Dawson City to Inuvik - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 204

In the early 1900s the Northwest Mounted Police (the forbears of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police) sent winter patrols through the north by dogsled. The route they followed
was basically the same as the road we are travelling between Dawson City and Fort McPh-
erson. In 1910 a patrol of four officers set out from Fort McPherson headed south to
Dawson City, approximately 800 km /500 mi away. They lost their way and in a desperate
bid to survive starvation and freezing headed back to Fort McPherson.
Sgt WJD Dempster, who was known as the Iron Man of the Trail because of his legendary
ability to travel this route through winter temperatures that often dropped to minus 40 de-
grees, was sent out to find the Lost Patrol. He found them, just 36 km /22 mi from Fort
McPherson but they were already frozen.
And yes, because of his legendary exploits on the trail from Dawson to Fort McPherson,
this highway was named for him.
An hour up the road we come on the Mackenzie River crossing, another free ferry subject
to the same climatic conditions as the Peel crossing. This crossing sits at the confluence of
the Arctic Red River and the Mackenzie River. You can catch it at any one of three landing
spots: the Inuvik side of the Mackenzie River; the Fort McPherson side of the river; and
the Gwich'in village of Tsiigehtchic a kilometre downstream.
For another 100 km /63 mi we parallel the Mackenzie River Delta, a vast landscape of in-
terlaced waterways and marshy vegetation. The Mackenzie is the longest river in Canada
flowing 4200 km /2625 mi from its headwaters in Great Slave Lake to the Beaufort Sea. Its
watershed actually covers one-fifth the landmass of Canada so you get an idea of its scope.
Past Inuvik the delta is actually impassable by vehicle in the summer. But in the fall all
these marshy waterways freeze over and you can drive all the way to Tuktoyaktuk on the
Beaufort Sea. The photo below is of the Mackenzie River Delta as taken from the Happy
Valley campground in Inuvik.