Driving the Winter Alcan

By Rob Ashford

British Columbia, the Klondike and Yukon territories can give a wonderful and awful feeling of isolation in winter. Long thin empty roads stretch endlessly into the distance. This place makes you feel vulnerable. On one memorable morning, in the early light, glowing in bright neon, was a sign outside the motel reading “minus 18 degrees C”. Looking around, it appeared through my sleepy vision that a cruel phantom had breathed a cloud of ice and snow throughout the landscape and I wondered to myself, “what the hell am I doing here!” At that time in my life, I had never before experienced such traumatic cold.

If ever a highway should be experienced, the Alcan is it. Built due to the threat of a Japanese invasion in 1942 by the US military, it runs for 1378 miles from Dawson Creek BC to Delta Junction AK. During the summer months, big rigs and heavy tourist traffic really churn the highway up, and road construction is constant. In winter, seeing the road is the issue.

Other than snowplows, semi-trailers and the occasional traveler or two, traffic was scarce. Remember this is not I-5 up the West Coast, this is the Alcan, the Klondike and Yukon territories, and cell phones rarely work here. Not including survival gear can, in certain situations, be very costly. Our arsenal consisted of flares, extra food and water, glacier goggles, blankets, shovels, a stove with fuel and matches, and The Milepost. This publication is invaluable and documents practically every town, motel, tourist activity, and sightseeing adventure along the northern routes in Canada and Alaska. What we did not have was a block heater. I was informed later that a block heater heats the engine in really cold weather to avoid it from freezing. Who would know? In the Yukon, we almost paid the price.

From BC onwards, parades of icy swirls snaked across the road surface as though alive, buffeting the vehicle from side to side constantly. The occasional headlight in the rearview mirror or taillight ahead delivered a degree of imagined security to us. On several occasions, when arriving in a small town, with knees crossed and expectations of a lonely gas station attendant waiting eagerly for our business, all we found was a “closed for the winter” sign, or a shut-down-forever appearance. It’s best to be practical in winter, especially in winter. If the gas station is open, fill up and get coffee, and do not pass up the opportunity of an indoor toilet. Trust me, trying to pee in wind chill of minus 25 degrees takes some serious dedication.

Visually the scenery throughout western Canada is stunning. Huge deep blue ice formations, thirty or so feet in height, streamed down rock faces at the roadside. Moose and caribou would stray onto the highway to lick salt from the road surface.  Christmas card landscapes dotted with small herds of caribou exploded like firework displays around seemingly mundane corners in the road. Occasionally the sun scorched a golden shimmer over an icy forest in the distance, giving the illusion of a giant footpath through a wheat field. It also offers jaw-crunching tortuous drives, down timelessly long steep slick and windy roads, past sharp corners and low barriers, overlooking steep drops with ice encrusted iron bridges over the River at the bottom. The motel manager in Fort St John informed us later that this hill was known locally as ‘Suicide Hill’ due to the number of vehicle crash fatalities on it. Although rare, this became a constant reminder of the hazards this trip presented.

One of the pleasures of driving in winter after a long day was the comforting sight of warm golden light streaming from the windows of our overnight home in the snow-lit darkness ahead. Toad River Lodge had this appeal. Outside, all was crisp and clear with a deep mesmerizing blue tint filtering through everything. The snow glisten like diamonds and the northern lights pulsed green overhead. The fish and chips weren’t bad either.

Just north of Toad River is Laird Hotsprings and if you do nothing else on your winter journey but stop here, it will not be a wasted trip: spectacular, magnificent and awesome. The springs are located about a quarter mile beyond the parking area along a thin walkway leading into a silent frozen forest. Steam rises through the ice-encrusted branches and the freezing air tries to strangle you. Changing rooms are basic and were covered in thick ice, as was the wooden deck. Clutching my shivering body as I plunged into the sulphury 108-degree water was indescribable. Hot pockets where the water reached up to 126 degrees can cause a burning pins-and-needles effect to erupt over the skin and makes you feel like you are being boiled alive. In summer, I am told the springs are very popular. In winter, the place was practically empty.

The Yukon is block-heater country. At Watson Lake, 33 degrees below greeted us. A week earlier it had been 42 below. It was the only time on our trip where the car had trouble starting the next day. Each breath of the freezing morning air would dry my throat and make me cough as if I had asthma. Try standing holding a metal gas pump nozzle in minus 35 degrees – even my hands changed color to a shade of orange blue and the tips of my fingers ached. Now this was cold.

A little further on from the Canada-Alaska border is Tok. For whatever reason, I liked Tok. Maybe because this was the first stopover in Alaska, maybe it was the food (very good pizza at Fast Eddy’s) or just a warm bed. Something about the place made the stay enjoyable. Tok was our final stop along the Alcan. From there we headed past the Wrangell mountains, the Matanuska glacier in the Chugach mountains and on, straight into the frost-heaved damaged roads of Anchorage.

Wandering down 4th street in Anchorage on the day of the dog sled races during the Fur Rondy, an annual Alaskan festival, I heard whispers of the latest earthquake, a 5.5. The excited frenzied eyes of the race dogs were hypnotic. People were wrapped in clothing that could have represented more than a century’s evolution in winter fabrics. Hats made from an entire wolf head to modern fleece, and brown leather outfits, which could have come from a sepia-toned gold rush photograph.

Traveling along the Alcan, through BC, the remote beauty of the Yukon and Klondike, and into Alaska has reawakened something within me that had for a time grown weary. The gold rush may be over, but a spell-binding fervor still permeates from the silent abandoned mines, within the rivers and mountains, offering us all a piece of the fabled pioneering spirit of adventure. A spirit that may be buried inside, but one for which we all still desperately yearn.

Find out more:
The Milepost The All North Travel Guide. Pub William S Morris III

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Robert Ashford is a freelance travel writer based in the United Kingdom. This is his first article published in The Traveler