The Rise Up Ride: Day 119, The Highway to Destruction (Bay)
Date: 19 August 2021
Start Location: Lake Creek Campground, Alcan Highway, Yukon
End Location: Destruction Bay, Yukon
Distance: 106 km
Time: 7:16
Total elapsed: 8:30
Elevation: 674 m
The storm and heavy rain had cleared by morning as I rolled off of my down-covered picnic table in the cook shelter and made muesli with peanut butter and raisins, warming my coffee on the stove. Oh, it was difficult to leave this unicorn of a campsite, but with blue skies and the prospect of a night indoors at THE motel in the unfortunately named town of Destruction Bay, I rode on.
Today's ride was along the section of the Alcan that nature quickly reclaimed in the late-Spring and early summer of 1943, only a year after roadbuilding America troops pushed through wartime construction of the Alcan in less than eight months (from "is it still winter?" through "is it winter already?")
With the clearing of vegetative cover and the scraping away of topsoil needed to build the road (and most probably exacerbated by climate change) the portion of the Alcan I've pedaled from the Canada border to Destruction Bay has been increasingly difficult to maintain as it has been literally melting faster and faster since 1942. New "adaptation" technologies such as underground vents, called thermosyphons, are filled with (ironically) liquid carbon dioxide to cool the subsurface and are helping to slow the permafrost from reverting to pre-last-ice age Arctic wetland. The road is under constant maintenance as they build thicker embankments and even add underground insulating foam. Although I didn't realize it while riding over some corrugated sections, the original logroad of timbers (a corduroy road) built during the second year of World War II is rising up to the roadbed. Again the road elevation profile is big bumps while riding over lots of little bumps through construction zones as the slow-motion battle over melting permafrost continues with high-tech and Caterpillar Backhoe Loaders.
By the late afternoon I arrived at the Talbot Arm Motel Fas Gas in Destruction Bay, a roadside motel which was as nice as Ida's Motel was awful. Run by Canadian Sikhs, the COVID protocols were strict, the room clean and the staff friendly. The next two days' weather forecast looks like it will be something to consider, as the winds will be coming out of the south tomorrow and turning cold as a Northerly will blow in bringing heavy rain overnight. I'll get a late start to ride only 19 km along Lake Kluane through grizzly country to Congdon Creek, one of the excellent Yukon Government campgrounds.
