The Dalton Strikes Back…!!

The skies above Prudhoe Bay were mostly overcast, but streaked with blue when we left to ride back over the Brooks Range to Coldfoot…

This maps shows our route from Fairbanks to Deadhorse on the Arctic Ocean, and back again… There is only one road in and out of Prudhoe Bay…the infamous Dalton Highway…

Ready to do battle again, the Big Fella was itching for another go at the Dalton…

Safety warning a plenty for this road where nature usually has the final say…

We knew it would take the best part of six hours to cover the 240 miles ahead… That was if the weather held…!! On the way up the day before, there had been no rain, and apart from a few tricky sections that were under construction, we had  “tamed” the Dalton…

It was a confident band of riders that headed south for Coldfoot on this crisp and windy morning… The weather up on the north slopes of the Brooks Range can be fickle, and within half an hour it started to drizzle…

We rode quickly past the Franklin Bluffs and No 2 Pump Station, standing up on the pegs and averaging about 80 km/h on the hard packed, but slick surface…

We slowed down when it started to rain more heavily, and looking ahead, I could see the band of thick clouds that stretched far to the south…

We knew then that we were in for a tougher ride than the day before…!!

About 70 km south of Deadhorse, we came upon some road works, where a grader was pushing sand off the road and onto the verge…

Sodium carbonate is mixed with the soil they spread on the roads here, then watered… After a day or two, it sets as hard as concrete, and allows the huge trucks that haul equipment and supplies to the oilfields, to run at top speed on…

This section of the road had been watered the day before, and we had a slippery and gut-wrenching ride through it, all of us almost coming to grief…

This photo taken by Mark, shows us zooming along the stretch of road just south of Deadhorse… The dirt road is hard-packed and a good surface to ride on… The next photo on Mark’s camera, taken just 15 minutes later, shows an entirely different situation…

The rain that had fallen overnight, and was still soaking the area, had not given the cocktail of soil and chemicals time to set…

I was leading the charge south at the time and ran into the sludge before I realised the danger…!!

I must confess that I had been thinking of other things at the time… The ribbon I had left in Prudhoe and the fact that I was now officially on my way “home”, are thoughts that come to mind…

The bike shuddered under me as I ploughed through the first soggy section… I got it under control by opening the throttle and gunning the engine…!!

A hundred thoughts flashed through my mind as I regained control, and the most important one for me was “do not slow down now…keep your forward momentum”…

Problem was, my forward momentum at that stage was in the region of 65 km/h, and after getting straightened up, I felt it was best to stay at that speed and “tough it” through the rest of the stretch that was under mud…

The ground seemed to be firmer under the Big Fella for a while, so it seemed my decision had been the right one… There was no time to look behind to see how my companions were faring, as I was too busy making small corrections to the steering to keep us going in a straight line…

The slush seemed to go on for the longest time… I did not remember there being this much of it on the way up…!!

That’s when we ran into a long patch of much thicker sludge that was between six and eight inches deep…

Battered and bewildered….!! Mark snaps me standing over my stricken companion…

For the  next few seconds, it felt as though I was on one of those thousand pound bulls at a rodeo, as the Big Fella seemed to want to throw me off his back… The front wheel might have hit a large stone hidden in the mud… Or maybe a deep rut…

I can only guess what happened next, as I have no clear memory of the actual fall… I believe I was flung back off the bike and in doing so, wrenched the throttle wide open… A 1200 cc motor cycle has an awful lot of power, and when this power is suddenly transferred to the rear wheel on a heavily loaded bike, the front wheel WILL stick it’s head up into the sky…

I came down heavily on the right hand side of the bike and went skidding off onto the verge, many metres away… I felt my helmet make hard contact with the ground and saw first the sky, then the tundra spin before my eyes… I lay stunned for a few seconds, and then got groggily to my feet… I felt a shooting pain in my right ankle and wondered if I had broken my foot…!!

Then thoughts of the Big Fella rushed to the forefront of my addled brain, and I hobbled over to where he lay on his left side… I looked at the damage in anguish… I felt sure that my journey had ended here on the tundra of Northern Alaska…

I looked up and saw Mark skidding to a halt a few metres behind my broken bike… His face was ashen as he leapt off his bike and came running over to me to see if I was O.K. … Trevor and Chenty pulled up behind him and also rushed over to where I stood looking down at the Big Fella…

We were both covered in mud, and once they had ascertained that I was not injured in any major way, we all managed to get the bike onto the side stand so we could survey the damage…

Both side panniers had been ripped from their frames; the bracket holding the top-box had been broken on either side and shoved up at a 45 degree angle; the tail light was smashed, my hand guards on the handlebars were broken; my mirrors were twisted at strange angles and an indicator had popped out of its housing…

My left pannier lies crushed under the Big Fella… That’s the one that holds my laptop….!!

We wrestled the panniers off the bike and carried all my gear to the side of the road… Large trucks thundered past us, hardly slowing down… I felt nauseous and staggered off the road and hobbled out onto the tundra… I did not want my friends to see the tears of anguish and frustration that coursed down my cheeks…

I stood staring out at the tundra for a few minutes, trying to compose myself… A few years ago I would have been cursing the road; the construction workers; the rain; and anything else I could think of to make myself feel better…!!

But things had changed… I was not the same person I was a few years ago…

Instead, I took a deep breath, reminding myself that I was still very much alive, albeit a little battered and bruised, and that I had lost a bit of focus and not slowed down enough when I had entered the slush that was being laid down on the road surface… Chalk this one down to rider error…!!

I walked back to the bike and as I got there, Trevor pressed the starter button and the Big Fella roared to life again…!! To say that I was amazed is an understatement, but just goes to show what tough machines these BMW’s are…!!

A SUV pulled up and I heard Trevor ask the occupants if we could load all my luggage into the back of their vehicle and if they’d be willing to take it as far as Coldfoot for us… They immediately agreed to do this and set about making space for all my gear…

We begin transferring my gear to the good Samaritans who stopped to help us…

I recognised them as the couple who had been swimming near us in the Arctic earlier that morning, and they introduced themselves as Damon and Rachel Evanson from Reno, Nevada.

All the while the rain continued to fall… I was not really thinking too clearly at this time, and Chenty’s voice seemed to be coming down a tunnel…

“Ronnie, put your raincoat on…!! You’ll freeze without it…!!”

I did as she firmly suggested and then helped lug my gear over to the SUV…

Bitter and twisted…!! The back-end of the Big Fella looked as though we had been rear-ended by a truck…!!

Then Trevor came over, put his arm around me, and asked if I was able to ride… There was no choice really…!! We were over 300 km from Coldfoot, and still had many hours of hard riding ahead of us…

I got onto the Big Fella and tried to swing him off his side-stand… With all the luggage gone, he stood a good few inches taller than I was comfortable with…

To make matters worse, I could not take any weight on my right foot, so Mark and Trevor had to help me get upright, and then balance me as I let the clutch out and eased back into the sludge around us…

We battled our way through a few more sections of road works, where the Dalton had been torn up to make a new surface for this coming winter, when the Ice Road Truckers would be running their loads through to Prudhoe and Deadhorse…

Each time we came to a stop, either Mark or Trevor would have to sidle up alongside me to make sure I did not fall over…

On occasion, Chenty would rush over to put my side stand out…!! They would then have to hold me again while I put the bike into gear and rode off ahead of them…

My right ankle felt as though it was being soaked in molten oil… For the most part I stood up on the pegs, taking most of my weight on my left leg… To change gears, I had to shift my weight onto my right foot and this caused me lots of strife…

Much gnashing of teeth, I can tell you…!!

Once I had the Big Fella in a gear I was comfortable with, I just let the brown snake of a road roll beneath his wheels, focusing intently on the lines I had to ride to get through the thick gravel and muddier sections of the Dalton…

We were not about to let this road get the better of us, and after just a short distance, we were back up to the usual speed we rode at… Thinking back, I realise that I was running on pure adrenaline…

Trevor with Chenty, and Mark, rode close behind me, letting me set the pace… I needed a bit of looking after…!!

The rain continued to fall as we rode south towards Atigun Pass… We stopped often to either have a snack, or to rest and reassure each other that we were going to make it to Coldfoot without further incident…

I shuddered to think what would have happened if I had ridden this road alone… I was extremely thankful that I had Trevor, Chenty and Mark with me, and their concern for me was more than heart-warming…

I seem to be smiling in this picture, and if I am, it just goes to show how addled my brain was…!!

We were in this together, and with each stop, our moods became lighter, and the joking and laughter resumed…

“Today this bloody ride became a true adventure…!!” Trevor said as we pulled over to rest again…

He was right about that…!!

Riding with an injured rider on a battered bike in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness; rain and a cold wind swirling about us; mist that had closed in and reduced visibility down to just a few yards in places; huge juggernauts that thundered up behind us and then overtook , spraying us with mud and stones…

What could be more of an adventure…!!

We took a breather at Trevor Creek, so that Trevor could get a few snaps of the creek whose name he carries… Looking at the back of the Big Fella, I was amazed that the main frame had not been buckled…!!

My camera had been thrown out of my tank bag when I had hit the ground, and Chenty had picked it up and put it into my tank bag in the SUV… There would no pictures from my trusty Canon D10 on the ride back to Coldfoot, which irked me a great deal…

I kept seeing things or scenes that I would have liked to get a photo of… I tried to show Mark that he should be taking photos, but he wasn’t about to try too much one-handed steering in these conditions…

I was so used to doing this, that the conditions I rode in hardly ever made me think twice about letting go with one hand and snapping away at the scenery around me…

It is something that most riders just shake their heads at, but I have had many thousands of kilometres to become quite used to snapping away on the fly…

When we stopped to rest at Trevor Creek, I asked for the camera and Mark strapped it around my neck… I hoped to take a few photos on the way up the Brooks Range and Atigun Pass…

On the approach to the pass, we saw that most of it was completely covered in mist, and the road surface was a sticky mess…

We managed to ride up to the crest of the pass, take a few photos, and then slither our way down into the long valley that would eventually lead us to Wiseman, 13 miles north of Coldfoot, where we had spent the night before we rode to Prudhoe Bay, at a little bed and breakfast…

There was also the matter of my luggage which had disappeared into the wild blue yonder… I was not sure where exactly we would meet up with Damon and Rachel again, and assumed we would have to ride to Coldfoot where they would probably have refueled…

At the top of Atigun Pass, the road was like a skating rink…!! Not easy to stop on using just one leg…!!

The rain and foul weather changed once we descended onto the Southern slopes of the Brooks Range… It was still cold and windy, but far drier than the northern slopes had been, and these conditions we could deal with… In fact, we rode down to Wiseman even quicker than we had anticipated…!!

By then my ankle was numb, and all I wanted to do, was get to Wiseman and rest… We rode the hard packed dirt and loose gravel sections with a confidence that belied the difficult time we had endured earlier in the day…

At the turnoff to Wiseman, we saw the SUV that had carried my gear, parked on the banks of the wide river that runs past the town…

Damon and Rachel had waited for us at the Wiseman turnoff and we rode down onto the banks of the shallow river where they were parked, and chatted for a while… They offered to ride the 3 miles to Wiseman and deliver my gear directly to the door of our little cabin…

Damon and Rachel saved the day for us…!! Thanks guys, your assistance was hugely appreciated….!!

Back at our cabin, our host Clutch, brought his pressure washer out and we set about cleaning the mud off our bikes… The sodium chloride they use to make the roads with, can be very corrosive, and needs to be washed off as quickly as possible…

Battered and muddied, the Big Fella was crying out to be cleaned…!!

Before I could rest my aching ankle, there was this very important task to perform….

We washed our bikes and all our gear, before Trevor rode the Big Fella to the front of the cabin… Even he was surprised at how tall it sat with all the luggage off it… I could see by the look in his eyes that he wondered how the heck I managed to ride a bike that was set up to stand so high off the ground…!!

Then it was my turn…!! Chenty got to work with the pressure cleaner to get all the mud off my riding kit… It was past 9.00 pm and the cold water had my teeth chattering in no time…!!

“How the hell are we going to get this sorted…??”

Then Trevor, without even taking off his riding gear, set about trying to sort the various broken bits and pieces on the Big Fella… I am not sure where he found the energy, but this is just how the man is… He runs on Duracells, I think…!1

First up was my pannier…

“Well at least the lid still opens and shuts…!!”

We emptied out the contents, which included my laptop… I was sure that we would find it broken into many pieces…

My panniers are very tightly packed, and looking at the photo on the left, you can understand why I figured everything inside it would be crushed and broken…

We were amazed to discover that not a single thing inside the pannier was broken…!! Mark fired up my computer and it still worked…!!

Chenty then bustled about carrying all the contents of the pannier into the cabin, and then set about cleaning the mud off all my gear…

Clutch, the owner of the cabin brought an ice-pack over, along with a pressure bandage and within minutes I was sitting comfortably in a chair with my foot wrapped… I felt helpless sitting there and not being able to help either Trevor or Chenty, and each time I tried to make a move towards helping, I was told in no uncertain terms that my assistance was not required…!!

But before the work began, we first drank a toast to our successful (and eventful) ride to Prudhoe Bay….

While my friends busied themselves with fixing and cleaning my gear, I was told to put my foot up and stop getting in the way…!!

Trevor sets about with the repair job on my pannier…!!

The swelling on my ankle was not as bad as I thought it would be, but the pain was a lot worse than I expected, once my foot came out of my boot…!!

I sat listening to the banging of the rubber mallet from somewhere behind the cabin…

With each bang I winced, wondering if Trevor would be able to get the box back into shape…

The occasional muffled curse could be heard in between the hammering, and Chenty just rolled her eyes and laughed at the look of pain that crossed my face each time a loud bang rang through the trees…

Half and hour later, Trevor and Clutch returned from behind the cabin, triumphantly carrying my pannier which had been repaired far better than I could ever have hoped…!!

Mark had straightened the frame it was bolted to, and after a bit of a struggle and some more judicious use of the hammer, we managed to re-attach it to the bike…

Hard to believe that with just a hammer and a few clamps, Trevor was able to beat my pannier back into shape…!! Well done, Mate…!!

Still in all his kit, many hours after arriving in Wiseman, Trevor still found the energy to repair a puncture…!!

Both lock had been broken, and repairing them was impossible… The panniers are now held on with a combination of nylon straps and cable ties…

And after all that was done, Trevor still had to repair the very first puncture he had ever had on Big Red…!!

He had ridden the last few hundred kilometres on a fast deflating rear tyre, caused by a nail he had probably picked up in Prudhoe Bay…!!

We finished a bottle of wine that Clutch had provided Chenty prepared the freeze-dried food that Trevor had been carrying for just such an emergency… We were too tired after our long ride and the repairs the boys had to make, to ride the 13 miles to Coldfoot to find food…

It was after midnight when we finally called it quits and headed for the shower and our sleeping bags…

It had been a very big day for all of us, and we were proud to have made it back to Wiseman without any further mishaps… And believe me, the scope for further mishaps had been huge…!!

I count myself extremely lucky to have been riding with such a wonderful group of friends, and without them I am not sure what I would have done out there on the tundra today…

I am also secretly proud of the will and determination I showed to ride my battered bike for over 300 km back to Wiseman… Together with Trevor, Chenty and Mark, we had taken everything that the Dalton had to throw at us, and triumphed…!!

This was mentally, one of the most difficult rides I have ever made, and one that I will never forget… For those seeking a mettle-testing experience, the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay will fit the bill quite nicely…!!

But don’t for a minute underestimate the inherent danger of an environment that will do everything to drive you back to where you came from, with your ego dented and your confidence shattered…

Postscript:

I have come to believe that everything in this world is connected in some strange, mysterious and inexplicable way…

On reaching Fairbanks, I found a short email from my sister in my inbox… It spoke of a distant cousin of mine who had been severely injured in a motorcycle accident on the same day that I had crashed on the Dalton Highway… He was on life support and in a critical condition…

This morning I received another email to advise that my cousin had succumbed to his injuries, and sadly, passed away…

His name was Dalton Borrageiro…

I am not sure if anything can be read into this, or even should be, but the coincidence has left me shaken…

Rest in peace Dalton…

I hereby dedicate my ride up and down the Dalton Highway of Alaska, in memory of you…

©GBWT 2012