Driving to Alaska

Fireweed along the Icefields Parkway north of Lake Louise in Canada

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During the Last Glacial Maximum, which waned about 19,000 years ago, so much water was bound in ice that a land bridge connected northeastern Siberia to Alaska. This and an ice-free corridor south of it known as Beringia opened the door to hunter-gatherers who migrated into what is now Alaska and Canada, eventually populating much of North and South America. Some of these became the Athabascan people, and around 1,000 years ago, a group of them moved to the U.S. Southwest to become the Navajo and Apache.

In August, Ellen and I drove north from Silver City, passing through historic Apache and Navajo lands in triple-digit heat, a far cry from Pleistocene times when mammoths scratched their backs on boulders in the Chihuahuan Desert, polishing them to a glassy sheen. We’d decided to head towards Athabasca in the face of another fizzling monsoon, the summer weather pattern that historically brings rain, moderating summer temperatures in the southwest. It’s hard to pin a few weak monsoons on human-induced climate change, but there’s no denying that the weather has been extreme in the last few decades. On our drive north, shrinking glaciers, vast swaths of burned boreal forest, and melting permafrost left no doubt that the climate is out of whack. Our purpose wasn’t to catalog climate impacts, but the farther north we went, the harder they were to ignore.

Unlike Beringians finding their way southward on foot or by boat, modern nomads drive to Alaska, and in the summer, the route we took to Anchorage is traversed by travelers in all manner of rigs including huge bus-like RVs, pickups with drop-in campers, converted vans like ours, sedans stuffed with gear, and a surprising number of motorcycles. At a laundromat in White Horse, Yukon, we saw a lovingly maintained yellow VW bug (from Denmark) equipped with a rooftop tent. At a long wait for road construction, I chatted with a German woman and her husband outside their rented RV. She’d been jumping rope beside the road to get a little exercise, and their kids were happily playing in the camper. She said with a smile that after weeks on the road, the kids didn’t feel much need to come out.

The Alaska Highway extends for over 1,300 miles from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Delta Junction, Alaska, southeast of Fairbanks, where it connects to the Richardson Highway. Though much of it is in Canada, it was built quickly during WWII by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a supply artery connecting the lower-48 states to Alaska. Originally longer (1,700 sinuous miles) and rougher (unpaved with grades up to 25%), it’s now paved the entire way with services at regular intervals. We drove to Dawson City via the Canadian Rockies, traveling through Banff and Lake Louise, up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper, and then north to Dawson Creek. Other travelers get to Dawson Creek from farther west (Vancouver, etc.) which is also reported to be a beautiful trip. From there the route crosses into the Yukon before finally entering Alaska on frost-heaved asphalt.

Naively, we were surprised by north-country weather. Rain began just before we crossed the Canadian border and for most of the rest of our trip it was wet. Very wet. At first, we welcomed rain, hydrating our parched southwestern skin and cooling temperatures to the delightful 50s. For a time we were loath to wander in it, but eventually, we learned to hike in the rain, like the hardy Canadians and Alaskans, encasing ourselves in rain gear and walking into the mist, bear spray at the ready even though seeing a grizzly through fogged glasses in time to spray it might be a fantasy. In the Yukon, we asked a woman working a Visitors’ Center desk if it was normal to have this much rain. “This summer has been shit, shit, shit,” she replied immediately. “We’ve had 11 days of summer and none of them in a row. I can’t even get my garden to grow—there’s not enough sun, and now it’s fall. I can’t wait to get out of the Yukon.” It’s possible that a Visitors’ Center job wasn’t the best fit for this woman, but she was friendly.

Despite the rain and all the driving (it’s a long way from Southern New Mexico to Alaska), the trip was well worth the effort. We saw spectacular landscapes, enjoyed brilliant fall color in forests and on the tundra, made new friends, and expanded our mental geographies almost to the Arctic Circle. I’ll post separately about specific places we visited, a tiny fraction of mountain ranges and coastal forests where one could spend lifetimes exploring. After seven weeks on the road, it was with reluctance that we turned the van towards home. 

The annotated photos below describe a few highlights from the drive, and I’ll follow them with some very brief logistics since there is no shortage of information already online.

Grain elevators in Warner, Alberta, along the road north of our border crossing at Sweet Grass, Montana. 

A peak in Kootenay National Park viewed from the Numa Creek Trail where we hiked after being stymied by the crowds at Lake Louise. Banff and Lake Louise are overrun by tourists in summer and even getting to trailheads can be impossible.

Looking north along the Icefields Parkway. Throughout the trip we were awed by vast mountain ranges that seemed to go forever into the distance.

Ellen at Mistaya Falls along the Icefields Parkway. Rivers, like mountains, were innumerable in the north. We crossed many huge rivers that we'd never heard of, though each would have been famously historical farther south.

Athabasca Falls off of the Icefields Parkway. Many of these violent falls punctuated otherwise tranquil stretches of river, and it's easy to understand how they terrorized early explorers and trappers.

One of many huge burns that we encountered throughout Alberta, BC, and the Yukon. This photo is from our stop at Athabasca Falls. The town of Jasper was devastated by fire last year, but the downtown is thriving and visitors are welcome.

Western bunchberry (I think!) at Yellowhead Lake west of Jasper.

Kinney Lake in Mt. Robson Provincial Park. Mt. Robson is shrouded in clouds to the right, but it revealed itself to us by the time we returned to the trailhead.

The landscape east of Jasper. Limestone mountains and broad valleys extended away from the highway in all directions.

A giant beaver in Beaverlodge, Alberta. 

A First Nation church at Prophet River. In Canada, indigenous people are referred to as First Nation.

Sleepy wood bison near Muncho Lake in northern British Columbia. Despite a constant barrage of signs warning drivers to watch for animals, we saw almost no wildlife on the trip, which is not that unusual. A dogsled guide in the Yukon told us that it is so vast that animals have no reason to congregate near humans. 

Liard Hot Springs, a famous stop along the highway. The campground here is surrounded by electric fence to keep the bears out, and we passed two shotgun-armed rangers on the boardwalk leading to the pool who said that there'd been some "bear activity" the night before. 

A memorial plaque near the start of a hike (Sheep Creek) at Kluane Lake in the Yukon. A hiker on the trail had been killed by a "young male Grizzly Bear" in 1996. At this stage, we were still very nervous about hiking in grizzly country but as time went on we came to take it in stride, always with a can of bear spray at our side.

Ellen on the Sheep Creek hike where we passed a young woman hiking alone who told us that she stopped carrying bear bells after hearing them described as "dinner bells."

A dispersed (free) campsite beside Kluane Lake in the Yukon. 

A lake near Tok, Alaska.

View from Near Point on the Chugach Front Range above Anchorage where we hiked after arriving at our friends' house there. 

Ellen and Robin Moore descending from Near Point towards Anchorage. Robin's son, Adam, lives in Anchorage with his wife, Allie, their new daughter, Juniper, and two excited dogs, Echo and Norma.

Brief Logistics

There are many resources online for planning a driving trip to Alaska from the lower-48. I'll bullet a few useful tidbits below:

• Buy a copy of the Milepost, an annual publication that has mile-by-mile information on many of the routes through Canada and within Alaska. It's ridiculously detailed and especially useful if you have someone traveling with you who can read from it as you go.
• Be prepared for wet weather. At least on our trip, it rained a LOT. Don't let the rain stop you from getting out and doing things. Bring good rain gear.
• Carry bear spray almost everywhere. You are not allowed to cross the border into Canada with pepper-spray, mace, etc, but you can bring bear spray. We had no bear encounters, but they are out there.
• Gas is expensive in Canada and Alaska. Budget for it.
• There's no need to carry an extra gas can unless your car has a very small tank. Pay attention to filling up, but there are plenty of gas stations. 
• Give yourself LOTS of time for the drive. We spent about 11 days getting from the Canadian border to Anchorage and could easily have taken many more. 
• There are many campgrounds along the route and many options for dispersed (free) camping. We used an app called iOverlander to find campsites. It maps paid and free campsites as well as places for water, wifi, car repairs, etc. For $9.99/month you can subscribe and download unlimited states or provinces ahead of time (recommended) so that you aren't reliant on cell. 
• Cell coverage was spotty but surprisingly good a lot of the time. We have Verizon.
• If you camp outside of campgrounds, please learn to properly dispose of toilet paper! Many dispersed sites where we stayed were tainted by visible TP. You can put it in a small zip lock and throw it away at readily available trash cans or burn it (if you are extremely aware of fire danger). At the VERY LEAST, bury it rather than leaving it on the surface or draped in vegetation. Carrying a small shovel is useful.