Top Of The World Highway

From Dawson into Alaska runs one of the most beautiful roads in this part of the world. It climbs sharply from Dawson to run along ridge line for 100km before reaching the border with Alaska at 1300m altitude. This sounded  brilliant however we woke in the morning to incessant rain and fog/low lying cloud.

For the whole journey over the top of the world the clouds surrounded us and the rain beat down. So there may have been views but we didn’t see them.

US customs went very smoothly and took only about 10 minutes at the isolated border post where the guards have to live for 2 months at a time. The weather there was freezing and the rain was turning to sleet. There was no import process for the Beast. We saw Frans and Martine again at the border.

After moving onto USA soil the road sharply deteriorated to a dirt track filled with potholes and very narrow. This was far and away the worst road we have seen and max speed was around 24mph even with the Beast. We overtook a number of vehicles who could only move much slower  – a first for us.

Half way back to the Alaska Highway is the town of Chicken (so called because of the number of Ptarmigans in the area – but they couldn’t spell that !). There is a tiny trading post here and Alaska’s Dredge No.4 because this is another gold mining area. We had passed a few active claims on the way through.

After Chicken the road improved but still wasn’t great so we progressed slowly – so slow in fact that we were pulled over by the law and then told in no uncertain terms that if you have traffic behind you then you must pull over to let them past. I think he just wanted to get past himself. So our first US police stop within 2 hours of being here – good going !

We finished the day parked up at Moon Lake campground just past Tok, back on the Alaska highway.