I'm gonna throw this out... anyone want to ride motorbikes to Prudhoe Bay in August?

BTW, no way in hell I'd use street tires on this ride. Its doable, but you'll be going 20mph for about 800 miles of the trip. The Dalton is just hella beatup and the weird stuff they put in the dirt to improve traction does really weird stuff to bikes when the road is wet or snowy. We ran into 2 bikes from Argentina with street tires... one was a Honda CB250 and the other a 400 Falcon. One of them had crashed and they guy was pretty messed up. This road is best for 80/20 tires. I ran new Hidenau Scouts on my KLR650 and just barely made the trip. They were about 98% gone when I arrived back home.

 

So was your August departure prime time or would the weather have been better with a late June/early July time? I'm thinking about this trip one day soon and I can imagine it will be hit or miss regardless of what is planned.


Oh, and great picture! It's those kind of shots that keep pushing me.

 

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I'm doing this trip the first week of June next year. We are renting from Anchorage and then riding up. I just sent in my reservation form yesterday.

 

It depends on the year though I think there's less rain in June/July. I rode up three years ago and we only had one day of riding in the rain in three weeks. And it was so warm we didn't put our jackets on for an hour. We had 80's a lot of the time, locals were dying. I took my wife up this year at the beginning of August for two weeks, rained almost every day and was cool most days. Wife got to jump the Audi Q5 off the frost heaves in the yukon though, roads were much better than three years ago,

 

I need to clean it up a bit but I did something for friends at home on our trip, I'd update it when we had wifi so they could see what we were doing. http://ridingnorth.com/

Riding into Haines was one of the most parts of the ride.

 

When I was up there a few years ago in August the temps were starting to drop and the mosquitos weren't bad. I've seen a lot of awful footage of the bugs in July time frame...

 

We are going in early June mostly to avoid the bugs. I'm not that worried about the temperature. Where I live in Indiana is colder than a lot of Alaska anyway.

 

Riding Chicago to Alaska and back is definitely on my bucket list, but won't have the time until I retire.

 

Who needs time? I did the same ride in 1983, there and back in a week. Granted I went to Hyder, not Prudhoe or Anchorage, but it was still over 7k miles.

 

Seven 1000 mi days in a row? No thanks.
No time to enjoy the scenery, no time to appreciate the places you are traveling through. I'll keep my trip to 500-700/day max and enjoy the ride.

 

Truthfully even that can be a lot of miles per day. We did that but I'd prefer to have spent more time looking and less riding from point to point some days. Next time I'll leave space in the schedule to stay in a location an extra day or two if I want to do so. I'd like to do a month and about 7K or less in miles.

 

Thanks for making the page! Good stuff.

 

I drove up this past July with my Husky FE501 in the bed of my pickup. ~3700 miles in 4 days up and same coming back. I've made that trip at least 25 times and enjoy it every time. I stayed with my former neighbor in Chickaloon who also has a 501. We got 10 days riding in the Alaska, Talkeetna and Wrangell mountain ranges. It rained a bit but we were prepared. At one time in the past I did have a Super Tenere for a while and thought about riding it up the Alcan, but that road isn't much of an adventure any more. It's not like the pre-90's before they civilized it and took out hundreds of turns. It's still a great trip, but it's not very challenging. When we were camped near Chitina a couple I know from Santa Fe serendipitously met up with us. They spent about 2 months riding up to and around Alaska on their 690 KTMs. I'm not sure I'd want to do that much riding and staying in a tent. I like the way my trip went.

On the way back I did take a detour from my normal route and drove the length of Jasper National Park in Alberta. That's a great place even if you only travel through it without staying overnight.

BTW I'm not sure about just visiting Hyder. I admit to being prejudice because I spent almost half my life in southcentral. I've spent my time in southeast and yes it is spectacular, but I think there is more between Homer and Seward on the Kenai peninsula, and Valdez, and the Denali Park and traveling over the Denali Highway, going to Kennecott mine and Chitina. Wherever you go it is an impressive place to visit. I'm planning to retire next April and look forward to getting back there next summer for a longer stay.

 

I didn't say it made sense...
Young and dumb, but it was an epic trip, and did see incredible things. Most the road was construction gravel, which my Gpz1100 handled well if you went fast enough.

 

I did this ride 2 years ago. We averaged 570 a day. At that pace, up there, even that is an aggressive schedule.

 

Yep with the way construction goes, doing 500 miles up there can be like doing 1000 in the lower 48. Either way (fast pace or slow pace) you're guaranteed to have an adventure. I love hearing about peoples trips up there in the Alaska and northern Canada areas... it's always a surreal experience in some of those spots, being so remote and far away from the "real world". Really cool seeing a lot of ADV stories here on the WERA forum

 

We left Montana on August 10 and returned August 28. We had about a week of constant rain and temps in the 32-42 degree range between Valdez and Deadhorse. It really was not that pleasant. When you plan a trip up there, you have to decide if you want bugs or cold. We opted for the cold. I don't think we saw one mosquito the entire time, so camping was really pleasant.

I haven't researched weather in early June, but that sounds like guaranteed snow to me.

 

We went in August. It rained EVERY single day in our 15 days of riding. The two days on the Dalton were hateful, rain and high winds for probably 3 hrs each day.

 

I'm looking forward to it.

 

I went in late June I think it was. Figured I should bundle up, cuz we were going to Alaska after all. Given the complete lack of luggage space on the bike, that meant we had to wear most of what we brought. Holy crap was it hot out. That said, Hyder is more like Alaska 'lite'. Back in the early 80's, think wild wild west. Some day I'm going to write a book about that trip. I'd love to do it again, and take a few weeks, but I can't do that kind of mileage anymore, regardless of schedule.