VivaEnduro

Woke up after about 6 hours sleep, once the sun got high enough the tent became sauna.  Another clear blue sky day. As I’m packing up my tent a guy on a bicycle rides up, his name is Simon and started in Vancouver.  His plan is to ride to Inuvik, then down to Mexico, very impressive.  He says he bush camps and I ask if he has had any bear issues “Nope, have you”.  I try not to freak him out, but give him some cautions to take, it would really suck to be alone without a car/motorbike when a bear walks out.

We head in to the Eagle Plains Motel but miss breakfast, its the only restaurant in Eagle Plains so I settle for some fish and chips.  We chat up some other bikers and after a few more cups of coffee hit the road.

The first stop is the Arctic Circle, this is where the GPS gets all wonky and confused when sunrise and sunset are.

There are a number of ride roads you can take to explore, its difficult to judge the scale of the hills and valleys.  The next picture shows my bike, up one hill, and Ed and his bike up the next hill.  You can barely make him out.

 

Next up the final border crossing: NWT

The ditches are anywhere from 6 to 10 feet down on either side.  This is required this far north to insulate the road from the permafrost.  If they dont do this the road will buckle.  There was a section of road in Alaska that was buckled, it looked like a serpents back, super fun to ride the motorbike on as you could almost launch the bike in the air each hump, but the RV drivers were cursing it.

We took the ferry over to Fort Mcpherson, which is actually pretty large settlement, but unfortunately suffers from many of the social issues of small northern towns.  Although dry, vodka bottles lined the roads.

This far north all the houses are on stilts.  The ground is too frozen for a foundation, the warmth from the building would melt the permafrost and the building would sink.  Dawson has a street with sunken buildings thats is interesting to see the actual effects.

The last stretch of the dempster was brutal, the gravel was deep and would grab your front tire.  I had a number of scary ‘tank slappers’ and once thought I was going over.

Finally pulling up into Inuvik I puled over to wait for Ed.  A car pulled up and some organizers took a table and water cooler out of the back.  They were dressed in jogging gear and obviously setting up for a race.  I walked over to talk to them and it turns out the annual Solstice Half Marathon and 10K was being setup.  She said the race stars in 1 hour, which was 11:30pm.  Great I thought, where do I register.

I zipped over to the cabin we rented, dropped my gear, showered the layer of dempster dirt off my body and jumped into the most suitable jogging attire I had (which didnt include jogging shoes).

 

I got over before the start and ran the 10K, perfect way to get a tour of the town. Apparently even north of the arctic circle my face goes beat red when jogging.

After the race, I walked down to the grocery store, bought some stuff for the BBQ and rode back to the cabin to grill up some dogs, it was the first meal I had since my fish and chips 12 hours ago.  By the time I finished eating it was close to 3am, still sunny out, Dempster finished.