It was still a bit early to stop by the office and check in, so I just left a couple US bills on the table (I had not changed any money into Canadian $ - I figured they wouldn’t mind. :-) My usual breakfast of Slimfast to wash down a cereal bar, another one on top of the tank bag to eat on the run with some beef jerky, and time to hit the road. I was already pretty far up in the northern latitudes, and the sky was quite light between the lingering clouds even that early. I took the time to click a couple pictures on the way away from the lake to catch the rather dramatic sky. Muncho lake is located at a pass at about 1200 m / 3600 feet elevation, this is really the heart of the Rockies. I drove by a big 2-propeller airplane parked by the road, and realized that the level stretch of ground between the road and the lake was an airstrip. Compared to a few more I would spot further down the road yet, this was a pretty big one! The early morning ride was quite invigorating: blue sky peeks through the clouds, roads were drying quickly, not a soul on the nicely curvy mountain road, and the 3 hours of sleep had nicely refreshed me so I could really enjoy the ride. I picked up a bonus at Liard River Hot springs. I figured that it would be closed that early, so didn’t even bother to get off the road and just snapped a picture sitting on the bike (my rally flag is hooked to my ID strapped around my neck, within easy reach. When conditions are just right, I can just unzip my jacket, unhook the flag and drape it or clip it to my windshield, pull the Polaroid camera from the pocket of the ‘stich and snap the picture. Clip the picture to a handy clip on the dash while I stow everything back in, check that it’s actually developing nicely, stow it in the pouch stored in the right pocket of the fuel cell cover behind me, clipped with a leash to the bike… It probably take less than a minute to bag the bonus. Thanks, Kerry Church, who demonstrated his very efficient method a couple years ago in Gerlach! I make very sure that I have deployed the sidestand before pulling that stunt now, though!) Ooooh, it was very tempting to wait and get a nice soak, but I don’t have too much time. Jack G. told me later that it was indeed open 24/7… Good thing I didn’t know that! Stopped for gas a bit further down the road, and had to laugh at how dirty the bike was. Boy, this was nothing compared to what it was going to look like soon…

All was going rather well – and you all know that this is when your guards should come up. The Fates are just softening you up, and something is bound to be creeping up on little unsuspecting ya… Well, you remember that bonus that I wisely chose to disregard back in Boise, a couple months ago? I felt that I didn’t want to risk riding a few hundred feet on a gravel road with that big fat pig of a bike? Ah! There were a passage in the Question & Answer list on the website that I had latched on, and that was one of the pebbles that prompted me to sign up:

Jack also got into the act and tried to reassure tentative riders:

Fear not, brave riders. Aside from the inevitable highway construction, all you will need to do from Checkpoint 2 on is ride. And ride. And ride. And take Polaroids, and ride. And ride.

We're avoiding all but very short sections of gravel, and all bonus locations are accessible over routes I would not be afraid to travel two-up on my Concours.

There was another passage along the same lines explaining why Prudhoe Bay would not be a bonus (oh gosh darn.)

Also, we want to stay away from dirt and gravel roads as much as possible. We MIGHT have some short excursions onto dirt or gravel in the rally (possibly including something along the Dalton "Haul" road but nothing very far along it.) If I had to guess, I'd say the farthest you would have to travel on dirt or gravel roads would be maybe 20 miles. [...]

All good and fine, still talking about bonus that this here not-so-adventurous-great-Alaska-explorer can avoid if he doesn’t want to get mud on the bike. Great, I’ll be black-topping that sucker, sign me up. Unfortunately, my mind conveniently chose to disregard the last sentence to that paragraph... I suspect that I personally do not descend from monkeys (or whatever animate/inanimate thingamabob your personal convictions sees you as coming from), but most certainly from ostriches. What I don’t see can’t hurt me, and when my head is not stuck up my ass with my foot in my mouth, it’s buried so deep in the sand that I can taste the crude oil. If you don’t mind a brace or so of corny ready-made expressions. That fateful sentence read:

[...] You'll probably have to do that on the Alcan through construction areas anyway so we're not putting in anything harder than that. 

I found (after the rally was over, of course…) an old message that Jack Gustafson had sent to the Ldrider list in 2002, describing a trip down the Alcan. I’ll give you a quote from it, with no comments from me (I’m too shocked for words :-):

[...] you may want to consider my perspective when I describe surface conditions for these northern roads. Through the broken pavement that exists from Haines Jct. to the Alaska border, if there is sufficient width to accommodate my single track vehicle, and I can maintain my desired cruising speed while missing the worst of the potholes, I consider the road surface to be acceptable, if not necessarily good.

This courtesy  the maniac who laid out the last leg for the rally… :-)

And I was now unwittingly hurtling up the Alcan, a merry song in my head and a blissful smile on my lips.

Everything was going soooo well, that it won’t be too hard to imagine the surprise, then the disbelief, then the disappointment, then the sinking feeling that clamped both on my mind and my tires as I hit the first dirt on the road. I had zoomed by big signs announcing construction, but had not paid much attention to them. They say that up North, they have two seasons - Winter and Construction. I was not quite aware of what "road construction" means there. They just tear off the whole road, and start from scratch (as in "bare earth") And not for a 100 feet, but for 2, 5 10, 30 miles of non-stop construction: surface varies from (best) oil-sealed or packed gravel to (WORST!! ARRGGHH!!) 5-inch deep loose dirt or sliiiick clay mud, with a few variations thrown in for kicks. If it had been raining, then you’re going through a muddy mess that’s just as slippery as a toad’s back. If it had not been raining, then they have water truck go over the earth and water it down so it can pack when they run over it with the rollers – and it turns just as slippery as a toad’s back. :-) You’re not really in much better shape if they’re not at a stage where they have to water it down, because then the road is just a great dust factory: every car or truck you pass will bring visibility down to… not much, and will clog your lungs (and your bike’s air filter.) If you have to follow other vehicles (say, one of the zillions RV plying up and down the road), then visibility is zero as long as you suck their wheel. You actually come to welcome having to stop and wait for a pilot car to drive through a more active construction zone, because they will usually let you cut to the head of the line of car, and more often than not will let you ride next to, or in front of the pilot truck, so you can stay out of the dust.

The sinking feeling (very) quickly turned (predictably) to something a bit more productive: anger towards Mr. Joe Z. and his goons. Now, not only did I want to get to Whitehorse to make up for my previous rally brainfart, but I had to get there so I could strangle my friendly rally master! Excellent incentive! (For the more queasy stomachs among the 3 people reading this report (hi mom!) – no rally master was harmed during the running, or the writing up, of the rally.) (Well, not by me at any rate!) I get a little confused now about the actual location of the road construction, but I seem to remember that there were two very long stretches (maybe 20 or 30 miles non-stop), one before Watson Lake and one before Whitehorse. And that's without counting the (well, countless...) segments of gravel, ranging from 10 feet to 1/2 mile, that popped up constantly on the road. On the way back, I checked the sign, and it warned of something like 200 km of construction. That’s converts to what, 700 miles south of the border, eh? 

For the first few miles on the gravel roads, I was pretty tentative. Alright, no suspense, I must admit right off that it all went quite well, and I survived. Of course, I had the nice incentive of Joe’s face turning blue to help me keep the bike upright, so I can’t just credit my skills or the great handling of my K1200GS. I soon enough hit a comfortable cruising speed that would oscillate between 35 and 45 mph on the good stretches. You had to be constantly on the lookout, though, even on those good stretches Packed gravel was easy enough to ride, if you could stay on the packed part - so as to minimize interruption to traffic, construction crew will dump the various layers of material on the road, and let traffic drive through over the loose material – dirt, gravel, what have you. Trucks and cars actually contribute to the construction process by packing down the material, before the crew even run over it with heavy machinery. Great fun if you have more than two wheels. Not so great if you’re sitting on top of a 900-pound two-wheeled twitchy piece of sh… er, fine German Mile-Eating Machine, and you’ve already been riding for 10 miles with your ass cheeks clenched so tightly that you coulda squeezed a couple liters of oil out of a half dozen olives strategically located. So, unfortunately, more often than not, that packed part was just the tire track cut by vehicles in front of you, a track surrounded by 2 nice mounds of looser gravel, that can be 5 or 10 inches deep. If your front wheel meandered over too far to the side, you were more than likely to loose control of the bike in the loose stuff – which would happen to one rider on his way back after the rally was over. To sweeten the pot a bit more, there was often not just one track, but a few that wander back and forth. Picking the right one becomes a sweaty proposition, and if the one you chose happens to peter out, getting to another one can be dicey. Still, those were the good parts: on two occasions, I had to ride right after they had dumped %%$#@& loose earth on the road (excuse my French.) Fortunately, those stretches were short, and I managed to slither out of both upright. Crossing the first one, though, I thought for sure that I was going down. The bike started plowing down after 100 yards, and started to shimmy right and left, up to what felt like close to a full tank slapper. The handlebar was waving back and forth so violently, that it wrenched on my not quite back to 100 % shoulder, and send another pain message down my spine. Well, it was nice to hurt somewhere else for a change :-) I have done a bit of dual purpose riding, but it was quite far away. I must grudgingly acknowledge that I remembered Joe Z.’s IronButt Rally report, where he described his trip up and down the Haul road out of Fairbanks. The discussion on the LDRiders list had covered how to handle the loose and slippery stuff, and the word is to a) not panic (too late for that) b) stay on the gas c) stand up on the pegs. Well, I didn’t want to disrupt whatever balance and control I had, and wasn't really up for acrobatics anyway, so I didn’t stand up, but did weight the pegs as much as I could to lower the center of gravity of the bike. I did give a bit of gas, and what do you know, but miraculously, that brought the bike a bit under control, and pulled me through to the end of the patch, which was  fortunately no longer than maybe 500 yards. 500 long, friggin’ yards… There were a couple more slippery clay passages, one with a bit of an off-camber that got me praying to whatever Alaskan gods would be listening (probably laughing their silly heads off and placing bets on how deep a trench the tenderfoot would dig with his chin when finally coming down.) It eventually turned out to be quite fun to be riding on the gravel roads. (Loose stuff? Snotty clay? Nope, still looking for the humor in that.) And I decided to spare Joe Z. and Jack G., after all. Especially after I reread the FAQ and spotted that innocent overlooked sentence ‘bout construction on the Alcan…

After the miles and miles and miles of construction, I'm a bit less tentative on gravel now, but I still do slow down, to 70, for those ubiquitous errant patches :-)

Apart from the construction (!!), the ride to Whitehorse was quite uneventful. I can’t quite keep commenting every other paragraph on a) the gorgeous mountains, b) the scenic lakes, c) the wild rivers, d) the amazing wildlife, e) the spectacular roads, but please do not think that they weren’t there. It is quite impossible to capture with a camera the beauty of the terrain across which you ride. The little picture box is not big enough to embrace the expansive horizon that surges up when you crest a little pass: huge mountains in the background, circling you on 270 degrees, a huge valley below you, with half a dozen lakes sparkling on the floor, linked by a couple rivers that lazily or mightily meander among a zillion scrawny pine trees. I love mountains, and I can sure get my fill up there. Big mountains, little mountains, close mountains, far away mountains, of all shapes and compositions. All this, with a whole lot of nothing else: towns and villages are few and far in between. I’m sure that there are more people around than meet the (uninitiated) eye, but it is quite peaceful to be riding along for miles on and on and not see another soul. Check out a few of the pictures I took to get a very limited idea.

Despite the delays and the slow pace going through all the unexpected (to me) construction, I still managed to get to Whitehorse before the window closed down at 11AM. My brain must have been a little bit fried, because I took the long way around to get to the checkpoint location, STM Recreation, a Yamaha dealer. Although I had printed the map and the directions, and actually had remembered in the morning to stash them in the mapcase on my thigh so I could easily refer to them on arriving to Whitehorse, I still had to stop to double check the map. No problem, I had time before the window closed, and finally welcomed with a big sigh of relief the sight of the dealership sign at the end of the street. I had made it to the end of the leg, I had arrived on time. Dropping the bike, riding through snow and fog, fighting the bike over loose dirt, all was forgotten for the moment: I was quite happy.

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