Dempster Part 2, north to the Arctic Circle

 

This is part 2 of our little catch-up series, going to the Dempster Highway.

After the dramatic start yesterday, the weather did settle down today, and it turned into a relatively fine day.

Morning at the campground was much improved:

Looks like a nicer site today

Lots more scenery pictures today (ruthlessly trimmed, but still a lot of pictures):

Still snow around in places

Still clouds off and on, but no more rain today

Yellow flowers are Mountain Buttercup (we think). Lots of them in places

Winding through the hills

We often saw this red creek, Engineer's Creek, as it winds it way through the valley. It added some colour to the Olgilvie River when they merged:

Along the way we often saw red flags at the side of the road, and a pathway about 8 ft wide that looked like all the little trees had been chewed up and spit out. That's pretty much what has been happening:

 They call it mulching, and have special machines to do it:

This all in preparation for a crew digging a trench to lay a Fiber Optic line mostly along the roadside, in this case all the way from Dawson City to Inuvik:

That red spool is the Fiber cable

A worker told me they need to bury the cable at least a foot deep, and in places it's very difficult because the ground is frozen hard. A lot of the Dempster is built on top of perma-frost, ie ground  permanently frozen up to 1200 ft deep. They have a year to complete this stretch, which would be close to 900 km long.

And even more scenery:

The Dempster often winds its way along ridgelines 

Neat to see the treeline on one side, bare rock on the other

Interesting how the loose rock has fallen down, leaving bare cliffs at the top

This large mostly-bare rock...

... has this tiny fringe of trees clinging to a notch

Along the way we noticed a helicopter lifting something up to the top of a nearby peak:

It looked like a concrete bucket, like a construction crane would use

They were clearly making a foundation up top, maybe as part of the new fiber optic network.

This next couple of pictures have what looks like weeds in the foreground. They are actually small trees, maybe 10-20 feet tall, that looked like survivors of a forest fire at some point. 

And yes, we did see a grizzly bear. He scooted across the road in front of us, then paused periodically to give us dirty looks for disrupting his day:

When we reached Eagle Plains we booked a campsite for the night, then continued on to the sign marking the Arctic Circle. Along the way we found we were on an emergency landing strip:

We did make it to the Arctic Circle sign:

Just around that last bend

Our filthy van

And some happy travelers

There are even picnic facilities, with a view. Temp was 22C!!

After visiting the site, we returned to our overnight spot at the Eagle Plains lodge. It's a real outpost, the only place for many kilometres to get fuel, food and services:

Our comfy site for the night