Approaching Truck, Dempster Highway

Photograph

The Dempster Highway connects the town of Inuvik, near the Arctic Ocean in the Northwest Territories, to the rest of the Canadian highway system. It is 734km of rough gravel road with very few services - perfect for a Land Rover! We stopped to help other people twice, a Pathfinder with a defective alternator and a Ford Excursion with a blown radiator hose. Approximately halfway along the road there is a motel and fuel stop where we saw a number of cars with slowly deflating tires. The only problem we had was a nasty crack in the windshield from a rock tossed up by a Ford Explorer only 300m away from the pavement at the end of our travels. It didn't matter much, we already suffered cracks from the Alaska and Yellowhead highways plus a cracked headlight lens from the Haines highway.

In the picture you see a big semi with two trailers about 5km away, or the dust thrown up by the vehicle. Even though the truck and ourselves are in the sun, there is rain following on the mountains on the right side of the picture. The low vegetation growing in the thin soil overtopping the permafrost are in the fall colours.

The are many places along the Dempster highway where you have spectacular views over huge distances. At one point you can see all of 180km. The highway more than makes up for its roughness with wonderful scenery as you travel through several geographic zones from mountains to tundra.