The vast majority of Pan-American riders aim to start or finish their trips in Deadhorse, Alaska sometime in June or July; the height of summer when days are long and mosquitos abundant.  My September arrival in Vancouver was certainly “late in the season”; a cold reality that would become very apparent during the following months.

The choice had been to continue cycling north and be stopped by winter where I found it, or fly to the Arctic Ocean and cycle south; a sprint against the looming cold and white.

The race was on.

On the evening before I arrived in Deadhorse, a pair of cyclists left their bikes outside the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. One of them was a Brazilian named Jose; a fellow Ushuaia-to-Alaska traveller whose wheel treads I had been following up the Americas for two years.

I was already anxious about bear encounters in Alaska and Northern Canada, but it was truly alarming to receive Jose’s video of a family of bears ripping apart his panniers in front of the hotel where I would stay the next day.

More of Jose’s photos and videos can be found here.

Prudhoe Bay Hotel is an arrangement of portable buildings divided into single-person rooms and a central dining room filled with overweight oil workers tucking into Bain-Maries of greasy food. It was a frozen analogue of my own time out in an Australian mining camp and it did not fill me with any kind of nostalgia.

I took the bus tour to the Arctic Ocean with a trio of Chinese tourists who had enough English to do exactly the opposite of whatever the driver said. The father leapt off the bus onto a restricted area, then took photos of the guard house; the only spot on the tour we were asked not to take photos.

The structures and machinery of the oil field shrunk from view as I cycled south from Deadhorse, and soon I was alone in an alien landscape.

The highway is a thin, dirt scar that runs parallel to a steel artery of crude oil, the Brooks Range glitters like a beacon on the horizon.

In the afternoon of this first day, I spotted a large, brown creature moving near the road ahead of me and was struck with the fear of a possible grizzly encounter. I moved closer and was relieved that the brown bulk was only a grazing musk ox.

Some passing motorists handed me water, Gatorade and a burrito before I made camp behind a pile of gravel.

The sense of isolation grew as I progressed further into the Arctic Tundra.

Waves of unobstructed wind were not as strong as those famous gusts of Patagonia, but the wetted road stuck like molasses and made for slow-motion travel in an infinite landscape.

The highway surface is treated with calcium chloride and this super-adhesive mud dries hard like concrete; binding my derailleur and rapidly abrading brakes, rims and teeth.

I camped near Pump Station 3 and a couple of workers came over to deliver bottles of water, a giant cookie and a T-bone steak. My kitchen was a drainage pipe that blocked the wind.

The Dalton snakes through gently rolling plains, causing the Brooks Range to disappear from view and then reappear closer, larger and more majestic.

A few more cars stopped to deliver snacks and water. A fox watched me from high on a mountain.

It was late in the day and very cold at the foot of the Brooks Range.  The sun had dropped low in the sky and the peaks cast long shadows across my path. I was instantly chilled each time I crossed those sunless spaces.

The road was a raised ridge above sodden earth and I needed a flat, dry clearing to camp. It had been a long time since my tent could be called waterproof and a damp night in these temperatures was a grim prospect. I pushed on even after the sun slipped away.

Finally, a construction site appeared like a cold oasis and I cooked my dinner with a shipping container windbreak. I scouted for a campsite and returned to my kitchen to find that a raven had stolen a couple of my muesli bars. He sat perched above me on the container, cawing and perhaps gloating.

How long had he been watching me, waiting for his moment to strike? I packed my food away and took another stroll to fill up my water bottles from the stream. There was more shredded plastic on my return and the raven still sat stationed on his perch.

The plastic, I inspected, to find what he collected,
Soap, lemon scented – we’d call this round a draw.

The construction crew had left for the day, but the generator was still running and powering the shipping container (which was fitted out as living quarters).

I decided the possibility of a warm sleep was worth the risk of an angry confrontation, so I snuck into the warm chamber, rolled my sleeping bag out on the thick mattress and had a blissful evening indoors.

Next morning I saw a worker in the window of the adjacent office building, but he left me in peace.

All the standing water had frozen in the night and I was heavily clothed as I made an early start into the blue shadow land.

The Brooks Range rises abruptly from the North Slope, neatly dividing the empty plains of arctic tundra from boreal forest. Mercifully, the skies were clear for my crossing and I was afforded incredible views in addition to the warming rays of sunshine.

I pushed my bike up the steep grade of the barren north side and clenched my brakes tight as I descended into a new world of vegetation and trees.

After nearly 400km on the Dalton, I arrived at Coldfoot Camp; the first place you can get a meal after Deadhorse. I enjoyed a disgracefully large breakfast, restocked my chocolate supply and fielded questions from surprised hunters and tourists.

Later, I pulled into the DoT station near Pump Station 5 and tried to drum up some sympathy and a bed for the night. My charm was apparently lacking, but the maintenance worker suggested that I camp out back by the river. I asked about bear activity and he said that there were grizzlies in the area, but since there weren’t salmon in the river, it should be OK.

While setting up camp, I heard a mysterious splashing coming from the river and found a weary salmon flopping around in the shallows.

I prodded the fish back into the current, and then flopped about in the near-freezing water myself. This would be my only wash on the highway.

Day six on Dalton was grey, grim hell; 130km in cold rain and sticky, bike-destroying mud.

I waited 30 minutes while a group of tourists took identical photos in front of the Arctic Circle sign and eventually just barged in to snap a photo when a second van of them arrived and there was no indication that the photo-taking would ever cease.

It seemed insane to me that they would drive hours up the highway just to get a photo with this unremarkable sign, but I suppose my own travels probably seemed equally insane to them.

Later, I saw another large, brown animal close to the road. For a second time, I could not immediately make out what it was, but had to keep going and find out.

I was initially relieved to see that it was a moose, not a bear, but my relief was short lived when I realised that it was watching me and making a course that would be too close for comfort. Thankfully a vehicle appeared on the scene and I was able to stand near it while the moose passed.

Then the van of tourists rolled passed, unaware of the moose and possibly the world itself.

The rain came and soon I was dripping wet. Each climb added sweat and during each descent I became deeply chilled.

The road surface turned to hell-gunk and my drivetrain resisted all cleaning; blocking up so rapidly that I couldn’t use my small chain-ring without the chain jamming. The mud stuck between my fork and wheel, flicked up onto my panniers, the bike and me.

There were no clearings next to the road so I pressed on after sunset, walking my bike up hills and stopping frequently to knock off mud. I was thankful that I replaced my hub generator in Vancouver because it got dark, and in hunger and exhaustion I was getting anxious. Were those scratches on the trees from maintenance crews or bears?

I pushed on mindlessly, repeating the number of remaining kilometres and rhythmically ringing my bell, hoping to alert bears that probably didn’t exist.

At 9pm I arrived at five mile café and the sign “closed for the season”.  I pitched my tent, peeled off my soaking, filthy clothes and passed out without eating.

I was not functioning well the following morning, but it was not far to Yukon River Camp and I treated myself to another obscenely-portioned meal.

The rain had passed and I washed the muck off my bike.

The Southern portion of the Dalton Highway was ablaze with autumn colour. Sections of forest were succumbing to the changing season at different rates, creating a patchwork quilt in green, orange, yellow and brown.

On my eighth day since leaving Deadhorse, I reached the end of the highway and returned to paved road. There was still over a hundred kilometres of nothing until Fairbanks.

The abrasive mud of the highway had ground down my rear wheel rim and cracked the outer wall. Fairbanks was probably the first and last chance for repairs for the 1000km until Whitehorse, so the timing was fortuitous. The mechanic didn’t even charge for labour.

At the hostel I met tourists who had come north hoping to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. One Japanese guy had spent his entire two-week vacation up there and left without seeing anything. I felt a little guilty that I had spent close to no effort trying to see the aurora on the Dalton, but even when offered a ride from the hostel to see it, I declined.

For some time I had stopped pursuing hikes, viewpoints or other local tourist attractions.  It was partly due to long-term exhaustion, partly due to travel saturation, but also the cycling itself felt like enough. This northern run was so isolated, so wild and pure-feeling that I was left with little desire to do anything but ride my bike and be in the scene.

From Fairbanks, there is roughly one hundred miles of the Richardson Highway before you hit the Alaska Highway. During six months in the summer of 1942, the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers cut a 2,700km trail from complete wilderness between Dawson Creek, Yukon Territory and Delta Junction, Alaska. The current highway is 500km shorter, well-sealed with ample shoulder, but still surprisingly empty for what is essentially the carotid artery of Alaska.

I pulled off the highway to camp by a picturesque lake and a family invited me over for a beer. Brad and Christine were a young, well-travelled surfing couple who had moved up to Alaska with their kids to run a farm and manage the Fairbanks farmer’s market.

It was the first day of their holidays and we discussed the unseasonably warm weather (this time the year before there had already been huge snow dump) and the gambling nature of running a farm; one of their entire crops had been rendered worthless by ill-timed rain.

We ate fish fresh-smoked on the fire, tasting extra special as it was their daughter’s first catch.

The paved highway provided some sense of civilisation, but towns were few and far apart in this stretch of South-East Alaska. I enjoyed quiet days of riding through dense forests and the occasional views to stunning mountain ranges.

On the fifth day after leaving Fairbanks, I crossed from Alaska to the Yukon Territory; the last international border of the trip.

The border immigration officer asked if I was carrying any weapons and recommend that I at least carry a knife for protection against the wolves. She told me that it had already snowed down the road at Haines Junction and also behind me, yet somehow I was still threading the needle.

The visitor centre at Beaver Creek was open for its second last day of the season and the friendly old custodian told me I could pitch my tent in the town’s ice skating rink. My bottles froze during the night and I felt like winter was catching me.

The feeling of isolation continued and perhaps even grew during those first few days in Yukon. The majority of campgrounds and tourist services had already closed, traffic was low and, for the most part, it was just me out there alone.

The quiet and gentle pace of the bicycle allowed for intimate encounters with wildlife; moose, porcupine and coyotes not aware of my presence until I was almost upon them.

When the sun was obscured by clouds, the temperature plummeted and I stuffed heat packs in my boots and gloves to delay the onset of numb, waxy, white digits.

There was no-one to talk to (bar myself), so it is hard to say for sure if it the views would have left me speechless. Green leached out of the forest, leaving shades of gold and brown; the scene framed by barren mountains with snowlines creeping ever lower.

I camped on the lip of a sprawling valley and watched the moon rise over jagged peaks as the sun dipped and the sky ran through shades of rose into dark violets and finally inky darkness.

A truck pulled alongside me and the passenger yelled something aggressive. I couldn’t make out what was said, but the look of anger on her face definitely indicated she was unhappy about something.

Later, I thought I saw the same truck approaching again and I prepared for a verbal assault as it slowed and pulled alongside me. Fortunately, this truck was full of smiling women who offered a sandwich out the window.

Reports of bear activity at Kluane Lake encouraged me to stay in a provincial campground with electrified fence and lockers. It provided a great feeling of comfort to go to sleep without the worry of bears, wolves or cats stalking me in the night.

I enjoyed another stunning sunset with views of the lake. In the morning, my tent and bicycle sparkled with ice crystals.

Between Haines Junction and Whitehorse, I was pulled over by a French couple in their campervan. They got the percolator on the stove and soon I was warming up with a cup of coffee and friendly faces.

Later in the day, I met Dan from the UK; the last cyclist I would see until Vancouver Island. He’d been navigating the Yukon River on a raft made of two canoes lashed together, before he cycled the Dempster Highway. He is a much better photographer than me and you can see his photos here.

South of Whitehorse, I felt as though winter was almost upon me. The snow line had dropped to the bottom of the mountains and my energy levels were incredibly low. Each morning I lay in my bag, staring blankly at the roof of my tent, not wanting to drag my exhausted body out into the cold for another day of punishing conditions and solitude.

Finally, the snow did arrive. Pretty little flurries circled around me and gave the landscape a coating like icing sugar. As I climbed higher towards the continental divide crossing, snow lay thick on the ground, and for now it was a novelty.

Even with these trying conditions (or perhaps because of), I was continually stunned by the incredibly scenery which seemed to be mine alone to enjoy.

At the small truck stop and motel that is called Rancheria, I enjoyed a hot, hearty meal and then made enquiries about camping.

The manager told me that one of their motel rooms was available and that I could stay there. I thanked her and explained that it was outside of my budget, but she replied more forcefully that I would be staying in the room and I would not be paying.

I could not stop grinning – a big bed, heating and shower all to myself!

Feeling well rested and energetic the next morning, I appreciated the light flurries as I pedalled towards Watson Lake, my final stop on the Alaska Highway.

I found a guy standing on the berm of the road, minutes after his car had slid off the highway and flipped deep into the forest. He was miraculously unharmed and he hopped into a truck for a lift to the nearest town.

Later, I met two Turkish motorcyclists who were on an around the trip and who had also come up from South America. They were heavily clothed and suffering even more than me, exposed as they were with no physical exertion to keep them warm.

A truck towing a caravan passed me and then had a tyre explode a couple of hundred metres down the road. I stopped to check if everything was ok and found the driver to be extremely distressed; much more upset than a blown tyre warranted.

“Have you seen a pet carrier?”
“I’m sorry?”
“A portable kennel, I had my cat in it”
“No, what happened”
“I think I left it on top of my truck and it fell off on the highway somewhere. I’ve been going up and down trying to find it”

Needless to say, that cat was having a much worse day than its owner.

There was a thick layer of snow at Watson Lake and all the campgrounds were closed for the season. I meandered around town in search of a place to camp, but nothing appeared and there was no budget lodging. Even though the camp hosts were still living on the grounds, they would not let me stay for the night.

A kind Panamanian woman who owned a service station gave me free coffee and said I could camp in the adjacent car wash. Later, the Turkish couple arrived and we all camped together in the wash bay, out of the snow. They showed me incredible photos of the northern lights they had captured the night before when I had been fast asleep in my free bed.

More free coffee and light snow in the morning before I rode to the junction of Highway 37, the Stewart-Cassiar Highway. The Turks were unable to safely ride on the icy roads and loaded their motos onto a pickup to seek warmer climes.

The gas station attendant at the junction warned me that a snow storm was coming.

This highway was even emptier than the Alaska Highway and I rolled through the burned-out forests completely alone.

Near the edge of the road, I spotted a mother wildcat and her two kittens. I stopped to watch the kittens scamper and was allowed to snap a few photos before they trotted off into the undergrowth and were lost from view.

The snow began to fall more heavily near the close of day and I made camp at French Creek, using tall trees to keep my tent from becoming coated.

I awoke abruptly in the deep night to the sound of an animal sniffing my tent beside my head. I grabbed my headlamp, knife and bear spray before cautiously opening the tent and crawling out to investigate.

Ten or fifteen metres away, two eyes flashed in the beam of my lamp. We stood still, staring at one other, each trying to gauge the other in the pitch black.  The beast turned and I lost the reflection of its eyes.

I scanned rapidly, panicking and trying to catch sight of it again. When the eyes reappeared, they were closer. I yelled at the animal, told it to fuck off and then returned to my tent to wait for daylight.

In the morning I found fresh cat tracks in the soft mud by the river and something had chewed through a portion of the rope that was hanging my food bag.

Next day, three wolves ran across the road in front of me. I quickly fished my camera out, but the rest of the pack had spotted me and were watching from the edge of the forest. They were cautious and decided to pass me in the cover of the forest; the three that had already crossed on my right, the rest of the pack on my left.

I watched the group of maybe a dozen wolves sprint by in the forest. When safely clear of me, the first three wolves crossed the road again to re-join the pack.

Hand in hand, the natural beauty around me and my lonesome feelings somehow grew even further. I could set my camera in the middle of the road with no fear of a vehicle running it over.

It was a joy to be so removed from civilisation, yet there was the ever-present anxiety that I’d encounter a dangerous animal out there, far from help.

I arrived in Jade City and pitched my tent in the trees.

For a second night in a row, I was startled awake in the early hours. This time it was not a predator that disturbed my slumber, but a partially collapsed tent.

Huge quantities of snow were dropping and I punched my tent to dislodge the weight before the poles snapped. I peeked out to see a thick layer of fresh snow on the ground and slept fitfully as heaps of snow fell off tree branches and struck the tent like a drum.

In the morning I emerged into a changed world. Everything was white , my body was stiff and I reluctantly brushed snow off my bike and gear before loading it up for the day.

Before I made my first kilometre, the owners of the Jade City store invited me in for hot coffee and a heaping plate of pancakes.

I made a little less than forty kilometres before I arrived at Greg’s cabin and stopped in to say hello. He told me that there would be a big meal that night, a hot shower and covered area to camp if I would lend a hand felling trees around the property. He even had a drying room for my sodden tent.

Also present was Dimitri from Amsterdam, who had met Greg 14 years before when Greg was living on a floating house near a bear sanctuary and running wildlife tours.

If felt good to do some physical labour again, using muscles that had been largely dormant for nearly two years. After a hearty dinner of moose and Irish coffee, I slept like the dead.

We shared another big meal the following morning, and then I was on the road again. The highway had iced over and was incredibly slippery. Any sudden braking or turning threatened total loss of traction, and I trundled slowly along, not allowing myself to pick up significant speed.

Conditions worsened throughout the day, snow and ice rain dumping on me and no shelter anywhere to escape even for a moment.

By the time I arrived in Dease Lake, I was soaked, freezing and shivering.

Sophie at the Arctic Divide Lodge in Dease Lake let me camp out in the barn and gave me full use of the lodge amenities with no charge. She even tried to give me a free room on my second night there, but I stubbornly refused and I’m still unsure whether it was because I felt guilty or because I’m just an asshole.

We drank her father’s potent moonshine and another guest gave me a dehydrated meal. When hearing about my travels in Latin America, a second guest began to tell me how poor people are the happiest in the world and that wealth is the source of misery. I wanted to tell him to fuck off and throw out all his money then, but he did give me beef jerky, which I suppose is ok.

From Dease Lake, I climbed upwards towards Gnat Pass, the highest point on the Stewart-Cassiar Highway. The road was covered in a sheet of ice and it was positively freezing; my feet quickly losing all feeling. Despite the low traction, cars and trucks flew by at tremendous speeds and I was sure that I would see someone careen off the road to their death.

Sophie had arranged for me to stay with Joe and Chalan, just outside of Iskut. They fed me a body-warming meal under the glassy gaze of a mounted buffalo and gave me an A-frame cabin to stay in for the night.

The warmth of Chalan’s morning coffee and rhubarb muffins didn’t last long; the constant rain and snow ensured that I was soaked again by end of day.

I pulled into Bob Quinn Maintenance Station and tried to charm a room out of the supervisor. Initially I was directed to a smelly, condemned building complete with rubbish, expired food and a dead bird, but half an hour later the supervisor had a change of heart and let me stay in the heated main quarters.

Signs on the walls clearly said that no visitors were permitted, however other signs said “no smoking” and I never once saw the super without a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

The rain and snow continued, but at least I could keep warm when climbing hills. At a pass just before Meziadin Junction, I overtook two trucks that had tried to cross the icy summit without chains and were slowly sliding backwards down the mountain.

I spent the night in trucker’s accommodation and listened to those truckers brag about how they got fired for refusing a drug and alcohol test or for punching someone at work.

Looking at my phone while walking back from the kitchen to my room, I didn’t see the black bear until I almost walked into it.

On the day that I took a brief detour down to Stewart, the snow was coming down harder than ever. A car pulled to a stop and told me that there was a large grizzly bear ahead.

My glasses were foggy and covered in snow, so I rode half blind, yelling “Hey Bear” and ringing my bell. A few kilometres later, crows were hanging around in great numbers, signalling that there was a carcass nearby.

I came around a corner and there it was; a grizzly in the middle of the road.

I skidded to a halt and said my loudest, most confident “HEY BEAR”. It looked up at me, paused for a beat and then lumbered off into the forest.

A few moments passed while I waited to see if it would reappear, then I cautiously continued on, peering into the forest to see if it was still there. Bear tracks continued a good way along the road, but eventually they disappeared and I felt safe again.

The snow was really dropping, but once I began to descend towards Stewart, the temperature increased slightly and the snow turned into rain. My clothes were completely soaked and could not get warm on account of the uninterrupted descent.

Stopping by the road to star jump and jog on the spot was doing little to help, but eventually I found an isolated cabin with smoke coming out the chimney.

I ignored the no trespassing sign on the fence and knocked on the cabin door. A very strange-looking man answered and when I asked if I could warm by the fire for a minute, he thought for a second, then said no and closed the door.

There was no option but to continue to Stewart, shivering violently as I rode. When I did arrive, it took me a long time to warm up and for the blood to return to my fingers and toes.

A huge storm hit coastal British Columbia while I was in Stewart and I took two rest days while the torrential rain made the prospect of riding unbearable.

A friendly old guy called Sam started chatting to me in a café and offered to give me a lift back up to Highway 37 in his truck. A large rifle rested on the centre console, bullets on the dash. He told me that he had 50 to 100 guns and his son had well over 100. He said that he wished firearms were written into Canada’s constitution and I didn’t really know what to say.

When we drove past the cabin in which I had tried to seek shelter, he told me unprompted that the man who lived there was a weirdo. Probably just as well that I didn’t go in.

Back at elevation on Highway 37, the storm of the previous two days had transformed the landscape to Narnia in the Age of Winter.

Everything was covered in snow and the ploughs had only cleared two narrow lanes of highway, building snow on the shoulder where I would have liked to be cycling.

I was forced to ride in lane with the huge trucks, flinging myself off into the snow bank each time two vehicles passed each other in my vicinity.

After 17km of this stressful riding, I accepted a lift and avoided the worst of the blocked shoulder.

In the afternoon, I rolled into Kitwanga; the end of the Stewart-Cassiar highway. I pitched my tent in the municipal park and my tent pole snapped, finally defeated.

I felt the same way.

From Kitwanga, it was a gentle ride along the Skeena River for a few hundred kilometres until the coast.

I spent several days in Prince Rupert recovering and doing very little while I waited for the ferry.

The ferry took me from Prince Rupert to Vancouver Island via the inside passage. Huge ridges of earth jutted out of the water on either side of the boat while whales floated by, spouting jets into the air.

The broken-up landscape, with dense forests and collapsing ghost towns had me thinking about future water adventures, for when I had finally laid Felix to rest.

Port Hardy, Vancouver Island. Before me lay an island, behind me laid two continents.

The anxiety about whether I could outpace winter was gone. Multiple ferry routes to the mainland ensured that I could finish at my leisure.

All that was left was to savour the final moments of a two year voyage.

I commenced with the intent of criss-crossing the island on quiet forestry roads. Seeking lakes and rivers to camp beside, building fires for warmth and light to combat the darkness brought forward by the end of daylight savings.

For four days, I made my intentions reality; scenic roads terminating in incredible camps, campfires and hot meals.

At the end of the fourth day, I camped by Elk River and watched as Salmon shimmied over the shallows on their way upstream. Eagles and predatory birds swooped up and down the river, picking off the choicest fish.

After this pleasant introduction to island life, the rains arrived and continued for the remainder of my trip. On many days, the downpours were torrential and I puttered along in sad, soaking misery.

While trying to explore a muddy forestry road, my derailleur went into the spokes and I had to hitch a lift back to town. A huge hole opened in my rear tyre and I switched it for my spare. Another hole signified the end of my front brake pads. The screen of my ereader cracked. My tent-pole repair failed and they broke even further. The holes in my panniers allowed water to pour in and my food and gear and clothes were all wet.

I felt like my bike and body were falling apart.

The rare moments of sun felt like tremendous gifts and my spirits were kept aloft by the incredible people that hosted me in these last couple of weeks.

Of course the hot showers, shelter and hearty meals were manna from heaven, but the conversation and human connection were really a special thing in that time of loneliness and introspection.

I watched one host jam away with a marimba ensemble then learned about their permaculture garden, biogas digester and how they operated a community loans program. Another host was an avid cyclist who also broke the solo around-the-world sailing record in 1985.

Everyone that hosted me in these last couple of months (and across the whole journey) bestowed a great kindness on me that I will be ever thankful for.

I cycled south to Victoria, then north again to Courtenay and caught the ferry across to the incorrectly-named Sunshine Coast.

Working my way down towards Vancouver, I searched for some kind of end-of-trip feeling, but there was nothing but grey and rain.

The final night of this journey was spent on Bowen Island, in the home of Caro and George; family friends of my brother’s good mate. They prepared an absolute feast, popped champagne and really gave me a very special celebration.

I caught the ferry from Bowen Island back to mainland Canada, took a photo in Stanley Park and checked into a hostel in downtown Vancouver.

Quiet and unnoticed, I was done.