On the Dempster Highway

First of all, this really isn’t like any Highway you’re thinking of. Although goods travel up and down the road, it is a ribbon of gravel through some darn rugged and beautiful country.

It is barely two lanes wide in places and sometimes it widens out to become a road and an emergency airstrip all-in-one. Just in case a plane has to make an emergency landing out here.

Then there is the gravel that the road is made of; it is crushed shale and even some chert, which is extremely sharp and very hard on tires. We have 10 ply all-terrain tires, specifically for this trip.

We drove from Moose Creek Government Campground to Dempster Junction and topped off our fuel. Our Landcruiser has a 40 gallon auxiliary tank, so we carry 65 gallons of gasoline on board. At a conservative 13 Miles per gallon, we have a range of about 845 miles.

Fuel in this part of Canada is very expensive at about $1.80 per liter, so it helps if we can buy gas at cheaper locations (Yellowknife was $1.65 per liter). Yukon has higher gas prices. Prices will only go up the further North we go. We paid $1.89 per liter at Dempster Junction.

Immediately upon setting off up the Dempster we were met with beautiful mountain views.

One of the first mountain ranges are in Tombstone Mountain Territorial Park and around almost every bend is a new awe-inspiring view.

The mountains and sky are just so big, it is difficult to judge scale, due to the vast distances one can see from the vistas.

We stopped at the visitor center in Tombstone Park and it was an amazingly well done interpretive center with a wealth of information about the park, the region and even the territory.

The girls met a young French girl and played with her in the children’s area of the visitor center while Sarah read every display in the building.

Then we continued up the road. We had originally planned to camp at Engineer Creek Government Campground, but there was no potable water at the campground due to naturally occurring minerals and sulfides in the creek, so we decided to move on.

We found a nice boondocking site a little ways up the road on a quiet side road that took us down to the shores of a beaver pond. We have a good water filter, so the pond water was no problem.

The only drawback to this site was that the fishing wasn’t any good in the beaver pond.

A mild breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay. We ate pancakes for dinner, which is Olive’s favorite meal in the whole world. Petra will eat them if they have M&M’s in them.

We fell asleep to the sound of the beaver splashing and repairing one of the dams stretched between to sections of the pond.

It was a good day.

~ Umingmaq