You don’t have to fly to Deadhorse you can drive there too. The Dalton highway is an almost mythic road that runs for over 400 miles through Arctic wilderness. It connects Fairbanks with Deadhorse and is the main supply route for the oilfields. Recently it has come to fame as the road in the TV series Ice Road Truckers. American trucks are often impressive but somehow they are even more dramatic seen on this thin ribbon of a road, much of it made from no more than gravel and ice.
For all the high tech trucks and huge infrastructure of the oil companies everything in Deadhorse is contingent on the extremes of arctic weather, screaming blizzards and deep cold are common. Is this the truck that didn’t get away in time?
The “stay in bed” thermometer. It’s not particularly cold on this day at the airport but it does show new arrivals what to expect.
and just a few days later it really was cold. It was in fact even colder, but as I picked the thermometer up the warmth of my hand and the rays of the sun were enough to make the needle climb – cheated of a few degrees of bragging rights!
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