I SURVIVED THE ALCAN HIGHWAY....ALASKA TO OREGON AND BACK!!

[AlaskanJack]

Well I just got back from my drive down the Alcan Highway in my X. It was one heck of a drive. Got a scare going down. I was 1400 miles into the 3000 mile one-way trip and my check engine light came on for about 5 minutes. It went off, but I was sweating bullets in the middle of nowhere. Air filter which was new was filthy from the dirty dusty road.

Coming back up was no fun. My muffler was knocked out, both driving lights in my airdam went out, one got busted and the other had the nut vibrate off. I had a chunk of my tires taken out by a metal grate bridge. It actually tore out a tread from the tire. We were 4 hrs away from any help. So I had to replace a Goodyear Wrangler RT/S 31x10.5. All I had was my old firestone spare which was 235/75-15. I had to switch a front tire to the back and run the smaller tire on the front for about 300 miles. I lost a shock in the rear, it went bad from all the rollercoaster like roads. One of my rear windows on the passenger side now leaks. Oh and now my tranny is sounding like it going to crap out.

Still the trip was worth it seeing all the wild life and the snow capped mountain peaks.

 

[Digger196]

DANG!!!!!!! what else could of happened!?! Glad your back home and safe.

 

[MrShorty]

That is one of my dream trips, without the car troubles of course.

 

[mattadams]

when I was 14 we spent about a month driving from Colorado to Alaska and back along the same highway. We had about four flat tires, and we hit a gopher with our grill! (funny store but a hawk was flying the gopher over the highway, saw us coming, gopher was too heavy, he saved his own life by dropping the gopher, timing was perfect, we hit the gopher with the grill of the aerostar, LOL)

 

[AlaskanJack]

Matt that is the funniest thing I have ever heard!!!!!!!!

My 7yr old son loved the trip. 1st day we had no darkness for about 36 hrs. He watched something like 20 movies and the rest of the time he had my binoculars out spotting wildlife. Some wildlife needed no spotting they were in the middle of the road and we had to stop. They included several Rams (stone sheep), 3 Buffalo's, 5 black bears, a herd of stone sheep, a herd of Caribou and Moose.

In total we saw the following animals on our trip we kept a log (well my son kept a tally sheet).

Moose, Buffalo, Stone Sheep, Caribou, Black Bears, Deer, Elk, Coyote, Red Fox (not Redd Foxx), Silver Fox, Lynx, Rabbits, Dahl Sheep, Mountain Goat, Wild Horses, Bald Eagles and 1 Grizzly.

We shot something like 400 photos with our digital cam and a few rolls with our 35mm. It was the most beautiful country I have ever seen.

 

[AlaskanJack]

Thanks to the ALCAN I now get to add a custom exhaust to my X. I am getting a flowmaster 40 single in dual out custom bent exhaust put on today. I hope it sounds good for $369.00

 

[Mike 92 XLT]

Ah yes, the infamous Alcan highway. I lived in Anchorage for a couple of years and I remember some of my neighbors would come back from a trip on it and their cars would be absolutely destroyed. I'd love to make that trip though - just in a rental car with unlimited mileage and a signed damage waiver.

Mike

 

[Blaine122300]

That is just a lovely trip. I cannot wait to make it next year when we drive out of here for ever. We will be in our 96 Tahoe, so it should be fun. I am saving the "X" and getting it shipped out. When I made the trip up 3 yrs ago, we had no troubles at all in our 87 F-150. Very pretty trip though.

 

[MONMIX]

Sounds like the best of times and the worst of times.
Ya gotta love a good road trip don't ya ?

 

[AlaskanJack]

Well we had a lot of fun on the trip. My son was sitting in the back on a stretch of road and he had his hands in the air like he was on a roller coaster. Until he got thrown into the roof. Then he put a pillow on his head.

I will post some pics from the trip if I can get someone to show me how.

 

[ok89]

With all that wildlife it sounds like it would be a fun trip to make. Just out of curiousity what makes the trip so hard on the vehicles? And is this like a 2 lane highway or what?

 

[AlaskanJack]

The road gets torn up in the winter from Studded tires and then come spring the roads have ruts in them. Sometimes its like being on a railway track the ruts in the road control where the car goes. The main thing that affects the road is the frost heave where the ground freezes and thaws. This can create some very large humps in the road. Then there are parts that are under repair and they have just thrown down gravel as a temporary fix. We hit some gravel/dirt areas that lasted almost 10 miles. I was dodging pot holes for a good part of the way. If the dirt roads got wet then it was like a washboard to drive on.

If someone can tell me how to post pics I will show everyone what my X looked like after we got through the worst part of the road. You'd think I had just been 4xing my truck was so filthy. Our headlights got so dirty that no light was coming through and we had to clean them twice. Its the law to drive with headlights on in the Yukon Territory.

 

[ToneDog]

Wow! That sounds awesome, i'd love to se those pics!

ToneDog

 

[mattadams]

ahh yes I remember the roller coaster rides too! . it's not only hte studded tires that cause the problems, but its also that the ground underneath the road freezes really bad and that causes it to constrict, and it sinks down in parts of the road... you won't know it until your doing about 75 and you hit one of the "reverse speed bumps" as we called them because thats what they were, just big honkin dips in the road.

 

[DesertSpive]

That is one of my dreams is to do the Alcan Highway. How many days did it take you? How far between are gas stations? And where did you lodge?

--Sean

 

[diablo5969]

I would love to do that trip!

When my parents were in college (mid '70s) they drove from New York to Alaska and back in a Volkswagen MicroBus. Now there are some good stories from that trip

 

[AlaskanJack]

We drove down to Oregon in 52 hrs. We left Friday at 4:30pm and arrived 14 miles from the California border by 2:30am Monday. It was about 48 hrs to the US/Canada border. Going down no stops, per say, we stopped for about an hour and hit some showers and we had pulled off the road twice sleeping a total of 3 hrs.

Coming back up with my nephew and his friend following we took longer. We drove from Saturday at 4:00pm straight until Sunday at midnight where we lodged in Ft Nelson, Canada about 1600 miles or so.

From there we didn't make it home until Tuesday night around 11:00pm.

My total cost in gas was around 250.00 each way. My nephew drove his Toyota truck 4cyl and it cost him $140.00 to come up. We only had to watch the gas stations on one leg of the trip. I was sleeping and when I woke up my wife was sweating bullets. She said she hadn't seen any gas stations for a few hrs. I asked why she didn't top off before she headed to Whitehorse and she just kind of looked at me funny. We made it with about 1 1/2 gallons left.

 

[AlaskanJack]

I am working on getting some photos posted from our trip as soon as I can figure out how to compress the files.

Funny note my nephew followed me back up to Alaska in his Toyota 2wd truck. He was noticing a rattle a few dasy after getting here. Well just yesterday he lost his tailpipe from the muffler out just as I did from the trip.

I was laughing so hard when he told me this. Boy was that road tough on our vehicles.