Dempster Highway
Truck driver waiting for repair of two blown tires, Fort McPherson, YT. Drivers prefer the road in winter. This driver told me he has "driven every ice road in the North". He had been invited to be on the TV program, “Ice Road Truckers”, but had declined, “They waste too much time stopping to take pictures.”
We had first met him and his rider at breakfast about 200 miles (300 km) south at the Eagle Plains stop, and then ran into them here again when we had reason to stop at the tire repair. Ice and debris on the rivers had just cleared, and the ferries had opened the day before. He was carrying some of the first supplies to Inuvik, which had been unreachable by land in the four weeks since the ice bridges closed.
The northern section of the Dempster Highway in the Yukon was built on crushed shale to raise it up from and insulate the permafrost. Pieces of this shale regularly puncture tires. A tire repair awaits at each end of the worst 150 mile (230 km) section. The Dempster runs nearly 500 miles (800 km) unpaved from the Klondike Highway near Dawson to Inuvik, far above the Arctic Circle.
