The return to Dawson City

We got out of the hotel at 11am. It didn't take us long to see town, such as it was, and get a couple coffees and a muffin down. We had a great conversation with a 40 year old female artist. She was also a rider. She had a VFR, bur wanted to trade it for a KLR.  Smart girl as the 550 lb VFR with no off road suspension isn't right for a 120 lb gal.  She was doing some avant-garde paintings, mixing the mystical with the animals of that area, and the First Nation folks from up there.

We gassed up and visited the church as well as the native visitors centor. The church was ok, but the visitors center was spectacular. Turns out that an 18 year old niece of Nadia Lennie, a Dawson City visitor center gal, was the host for the day. She was really beautiful, and nice to boot. She explained some of the culture, and the outer island in the Arctic Ocean. She whipped Doug and I up a certificate that said that we beat the Dempster on Motorcycles.


But time was a wasting, if we wanted to get back to Dawson today. We had already gassed up, so we left the VC at 12:30pm. The sun was shining, but it was still cold, in the 40 degree range. I had stuffed some newspaper in my chest area, and closed up any air gaps around my neck.

My groins had recovered, but I could feel the pain was there just waiting to return. I didn't see any way that we could do better than Eagle Plains today, but the road was good and the wet part had dried out to just a few puddles. We did the two ferries, and gass up in Fort Mcpherson, in just 6 hours.

Although cold, we we're sitting in EP having a burger at 7pm. There were several other bikers there. One was a PC800 that we had passed on the way up yesterday. He had had a flat tire and was forced to go back to Dawson City. He was here now, spending the night, and on the way to Inuvik..

As we ate, we talked to some folks at the next table who had come up from Dawson. They said that the rain that we were going into wasn't too bad. Rain!!!...we didn't want to hear that. We had imagined that it would just be another 5 hour leg and we would be back in Dawson.

So we geared up and left with apprehension as our riding partner. We had to make Dawson tonight, as the gas station at the highway would be closed. The gas can that Doug had put the hole in would still hold gas, if we filled it, and then strapped it on Doug's rack with the hole up. We figured we would go 50 miles and use most of that gas right away. We had 23 more miles to do than on the way up to get all the way to Dawson City since the gas station at the road at the finish of the Dempster would be closed.

The folks at the next table were right. It started raining in less than an hour. Still, it wasn't hard, but the road was sloppy wet, and oncoming traffic was going really slow on the hills in both directions. Most of that was Semis with trailers. I remember passing one semi going down hill. Of course, he was in the tracks, and I had to make my pass out of the tracks, in the fresh untraveled roadway. I wondered how slippery that would be, and just how I would fair rolling around under his dualies in an extreme situation.

Well, 'no harm, no foul' or 'luck beats good. My bike's traction held up. At one point Doug waved me on ahead as he realized that he was holding me up a bit. I finished up the mountain section and then waited for him. That left about 60 miles left to the pavement, and the rain was over by then.

You can see that we were all about the business of getting back to civilization, as there are no pictures being shown.  It was late and we were cold and tired.  Yep the thought of pictures did not come up.

Doug went ahead from there. I was prolly about 30 miles from pavement when I ran out of gas. Doug got 80+ mpg with the NX, where I didn't quite get 50mpg. Doug didn't notice that I was missing, which is what I worried about on the way up, but I still had my two gallons of gas, so it should be no problem.

It was about 12:30am as I poured the gas in. I'm not really used to running out of gas in this bike, and I don't know the drill for restarting that bike....and I still don't know why, but it wouldn't refire. Oh shit, quickly testing, showed that I had spark, and gas going to the carb as well.

My starter button had quit working a few months ago. I put a starter switch in the line that bypassed the starter switch. As I ground away on the starter, I realized that my starter button didn't cut out my headlight. I could hear the starter getting slower.

Doug hadn't come back so he probably was at the pavement waiting some thirty miles away by now. He wouldn't have enough gas to get back to me, I thought. If this thing didn't start in the next try or so, I was going to be in a serious pickle. I'm sure it was the last bit of juice in the battery that began to ignite the engine. It started as though it was flooded, go figure.

Thinking back, remember how I said we put our reserve gas in the bikes before we ran out on the way up.  Well, I should have stopped on one of the many hills and done the gas transfer before I ran out as I could bump start on the hill if I had to for any reason.  That would have been just an extra bit of insurance in a worst-case scenario.  I didn't because I thought Doug would be there to pull me if my bike wouldn't start with the starter.  That little laps of not being as careful as could be, could have gone downhill, especially if any of the wildlife got involved.

I can't emphasize enough that in remote places like Baja or up here, or lots of other places a rider is relying on his partner, and doing anything that lets your partner out of site can be catastrophic if just a couple of negative coincidental issues line up at the same time.  This time it worked out all right.

30 minutes later I pulled into Klondike Corners where Doug was waiting. Doug had gassed up as someone else had paid the opening up charge of $10 (that we didn't know about), for an emergency fuel up. He was glad to see me. I suspect that most remote gas station in Alaska have an 'open anytime' charge up there.  That's good to know.

We drove the last miles to my van in Dawson City, and arrived there at 2am. That van was a sight for sore eyes, and Doug and I didn't chat about the trip much before going to sleep. Doug's new name has been forever changed to 'Muddog'.  He cleaned the mud off his duds as soon as he got up.