Shiny side up

As the date draws near (and boy, howdy, is it near!), I find little pockets of trepidation in various caverns of my psyche.

• This will be the longest departure from work I’ve had in my adult life, and many folks have asked about that.
• We’ll be traveling through some areas that are considered security risks, so will need to be wary. 
• There will be a lot of borders to cross, so documentation for ourselves and our steel steeds will need to be in order.

But right there at the top of the list is concern about road conditions in Alaska in May.

I think the ultimate version of this trip would be to do it over 6 months: solstice to solstice. I’m quite happy with 3 months, though: it fits my present financial capabilities much more closely, methinks. But moving the start of the trip up from the solstice means heading north of the Arctic Circle before summer has had a chance to catch on. Via conversations on ADVRider.com, I came to appreciate that it can snow at any time of year on the North Slope Haul Road. They say, though, that the week following Memorial Day is often a best bet for decent weather up there. Due to the timing of the Stahlratte voyage from Panama to Colombia, we elected to start our trip to the beginning of May instead of the end. Recently, we’ve started watching weather conditions along our route pretty closely. Deadhorse is the clear winner when it comes to frigidity. Over the past several weeks, we’ve watched it climb above and dip back under 0°F, and covet any forecast of highs above 20°F. We’ve prepared for the cold, though, with thermal layers and heated gear. The even bigger concern, for me, are the road conditions.

The first vehicle I actually owned was a motorcycle – the first motorcycle I ever drove, matter-of-fact.

This isn't the actual bike, but it is a GS850G like I had, big ol' WindJammer and all!
(pic source: http://img.scgpix.com/listimg/img1_1016/09/img_fUN27kQWsBKYpyu_r.jpg)

I bought the Suzuki GS850G from a family friend not long before I headed off to college, intending it to be my year-round vehicle. I drove it rain or shine, hot or cold. And there was once in the winter when the roads were clear that I caught a small corner of a piece of ice in a parking lot. The bike didn’t go down, but only due to the small size of the patch of ice, no doubt. In that moment, I decided that ice or snow on the road was not to be trifled with.

And now I’m driving to the northernmost reaches of Alaska…before temperatures consistently get above 32°F. I just really don’t know what to expect. Dick Proenneke’s “Alone in the Wilderness” remains one of my favorites. Seeing him digging his pathway through several feet of snow and reading about how he thrived in the cold, where 38°F was “balmy” inside his cabin, was inspirational. But the image of several feet of snow sticking in my mind when I start thinking about an area much farther north, on a not-highly-trafficked road, with several high mountain passes just makes me a bit trepidatious.

I did just find the Traveler 511 Info website at Alaska.gov. Looks to be quite useful. Most of our route shows yellow (fair) today, which I think I can deal with:

Something to keep an eye on we consider when to drive north.

A pleasant surprise to me: the annual snowfall in Prudhoe Bay is less than 3 feet (source), though the North Slope Borough boasts a grimace-worth 6 feet (source). Wikitravel provides this tentative reassurance: “Travel on the [Dalton] highway during the months of May and September is a bit colder, although travel along the highway is not considerably more dangerous during these months [than the summer months of June-August].” The site reads like an episode of Scared Straight, though like warranted.

So…that’ll be the first leg of our journey. Yippee-ki-yay.