First ever Lotus to cross Alaskan Arctic Circle

Right, have had a bit of sleep, so will try and remember what I did yesterday !

Oh, thats right, drove to the Arctic Circle !!

Woke up early at 4.30, and hit the road at 5.30 from campsite at North Pole (yes !!) outside Fairbanks.  Clear crisp morning, so roof off, and sandwiches and nibbles packed as I am expecting a LONG day in the saddle - The day before when I took the tour just to the Circle took 17 hours, and I intended to go a further 100 miles north of the Circle, to Coldfoot.  And while Elsie may be faster than the coach, a lot of the road is on dirt where 40 mph is an absolute max, often a lot less.  Beautiful morning, so roof off, and rugged up with my fur hat, and off I went.  Climbing up the first hills, the light was catching part of the clouds and made some eerie patterns and light which looked suspiciously like a daytime Aurora Borealis to me - Which I know is impossible, but.....  Tried to ttake some pics but of course they don't really show it, but I have put them in the folder and circled the bit I am talking about.  It certainly was VERY vivid, and moving around.


The first 1 1/2 hours was on the Elliot Hiway, twisting up through the hills through a busy Gold Mining area.  The hunt for gold didn't stop in 1898, or whenever - It is live and active now, and not just the big conglomerates.  Quite a lot of people apparently have hobby gold mines which they might operate with friends at weekends, hoping to make some extra cash from them.  There are the big commercial mines round here of course, but as you drive along you see these private sites, usually with ramshackle equipement out there, although I am sure it works just fine ! 
First stop was actually at an Alaska Pipeline view point just to see what they had.  Not a lot more than I had seen on the guided tour a couple of days earlier.  However there was a great sign beside the road there saying  "Canada my ass, it's Alaska's Gas"  - Oviously no love lost there, Eh ?   Love it !!!

Not much further up the road I came up behind a truck carrying chemicals belonging to the company I worked for for 36 years, M-I SWACO.  I knew they operated on the North Slope, but thought it was a bit of a coincidence that I should come up behind one at the start of the haul road. He actually stopped to fuel up for the run to Prudhoe, so I pulled in behind him and had a chat - Erin.  Saw him several more times on the road during the day ! That was when my new hand held CB radio came in useful as I could communicate with all the trucks round me !  Even better when he and another couple of guys I ran in to started calling me up as "Giles" for a chat over the air waves !!!  At one stage later in the day, a truck was coming up fast behind me so I called him through when he was ready and he said "No problem Giles, Thanks " !!!! Turned out he was the driver Shawn I had met in Coldfoot a few hours before, but gave me a helluva shock when he knew my name !!  "Oh, that must be you Shawn, is it ?" I said !!!  Rofl.  CB Radio turned out to not only be a great asset in dealing with the trucks, but also good fun and relieved a lot of the monotony (if there is such a thing on the haul road !!)

Anyway, on up the road, through the morning fog, to Joy, where I had promised Joe Carlson when I was there the other day on the tour that I would stop by with my car.  So I did, and he took lots of pictures and was pleased to see me.  Told me to drop in on the way home to prove I had made it OK, and to let him see the (currently clean) car when it got covered in mud !!  Then off again, and not far from Joe's we turned onto Highway 11, the Dalton Highway (aka Haul Road, or Ice Truckers Road) that runs all the way through to Prudhoe Bay.  It really is an odd feeling when you have read about and used all these names for 3 years while you are planning the trip, and the moment when you see the actual sign is actually quite special.  The Haul Road was only completed in 1974 after the 1968 oil discovery on the North Slope meant they need a road to get supplies up there.  It is 414 miles long, and was built in just 5 months (maybe that explains the condition ?!!) The highway was only opened to commercial traffic in 1981 but only to MP (MilePost) 211.  It was only opened to the public all the way to Deadhorse in 1994.  It was also built to enable acess to the pipeline so it could be inspected / serviced.  But winter plays such havoc with roads up here that the entire 3 months of summer is spent repairing the worst parts of the road, ready for the next winter, so there is no time when it is easy to drive.

I won't repeat most of the things I had mentioned when I did the tour, but will allow you to just see the photos as I drove the road.  One thing you may want to look for are a couple of shots I took of steep hills - These are the hills that the truckers have major problems with in the winter when they are ice covered, and if they don;t get all the way up, the slither all the way back down again, and you see this on Ice Road Truckers, if you watch it.  But these hills are often like a roller coaster in that they have a long downhill section first, then a steep up hill section up the other side.  So the trucks (even in summer) go screaming down the hills in order to get enough steam up to enable them to get up the other side - And they do NOT tke kindly to people who slow them up, especilly when going down the hill and trying to pick up speed !!  You really have to drive on your mirrors here, and even stop and wait for a truck to pass you if there is a tricky section coming up.  And at the bottom of these roller coaster hills there is often a narrow bridge, so if you see a truck coming towards you, don't race him for the bridge !!  He is coming through, in the middle of the road, and does not want to find someone in his way !!

I noticed the wheels on the trailers either have metal bars sticking out, or the tyres are painted with stripes.  I was told this was so that, on the ice, the driver can look in his mirrors and see if that wheel is actually rotating - Apparently on ice they can just be skidding, and this is obviously very dangerous, while also can wear out expensive tyres very quckly.  Lots of unique tricks you need to know on this road !

The only fuel stops on the Dalton are at the Yukon River Camp, and at Coldfoot, so you fill up when you can.  Yukon River camp dosn't look like much, but it offers (limited) accomodation, food (even for coach parties), and gas and limited mechanical help. So after crossing the Yukon River I filled up there before heading north to the Circle.  The massive Yukon River bridge is interesting as the entire road surface on the bridge is wooden, like old bridges. Not sure if that is to do with availability (probably) because to haul tarmac up there would be very expensive, or to do with how it lasts in winter, but is is impressive.  The Dalton is the only Alaska Highway that crosses this great river.

From there it was another 49 miles up to the Arctic Circle at MP 115. Having been there already on the tour, it was just a question of just getting some pics - Not easy when you are the only person there !!  Luckily I hd my little tripod nd used the timer - But the tripod is only about 9 inches tall, which explains the low camera angle in the photos !!   Must admit to a little bit of a moment there, as this really was the target for the trip - My very first blog showed a photo of the sign and billed it as the goal.  So to finally get there some 3 years after the original plan was hatched, and almost exactly 10,000 miles / 16,000 kms on the road since Los Angeles in March, was quite emotional, especially being on my own.
But the Circle isn't Coldfoot, and my sign on the car says "Surfers Paradise to Coldfoot", so off I headed north again, to Coldfoot at MP175.  While the road was interesting, I have to say that Coldfoot was not the most exciting place, even now.  Let me quote how it got its name - "The original gold rush town of Coldfoot was located n the middle fork of the Koyukuk River ner the mouth of Slate Creek.  It got its name in 1900 when erly prospectors reportedly got "cold feet' and left before winter set in." !!   A gas pump, some very expensive portacabin accomodation and a restaurant, and that seemed to be about all !!  I met Shawn, another M-I SWACO truck driver while I was there, but I left shortly thereafter !!  There is a Visitor's Centre there - But guess what, closed for the winter until................. tomorrow !!!

However I did learn from Shawn and other truckies I spoke with that the road from the Atigun Pass through to Deadhorse / Prudhoe Bay was in bad condition and being worked on. While it would have been great to get to Deadhorse, and I would have loved to have driven over the famous Atigun Pass, the amount of dirt road and bad condtions that I had already subjected Elsie to (and through which I still had to return) was enough, especially with a long way to go yet in order to get back to Seattle, and the thought of spending a night up there if I wasn't going to drive to Deadhorse and therefore make it worthwhile, soon presuaded me to get out while I could. So I did drive another 30 miles of good road further north, to Sukakpak Mountain at MP 204, and then I turned back when I came to the roadworks sign.

From there I just followed the only road back home !  Lots of comments from truck drivers on the radio as we passed.  One partcularly funny one occurred just after Shawn had passed me, so I was only about half a mile behind him.   A truck going the other way (towards us) chatted to Shawn and then saw me, and said "Holy s**t, Shawn, what is THAT behind you ?".  Shawn just said "Oh. that's just Giles in his Lotus" !!!!

Frost Heave on the road is interesting, but no worse on the Dalton than on many other regular roads here and in Canada. They mark the damage very well beside the roads, so you have ample time to slow down.  But you never know how bad it is - You might go through 10 marked sections which are very minor so you end up assuming the next one will be the same - And you suddenly hit a really bad one ! And it is not so much pot holes, but big longitudinal cracks in the road, like there has been a small earthquake there -  (I tried to potograph some of them, but obviously when they are bad, I am a bit busy to take photos !!  And you can't stop on the Dalton - you will get squashed !!)  Usually there is only 2-3 inches height variation which isn't a problem, but you can get some where there is 8 - 10 inches variation, and that is a problem because with your wheels either side of the crack, you can bottom out big time in the middle if your wheels are not close enough to the edge, tearing out sumps etc.   Elsie was very good because she is so nimble that you can weave between most of the cracks, whereas coaches and motorhomes and trucks just have to go straight through.  I only bashed the front clam once all day and that wasn't frost heave but just a recession across the road that was just severe enough to compress my suspension so the front hit - But it wasn't really that bad.  Generally she handled it so well that I am confident she will do fine on the Top of the World highway from Tok to Chicken and Dawson on the Klondike highway, when I hed south.  That has about 100 miles of dirt, apparently.

And so we trundled back into Fairbanks.  The main 10 mile section of road works was particularly wet and muddy as they were watering it copiously, so we really got splattered everywhere this time.  So when I stopped at Joe Carlson's to show him, several comparative photos were taken, and a laugh had by all !

Finally pulled into the campsite at 8.30 pm, exactly 15 hours and 572 miles after I had left.  That is an average of 38 miles an hour, which considering the delays, and fact that on the dirt you were lucky to get to 20 mph much of the time, was not too shabby.  Interestingly,  due to the low speeds I averaged about 38 mpg (US Gallon remember, so about 46 to the imperial gallon) instead of the trip average to date of 32.12 pp(US)g.  (39 mp Imperial G)   Perhaps this shows that we should all drive more slowly and save fuel more !!  I had been able to keep the roof off all day (what better way to go to the Arctic ?!!) , with only a couple of light rain showers, and temps generally about 15 deg C all day.

So, Mission Accomplished.  Continuous rain is forecast everywhere in Alaska for the next 3-4 days, so there is no point in packing up and running down to Anchorage or elsewhere until early next week.  So when the rain permits (Elsie is not a good car to get in and out of repeatedly in the rain - She is fine on a long journey in the rain, but getting in and out frequently gets everything wet !! And being in a tent, it is hard to dry wet things !!)

https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/WithElsieToArcticCircle?authkey=Gv1sRgCICerOvmr9_i1gE#

This is the most important one.

First ever Lotus to cross the Arctic Circle by driving up the Ice Truckers Highway / Haul Road / Dalton Highway in Alaska.