Top of The World Highway – Dawson to Beaver Creek

Today Rosie and The Operator will travel 446km over 9 hours, from Dawson, along the Top of The World Highway to the Tetlin Junction where we then exchange onto The Alaska Highway for an overnight stop in Beaver Creek.  The highways have two border crossings to negotiate today, one into Alaska, USA and then back into Canada.  Tomorrow, we then make our way to our final destination of Whitehorse.  Its going to be one long day of driving!

By pure chance chatting to a local the day before we left Dawson City we found out that The Top of the World Highway and the border crossing closes for winter the day after we drive it….great planning Rosie!  Actually, what a complete fluke, Rosie wasn’t aware that the road and the Border even closed for winter!  We got through in the nick of time otherwise we would be driving back the way we had originally come.

We started out of Dawson at 0700am, it was still dark and we probably should have known better than to be driving at this time, but, dawn wasn’t far away and how bad could it be?  We would be cautious on these unknown roads and keep our eyes peeled for early morning wandering animals cause we thought that was our only danger.  How wrong could we be!

We drove to the ferry crossing in Dawson and waited for the punt to take our car across the river. It was lightly drizzling, but it wasn’t too bad, Rosie felt sorry for the ferry operators having to work in the freezing cold overnight temperatures as they operated this ferry 24 hours per day up until when the river freezes for winter.

The ferryman reminded us that the border was closing tomorrow if we were planning on coming back. Thanks for the reminder but we are not coming back. Bye Bye Dawson City, it was a blast.

Connecting The Yukon to Alaska The Top of The World Highway is described in Rosie’s guidebook as ‘the Highway who dares to be different as it snakes along the top of a mountainous ridge offering breath taking rolling scenery and the most unexpected flora and fauna….’

This is all we saw along this Highway.  You have to laugh, that we saw nothing but rainy, foggy gloom for 200km.

On, The Operator doggedly drove, slowly but surely, as we seemed to climb quite quickly, quite high.  High enough for our ears to be popping in the whiteout fog, with full rain, whilst on an unsealed road in the pitch black within fifteen minutes of starting our journey. The visibility was down to about twenty meters and it was treacherously, slow going.

The slick unsealed road had rivulets of water running down the middle in the headlights, coupled with watching to make sure the road wasn’t washed out we had to beware of animals…surely even the animals wouldn’t be out in this weather at this time of the morning!

Higher and higher we climbed, and the landscape was eerie in the dawn light.  All of a sudden the weak sun revealed where we were as the fog lifted for an instant unveiling a landscape that went on forever in stunted spruce clad splendor.

The clarity was short lived as we were soon fogged in again and the road seemed to pass by in a mesmerizing white abyss as we reached the Alaskan border. To get to this point we had driven 107kms in just over two and a half hours and we had not seen one other vehicle in all that time.

It felt like we were the only people in the world, then a sign at the border revealed why our ears were blocked and that we were not alone….there were three other people here at The Poker Creek Border Crossing.

The border control was quite fancy. We had to stop on the the red and advance when they beckoned us on the green. A border guard actually came out of his modern warm looking hut and greeted us on the side of the road through the car window to check our passports, it was all very quick and painless.

Now, Rosie can totally understand why this road would be closed over the winter months…at this elevation, over winter it would be totally treacherous. The Top of The World Highway was built as a shortcut so that access would be easier between Dawson, Fairbanks and Anchorage up north, rather than have to drive from Dawson all the way down to Whitehorse and then back up, which, in the winter, is an actual detour of 14 hours when the Highway is closed!

Just down the road from the border office was the cabin (pictured above) with the signage in front of it, this is where the border officers live.  As of tomorrow when the road closes, so does the border.  No one lives on this entire stretch of 281km highway except these guys, this is the only house.  Serious!  It is so crazy remote here.  As of tomorrow, Poker Creek – population – 0.  This is also the most northerly border crossing in North America, it kind of makes you wonder what these guys did to get ‘banished’ here.

Travelling down the mountain towards the village of Chicken, Rosie was looking forward to her first coffee stop of the day!  Thank goodness the weather was getting clearer the lower we drove and look, a mama moose on the roadside, said The Operator excitedly…quick, quick Rosie, take a photo as we flash past, wow, what big animals….hate to encounter that actually on the road.

Look again!  Said The Operator, in quick succession, as Rosie was eagerly scanning the roadside for animals.  The first car we have come across in three hours, quick take a photo!

Talk about four seasons in one trip! We had a bit of everything weather wise on this section of road. After not seeing anything on the first half of our journey today the view was fantastic as we drove on, the pine forest was gone, replaced with shorter, scrubbier alpine growth and the vistas were breathtaking.

Here we are, our first town, the metropolis of Chicken! Population 7, according to official census figures.  In summer, this figure explodes to 100 when the miners come back for the summer.  Most other visitors pass through or stay overnight on the way somewhere else. Believe it or not, there is a ‘downtown’ in Chicken, a roadhouse, which apparently has great homemade pie, a small saloon off the side of it and a gift shop. Rosie cant wait for that coffee!

Nooooooo, they had closed two days earlier for the winter according to the sign in the window! Rosie was gutted…no coffee here this morning and no sign of any of those 7 inhabitants either!

Rosie dejectedly walked up to the highest point in Chicken…on top of the tiny hill is a scrap metal chicken and a sign pointing to all other chickenesque places in the world…with a homage to the Hen and Chickens in our homeland of New Zealand. The long drop outhouse was spotlessly clean and Rosie expected to see a tumble weed blow through as we rolled out of town.

Oh why, do you ask, would this town be called Chicken? Well, this area is loaded with Ptarmigan, you know, those small ground running like birds similar to pheasant. In the 1800s the gold miners of the area kept themselves alive by eating these ptarmigan, which by the way, is the Alaskan state bird. In 1902 when this settlement officially became a town the people wanted to call it Ptarmigan, but it was thought the name was too hard to spell and no one could actually agree on the exact spelling anyway…so they called it…Chicken, cause the Ptarmigan kind of look like…Chicken. True Story.

The road winds on with beautiful smooth tarmac…….then it stops, see the transition….gravel it is again.

Rosie was getting a bit caffeine deprived and cranky and The Operator totally needed a caffeine fix as well to calm his driving nerves. Tok it was, population 413, a small 15 minute detour off the The Alaska Highway not far from the Canadian border. Yes, a diner, indoor loo and bottomless coffee….yay!  Tok is nicknamed ‘Mainstreet Alaska” for the amount of people that pass through and it being the first Alaskan town they come across on their Northern Roadtrip.  Tok is also called the Sled Dog Capital of Alaska for the popularity of winter dog mushing, and Rosie heard from the waitress, there is also a theme park here, hmmmm, that could be kind of interesting, the actual ‘theme’ of the park would be a surprise…..but we need to push on, oh, and hold on, its closed for winter.  No photos here, Rosie was racing inside for the loo and coffee.

Just what the doctor ordered, recharged, we are back on our way again, our 4 hour detour into the USA was over as we crossed back into Canada. A mere five minute drive from the border and we had hit our overnight destination, Beaver Creek population 115 and its claim to being the most Westerly community in Canada and 301 miles from nowhere.  Actually, it is 275miles from the closest town in Canada but whose counting…and hey, why being pedantic.

This wee blip in the map was formed in the 1900s as a camp for surveyors surveying the Canada Alaska border and has grown since then to have about three hotels clustered here, a couple of gas stations, an RV park and a restaurant/bar called Buckshot Bettys. Plus a few houses lined the road and there was a church, fashioned from a half round barn with a weekly Sunday service at 11.30am and that folks, is Beaver Creek.

Sitting in Buckshot Betties, ‘No laptops as this is not an Internet Café!’, and chatting to the people that were in there Rosie and The Operator had a great evening. A group of guys from Anchorage had been there a month already living in the ‘town’ whilst they upgraded the heating system at the border/customs station. They knew the menu off by heart and made some great recommendations.  The rest of the folk were just passing through the town like us as the majority did daily.

Rosie and The Operator were staying in pretty grim looking accommodation at the 1202 Roadhouse, it had petrol pumps outside, a small general store inside and a polar bear on the roof.

It so reminded Rosie of one of those places in a horror movie where everyone rolls into the car park at dusk, gets to meet each other at the diner over dinner (Buckshot Betties) and only one couple survives the night and leaves in the morning.

Turns out the managers of the roadhouse were from Marrakesh, Morocco and they were very excited to be spending their first winter here. They were a great young couple who were a credit to managing this place as the tired old fashioned rooms were spotlessly clean and we actually had a beauty of a sleep in the dead quiet of Beaver Creek in the middle of nowhere.

Tomorrow we are on the home stretch, heading for Whitehorse.  Our original holiday plans called for an enroute deviation as our ferry was cancelled in Haines on the day we wanted to cross to Skagway.  Another crossing wasn’t available till the next day which didn’t suit our plans so we have had to miss out visiting Haines and Skagway and drive the inland route directly to Whitehorse from Beaver Creek.  Never mind, Rosie and The Operator will roll with it, it meant that we got to spend an extra night in Dawson of which we are well thankful for.

See you on the road tomorrow for the most amazing part of the trip…..cause it snowed overnight!