Days before we arrived at the beginning of the Dempster Hwy and the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Hwy (ITH), people warned us about them. Oooohhhh! Watch out! Have 3 spare tires! Get ready to have your windshield broken! But don’t get it fixed as you will have it broken again! Etc…….
Turns out it was one of the most awesome drives ever! But…..
Here is what we actually saw; sorry there are not pics of everything due to the heat of the moment.
We came upon a burning road crew truck on the ITH. We grabbed our fire extinguisher and helped put it out. The guys were very appreciative They set us up with a couple of extra extinguishers when we returned to Inuvik and a promise that if we ran into trouble on the trip south to call them and they would rescue us.
Too many broken windshields to count. We think it was a local badge of honor as the locals fly up and down the road. One local told us the next section of road was an hour drive…it too us two and a half!
Tire carcasses and blow outs due to the rocks that make up the roads.
One broken axle on a trailer.
One bent wheel on a jeep.
One wheel popped off a very large delivery truck. And another large truck driving with a shredded tire.
Campers that now squeak and are definitely going to need some repair work.
Very large gravel trucks. They are still putting fine touches on the ITH, it just opened a few months ago, and the gravel trucks run constantly.
Several landslides. Unaware to us a large landslide closed the road behind us as we traveled north. The road was still being cleared when we were coming south and the river below it had had a new island!
Rain closing the road. The road to Tuk was closed for 3 days just prior to our arrival in Inuvik. The “weather window” is a common topic of discussion as you travel north as it can change the road conditions drastically. We were lucky enough to have a beautiful day for our drive from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk.
The Bugs! Some days there were none and others were beyond description!
The Dust! I think it will take many showers for us and the Rover to be clean again.
Black Mud. The road is made from whatever stone or rock is nearby, in the case of black mud the road is made from ground up oil shale. When it gets wet, it is mud lubricated with oil.
On our way south, we came upon a truck & camper playing a game of chicken on the Dempster in the infamous Black Mud. The truck lost when it pulled over to let the camper pass. We pulled to the side a bit to get out of the campers way and proceeded to begin sliding sideways off the road. We popped the rover into 4WD and tried to back into the center of the road. We slid closer to the edge and a potential roll over (the road is built high above the permafrost), we then dropped it into low range and the wee Rover crawled her way back to the packed center of the road. We were unable to help the other truck but we were lucky to flag down a road crew who very nicely brought a road grader to pull the truck back onto the road.
We had snow, hail, fog like pea soup, rain, 24 hours of sun, dust that coated the inside of the rover, mud that coated the outside of the rover, a road rough enough that we may have loosened a few fillings, a road smooth enough that it felt like pavement, skies so clear you could see forever, and views that humbled the soul!
We drove slow and had no flat tires, no cracked windows and the wee Rover out did herself!