{"id":854775,"date":"2026-09-20T22:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T22:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/854775\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T22:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T22:36:10","slug":"canadas-dempster-highway-is-a-460-mile-dirt-road-stretching-across-one-of-the-harshest-places-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/854775\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada’s Dempster Highway Is A 460-Mile Dirt Road Stretching Across One Of The Harshest Places On Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having now done the Dempster up and back, I\u00a0can pretty confidently tell you that almost anything can make the trip, so long as you have enough ground clearance and a decent tire. But even then, you’re likely to suffer some costly damage to your vehicle that will need repair. As I\u00a0write this, the 2013 Porsche Cayenne that we took on the journey is at a wheel shop getting out-of-round wheels repaired, and the windshield has four brand new rock chips in it that weren’t there when we crossed the border into Canada. The incredible level of bumps and crashing suspension moments also cracked both of the car’s headlight retaining brackets, and we had to resort to holding both sides in with duct tape. These are all things that can be relatively easily repaired, but they remain minor annoyances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The group that I went with on the 2026 Alcan 5000<\/a> made it through the two days of Dempster relatively unscathed. Two cars suffered tire blowouts, one car slid off the road and had to be recovered by a semi truck, and an old Subaru suffered a gashed fuel tank and had to be towed over 100 miles to Fort McPherson, where it was expertly repaired. Nobody was left behind, and no cars had permanent damage, but preparation was key.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ParkedBradley Brownell\/Jalopnik<\/p>\n

Here’s a small summary of what I packed for the trip: For the car, I put a full-sized spare, an off-road jack, a mess of tools, a portable battery-powered inflator, a fire extinguisher, road flares, a set of recovery boards, and a tow strap in the back hatch. For the people inside, I packed bug spray, bear mace, a five-gallon bag of clean water, and as many high-protein snacks as I could find, just in case we found ourselves stranded for a while. There are only about four places on the drive to stop for a washroom break, but they’re remote, so we figured it would be worthwhile to bring our own toilet roll as well.<\/p>\n

If I\u00a0were to make the trek again, I would have packed a comfy pair of slippers, because the Eagle Plains restaurant and bar won’t let you walk around the premises with your outside shoes on. Because it’s always so muddy up there at the hotel, the rugs would be absolutely wrecked if they let a few hundred people traipse all over them in boots. As it was, I had to wear socks into the tile-floored men’s room, which was easily my least favorite part of the trip. You should also bring plenty of money, because a liter of diesel on the Dempster cost me 3.30 CAD, which translates to about $8.86 per gallon at current exchange rates (slightly less than I paid in California, by the way).\u00a0<\/p>\n

A word of warning that may help prevent wheel and brake issues on Dempster Highway: if the weather is wet, you’ll want to get somewhere you can remove your wheels and pressure wash them out (there are a few car washes specifically for this in Dawson City). The caked on dirt in the wheel barrels of my Cayenne caused three different issues. The first was simply an issue of wheel balance, as the rocks formed lop-sidedly and the car suddenly had a high-speed shake. That same layer of dirt actually wore through the rear brake pad wear sensor electric lead, causing the car to throw a brake wear fault. And finally, we noticed the rear brake calipers were getting quite scratched themselves, and being aluminum Brembo units, if left alone long enough, they could have worn through the surface of the caliper altogether, causing an actual brake failure. After over 1,000 miles on the Dempster and the highway to Tuktoyaktuk, the wheels needed a proper wash.<\/p>\n

\"WashingBradley Brownell\/Jalopnik<\/p>\n

We took our trip north at perhaps the perfect time\u2014costly diesel aside\u2014for a Dempster run, as it came before the first big snowfall of the year, and late enough that most of the bugs had settled down. I was warned that summer north of the 60th parallel was a bug-filled mess, but on our trip the bug spray (and the bear spray)\u00a0went unused. I\u00a0even had one of those hats with a net over your face, and I didn’t get to wear it once. With the leaves turning, it was just a spectacular sight, to boot.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having now done the Dempster up and back, I\u00a0can pretty confidently tell you that almost anything can make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-854775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}