The bumper sticker is still pinned to the bulletin board in my room:

“I survived the Dalton Highway”

Prudhoe Bay, Alaska – Riding A Bicycle From Florida To Alaska In 1997

The word “Highway” seems to be a bit of an exaggeration in describing the trail of dirt and rock and mud that stretches some 414 miles from the tiny town of Livengood, Alaska and to the Prudhoe Bay oil fields on the Arctic Ocean. It’s been nearly five years since I completed a 7100-mile bicycle trip from Largo, Florida to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and can clearly remember buying the sticker at the little store in the makeshift community of Deadhorse, Alaska. That sticker expressed accurately my feelings at that moment. After two weeks of pushing and pedaling a fully loaded bicycle – through snow and wind and ice-cold mud – up steep narrow banks while at times dodging roaring semi trucks- I had finally completed a journey that, at times, I though I could not possibly finish.

Part of the difficulty was the time of year I found myself up here in the northern most reaches of Alaska. It was September – the sixth month of a Florida to Alaska bicycle trip I had planned to complete in four-months. I had misjudged the time it would take and was now in a race against the approaching winter. If not for a little known at the time weather phenominon called El Nino this final Dalton Highway stretch of my trip would not even have been possible.

The Dalton Highway was the last stretch of a very long journey. After having ridden a bicycle some 6700 miles across the North American continent another 414 miles should be a piece of cake – right? Well, actually I knew better – and as I prepared to make that final trek from Fairbanks I anxiously anticipated what the infamous Dalton Highway would be like. I had heard and real a lot about the old “haul road” as the locals call it, but nothing could prepare me for the actual journey itself.

The 74-mile stretch from Fairbanks to Livingood – the point where the Dalton Highway begins was uneventful. The Elliot Highway is paved for the most part. The weather was nice – in fact, the temperature had been in the 80’s the day before. As I pedaled up the Elliot on a nice cool, sunny day enjoying the sight of endless yellow trees and a bright blue sky I couldn’t help but think that after more than five months in the elements I could handle anything. I was confident I was in great shape, and my legs were never stronger. I knew this would be the toughest portion of my trip but I had just been through more than five months of the toughest training and preparation. Certainly I should be able to handle this final stretch with no problems – or so I though.

The Dalton highway was named for James Dalton, an engineer who contributed to the exploration of oil in the frozen tundra of Alaska’s North Slope – the northernmost chunk of land in the US. The North Slope was frozen nine months out of the year, and was composed primarily of perm a-frost. The highway was built in 1974 during the construction of the Alaska pipeline as a haul road to move people and supplies back and forth to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean.

Right away I could tell I was “leaving it all behind”. I suddenly found myself on the most secluded highway of the entire Western Hemisphere and I could sense the stark isolation I would soon be subjecting myself to. For more than a year now I had been eyeballing that line on the Alaska map – the thin wavering line that stretched from the point marked Fairbanks up to the Arctic Ocean. All this time to ponder what it would be like had my imagination running wild. I had finally reached the road that had become in my mind an almost mystically unrealistic place. When I made that right turn at Livingood, I had reached the mythical Dalton Highway, and I was aware that this would be the last road of my journey. Still, there was no sigh of relief at this point and, in fact, I had the feeling of this being just the beginning of an entirely different adventure, for I still had this one last road to travel.

And what a long hard road it would be. It’s a stark contrast to any road I’ve ever been on in my life. It was not so much a road as it was a humongous trail of dirt, mud, and rocks. And not just little rocks either – there was a good deal of softball size stones and, unbelievably, some even larger. If anything, the Dalton highway is a slave to the terrain – the natural lay of the land. Not much altering was done to the surface it was not graded near as thoroughly as a regular highway would have been and consequently has some pretty steep spots with 12% grades and crazy twists and turns at spots. Often the road seemed to go straight up and straight down. And it seemed to go straight up and straight down while at the same time going what seemed like 180 degree turns – around mountains, around hills.

No sir, the Dalton Highway was not constructed with the typical passenger vehicle in mind. In fact, public travel was not even allowed at first – it was originally restricted to the first 55 miles of highway, which only allowed private vehicles to go as far as the Yukon River bridge. It is not a path for the faint of heart, and most definitely not for flimsy vehicles. If you are planning to enter your car in a car show in the near future, I would recommend keeping it as far away from the Dalton Highway as possible. This road eats cars for breakfast. To call this road rough is a major understatement. Rocks, ruts, dust, soft shoulders, and large, speeding trucks make this road not only challenging, but actually quite dangerous if your not constantly alert. A good practice is to pull off to the side when a semi-truck is approaching – and on a bicycle it is absolutely necessary.

This is one road that will never be paved – some sections of the road in the far northern region have plastic foam insulation under them to prevent the permafrost from thawing as passing vehicles heat the surface. The annual freezing and melting of the ground causes what they call “frost heaves” on paved roads – a phenomenon discovered the hard way after having paved certain sections of the Alaska Highway only to be destroyed as the pavement contracts and expands causing wrinkles to form in the asphalt.

My first day cylcling the Dalton I was happy just to make it to the first pipeline access road at mile marker 5.6. or Lost Creek Culvert. This would be the first of many so called access roads, with their trademark “goalposts” adorning the entrance. I’m camped out in the middle of a wild blueberry patch which I, of course, had to sample. They are tangier than store bought blueberries but I still eat plenty. I guess the novelty of foraging for my own food is hard to resist – I ate plenty of wild cranberries in _____and I hate cranberries.

If ever there was a road built strictly for utilitarian reason this one is it, if not for oil having been discovered at Prudhoe Bay this road would not even have existed – Its about the last place on Earth anybody would dream of building a road. The Dalton Highway was built for one reason and one reason only – oil. More specifically, it was constructed as a means of transporting supplies to and from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields

Oh yes, there is oil somewhere up there in that frozen wasteland, and this is not something you’ll likely be able to forget if you happen to be traveling this region of Alaska – there is one little structure that for 800 miles is difficult to ignore. Yes, the Alaska pipeline stretches out across the full length of the state – 800 miles – from Valdez on the south coast through the entire stretch of the Dalton. It was built between 1974 and 1976, is 48 inches in diameter, and more than half of this humongous metal snake is above ground. There are 10 pump stations along the Dalton Highway to keep the endless flow of crude oil moving toward the awaiting oil ships in Prince William Sound.

For all practical purposes, if you see another human up here they are likely to fall into one of three categories – Tourists, hunters, and workers. Of the people who work up here they are also likely to fall into one of three professions. The people up here either work at the oilfields, for the pipeline security forces, or for the highway maintenance crew that deal with the road itself.

I met a man named Dean, one of the highway workers, while he was operating a backhoe on a section of the highway. Just on of the many sections of a road that is in constant need of maintainace. Dean also ran a little truck stop restaurant stand at the 5-mile camp (so named for being 5 miles north of the Yukon River) during the brief summer period when everything within 1000 miles isn’t frozen solid. He let me use a trailer that sat on the now vacant property. After having spent night after night in a tent the trailer was like staying in a luxury suite in a posh hotel. The weather was starting to get cold at this point and it seemed that the further north I traveled the foggier it became. It was an odd pleasure that there was a heater in the trailer.

The Bureau of Land Management manages much of the land along the highway north of the Yukon River.

Dean drove me to his house the next day so I could take a shower. Actually it was a state owned house and it was not anyone’s permanent residence. The workers in this secluded northern half of Alaska mainly live in either Fairbanks or Anchorage. They fly back and forth to their jobs on the Dalton in alternating one or two week shifts. They work for a week or two, then fly home and have a week of two off. Dean worked every other week. There aren’t really many permanent residents up here except the Eskimos who live in small communities scattered throughout the region.

I’ve been told on several occasions that the weather has been unseasonably warm. “Usually by this time of the year it’s 20 below with two feet of snow on the ground” is a typical statement I’ll hear. Everyone seems perplexed as to why winter hasn’t started yet. It probably gets into the 50’s during the day and the 20’s or 30’s at night and there has been no snow yet, and here it is mid-September in northern Alaska. It wouldn’t be until later, long after returning to Florida, that I would learn of a newly discovered phenomenon called “El Nino” which caused strange shifts in weather patterns. Not many people were aware of it at the time.

This has been a really fortunate quirk for my trip. If 1997 hadn’t been an El Nino year I would not have been able to travel past Fairbanks. I stayed for two days and nights in Deans trailer and it was difficult to have to leave it behind. I filled my many water bottles up in an Artesian well on the property and I was on my way again.

The altitude rises above the tree line as a plateau rises abruptly at a spot just south of the Arctic Circle. It’s a strange landscape on an old primitive hunting ground. Strange rock formations called tors jut out from the ground. Apparently the frozen ground causes underground rocks to be squeezed up above the surface, some of which are around 40 feet high. One tor in particular, named “Finger Rock” looks like a giant finger pointing up to the sky. I’ve been told bush pilots have been using it for years as a navigation tool – Mother Nature’s friendly assistance, pointing them in the right direction. As far as my direction was concerned, I had only to keep heading north, up the only road available. Next stop – the Arctic Circle.

The speedometer hit 43.6 m.p.h. as I decended the plateau, leaving Finger Rock and it’s family of tors behind. It was the fastest speed of the trip and it couldn’t have happened at a more stimulating spot. Everything shook violently as I hurled rapidly down rocky dusty incline. I couldn’t have slowed down if I wanted to. My brakes had long ago worn down to near uselessness – especially at this speed. All I could do was look ahead and keep it as steady as possible – I was at the mercy of the road, and it felt great.

I made it to the Arctic Circle. There’s a rest stop display designating where the imaginary circle is. There’s nothing there to see, of course, the Arctic Circle is just a latitude distinction to describe the southernmost point in which the sun doesn’t rise some point in the winter and doesn’t set at some point in the summer. For me it is another milestone. And to the handfuls of tourists who make it this far from civilization, something to tell people about. A group of bow-hunters stopped by and took my picture against the backdrop of the [densely packed spruce trees] – and a wooden sign to let you know the [where your’e at]. One of the guys made a comment to me that made the assumption I was heading back south. When I told them I was heading north they looked at each other and started laughing – obviously they hadn’t heard of El Nino either.

In the year 1900, gold prospectors traveling up the Koyukuk River in search of precious metal and battling against the oncoming winter reached a point in which they felt they could go no further and headed back – they got “cold feet” as is said. Now there exists a town at that spot called, appropriately enough – Coldfoot. Calling it a town greatly exaggerates its size, but not its importance. It’s really not much more than a truck stop with a little restaurant and one of those pre-fabricated hotels, but it’s the only hint of civilization along the Dalton highway and the last place to get food or gas for another 240 miles. I was counting on a least finding a store so I could buy some much needed food supplies for the longest stretch of uninhabited wilderness (I’ve since learned of a small store in the “town” of Wiseman, which is a few miles off the highway nearby). I was able to buy bread, cheese and peanut butter from the restaurant. They pulled out four frozen loaves of what would turn out to be the stalest bread I’ve ever seen. It must have been years old. The crust turned to powder when it thawed out.

In addition to the restaurant/gas station/post office, Coldfoot had a “motel”. What they call motels up here are really just converted workers camp housing trailers. I wasn’t going to spend the outrageously inflated prices to stay in one of the little cells but I did buy a shower which I took in one of the closet sized rooms. I also took advantage of the heated lobby type area to relax in the warm confines and read magazines and the many news arcticles on their bulletin board. Coldfoot really is a truck stop and the vast majority of people who utilize the services here are truckers, so it stands to reason that most of the news revolves around trucking and extreme cold and the results of the two forces meet. In particular, the news concerns the perilous plight of the truckers who make the 500 mile trip each way from Fairbanks to Deadhorse in the most extreme winter conditions on possibly the worst road anywhere in the United States – And the climax of this trip is, no doubt, The Brooks Range. The climax of the Brooks Range is the Atigun Pass.

On article was featured on the bulletin board there in the lobby of the so called ___Motel about the dangers of the Atigun Pass and how many trucks have fallen off. A fallen semi was pictured lying on its side at the bottom of the pass. The narrow, unstable, winding, frozen pass – crudely chiseled out of the Brooks Range highlights the single most dangerous truck route anywhere in the states. The road is so steep in places the trucks must get a fast moving headstart in order to gain the momentum needed to climb the peaks in the road. This is often done in winding sections of iced-over road. Trucks are constantly seen stopped on the side where the driver must meticulously place chains around the 18 wheels of his truck. Consequently they are paid very well for the job. In 1997 they were making $2,000 or more for a load which some would attempt in one day but most drivers usually stopped in Coldfoot for the night.

When I woke up the next day after camping in front of the ______ hotel. I didn’t want to continue. I sat there and though about whether I should turn around and start hitchhiking to Fairbanks. I don’t know if the spirits of the would be gold miners of 100 years ago were trying to tell me something or not but I was getting a case of the “cold feet” myself. I didn’t feel like I could continue and at one point had even made up my mind to turn back. It was after 1:00 PM and I was sitting there in Coldfoot trying to motivate myself to do something. For a long time I just sat there trying to thing of a reason I shouldn’t just turn around right there. It was 240 miles to Deadhorse and I was aware it would be the toughest part of the trip. The Brooks Range was up ahead and it was getting colder by the day. I would be above the treeline with no wood to burn and no more places to stop for anything. There would be nothing for those 240 miles, possibly including water. I had a strange feeling about making that right turn and heading north. For the first time on my trip I was actually dreading the though of going any further.

Ultimately, something inside me decided for me that it would be a shame to make it all this way and not to finish. A sudden reflex propelled me from my seat and, without thinking, I hopped on my bike and headed north. I turned down an access road at a point the maps call Dietrich camp. It’s a typical scenario. When I look for a place to camp the access roads make for a perfect choice. For one thing, they usually have the “goal-post” type structures over the entrance to insure no truck too tall to clear the pipeline will be able to pass through and damage it. These make really convenient structures to hang my food out of the reach of hungry animals. The trees this far north are so stunted due to the permanently frozen ground they fail to grow much bigger than Christmas trees.

I had just pulled in and leaned my bike against the goal post when I noticed an animal up ahead on the dirt trail just past the pipeline – a bear. It looked small from a distance so I thought it was a cub. I snapped a quick picture and it wandered into the woods. Hoping to see it again for a better picture I stood there with my camera and waited. There I stood cursing it’s departure and ruining my photo op when it finally emerged from the bush much closer. I see that it’s not a cub but rather a fairly large Grizzly Bear and I can feel the adrenaline in my body pumping. Still about 300 feet away it starts zig-zagging toward me and I get a couple pictures. At this point I am no longer anxious to be taking pictures.

The rational part of me starts to take over and begin to wish it would start heading in another direction. The bear continues its zig-zag path toward me and I start walking in the opposite direction – toward the highway. Suddenly, I realize that I haven’t tied my food up yet and that the scent is probably what is attracting the bear. My food is still on my bike and the bear is downwind. By now I have made it to the highway but there is really nowhere for me to go out here. I picked up two big rocks and started banging them together. The rocks break but the bear hears the noise. It momentarily sits up on its haunches – like a really big gerbil – then runs off into the woods.

I realize that the threat of a bear attack is slim and that even in a face to face encounter the bear is likely not to want anything to do with you. I’ve read enough about it to know that up in these remote regions where bears and humans don’t frequently meet, that a bear is likely to avoid us as we are of them. Still, I can’t help but recall that rush of adrenaline I felt seeing a real live bear out there in its natural habitat. No cages , no fences, no man-made structures of any kind that I could use to my advantage. If a bear wanted to get me there is nothing I could do about it. I had no weapons but a small canister of pepper spray.

For all the stories I’ve heard about bear encounters – good and bad – I am suddenly struck with the stark reality of the situation. Even after hearing of the bears killing those people at the camp the day after I left didn’t hit home with the clarity that seeing one from a distance. I was glad my bear encounter came at the tail end of the trip. I figured I only had possibly four days left and it would just be my luck to make it all this way only to get killed by a bear. I had always wanted to see a bear and now I had. I would at this point be perfectly satisfied to finish the trip without seeing another one.

All this excitement and adventure had me psyched, but I’d soon realize that this had all been just a warm-up. I had no idea at the time but the day after the bear encounter was to be the most challenging and exhausting day of the whole trip. Today I would cross the Atigun Pass of the Brooks Range.

The Brooks Range is a string of mountains that stretch east to west across the top of Alaska dividing the North Slope from the rest of the state. I reached the foot of the mountains late in the afternoon. I first had to ascend a winding ramp to reach the Chandalar Shelf, a plateau, which gave me a nice little rest – sort of. It took about and hour and a half to push my bike up this incline to get to it.

As I rode across the shelf I figured I’d done the hard part but as I circles left around a bend I was greeted with the sight of the ACTUAL Atigun Pass. Up to this point I had only seen snow on mountaintops – now I was IN the mountaintops. And there, in front of my face, was a massive snowy white pair of mountains, and there, on the side of one of the mountains I could make out a diagonal line running along the mountain. This was the road upon which I needed to ride, and there on that road was what looked like a little miniature toy semi-trailer truck making its way down the mountain.

Even so it didn’t look like it was that long from where I stood. It only seemed high. The high point of the pass I could see with my own eyes so it couldn’t b that far. It was probably about a mile. I started pushing my bike up the mountain at about 8:00. About 3 hours later, under the pitch black dead of night after an extreme temperature drop that made the road into a giant mud Popsicle, I finally reached the top. It was now around 11:00 PM.

Three miles per hour is pretty slow – but three hours per mile….? By this time it had been dark for some time. The road, my bike, and everything else were frozen. My bike was caked with frozen mud and when I tried to descend all the gears were frozen and I couldn’t shift or brake. I had only my bike headlight to aid my sight and as I descended the ice-covered mountain mud road I realized that I would not be able to stop my bike if I started rolling too fast. I had my feet flat on the ground and hands on what was left of the brakes and just followed the reflection the light made on the edge of the road. During this time a truck came by. I grinded to a stop and got all the way off the road.

I was trying to find somewhere to camp for the night but couldn’t see anything. When the road became sort of horizontal again I started shining my light to the side of the road to find a spot. I located an access road, buried my food under some large rocks, and set up my tent. I had never been so cold in my life. My regular gloves had gotten wet the night before when it rained so I had been wearing fingertipless sports gloves and I could no longer feel my fingers. Some of them I couldn’t even bend and I had a hard time setting up my tent. When I finally got it all together there was still one finger that I couldn’t feel and seemed like it was frozen almost solid. I started sucking on it and that seemed to work. I had no trouble getting to sleep that night.

The next day I was glad just to be making some progress as I made my way up the road. I filled up my water bottles at pump station #4, ate some stale peanut butter sandwiches, and continued my journey when I was promptly greeted by some more steep hills.

I had stopped to rest when a bow-hunter named Mike came by and offered me a beer and a place to stash my food for the night. We agreed to meet up in a little bit and I rode off to find a campsite. The sky had been covered with clouds all day long and ended just above the horizon. I had not seen the sun all day but now that it was setting it crept below the clouds as it started to dip below the horizon and it created the strangest lighting effect I have ever seen.

I’m not sure I can accurately describe it but it was like being on some strange planet. The oddest shade of red filled not only the sky, but it seemed to saturate the atmosphere. Everything had this eerie red glow to it. The grass of the tundra took on the red hue combining with the greenish brown and appeared to light up like a dull neon light. I could only just stand there in awe, not quite knowing what to think or feel, then just as quickly the sun finished its descent below the horizon and it was over – weird!

The following day I would encounter an interesting little piece of Dalton Highway style engineering called the “Ice Cut” – a steep hunk of rock where as little chisling as possible was done to create a narrow path up and over its monsterous peak. This section was so steep that even pushing my bike presented a great difficulty. It took what seemed like an hour to traverse the length of which probably totaled less than 250 feet. There I was on top of the Ice Cut looking down upon the vastness as it sunk deeper and deeper toward the horizon. Its always a thrill to be standing on top of some peak that took forever to climb knowing the descent will take only minutes or seconds. It’s a well-deserved reward to enjoy the rapid descent down some mountain road where I and my bike are propelled by gravity to reach speeds in excess of 40 mph.

Upon completing this climb I met one of the many Alyska security guards passing by in their by now familiar red trucks. Out on this vast lonely stretch of never-ending highway where the miles outnumber the vehicles by more than 10 to 1, it is common that two approaching vehicles stop so that the occupants may talk. Merrily he sat and sang the praises of a life of working in such a desolate spot on the planet. Up and down the Dalton Highway he travels; day after day the same route and the same scene and he gave no impression he was tired of it. I got the impression that he relished the solitude of working out here. he mentioned the strange phenomina of light from the night before and how it was like being on some strange planet – the same thoughts that had gone through my mind. I couldn’t help but think back to that moment as I stood there, alone in the middle of a sea of tundra, experiencing the most ethereal moment of my life and that, somewhere else at that same moment some one else experienced the same thing. Mother nature alone is capable of forming these connections between her subjects.

??????????

I met Mike again at an access road and we drank a few beers. He comes up here every September from Michigan for his birthday to hunt Caribou. Its illegal to hunt Caribou with guns so they have to use a bow and arrow – like Ted Nugent.

I woke up the next morning and my tent was covered with snow and the entire landscape is no longer a dull green-brown but now luminates with an illustrious white as far as the eye can see in every direction. This is the first time I have ever seen such a scene as this is the first time I’ve ever seen snow outside of Florida. It makes for interesting riding. I ride in the tracks the trucks have made which have now turned to mud – more mud, ice cold mud! I’ve been aware for some time that I’m racing against the arrival of winter. The sudden sight of this snow-covered tundra instills me with a new sense of urgency.

I am extremely impatient to reach Deadhorse now. I awoke this morning with a coughing, runny-nose cold and the sight of snow is certainly contributing to quick-freeze of my new mental state. I try to push myself to go further. I’m really hungry and tired and now starting to get sick and now that it’s starting to snow I realize my luck is running out with the weather. There’s no way I’m going to fall short after making it this far. I ride on until dark. I’m now in the true frozen tundra of the North Slope. It’s completely flat as it slopes down toward the Arctic Ocean. There is absolutely nothing to look at this point. The sky is completely filled with a white fog so dense I can barely see much further than a few feet ahead.

I camped out in front of pump station #2 that night. It would be my last night on the road. When I woke up on Sunday, September 21^st I knew that this would be my last day of riding. I was less than 60 miles from Deadhorse. After six months on the road I was finally down to my last day. A man named Joe Pruit stopped by as I was packing up. He was a public service officer for the town of Deadhorse – the only police officer in the town. I met Mike again and he offered me a ride back to Fairbanks after I made it to town.

I pulled into Deadhorse before it got dark. A misty white chill filled the air and I didn’t quite know what to do now that I had made it. It gave me a strange feeling pulling into Deadhorse. There’s not much around but Pre-fabricated buildings. It looks like a makeshift town of trailers and metal warehouses. It’s a hard-working town that exists only to supply the oilfields and to house and feed the people who work on them. The two weeks that this shift of residents inhabit is a rough one. Everyone is too tired after a long day of work and this gives the impression of frozen arctic ghost town.

I started to look around for a place to camp and Joe Pruit pulled up. I asked him if there was anywhere I could take a shower and he led me to the Arctic Slope Motel, which was also where his office was located. The Arctic Slope is not so much a motel as it is living quarters for the many workers flown in to work the oilfields and other necessary duties required to keep things operating in the makeshift community of Deadhorse. A room for a regular tourist would cost about $100. I guess my situation makes me special – I stay for free.

They are actually pretty luxurious and the food can’t be beat. They have a chef that makes all the food and the workers eat all they want free of charge. I had talked to another adventure cyclist I met at a campground in British Columbia and he was telling me about these arctic workers residences and the tons of gourmet food and I was only half paying attention. I guess what he was saying didn’t seem real and Deadhorse was so far ahead in my future at that point I couldn’t envision actually being there. For a trip that takes over 7000 miles and six months to complete it almost impossible to function with Alaska as the goal. Its is more like the next state – the next town – or even just the top of that next hill – the only goal at the moment – my only destination. Now that I was here it seemed to good to be true. The heat, the hot shower, all this food, The man that ran the place let me sleep on the couch in the TV room and I ate like I’d never eaten before. I sat on a nice comfortable couch and watched TV all night feeling as if I’d been plucked from some terrible frozen battle-field and transported to some euphoric ethereal plane.

I hung out there a couple nights waiting for Mike to come back and get me for the return trip to Fairbanks. I did not mind the wait. After being out in the elements all this time freezing, and with little to eat, it was near surrealistic euphoria to be in the comfort of this heated luxury with an unlimited banquet of all-you-can-eat fine food and hot showers to boot. The timing coundn’t have been better either. The first night I sucumed to a full-blown cold that I can’t imagine having to recover from by freezing in my tent eating canned spagettios. Six months it has taken me to bike the 7109 miles from Largo, Florida to Deadhorse, Alaska. And like any decent adventure story where you would expect the climax and resolution to be at the end, my Dalton Highway trek certainly insured that this would be the case for me as this was one wild 414 mile stretch of road I will never forget.