slow, camped on the river at Walker’s Fork that night, in the Fortymile region. If you happen to write Lee Falk’s Phantom, how do you ride by a place called Walker’s Fork?

Next night, Thompson’s Eagle’s Claw camp in Tok, Alaska. Time to decommission my rear tire, mount the new one I’d been lugging around since Whitehorse.

The old one wasn’t exactly alarming yet but I wanted a fresh drive tire under me for the haul road to Deadhorse. Up and back it’s 800-plus miles of gravel and post-apocalyptic pavement. I’ll try to get pictures of that on my way south to Coldfoot tomorrow. It can be risky to stop in those places (no shoulders, big rigs barreling along) but I’ll make the effort if it’s not overly hazardous.

Two of the guys in camp that night. Ron from Arizona on the left, and John from North Carolina.

They whipped up a potatoes-and-brats feed that fed probably eight of us. John’s treat. Ron and I had to insist that he take $10 from each of us before he made the grocery run to town.

Vanessa dropped by that evening. She owns the camp and goes out of her way to make it motorcycle-friendly.

Need to do maintenance on your ride?

A fully-equipped motorcycle shop. Use whatever you need, leave a few bucks in the tool box. Or not.

We all did, of course.

Sleep in the ambulance, if you’re not superstitious. I didn’t. But only because the ambulance qualified as a roof over one’s head.

John, Ron and I, and two guys from Brooklyn, New York, Spencer and Andy, camped at the group site not listed, $10 each.

I happened upon a pre-war Ford while nosing around the woods nearby. It was a hot day, look at that Alaska sunlight.

Shot up, as so many old trucks are. Bullet holes in the door.

Motor on the ground behind the truck. Not the factory motor. That would have been a flathead six or eight. This is a later Ford motor, the Y-block they made in the 50s and 60s.

Posted at the outdoor kitchen…

The group site was empty the next night, just me.

I talked with a BMW rider down the other end of Eagle’s Claw, Jeff from California, a retired firefighter. He had another first-hand report to tell of a Dempster Highway casualty: his riding buddy.

The guy wrecked his KTM1290 on a slippery stretch of mud just south of Eagle Plains, right around the time I was there. He broke two ribs. Jeff got the motorcycle loaded onto a tractor-trailer headed south, from Inuvik to Whitehorse. His buddy got some medical attention there, and transport home. The Yamaha dealer in Whitehorse agreed to store the bike until the guy who got hurt can fetch it home to the States.

So with his riding partner out of action, Jeff rode solo out of the Yukon and on to Tok, where I met him.

We happened to see each other again in downtown Fairbanks the next night, so we camped together. He wasn’t interested in riding the haul road with me, to Deadhorse.

He said the Dempster had cured him of it.

Headed north out of Fairbanks. Pavement here, gravel up ahead in the distance.

The Dalton Highway’s constant companion, the northern half of the 800-mile pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.

I camped in Marion Springs that night, just north of Coldfoot. Awoke and thought it was time to get up and ride again. Leaned out of my tent and snapped this pic.

It was 3:23 a.m.

Lots of rivers to cross on the way up.

I was surprised to find about 30 miles of fast asphalt not far north of Marion Creek. There seems no rhyme nor reason to where the haul road’s paved and where it’s gravel. Sometimes you find just a half-mile of pavement for no apparent reason.

Like the Dempster, the haul road’s constantly changing. Keep your eyes peeled. On bad sections of asphalt and gravel alike I hit holes that made me lean over the fork a moment later, to get a look at the front wheel. Each time I was astonished to see the wheel was still round and running true.

This little piglet really is built to take punishment.

Atigun Pass, where you leave one climate behind and enter another. The warm air currents pushing north fetch up on the south side of the Brooks Range.

Cross over onto the North Slope and you’re in the Arctic for sure. Start putting on more clothes.

Dry gravel here… nice…

But see where the edge is collapsing over on the right? Sometimes you see that in the travel lane. It would be a serious get-off if you were to drop your front wheel into one of those rifts at speed.

Lonely roads… I can’t get enough of them.

Rain here and there.

A little wet but nicely graded. You can rip right along.

These guys do, too, so… watch out.

One passed me with little room to spare while we were headed down a wet stretch of gravel, 7 percent grade, a single-lane bridge at the bottom. One of those things where you check and check and check and there’s never anybody in your mirrors; and, of course, as soon as you don’t check there’s a massive truck grille looming behind your left shoulder.

This was juicy but graded seconds ago. The road doesn’t get any fresher than this.

I passed the grader and kept riding north. Little did I know the road would go completely to hell the closer I got to Deadhorse.

Later, I overheard two guys who work here talking about the poor condition of the road. One said, “It’s not even washboard anymore, it’s nonstop violence.”

He nailed it. For me, it was hard to make 20mph for quite a while before I got to the end of the road. The piglet took real punishment there, rattling and banging along. How does it hang together? Somehow it does.

But at a price. The Dempster got the last mile out of my rear shock; I fully expect to be riding with blown fork seals by the time I get back down to Fairbanks in a couple of days. I’ll be surprised if I’m not.

Last of the Brooks Range… The high places play out to nothing as you near the northern edge of the coastal plain.

Pretty to look at.

The starkness of the oil settlement itself. Lots of water flowing all around. Flowing north. Fresh water from the Sag River. Deadhorse was built right smack in the middle of the delta as far as I can see.

The sign says if you want to see the Arctic Ocean you have to pay $70 to a commercial tour guide. I’ll pass.

Saw it for free last week, at Tuktoyaktuk.

Tony DePaul, July 1, 2019, Deadhorse, Alaska, USA