More of The Dempster.
The Dempster Highway is named for RCMP Officer William Dempster (1876-1964), who used the route with his dogsleds to travel from Dawson City to Fort McPherson, in the Northwest Territories. In the winter of 1910, when an RCMP patrol delivering mail to Ft. McPherson, got lost Dempster set out on a rescue mission. He discovered all members of the patrol dead, and in the winter of 1912-13 he was given the job of improving the trail, building shelters, and creating food caches. When the Canadian government built Inuvik (1958) and oil was discovered in Eagle Plains (just south of the Artic Circle, and halfway to Inuvik) at around the same time, they decided to build the highway, naming after the North's most famous Mountie. I made the drive from Whitehorse to Inuvik on June 20, so I'd be in time for the solstice. Here are more pictures.
All photos link to large versions
I was standing, more or less, on the Contenental Divide facing West, when I took this series of 6 panoramic shots of the Peel River Valley, starting from the south and swinging through west to North.
The Peel River is a huge river system that joins with the MacKenzie River at the Inuit community of Aklavik. It was the flooding of Aklavik that prompted the Feds to build Inuvik, giving the folks there a dry and safe place to live.
The highway continues north-west along the Continental Divide.
The trees got smaller as I got further north. These are the biggest I saw around the Arctic circle.
The road is used as an airstrip. You can see a plane that had just landed in front of me.
I crossed into the Arctic at 7 pm on June 20.
The highway just kept right on going.
Then I left the Yukon and entered the Northwest Territories.
The terrain changed remarkably.
An hour later the road starts to drop down to the Peel River crossing, from where it is flat all the way to the North Pole. It is all land you see to the horizon, but it is very far away.