Day 4. Alaska Ride 2017: Coldfoot, Alaska

I wake to find the rain has moved in over the night, and has increased more than I have seen over the last few days. The surrounding mountains are shrouded in white misty rain laden clouds. Outside my room window,  But, I do have electricity, a toilet and a shower.

I can see my bike surrounded in the muddy parking lot by pools of water. My 10 by 20 foot room is comfortable, but a bit cold. I cannot imagine what the rooms feel like later on in the season when it starts to snow.

Coldfoot is a former mining camp established in 1902. Coldfoot experienced another boom in the 1970s, when it became a construction camp for the Alaska pipeline. Coldfoot camp is where the workers lived during the construction period.  There are essentially three groups of people staying at the hotel. There are the truck drivers, tour groups, and one-offs like me.  

I head back to the Coldfoot restaurant to get some breakfast.  As the night before, the buffet is the center piece.  The food is actually good here. As I inspect the vegetable tarts, I tell the guy delivering some items to the buffet that the choices are interesting. He says “Because we are here for 6 months at a time, the food can get rather boring. So we try to keep things interesting and find new things, and change up the selection frequently. Otherwise, we would all go crazy. “ I Sit with a group of truckers as we watch the news on hurricane Harvey. I ask one Trucker if he was South bound and if he went over Atigun pass, and he replies that he went over the pass last night. I ask him what the conditions were and he says it was snowy and at one point it was 28 degrees. Another trucker says that it would be worse at the pass today, since it is raining here in Coldfoot. The trucker’s comments pretty much dash any window of hope that I could make the pass today, or tomorrow: signed, sealed, delivered and a done deal: not going.  

I think that I am going to hang out in Coldfoot Camp for the day. Not much to do here, other than eat, sleep and drink.  I could use some rest as the road back will be really muddy and dangerous, even more so than the other day.  I see that the Arctic Inter-agency visitor center has a ranger talk at 8:00 PM. I will go to the talk and go through the exhibit very slowly, as I ripped through it yesterday. The center is close enough that I can walk to it. I will get up early and head back to Fairbanks, where I will spend the night before heading out in the direction of  Canada.

I walk over to the visitor center and there is a new ranger talking to some folks that are interested in the conditions on the Atigun Pass.  The ranger says he went over the pass twice over the last two days. He says at first the snow was all the way down the North slope, and then later on down the South slope. He says it was slippery and snowy on the last 200 feet at the top.  I tell him that I decided not to try the pass, and he turns and says to the lady ranger “This guy is one of the smart ones!”.  The ranger then tells me “Winter has arrived early this year”.  The ranger then puts on a 30-minute video on the Dalton, just for me: I have the movie theater all to myself.  Great little movie that covers the area, people and wildlife along the Dalton hwy.  Afterwards, he gives me a map with trails leading from the visitor center. I walk the trails first to the Coldfoot cemetery, which is not much, and then later down the road to the airport. I then take the trail back to the Coldfoot camp restaurant where I order lunch.

As I am eating, my buddy Dustin from Colorado comes in the door dripping from head to foot from heavy rains. Dustin and I have been meeting each other on our bikes all the way up the Dalton. Yesterday, Dustin went to stay at the Wiseman B&B, with the thought of trying to get over the Atigun pass today. Dustin did attempt the pass today, but ran into heavy snow before he got anywhere near the top. He said the road was frozen and slippery, but not sloshy. Dustin said that several Southbound truckers tried to stop him from going over the pass, and that one of the truckers told him a biker went down at the pass yesterday.  Dustin showed me pictures of his bike in the snow and pictures of his helmet with snow frozen at the top of the visor. While we were getting lunch, a Southbound trucker that just arrived told Dustin that all the trucks going over the pass were putting on chains.  Dustin has been on the road for 28 days. He quit his job as a custom car mechanic and hit the road.  When I asked him when he was going home, he said “I do not have any plans at this time. I am thinking about heading down to the Kenai peninsula next”.  He says that he just finished doing the Deming hwy, which is the Canadian equivalent to the Dalton hwy.  Dustin was a fountain of information for those areas I was planning on riding through.  He said that there was bad smoke from fires through Idaho and into the BC.  When I get back to the internet I will check on the fires going on in the West. I might need to alter my ride. It is still raining and is showing no sign of letting up. It will be a cold, rainy and muddy ride back to Fairbanks tomorrow. I am sure I will be seeing Dustin on the road tomorrow. 

I planned on going to the ranger talk at 8:00 pm, but find that the rain is coming down pretty good.  So, I decide to just hang out and read in the reading room in the hotel. I read for a bit, talk to some people passing through about my trip and then John the ranger comes in. John was the ranger that I talked to earlier in the day. We talked more about the pass and the snow. John says a bus went up earlier and had to return, which is the bus that the couple that I was just talking to said they were on earlier in the day. The couple also said they saw Dustin turn around up on the pass. John says that he loves it here and really wanted the job once it was offered to him. He says it is not about the scenery, but about the people and the stories they have. John goes on to tell me about the many people that are obsessed with crossing the country in cars, bikes and motorcycles.

John leaves and I walk down the hall and run into a party taking up the width of the hallway, some women asks me if I want a drink of bourbon: I decline.  I sit down and start talking to the guy closest to me, who is drinking wine. I ask if they are on a tour and where they are going. The guy says that the group is a state resource group from many industries, such as mining, forestry, etc. that once a year go out to an area of the state and spend some time. The guy is not part of the group, but his wife is.  We talked for about half an hour and I find out that they are based out of Anchorage. Good group that is having some fun.