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I managed to grab a couple of shots of passing trucks just before the camera became painted in mud. I'd heard that the truckers could be nasty, but nothing could have been further from the truth; a misunderstanding likely originating with riders not fully appreciating what truckers are up against on this precarious road.It's fair to say that the road is a challenge without rain, but when the skies open up it quickly becomes a mud fest prone to flash floods. As I arose on the fateful day at 3:30 a.m., it was (of cours!) coming down in buckets. On this trip I'd already ridden something like 5,000 miles in the wet stuff, but this was icing on the cake. And knowing what was ahead filled me with a family-sized dose of a-n-x-i-e-t-y.

To Infinity and Beyond!

The V-Strom was stripped of all but the essentials, with a trusty KLIM Krew Pak that carried food, extra water and my secret weapon, a large spray bottle of Windex. The ride on the Elliot Highway into the maw of the Dalton was indistinguishable from the inside of a car wash, and becoming increasingly colder, too. About an hour out, and just outside of a station called “Livengood,” I rounded the final turn onto the “Ice Road Truckers” utopia.

Within moments my anxiety turned inside out to be replaced with a certain knowingness that I was about to: A. Wreck the bike; B. Break some bones; C. Possibly not make it out alive; or D. All of the above. The road’s entrance and especially the first few miles were nothing but mud, uneven and chewed up surfaces, hard twists and turns, and mile-long, slippery, sheer hilly descents and ascents. There’s a rumor that they keep it that way to scare off would-be riders—a tactic that nearly worked for me!

One of the most important things to remember after riding calcium chloride is to thoroughly wash the bike immediately afterwards. When it dries, it sticks to bike and engine parts like there's no tomorrow, and eventually won't come off! Many bikes have been permanently ruined by failure to heed this advice. Due to all the rain, my bike wasn't as caked as some, but it still required a whopping $20 at the Fairbanks "Spray 'n Wash" to hose the clinging crud off the bike.

To make matters worse, I’d been so confident that the weather would hold, the bike still had street tires. I now knew without a doubt it was crazy to be out there. Reassessing the situation I struck a pact with myself—give it a go or get out if I dumped the bike more than five times.

The Dalton has a top layer of calcium chloride used to keep the surface dust down when it’s dry. When wet, the stuff becomes goo and sticks to the bike in a far worse way than ordinary mud. Sink or swim (literally), the game was afoot. And there wasn’t a moment I didn’t contemplate tucking tail and getting the heck out of there.