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2003 Arctic Circle Motorcycle Tour

The following is a brief description of the 2003 Arctic Circle Motorcycle Tour.  A 16-minute documentary movie of this tour is currently running on this site and is available in both streaming Macromedia Flash and downloadable Windows Media formats.  All of this media is free.

Click here to view the Streaming Flash documentary movie (DSL, Cable)

Right-click here and select 'save-as' to download the Windows Media documentary movie (61 MB)

Although it was not not the most hardcore ride ever done, as we met several people who had ridden farther than us with cheaper gear and miserable looking bikes (including the guy touring the Yukon on a Vespa), the 2003 Arctic Circle Motorcycle Tour was still an adventure that tested man and machine. 

At the time, we didn't exactly own motorcycles that one would expect to see high in the snow capped peaks of the Yukon-- Honda CBR1100XX Blackbirds.  In the previous years, we had toured most of the desert southwest on these bikes, and we had complete faith (or at least blind ignorance) in them to get us to Alaska... fast. 

Our goal was roughly 66º33' North latitude, which in the year 2003 was the location of the Arctic Circle (and yes it actually moves, but luckily much slower than a CBR1100XX).  In North America, we had two options to obtain this latitude on motorcycles, the Dempster Highway in the Northwest Territories, Canada, and the Dalton Highway in Alaska.  Given that the CBR1100XX is supposedly a "street" bike (we definitely proved otherwise on this tour), we were limited to asphalt which tends to end a long way before 66º33' North Latitude.  The "Highway" classification of the Dalton and Dempster is misleading to those of us accustomed to 10-lane wide ribbons of silky smooth concrete.  It seems that the definition of "Highway" in the northern latitudes is a path that someone supposedly has taken before, which may or may not be passable, probably isn't near any sort of civilization, and if you break down or get a flat, you will probably get eaten by a bear.  Through our route planning and research, we read several horror stories of the Dalton and the Dempster, and quickly realized that our CBR's were not the right tools for that section of the tour.  Luckily we found Alaska Motorcycle Adventures and they were happy to outfit us with a BMW R1150GS and an R1150GS Adventure- the perfect bikes to tackle the dirt roads of the north.  However, to perform this bike swap, we would have to pass through Palmer, Alaska on our tour.  We decided to save the Dempster for another day, and opted to plan an Alaskan route up the Dalton Highway to the Arctic Circle.

We met in Salt Lake City, which was the launching point for our tour.  Our CBR's were packed to the hilt, leaving just enough room to squeeze in on the saddles.  The first day we rode over 700 miles to Yakima, Washington.  We got a late start (9:30 AM), and had we left earlier, we could have easily reached Seattle on the first day.

The next day we rode over the Cascades and hit Seattle traffic in full bore.  After the necessary photo-op in front of the Space Needle, we sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-5 from downtown Seattle to Bellingham, Washington.  That ate up most of day two.  In Bellingham, we were quickly educated on the ins and outs of the exchange rate.  It turns out that the exchange rate is basically whatever the establishment feels like making it.  We found this out after a teller at one bank informed us that we would get a much better exchange rate at a bank down the street; thank god for disgruntled employees!  We also met a local motorcycle enthusiast who informed us of a much easier boarder crossing in Sumas, Washington, which turned out to be a much nicer ride on backcountry roads as opposed to inhaling exhaust all the way up I-5.  That night we camped at Boston Bar, British Columbia (BC) in Frasier Canyon.  This night it finally felt like we were really heading north.

During the course of the next two days we rode north to Prince George, BC and then west towards Prince Rupert, BC on the inside passage, via the Yellowhead Highway.  The Yellowhead Highway is a phenomenal motorcycle road, with scenery and twists and turns that blow away any other part of the Alcan .  From Prince Rupert we took a ferry up the inside passage to Haines, Alaska, for no other reason than to see the inside passage from a ferry.  In the end, all I can say is that it was pretty lame; the ferry experience that is.  We camped out on the deck in the evenings, and the scenery was incredible, but after about 2 hours of not being able to ride, it became very boring.

We arrived at Haines, Alaska fairly late and found a bed and breakfast to stay at and shower.  The next morning we were up early and finally back on the bikes.  Over the course of the next two days we rode to Tok, Alaska and then dropped back south to Palmer, Alaska where we picked up our BMW R1150GS's from Alaska Motorcycle Adventures.  Ever since the ferry ride, we had picked up a tag-a-long rider who was a music teacher from California.  It was his summer break and he was riding to the Arctic alone on some beater bike he bought for $800, with a $20 Walmart tent, an inflatable floating mattress as a sleeping pad, and a Power-Rangers sleeping bag (well maybe it wasn't a Power-Rangers bag, but it sure looked like one).  He was a great guy, and in our opinion, hardcore as hell.

Due to an issue with my friends steering locking mechanism on his CBR, we were late leaving for the Arctic Circle from Palmer.  We started out at around 2 PM.  The great thing about July in the Arctic is that it is always light, so we just rode and rode.  It ended up that we road all 1,400 miles to and from the Arctic Circle in a 24-hour, almost non-stop period.  This was probably one of the most surreal days of my life for a few reasons.  First, I was tired as hell, but wanted to take advantage of the good weather and wanted to get to the Circle and back so we could deal with my friend's mechanical problems.  Second, the flaming red sunset that evening lasted eight hours.  The sun set on the horizon and then just traveled eastward along the horizon until it rose again.  Third, we passed through hundreds of acres of a smoldering forest fire, hundreds of miles from nowhere.  All these elements combined made it seem like I was in some weird dreamscape.

To top off the weirdness, there were the infamous tanker trucks on the Dalton Highway.  These aren't your typical little wussy semi trucks.  These trucks pull tanker trailers the size of large airplanes, and despite the roughness of the Dalton, they drive extremely fast.  They kick up rocks the size of softballs in their wake, and at 2 AM, hundreds of miles from nowhere, the last thing they are looking for or care about is motorcyclists. Luckily we had been forewarned of these giant monsters and advised that the best thing to do was to pull to the side of the road, brace yourself, and bury your head to try to escape the dust and rocks.  In most places we had to be careful not to pull too far off the road since much of the road is built-up over marshy tundra.  This seemed to work pretty good and we avoided pissing off any of the truck drivers, which was the second part of the advice we received; the truckers all have radios, and there is always another truck somewhere ahead of you... so don't piss them off.  Lastly, there were mosquitoes.  Similar to the giant tanker trucks, the mosquitoes seemed to be the size of small birds.  They didn't bother you when riding (with a closed face shield), but when you stopped they would tag team you in flocks of millions.  As a result, we basically lived in our motorcycle suits and helmets for 24-hours straight, including an hour long nap where we simply sprawled out on the gravel shoulder of the road.  Even though we must have looked dead sprawled out in the dirt next to our bikes, neither of the two trucks that went by that hour even slowed down.  They probably just though someone had beaten them to the kill.

The Arctic Circle was rather anti-climactic, and kind of hit home the idea that the adventure is not in the destination, but in the journey to and from.   The mosquitoes were so thick, that we really couldn't do anything but walk around with our helmets on.  Plus they were building in numbers and we began to worry that they were conspiring to carry our bikes off, so after about a half hour, we started the long journey home.  We stopped at the Yukon River where I finally took the effort to put on more clothes.  Up until then I had been freezing my ass off in the 40 degrees Fahrenheit July temperature, but was so tired that I opted just to keep riding as opposed to taking the energy to stop and put more clothes on under my suit.

We arrived back in Palmer and picked my friend's bike up from the shop.  I was in desperate need of a chain, but there were none to be found in all of Alaska.  We opted to limp out of town since there is a major pass just outside of Palmer that was under construction and coated with a good 3 inches of mud, and weather was starting to move into the area.  We were back on our CBR's, and although we had become experts at riding them over miles and miles of gravel and mud, it was still not our terrain of choice.

We made it over the pass and over the course of the next week worked our way down the Alcan Highway.  My chain was in very bad condition, but the few shops that we found in BC did not stock a chain that would fit my CBR1100XX, so I just kept riding, drenching the chain in lube about every 200 miles.  My adjusters were at their max and the sound of the chain riding over the sprockets was twice as loud as the engine.  At this point I swore my next bike would be a shaft drive.

We rode down the Alcan through Whitehorse, Yukon, the Liard Hot Springs, and finally Dawson Creek, BC - the "start" of the Alcan highway.  At this point we were reentering civilization, and it was kind of depressing after having been miles from nowhere for almost two weeks.  At a McDonalds in Dawson we met a very friendly older gentlemen (a fellow motorcycle pilot)  who was very interested in our little expedition.  After filling him on our journey up to that point, he recommended that we ride east into Alberta and drop down through Jasper.  We took his advice and rode through some of the most beautiful country I had seen since the Yukon.  It was apparent we were almost back to civilization however, because there was actually people and traffic.

We finally dropped into Montana, which seemed more like a smelly arm pit when compared to the country we had just ridden through.  My friend who was a few miles ahead of me had a run-in with the local rednecks while looking for gas at around 10 PM.  Jim Bob, Smiley (who only a had a few teeth) and their drunk side kicks wanted to take his bike (and probably him as well) for a ride after he stopped at a bar to ask where the nearest gas station was.  Meanwhile, I was babying my throttle for the past hundred miles just hoping to make the next gas station that popped up on my GPS (we had ditched our extra gas miles ago to save on space and weight).  In the end, we made it to Dillon, Montana with our bikes still running and our anal virginity intact.

The next day we rode into Utah and then onward to our homes which we had left 17 days prior.  This was definitely one of those trips that took a while to sink in.  My bike sat covered in mud, bugs, and grime for over a month before I had the ambition to start cleaning it.   As time went on, and I finally fixed my cameras (that were almost destroyed on the trip) enough to retrieve the pictures and video from the trip, the full effect of the trip began to set it and once again I began to realize why I love motorcycles.

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