Two Throughways to the Arctic

An untamed wonderland may soon be opened to motorists

As roads go, they are hardly spectacular, merely long gray ribbons of dirt and gravel. But the two highways--one in Alaska, the other in Canada--cannot be judged by initial appearances alone. North America's first throughways to the frozen north, they reach far beyond the Arctic Circle and slice through some of the continent's grandest terrain.

Running alongside the great pipeline, for which it was built, the Alaskan Haul Road stretches 397 miles from Livengood (pop. 25), an old mining town north of Fairbanks, to the bleak oilfields of Prudhoe Bay. Following roughly a parallel course northeastward across similarly unspoiled wilderness, Canada's Dempster Highway extends 465 miles from historic Dawson (pop. 745) in the Yukon to the government-built showcase city of Inuvik (pop. 4,150), close to the Beaufort Sea.

Neither road is open yet to the casual motorist. Lawmakers are still debating the highways' economic and environmental impact. But the Dempster is slated for a formal ribbon-cutting in September, and, with some backstage horse trading, the Haul Road may not be too far behind. Then virtually anyone with a sturdy enough car, a firm hand on the wheel and a taste for the outdoors, arctic-style, can contemplate a splendidly eye-opening joyride to the far north.

Canada's Dempster Highway, named after a turn-of-the-century Mountie who made a heroic attempt to rescue a stranded patrol, was begun 22 years ago by the Canadian government to spur the economic development of the Yukon and Northwest Territories. The road starts at Dawson, hub of the Klondike's 1890s gold rush, laces through the deep green forested valleys of the North Klondike and climbs the rugged Ogilvie Mountains, where it peels off in to rolling alpine meadows and the tundra beyond. At the 253.7-mile mark, a simple sign announces the 66DEG 30 min. latitude of the Arctic Circle. Then the road continues into the Northwest Territories, meets the Peel and Mackenzie rivers, and heads deep into the low, flat, piney Mackenzie Delta until at last it reaches Inuvik.

Except under the best of conditions, anyone traveling the $91 million highway will be roughing it. In winter, the road will be untenable without constant snow removal; in spring, it will be a morass of mud. Only in summer and fall will passage be relatively easy without four-wheel drive. Nor does the highway offer much in the way of roadside facilities. The Yukon government has established two maintenance posts at miles 41 and 123, and at mile 231 the privately owned Eagle Plains Hotel stands as a kind of halfway house. Other than two Indian villages, there are no roadside facilities in the Northwest Territories.

To protect fragile permafrost from being rutted by tire tracks, much of the Dempster is built on an elevated roadbed that rises as high as 6 ft. above the terrain. Thus it becomes difficult, as well as illegal, to pull off the highway and pitch a tent for the night, except at the sanctioned sites.

Alaska's Haul Road is not much easier on the traveler. It is also unpaved and elevated to protect the permafrost, and has no tourist facilities at all. But there is one jarring difference. Wherever the roadway goes, the Alaskan oil pipeline faithfully follows, sometimes underground, at other times above the surface on spidery steel supports. Built specifically to convey the men, machines and material required to lay down the pipeline, the highway was begun in 1969 by Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. Two years later the oil consortium completed the southernmost 57 miles as a public road linking Livengood with the Yukon River. Construction was resumed in 1974, following the pipeline's approval by Congress. Then, working day and night, 3,400 crew members completed the remaining 340 miles of roadbed in only 154 days.

The result of that labor rolls north from the Yukon through dark green spruce and birch forest, past Alyeska's abandoned Prospect Camp, near the Jim River, one of the state's most bountiful salmon streams. The road travels on up through the majestic Brooks Range into the tundra, fords the vast arctic plains, or North Slope, and finally ends at Prudhoe Bay.

Under their pact with Alaska, the oil companies got exclusive use of the road until Oct. 15, 1978, when it was turned over to the state, presumably for public access. For the second consecutive year, though, the Alaska legislature balked at passing the required bill. The 20-to-19 vote was somewhat of a surprise, given the eagerness of many Alaskans to open their rich, scenic northland to tourism and development. But many officials, including Governor Jay Hammond, are arguing that a road with completely unrestricted public access may cost far more to maintain (as much as $7 million annually) than the revenue it will generate.

However Alaskans settle the issue, both their road and its Canadian counterpart have raised understandable concern over the fate of arctic wildlife. The pipeline experience was not reassuring. Well-meaning workers, for example, left so many handouts for wolves and other creatures that they may have endangered the animals' capacity to fend for themselves. Bears, of course, needed no invitation to a feast. They simply helped themselves to any carelessly stowed garbage. Sometimes they became such a nuisance--and danger--that they had to be drugged and hauled away or simply shot.

Poaching is another concern. Though hunting and fishing are forbidden within a five-mile corridor on either side of the Haul Road, illegal shooting has sharply increased since the pipeline's Construction. Similarly, while the Yukon has imposed a ban along a corridor of its portion of the Dempster Highway, no such regulations have been drafted by the neighboring Northwest Territories. Warns one Canadian official: "We will have a slaughterhouse-alley situation."

Other environmental effects may be more subtle. One involves the numerous arctic streams that pass under both roads via culverts. These can speed up or slow down the water and disturb the salmon battling upstream each spring to spawn. Indeed, biologists say that there has already been a drop-off in the number of fish in streams intersecting the Haul Road. Gravel and dust can be another problem. Tossed onto the permafrost by car wheels, they cause the snow to melt early in the spring. Waterfowl then nest prematurely in these moist spots and lose their young to frost.

The greatest fears center on the herds of caribou, whose annual migrations across the arctic wastes began long before the first Siberians touched North America. Biologist David R. Klein of the Alaska Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit has already spotted trouble in a herd of some 6,000 caribou that has traditionally ranged north to south from the Arctic Ocean to the foothills of the Brooks Range. Since the coming of the pipeline, says Klein, cows with calves have shown a marked reluctance to pass under the raised stretches of the conduit and to cross the road itself. Migratory patterns also seem to have changed, and the herd may dwindle. In Canada, the size of a herd of more than 100,000 caribou may be reduced because of the Dempster Highway. Says Director Gordon Hartman of the Yukon game department: "We simply don't have enough information, and until we do, the road should not be open to unlimited travel."

Arguing that such environmental fears are exaggerated, pro-roaders see bonanzas at the ends of both highways. Despite the caution of Alaska state officials, the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce believes that the Haul Road could be bustling with so much traffic by 1985 that it will steer an extra $15 million a year into their city. The Dempster's boosters see one certain payoff. No longer will residents of Inuvik and the outlying Mackenzie Delta, where oil exploration is now being expanded, need to import most of their food, fuel, clothing, machinery and other supplies by expensive airfreight.

Yet to some observers it all seems risky. One is former Inuvik Mayor Jim Robertson, who predicts a flood of tourists. Says he plaintively: "We'll be the biggest used-car lot in the world. Every fool in an air-conditioned Cadillac will want to drive here, and one way will be enough. They won't go back over that road. They'll dump their cars here and fly home.''

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