Alaska’s Dalton Highway not for the faint of heart

But travelers with a sense of adventure and a tough truck will be awed by the lonely beauty of the Arctic Circle

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"Primeval."

The only adjective worthy of 800-pound musk oxen, reminiscent of bison on a bad hair day. Perhaps Neanderthals lurked nearby. Should our map have warned, "here there be dragons"?

It was the end of the road.

Really. And if you want to reach the end -- in this hemisphere, at least-- just look north to Alaska, to the Dalton Highway and the North Slope, which is where my friend Mike Weight and I encountered our musk oxen.

Not to mention pingos and tors.

Check out any map and you'll see one solitary road extending 500 miles north from Fairbanks to the Beaufort Sea: the James Dalton Highway. My desire to drive the Dalton took seed when I read Tim Cahill's "Road Fever," and germinated when the entire 414-mile length, built in just five months in 1974 and known as the "Haul Road" servicing the Alyeska Pipeline, opened to the public in 1994.

Some say only confirmed masochists dare run it, given the road's rugged, mostly unpaved construction, lack of services, supposedly crazed truck drivers, hordes of monster mosquitoes and the north's vast emptiness. In any event, you won't want to drive your Corolla, and most rentals aren't allowed on the Haul Road. Still, outfitters can fix you up for about $125 a day. We ended up with an imposing silver Ford F-350 V-8 quad-cab -- just what the doctor ordered.

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The Elliot Highway connects Fairbanks, Alaska, to the Dalton Highway. At milepost 73, just past Livengood -- and a cow moose lounging on the shoulder -- we turned right onto Alaska Route 11, the Dalton, and headed north.

If you go ... » Getting there: There are no nonstop flights from LAX to Fairbanks. Most major airlines fly to Anchorage, with only Alaska and American offering summer nonstops for about $700. Alaska Airlines flies direct to Fairbanks for about $830 and from Anchorage to Fairbanks for about $250. » Getting around: Most car rental companies won't allow their vehicles to be beaten up on the Dalton. We rented our Ford F-350 from National Truck Rental, 4960 Dale Road, (907) 451-7368. Current rates are $150 a day with 200 free daily miles. Arctic Outfitters, with a more comprehensive approach to Dalton Highway adventures, arranges shuttle tours and accommodations or will rent a specially equipped Taurus or Cherokee for $129 or $149 a day for a four-day excursion. Call (907) 474-4767 or visit www.arctic-outfitters.com. » Where to stay: Unless you're camping, there are only three places to stay between Fairbanks and the end of the Dalton at Deadhorse. The Slate Creek Inn at Coldfoot Camp (mile 175) has comfortable, if basic, doubles with shower for $169 per night; call toll-free (866) 474-3400 or visit www.coldfootcamp.com. The village of Wiseman, a few miles north of Coldfoot, boasts the Boreal Lodging, with doubles (shared bath) going for $80 per night and one cabin for $130, (907) 678-4566, www.boreallodge.com; and the Arctic Getaway B&B, (907) 678-4456. Deadhorse offers three hotels: the Arctic Caribou Inn, with doubles at $235 per night, (907) 659-2368; the Prudhoe Bay Hotel ($200), (907) 659-2449, www.prudhoebayhotel.com; and the Arctic Oilfield Hotel ($240), (907) 659-2614. » Where to eat: Between Fairbanks and the beginning of the Dalton be sure to stop at The Hilltop Truck Stop, if only for a piece of their homemade pie. If you're looking for Michelin stars on the Dalton, forget it. You'll find only buffet and cafeteria operations, but the food is usually hearty. At Coldfoot Camp, The Coldfoot Café serves buffet breakfast and dinner and a deli-style lunch, and you can get beer or wine in the attached saloon. In Deadhorse, the hotels all have buffets included in room rates except at the Arctic Caribou Inn (breakfast $12, lunch $15, dinner $18). The Prudhoe Bay Hotel had the most extensive selection of entrees. Be warned: There is no alcohol in Deadhorse. » More information: Get the latest edition of The Milepost, a comprehensive mile-by-mile description of Alaska Highways. For technical information about the pipeline, see www.alyeska-pipe.com. For other useful links about the highway and pipeline, see www.explorenorth.com/ library/roads/dalton.html

It didn't take long to figure out why some fear this road. The first 30 miles were nightmarish, the unpaved washboard surface giving our truck all the pounding it could take. Rather than saving the worst for last, the Dalton feeds it to you right away, perhaps discouraging the fainthearted.

Not us, though.

Within an hour we had the road to ourselves. Pretty much, anyhow, as we encountered trucks and pipeline maintenance crews all along the way. The crazed trucker myth quickly evaporated; big-rig drivers couldn't have been friendlier, usually waving as they slowed to let us pass.

The Dalton's lonely, isolated beauty impressed us immediately. The first hundred miles undulated through sparse spruce and birch forests, and recent fires created a patchwork of green and burned spruces interwoven with lavender-hued expanses of fireweed. Though most of the road was unpaved, large sections were covered with chipseal, smoothing it and reducing dust and loose gravel.

It's not the lack of traffic that makes this a lonely road, it's the total lack of population. Not a mailbox in sight.

We weren't completely alone, however. The pipeline, balanced on finned metal stilts when above ground, was our constant companion.

I had expected the pipeline to be jarring and intrusive, but I'll admit that as I watched it snake through the boreal forest and then over and under the tundra mile after mile I made my peace with it. There's no denying this engineering marvel, constructed in record time on the North Slope's jittery permafrost and extending 800 miles south to Valdez.

The 2,229-foot long Yukon River Bridge at mile 56 separates day-trippers from those committed to driving all the way to the Arctic, or perhaps it is the Arctic Circle turnout another 60 miles north. Both have BLM waysides with restrooms, picnic facilities and nearby camping or other accommodations. Nobody was on duty when we stopped, but posted on the door was an eerie notice warning of "dangerous" and "bold" wolves prowling the area.

Welcome to the wilderness.

It wasn't obvious on that warm, sunny day, but this northern topography is molded as much by the subterranean ice -- permafrost -- as by anything else. Not much grows on ground submarined by ice, which explains why the trees are mostly sparse and stunted for a couple of hundred miles before they disappear altogether. Taller trees, including spruce, larch, aspen, birch, poplar and tamarack, take root in the areas free of permafrost, usually on warmer south slopes. In a few places the earth has buckled, exposing the ice inches below; a strange sight in seventy-degree summer weather.

The Dalton leads due north, scaling long grades giving way to spectacular views of the broad valleys ahead. One of the best was Finger Mountain BLM Wayside at mile 98, exhibiting imposing formations called tors, granite pinnacles rising from the eroding tundra. Finger Rock, aptly named, dominates the heights and can be seen for miles, perhaps as a spirited challenge to those adventurous enough to take this drive.

I don't suppose it's possible to cross the Arctic Circle without posing in front of the Arctic Circle marker at latitude N 66, 33'. A young guy named Dave, riding a BMW heaped high with extra gear, took our photos and asked if we would reciprocate. We saw Dave a half hour later, out of gas. We offered a lift, but he carried extra gas and hoped to make the fifty miles to the Dalton's only service station -- which was exactly where we were headed.

COLDFOOT CAMP is a place you might happily pass by on most road trips, but since it's the only outpost of civilization for more than 200 miles in either direction it seems an oasis. Coldfoot is a year-round refuge for truckers and tourists, with a few fuel pumps, a saloon and restaurant, and a motel that resembles a jumble of cargo containers. We hit it on one of the best days of the year, but a sign out front reminded us that in one recent year the temperature varied from minus 82 to plus 97, a range of 179 degrees.

In the saloon we overheard animated trucker talk about weather, road conditions, welding and bumper jacks. Our new friend Dave strolled in not long afterward. Over a beer he mentioned he was a student riding solo from Los Angeles to the Arctic.

There's not much to do at Coldfoot except eat, drink, meet fellow travelers, and sleep in the surprisingly comfortable rooms at the inn. We tried a short walk, met our first wave of large mosquitoes, and quickly retreated. The nearby BLM Arctic Interagency Visitor Center provided some distraction, with information, maps, exhibits, and very friendly staff.

Getting an early start to Prudhoe wasn't hard considering the sun hadn't set all night. Hardly 10 miles north we crossed the Koyukuk River and detoured three miles to Wiseman, population 29, a historic mining town, with a post office, airstrip, museum and tourist accommodations. It was early, the museum was closed, and we didn't see a soul among the old houses. The sign advertising wolf hides was intriguing, but the highway called.

We hadn't seen much wildlife, save for a couple of moose and assorted little critters, but suddenly Mike, a veteran hunter, yelled "bear" and I hit the brakes. A huge grizzly grazed nearby and then ambled into a stand of trees.

A few miles down the road we spotted tracks on a river bank, so we pulled over to explore. Scrambling along the bank for a distance we observed that these were fresh grizzly tracks, which led toward a dense cluster of bushes between us and the parked truck. We prudently backtracked to the truck.

All that remained between us and the North Slope was the Brooks Range, with 7,000-foot peaks, and the first evidence appeared at mile 194 in the imposing form of 4,000-foot Mount Sukakpak, the historical boundary between Athabascan and Eskimo territories.

As if on cue, the skies clouded over as we made the transition from tundra to alpine environments, and at mile 235 we passed a sign announcing the "Last Spruce Tree," sadly girdled and killed by some itinerant jerk. Our grief was assuaged, however, by the discovery of a tiny spruce tree springing up perhaps 20 feet to the north.

It began to snow as we climbed the steep Chandalar Shelf. The eight miles to the 4,800-foot Atigun Pass seemed fairly treacherous, with grades of up to 10 percent, even without traffic or heavy ice. Close to the summit the snow mixed with a dense fog, suggesting an exciting drive in the dead of winter.

We quickly descended onto the treeless North Slope tundra. At mile 270, the Dalton crosses the Atigun River and provides a view of Atigun Gorge stretching eastward toward the boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, just three miles away; to the west is Galbreath Lake and the boundary of Gates of the Arctic National Park. So close, yet so far, as neither park has road access. We started to hike toward ANWR, but it was raining, and the tundra, covered mostly by grasses and low shrubs such as Arctic willow, provided treacherous footing. Close would have to do.

This was spectacularly stark country, with mountains giving way to a hundred miles of featureless tundra sloping gently toward the Arctic. The Highway here was in disrepair, with a multitude of rain-filled potholes that rattled but did not defeat our monster truck, by now coated thick with mud.

There's a surprising amount of activity in the middle of nowhere: pipeline pumping stations, highway maintenance facilities, and the University of Alaska Toolik Lake research facility, but no services or public facilities. This North Slope Borough, administered from remote Barrow, is the world's largest municipality, but it has a population of fewer than 8,000.

At mile 298, we caught our first view of the Sagavanirktok ("Sag") River Valley, which stretched to Prudhoe Bay. The countryside is completely flat, broken only by low shrubs and hummocks, and the occasional stream or creek. We had been on the lookout for wildlife but hadn't seen much north of the Brooks Range, except for snowy owls swooping down on hapless varmints.

On the horizon we puzzled about what looked like a flying saucer resting on the tundra, which we identified as a pingo, a large hill, perhaps a quarter mile across, several hundred feet high, and composed of soil and vegetation pushed upward by frozen standing water on top of the impermeable permafrost. The striking saucer effect was merely an optical illusion.

About 30 miles from the coast we reached the imposing Franklin Bluffs, and as we admired them we noticed some brown lumps to the east, which turned into our herd of about 20 musk oxen. Our disappointment about the paucity of charismatic megafauna promptly evaporated.

Surprisingly, the closer we got to Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay, the more animals we saw, including caribou and red fox, in the shadow of the oil rigs.

As if to announce our arrival, the sun reappeared just as we reached Deadhorse. The thing about getting to Deadhorse, a dreary shantytown of temporary metal buildings, 4,000 temporary workers, mostly on two-week shifts, and hundreds of oil wells on the shore of the Beaufort Sea, is that you really don't want to be there. It does have many of the comforts of home, however, including an airport, a couple of ugly but surprisingly adequate hotels, hearty food (but no alcohol), satellite TV and cell phone service. It's still wild, however; we were warned about grizzlies in the hotel parking lot.

The Dalton ends at Deadhorse, but we were still several miles from the real end of the road -- the Beaufort Sea -- and the only passage through the secured oilfields is by tour bus. The wells themselves were smaller and less obtrusive than I had expected, and I saw no evidence of pollution, but let's agree that there is nothing pristine about this corner of the Arctic.

The driver parked on a rocky spit poking into the calm Beaufort Sea. Improbably, the sun was still shining. Mike and I walked to the shore, took off our shoes, and waded into the clear, cold Arctic water. I'm informed that some foolish souls opt for full body immersion, but wet toes seemed sufficient.

We had conquered the most northerly highway in North America -- topping out at longitude 70 degrees, 25 minutes -- and felt pretty proud.

Still, I had to remind Mike that there's a road in Norway climbing to more than 71 degrees north.

Norway, anyone?

James Dannenberg is a retired District Court judge who lives in Kailua. His tales from the road have appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.