Day 6 - August 2nd
Eagle Plaines to Inuvik and back to Eagle Plaines
482 miles
Anyone that has made it to Eagle Plaines and the Arctic Circle would have had a great road trip, but the real adventure (risk) starts at the Northwest Territory border. The north Dempster is the real deal for an adventure. Just the massive length of this road up and back to Inuvik forces you to go faster and take more risk then you should because it takes forever to get there and back.
I knew that the road ahead was supposed to be dangerous so while laying in my tent that night I decided to write something down in my journal to Michelle. This is kind of personal but with the accident that is going to occur this day to Troy and Scott I decided to share this with you. I am going to photograph the journal so you see exactly the way it was and not retyped.
The night before when we came into Eagle Plaines Troy got so excited talking to the other travelers that he forgot to fill up with fuel and the pumps shut down at a certain time and would not reopen until 8:00 in the morning. When I woke up in the morning and was laying there rain drops started hitting my tent. I thought there is no way I am heading up this north Dempster with a bald rear tire, so I got up and changed to my new Shinko.
All you need is a picnic table to break the bead on a tubeless tire.
Catching up on my journal. Notice that my tent isn't even zipped up, No mosquitos , No black flys, No bugs. I liked August up here.
This picture was taken from the campground
Eric took off first for Inuvik, then a half hour later I left, and Troy still had an hour to go before he could get fuel. Landon was only going as far as the Arctic Circle and he was still in bed when I left.
This is one of Troy's pictures that he took. I wasn't with him when he took it.
Dempster Highway by Motorcycle, Sand, Gravel, Wind, Danger,Yes!
Eric is on top of some mountain here in the Richardson Range of the N.W.T. Stuff like this is why I like riding with him, I just ride by and don't notice these side trails.
So I rode totally by myself to Inuvik except at the 2 river crossing ferries. Eric was waiting for me and we ferried across both of them together.
Peel river ferry is on a cable.
Mackenzie River Ferry crossing. This river is huge!
This is Tsiigehtchic No roads to it, Only the ferry. A Gwichya community, pop. of 175.
While in Inuvik we just did a little shopping, eating, and exploring. Inuvik has 56 days of 24 hour daylight, There is also a lot of speculation that this close to the north pole's magnetism has a lot of adverse effects of visitors. I couldn't tell if it was the magnetism or just normal for me.
We found this old ship that was just awesome to explore. We heard later that a guy bought it for a dollar and doesn't really like people climbing around on it. Sorry, couldn't resist.
When we were ready to leave Inuvik Troy said he had to stop by the Welcome Center and get his I concurred the Dempster certificate. Eric said I wouldn't touch that thing until we are off this road. I told them I was going to start riding because it took me 5 hours and 10 minutes to get here and I have to be getting back or I will never get off this road. So I took off and Eric caught up with me shortly and we rode side by side to the MacKenzie River Ferry. When we exited the ferry I hear Troy talking to Scott on the chatter box. I said, Hey what are you guys doing?, and Troy said they had just pulled up to get on the ferry. I talked to Troy until we crested a hill a few miles away and that would be the last I would talk to him until I got a hold of him when he was home. Between the Mackenzie River and the Peel River the gravel was deep with only 2 tracks 8 inches wide through it. I was riding at 65 mile an hour just to the right a tiny bit behind Eric and we hit 4 inch deep loose gravel. My bike's rear wheel whipped from side to side so violently I knew if it whipped 1 more time I was going to go over the bars, so the second time the rear wheel whipped out to the right I buried the foot break as hard as I could. Eric yelled dad you are going down. I was willing and wanting to lay it down on the left, low side. I figured I could actually get up and walk away from a 65 mile an hour low slide crash, but to go over the bars was totally unacceptable if I wanted to walk away. When I buried the foot break it dug in deep enough that it chopped 30 mile an hour off my speed almost instantly, so I eased out of the break and let it come back up straight. Eric then started yelling throw that bike in the dump! I said first it has to get me home Eric.
For 2 days after that I tried to figure out why that happened. I knew that bike was dangerous in loose gravel so why did I let that happen. I finally figured it out. It was Eric's fault (just kidding). But here is what happened. I have ridden with Eric for thousands of miles on many trips and to keep up with him I have to rest now and then while riding, so I tuck in to my comfort zone right off to the right behind his back so I can hear the engine so if he chops his throttle and the sound changes I snap out of my rest and figure there is something ahead or danger. The problem was Eric's 990 can probably do 100 in that loose gravel and he preceived it as no danger and did not compensate. On the other hand I followed him into that gravel at 65 mile an hour which was almost sure disaster for a loaded down Wee.
MacKenzie River Ferry.
This shows how wore out I was on the way back to Eagle Plaines.
The fuel at Inuvik, we were told, was junk. It was. I just barely got back to Eagle Plaines on all the fuel I had coasting down hills. I told Eric that there is no way Troy could get within 50-60 miles of Eagle Plaines tonight without running out of fuel. We heard you can flag down truckers and buy fuel off of them, if you ever see a trucker. We ate supper that night in the cafe with 3 ST1000 riders that planned on going all the way to Inuvik. I told them starting at the Northwest Territory border that it turned to 2-4 inches of sand on top of hard pack for 50 miles. They said they were just going to camp up past the Arctic Circle that night. I told them about a huge grizzly that Troy seen along the road past the Arctic Circle and they were still mumbling about that as they rode away.
I wonder if these 3 guys ever made it to Inuvik. They said they were moving very slow and careful.
We went to bed that night thinking Troy would show up sometime during the night. About 1:00 in the morning someone woke me up asking me if we were with Troy. He said that he was in a truck and found them crashed along the road between the 2 rivers. He took them to Ft. McPherson and left them with a mountie. I went in the lobby and called the mountie and he told me that the bike was totalled and he hauled Troy and Scott back to Inuvik to a hospital and that Troy had a badly broken arm. Then I called Michelle. She already knew the details and said Troy had to be flown out to Vancouver, then take a bus across the border, and fly home from Seattle. (He only had a passport card, no flying out of Canada)
We were very sad to hear that we lost our fearless leader on this trip,"Scott" but Eric told me that if I had come up here when he was 12 years old he had better of been on the back of my bike.
This is something I wrote down a couple of days later while lying in my tent, I will retype it so it's readable but it's exactly as I wrote it in my journal.
My thoughts lately 8-8-11
Since the very first mention of this trip, I have heard a lot of “what if’s”, What if you crash? what if your bike breaks down? What if you get hurt? Not once since I've known Michelle has she ever said “what if”. She married a life time dirt biker. Dirt biking is a risky game.She has loaded me into a truck many times with various broken bones. Our kids are life long dirt bikers. I once was working the starting line at a MX race in Missouri that Our Daughter Emily had just taken off in with all the rest boys, when I looked over to see a pink # 9 bike cartwheeling through the air. When I got there one boy was going back to the pits because his pipe was bent. A friend of ours was kicking on the side of Emily’s bike because the sub frame was bent to unridable while she was yelling “hurry , start my bike I have to get going!” For months after that people that seen that crash would tell me “ Emily has to be the toughest girl they know”
Once a little boy named Eric ask me to come to the side of the track and watch him do the biggest jump on the track. Little did I know he had shut off his fuel pet cock when in the pits. I stood 10 feet away and watched my little boys bike bog on the take off ,as him and his bike turned forward upside-down . When he got up he said, Dad I have broken my left wrist and my right hand. He had. Dirt biking is a risky game! We play risky games. Guess what? Troy has been a life long MX racer, Guess what ? Scott races dirt bikes, They play risky games too.
Taking a huge adventure like this trip is a risky game,We all knew that.It was a risk we were willing to take. No one wants to get hurt or see their kids get hurt but a life worth living is worth the risk. I don’t want to die anymore than anyone else, but I am not afraid to die, This body is just a temporary loaner anyway.
There are ways to minimize risk though. That’s why my MX bike is what Motocross Action Mag. calls “ The best handling production bike ever built.” A YZ125. I tell people it is uncrashable. It has lowered my risk Moto crossing to an acceptable level. That is why I ordered the XT1200 for this trip, I knew I needed the safest bike ever built to survive a trip like this. I needed this bike bad! Some times I would just yell “Yamaha I need my bike.” In the end I had to ride this Suzuki. It has been a Great Trip, No matter what happens I’ll have a great trip, Michelle told me too, and it’s written on my pannier. Steve
( not my brightest move but it always feels really stable until just before you crash and die)
