RubiKon Adventures: Our Life Behind Bars – Father & Son Doing Time in the Northern Frontier (Mile 4244 to Mile 4439)

Day 19 (July 17, 2013)

Yukon Johann writes:

The Top of the World Highway was a very wet and slippery ride. My dad was debating on whether we should even go on that highway, or head over to Whitehorse. This all depended on what the weather was going to be like. Well, it was raining lightly and we decided to go on the Top of the World Hwy. The road was ridiculous… during the worst weather, it was all dirt road, and it was like driving on slippery ice the entire way to the Canadian border from Chicken. We hit a very foggy area, so foggy that we could hardly see at all. We were only going about 20 miles an hour through this stretch. Luckily, it only lasted about 10 miles, and then we dropped in elevation again. We made into chicken after about 2 hours of riding on some of the most slippery roads ever. We took a look around the local gift shop, looking for stickers. The lady running the register there was kind enough to give us two free Dust 2 Dawson hats. We headed on down to the main building and campground and grabbed some food to settle us down for the rest of the day until dinner.

Video summary of one tough ride

Arriving at Chicken

Wet, wet, wet.. This was actually some of the best
weather we had on the road that day.

Which way do we go?

Dad, let's go in for a drink :-)

Somebody forgot their hat(s)

Taking care of business

Chicken style

OK, after lunch it was time to head out

We left chicken and made our last stretch to the border as comfortable as possible. The road beyond Chicken was worse. Just about the whole ride to the border, we were fishtailing and using the entire road, looking for the best track. Several miles from the Yukon-Alaska border we came across the road construction. It was even worse. They had scrapped the roadbed down to the muddy surface. The whole road was torn out, and was just pure dirt (more like snot), nothing compact just lumps of slippery mud all over. Add in the rain, and you get extremely slippery, thick mud. Don’t forget the very large “puddles” forming in the middle of the road… I think it would have been safe to call it a pond at that point. Riding through all of that stuff was very difficult, and when thinking of it, I’m completely stunned on how we were both able to get out of all of that without dumping either of the bikes. The border guard told us that they have been picking up bikes for most of the day and were surprised that we didn’t dump or crash our bikes at least once.

Odd town, odd place... We can check this off the bucket list.

The sky opened up and this is what we experienced... hell on two wheels.
There was no turning back now

Mud

More mud

More, mud, mud, mud

Arriving at the border.

Despite the tough going and hard weather, we were in good spirits.
It's all part of the adventure

Poker Creek Alaska.. The most northern border crossing in the United States. Population "2"

We finally made it past the border at Poker Creek and got through no problem at all. The road was much better on the Yukon side. It wasn’t slippery and wasn’t super muddy. It was great to not have to play a game of slip and slide all the way to Dawson City. We made it to Dawson City, got a room at the Downtown Hotel, washed our gear, dried our gear, and made dinner. A very long and strenuous day has finally come to an end, and now it was time to turn in and get ready for the next day’s adventures. Except my dad had this idea to ride to the top of Midnight Dome. He went for a walk around Dawson and the weather and said the weather was getting better. I agreed, and we had a great time up there. The town was in a sort “calm” before the storm mood as the Dawson Music Festival was getting ready to start. We met another GS rider who had a bike identical to my dads, a Red ’09 R1200 GSA. So we all rode together up to the dome. We saw a huge porcupine on the way up. Once at the top, we had the dome all to ourselves. It was serene and quiet. Try as it may, the sun would not peek through the clouds. We got to enjoy a nearly full moon however. After about an hour we went back to the Hotel to turn in for the night. What a long day. As we faded off to sleep we talked about the misery of the day, but you know what, in hindsight it was fun. We were glad we did it and got to experience the worst of the worst possible riding conditions of the entire trip. Better here, than above the arctic circle.