Date: December 2, 2005 - Kilometers Traveled: 766 Weather: -31 and cloudy

We started out on our journey at 6:45AM. I had planned to start at 5AM, but Lorie was a little sneaky and set the alarm for 6AM instead. We woke to find that there was no water – it must have froze up in the night (remember that minus 36 rant yesterday?). There was barely enough water flow from the tap to brush our teeth. So we did that and we were out the door….not quite. We had left some of our stuff in the room and locked the key in there too. Lorie had to wake some of the staff to get back in our room. They were pretty good about it though.

So finally, at 6:45AM, we hit the road. The check-in station at the beginning of the Dempster wasn’t open at that hour, and only ominous warnings of the dangers of traveling the Dempster greeted us there. It was pitch black, of course, and very cold. The tires of the jeep scrunched and squeaked as they struggled over the frozen snow.

We started down the road when a thought stuck me – We didn’t check the road conditions hotline. We tried the cell phone, but we had already lost the service area. Now those of you who know me, know that I always go ahead – never back – and sometimes I forge ahead with a little too much enthusiasm. This character trait has served me well in the past, but today I’d regret it. More on that later – much, much more!

We traveled well for the first three hours or so, despite the dark. The road is narrow, with lots of curves and some pretty good hills, too! Why is it that road-builders always put the most dramatic of curves at the bottom of the steepest hills? I would really like to know that, because it is pretty hard on my underwear, if you know what I mean! There’s a certain civil engineer I know who is reading this, so I’ll be eagerly awaiting an answer.

We had hoped to get some pictures of the trip up the Dempster, but the sun does not seem to want to come up and it’s hard to take pictures in the dark. We expected to be able to see a little of the Aurora Borealis, but there are no signs of it yet. Perhaps it’s too early in the year for it yet.

Finally at 11:00AM the sun, although still well below the horizon, began to provide us with enough light to get a dim look at our surroundings. The scream of the jeep’s engine a sit climbed unseen hills had been for good reason. Mountains loomed ahead and behind us – great, enormous protrusions into the sky astonished us, but we still didn’t have enough light to get a good look.

Finally at 11:45AM the sun lazily rose above the horizon. The first spears of true sunlight shot towards the west and at our back. When the sun is low on the horizon like that the light is very yellow and very intense. I had to avert all the mirrors so that the reflection didn’t blind me.

The early sun cast an odd glow over the terrain. The yellows and oranges glistened off the snow of the mountains. As the sun got higher in the sky the yellows gave way to reds. The colours playing off the snow of the mountains were beautiful. At times, depending on the angles and our perspective, we saw a type of rainbow as the crystals split the prism of light into its constituents.

The sun stayed low in the sky, pretty much along the horizon, until about 3PM – when it set again. Within those few hours we got some pictures and I will be sharing those with you in a separate entry like I did yesterday.

One other phenomenon caught my attention – the frost on the windows of the jeep. No matter how hard we tried, no matter how we directed the hot air from the engine, we could not fight off the frost that constantly formed on the windshield and the side windows. The path the tendrils of frost took down the windows was interesting to say the least. Fingers of frost tracked down the windows in the oddest of shapes. I though some of them looked like decrepit branches of a tree reaching toward the sunlight.

We saw a wide variety of wildlife on the road. Here is the count –
- Two red foxes
- Six rabbits
- One small herd of Caribou (antlers were bigger than those in Newfoundland)
- About a dozen Partridge (no pear trees that I saw)

About one hundred kilometers south of Eagle Plains we ran into some drifting snow. I hit the drifts a little faster than I would have liked to, but not having checked the road report I didn’t know they were there. At first the hard snow of the drifts made it feel like we were in a boat going over lops on the ocean. But pretty soon the jeep was hitting the drifts pretty hard, and before I had time to slow down from the 70km/h we were traveling, the jeep tracked into the plow ridge and off the road. Lorie and I looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief that we were ok and we were only just off the edge of the road.

I stepped out of the jeep to take stock of the situation. I have been stuck before, but this was different. The front end of the jeep was buried in about a metre of snow and the entire passenger side was submerged as well, up to the windows in the doors.
I looked up the road, and then down. There was no one, nothing. We were utterly and completely alone. The air was cold – very cold, and the wind was up. We had gone off the road basically on the top of a mountain, on the plains. That’s why the drifting was happening. It was as bad as I thought, and there was no way we were getting out of this without some work.

I went to the back of the jeep and took out the small shovel that I had packed for just this type of situation. I shoveled for about twenty minutes. The going was difficult though, the snow was hard – good igloo snow, I guess.

After I had shoveled for a while I hopped in the jeep and tried to loosen us. The snow was having none of it, though and we did not budge a millimetre. Out again, and more shoveling. This time we did move. Turns out the two wheels on the passenger side had gone off the edge of the road and into a shallow ditch, and every time I moved the jeep those wheels continues to track along the edge of the road. There for a while I didn’t think we would ever get out on our own. Time and gas consumption became concerns, as was my freezing flesh.

It was very cold. Lorie wanted to get out and shovel or push, but I wouldn’t let her. The cold was incredible. All of my exposed skin was numb, my beard was frosted so much that I could feel the weight of it hanging off my face, and my legs felt heavy and useless. I persevered on though, and made a commitment to shovel out a path all the way to the road, and all the snow around the jeep. Hopefully a clear path and use of the four wheel drive would snap us out of our predicament. It worked! All of a sudden we were out!
Being stuck had cost us an hour of daylight and almost a quarter of a tank of gas – but we were out.

We continued on down the road, much more carefully this time. About an hour and a half later we reached Eagle Plains. It is obvious that this place is here for no other reason than to let people gas up, get a bite of food, and maybe stay the night if the weather is poor. The place is virtually deserted, and even though I walk in and pour myself a coffee and walk around the restaurant looking at the pictures on the wall, the guy sitting at one of the tables smoking and reading a newspaper, says nothing to me. Finally Lorie asks if we can get some food. He grunts towards a menu over by the cash register. We take a look at it and decide on a grilled cheese and fries for me, while Lorie ordered soup and a plate of fries. The smoking man took our order and went to the kitchen to cook it. While we were waiting we read the account of the Lost Patrol. There were some pretty interesting pictures and narrative on the walls of the restaurant. I’ll have to do some research on this later.

We eat our food, which is surprisingly good, gas up (gas is $1.40 a litre), and head out again. This is the half way point, and it has taken us a long time to get this far. We are not looking forward to another long drive.

About thirty kilometers up the road, we cross the Arctic Circle. I will have some pictures of that later.

We continued on, and before long we lost the little bit of daylight that we had and, once again we were traveling in the dark. The kilometers droned on, one after another…endlessly. Had it been light out, we could have at least entertained ourselves with the sights. But that was out, as was listening to the radio – there were no stations.

Eventually we reached the Yukon – Northwest Territories border. We are one step closer to home. After what seems like an eternity we cross a short ice road and pull into Fort MacPherson to gas up. The locals are less than friendly, but the gas is at least cheaper that in Eagle Plains.

After another eternity we cross the second ice road, the one we had been waiting on. It was much longer than the first one, and much rougher too. It’s an odd feeling to be driving across a river on ice. All we can do is trust that the people making the decision on the safety, know what they are doing. They must because we cross without incident.

The rest of the Dempster to Inuvik is relatively flat and straight and we make excellent time. The kilometers tick by faster now. Despite doing 100 km/hr on a snow and ice covered dirt road, we are passed by several trucks heading to Inuvik.

Finally at 8PM after thirteen and a half hours we pull into Inuvik. Finally!! The total is about 11,100 kilometers – and we did it!

That’s it for now. Tomorrow I’ll have some words on Inuvik. For now it’s to bed.

Cheers!