Back in Fairbanks

Really horrid drive back from Coldfoot, terrible conditions blizzards, trucks were sliding off the road all over the place its taken me all day to do 200 miles and I'm tired now. It is such a Dangerous road and i have so much respect for the drivers who drive up and down every day.
I'm going to visit the Stampede trail head where the young man Chris McCandless lost his life in 1992 when he hiked out into the Alaskan wild and lived i a bus where he got trapped as the frozen river he crossed on the way out was flowing when he tried to come home. He died up their and he is a icon of youth finding their own identity in this crazy world and God bless him.
The bus is still there 25 miles into the trail and is a hunters shelter but too dangerous to walk out to at this time of year, i will stop at the start of the trail and pay my respects.

Prudhoe Bay

I left Toolik at 2pm and turned north onto the Dalton highway, the road conditions were much worse and i was having to concentrate a lot more, just a single track was in use in the center of the road and when oncoming trucks come along i had to pull over and come to a stop as it is so dangerous that if your tire touches the drifted snow it will pull your car off the side of the road. I kept plodding a long in the dark and arrived at Deadhorse and Prudhoe bay at around 7 pm i had a look at the Prudhoe bay hotel but didn’t stop for anything, the whole area is geared around the oil industry and all the buildings are tempory style units so it says hotel but looks like a shipping container.
I made my way over to the general store called Prudhoe Bay general Store and its run by Deborah and Joseph Bernard, they are so lovely, i was given a huge warm welcome and Deborah very kindly gave me some items including a thermal Prudhoe bay hat. Thank uou Deborah you were a light at the end of a very dark stretch of dangerous road, you provide such a good service to all the workers and i’m sure your happy face makes them feel a whole lot better being up their. You van contact Deborah at email deadhorsedeb@aol.com

I had a look at all the other pictures of adventures similar to mine but done in the summer months as they dont see people like me in the winter, i briefly spoke to another lady that run the post office downstairs called Luann and then i made the decision to drive back south to Coldfoot, o the drive back conditions were getting worse but i took it steady and things are going well, visibility through the Atigun pass was very bad and the climb to 4800 ft on the north side was ok, i met a group of trucker at the top who contacted me on the CB radio and asked if i could wait at the top as the south side was getting badly drifted with snow and only one track up was in operation, they sent me down first maybe as a guinepig or maybe they thought i would be faster, this mountain is much steeper than any european climb or decent like the mont blanc. i put the car into low range and with the auto box the car was making a good decent at a controlled speed of around 30 mph, a couple of time the cat lifted and slipped sideways over the snow drifts and all the trucks waiting for us to come down had fitted their snow chains for the climb up.
In coldfoot i stopped at the truck stop for a cup of tea with one of the truckers that i came down the way with and we chatted about what it was like to drive trucks in Europe and Scotland, i had a shower and moved the vehicle to a parking area and parked up for the night.
Tomorrow i will push on back to Fairbanks.

Toolik field station

Well I'm up in the arctic and last night was my second night up on the Dalton highway, the road was built back in the 80's by the Aleysken oil pipe line company and was the idea of James Dalton who its named after, the road is about 500 miles long and runs from Fairbanks up to Deadhorse and your horse would be dead if you rode up hear in these temperatures, not a lot lives up here
once you get above Coldfoot and to a lovely small hamlet called Wiseman which is about as far north as you can to find animals like Martin which are caught up here for their fur which can fetch between $40 and $100 these kinds of practice are a necessity for people who live all year round and i loved seeing the small huts which have generators to power battery packs for lighting and the manage to either melt snow for water or have bored under the house to unfrozen water tables below the surface.
I stopped to have coffee with two families that live in Wiseman one couple that runs summer tours like hiking and wildlife and his wife who writes for a fisheries magazine and another family who have a very small gold mining company a small family business many people have rights to gold mining areas of land going way back to the early settlers and that is before the oil company moved in and put the road in. For the first time i saw Dog mushing in real life and all the fantastic healthy looking dogs they use to pull the sleds, children are home taught and live very close to nature.
I left Wiseman a 2 pm yesterday and drove up to Toolik arctic field station which took me about four hours and i passed by the turning as it was hard to see and off set about 1 klm off the road.
living on the road now is very different and the temp is so cold that it does strange things the engine temperature is running much cooler and as it is a diesel and diesels cool when the idle and petrol engines heat up so this means when i sleep inside my cubby hole in my sleeping bag that the front blower runs very cool even though i have the engine running 24/7, i really on having the back up diesel heaters which is a Webastow airtop 2000 and a Thermo Top P under the bonnet without these heaters it would be a lot harder and all my food in the car would freeze up, when the temp dropped to minus 40 they water pipes for cooking and washing froze and that in the car, as soon as i stop get my gear on to make tea the pipes freeze within a couple of minutes of opening the tailgate, its incredible, I know have to cover my face when outside and your eyes can also get sticky and can stick open if you don't wear goggles, take your gloves off and touch metal and its painful, i would have no way of working on the car in this weather, i am living on a knife edge at times, at least i have my emergency tracker and can run a petrol stove with the window open a bit in an emergency.
Being above the Arctic circle in the winter means no sunlight at all however you do get some light coming over the horizon for a period of time on the flip side is that in summer they have Sun all day long too.
The Toolik camp is by appointment only and i am very privileged to be invited by a scientist called Lesa Hollen from the Neuroscience Visualization M.S.
Dept of Biochemistry & Neurochemistry
University of Alaska Fairbanks
their is only three people here this week managing the site at any point scientist from all over the world come to gather all sorts of data even Nasa use it, its not open to tourists and i am so excited to be on site, it is everything you see in the movies about the Arctic it has Skidoo's and dome style huts all covered in snow bearded men and puffy jackets walking through blizzards,
The accommodation barracks are remind me of being on a ship and everything is well organized and water is a luxury so plates and cutlery is paper an plastic and you have to use out side long drop style toilets and if the heater has not been put on you can freeze your bum to the seat. Its all good fun and i am hoping to be shown around the site more extensively today.
From here later i will drive up to Deadhorse and the oil terminal at Prudhoe bay you can see polar bears up their too and they are massive the biggest of all the bears. The scenery is incredible and when people say their is nothing to see for miles they are wrong they must mean you can't see Mc Donald's or houses, but you see huge mountains with very jagged shapes very aggressive looking glaciers too it makes you feel so peaceful and relaxed, the climb up the Antigan pass where i climbed to nearly 5000 feet was a really long haul and the new oil cooler coupled with the low external temperature means its no longer over heating too. I'm going to go now and have a flannel wash and make some tea.
I want to thank everyone for being so kind to me on this trip it just goes to show how everyone helps everyone out here in the wild.

On my own. Wednesday 3 December 2008 Temp -17

About a week ago Chris had arranged to get a copy of his birth certificate sent up to a youth hostel in Fairbanks and the hostel called Billies is a great place to meet like minded travelers we both made some new friends and Chris last night had decided to have a night with some of the people from the hostel and i decided to do my own thing.
I took myself off to Radio Shack to look at a 2 way radio to use up in the arctic and on leaving met a lady called Lesa who is a scientist and does many field studies, she was interested in what i was doing and where i was going so invited me out for dinner we ended up in a bar later called the Marlin and i met many great people who are very individual,
Lesa had a great contact for me and called a friend to ask if i could visit the Alaskan field study station up in Toolik which is only 2 hours away from the Arctic sea, we emailed to the field station and they are happy to meet me, i have also from being in this bar made a contact for visiting Wiseman a very small village of people about 16 who live with Huskies and sleds in wooded cabins so i want to go their too.
I got back to Patricks the guy who is kindly putting us up, at about 2 am and had a lye in in the morning as i am waking up at 6am every morning and with the cold its wearing me out also its not getting light till 10 am.
I drove down to town to collect Chris from the backpacker lodge and then we could start our drive again north to DeadHorse, on arriving he wanted to have a chat to me and looked a little concerned, i asked him what was wrong and he told me he didn’t want to go into the Arctic and i told him that was ok he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to, i think the last few days have been very tough on Chris and the coolant problem and sub minus 40 temperatures had made him realize how dangerous things can get if something goes wrong. Chris took the rest of the things from the vehicle and we gave each other a hug, he told me he can find work in Fairbanks and would be ok.
He is doing the right thing and chris had been looking a bit ill the last couple of days he needs the rest.
I want to thank chris for the help and support that he has offered me over the last few weeks we have both learnt so much, Chris has been really effective at getting the expedition with local sponsorship and i am impressed by how he has gone about this.
The high point of his work has to be setting up the Smithers skateboard project with youth Kenny Thomas i look back at our time their and that was a job well done, so thank you Chris for all your hard work.
Chris burton has a blog too which is in my links column and he is hoping to continue promoting RamblingRat benefiting StreetKids on his own travels too.

Tim dennis

Arctic Blunder's December 2nd Minus 40oC

Last night we left the engine running all night and the outside temperature has plummeted down to -40 oC this is the coldest i have ever experienced in my life, Sweden was minus 28 but this really goes through you we are only 500 miles away from the most northernly point in America which is above latitude 70 and can go down to minus 70oC.
When we came to leave this morning at 3.00 am i noticed no heat in the car but the engine was running, ice had formed in the radiator cap and the car had lost coolant too, i guessed that since i had had the coolant changed yesterday that it had been air locked so Chris and i drove into Fairbanks and topped up the coolant level also o the drive the brake fluid light had come on too so i was worried that that had moisture in the system and had frozen, but it turned out to be a low level in the reservoir.
We then made our way out towards the Elliot highway and onto the dalton Highway after about three hill climbs it was evident that something was wrong with the cooling system and i could smell coolant in the car also the condensation had frozen to the inside of the car windscreen solidly and the heater lost its heat, i pulled up and got Chris to get the antifreeze bottle and we lifted the bonnet to see steam rising above the bonnet then falling back down like snow, very strange to see, i was worried that the car would overheat and if we filled the radiator with water after we had used all the antifreeze then it would freeze in the radiator when the thermostat closes, if we had no engine then we have no heat for us and this would be very dangerous.
We made a decision to turn back and used about 2 and a half gallons of water to get back to a garage about two hours drive back to Fairbanks. In Fairbanks we had new hose clips fitted and new coolant again, the garage Goldpanner and the Owner Vern would not let me pay again. We are now sat in the backpackers hostel having a cup of tea and sending this blog.
I will check the vehicle again in the morning and maybe we will be ok for another attempt at the James dalton Highway.

Fairbanks Alaska December 1st

Tomorrow we are going to start a 500 mile drive up the Dalton highway which is the furthest north that you can drive anywhere in the world, we will be 7 miles away from the arctic sea when we arrive in Prudhoe Bay the day after tomorrow.
The temperature here in Fairbanks is minus 25 and i am keeping the engine running all the time day and night also i have put fuel additive into the fuel tanks to stop the diesel clouding called bittering agent.
Chris had organized a TV interview today with local Tv and we did this at the local Toyota dealer in town Fairbanks but the dealer was no help to us and were not interested in what we were doing even though we had the news their and we said they supported our cause they were a very difficult bunch to deal with, nothing like the lovely Canadian dealer network especially Glacier who are at the tip of the iceberg in Quality and service.
We took our business to a small garage called Goldpanner Chevron Service and a lovely man Vern Stoner took care of us checking the 4x4 over for an inspection before tomorrows drive to the arctic the garage informed me that i could do with some more antifreeze and didn't charge me for any of the work that they did. Thank you Vern