ALASKA HIGHWAY
NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA, YUKON, ALASKA
THE BEST REASON to travel the Alaska Highway in winter is the fact that few people do. Other than the occasional transport truck lugging fresh milk and vegetables to the Yukon and Alaska, or locals commuting between towns, traffic is sparse on this road from December through March, unless you count the moose. Gone are the oversized RVS that trawl the highway from Fort Nelson to Beaver Creek all summer. Closed are the tourist traps selling overpriced cinnamon buns along the way. What’s left is a world of wind, ice, spruce, and stars — so many you’ll suspect you’ve detoured into the Milky Way. I’ll let you in on a secret. Those who live in the North generally don’t dissuade people of the notion that winter here is a cold dark perdition for good reason: we don’t want company. It’s nothing personal! And if you do come to northern British Columbia, Yukon or Alaska, rest assured that northerners are a welcoming bunch, whatever the season. We just selfishly prefer the Liard Hot Springs to ourselves on a –30 C night, when steam rising into the sky seems the source of the aurora borealis. We’d rather not elbow through crowds in Kluane National Park to watch herds of white-wooled Dall sheep blend into the snow, leaving only their dark curled horns visible on the slopes, like parings of wood adrift on the wind. We want to watch the low-angled sun throw gorgeous amber light over the Saint Elias Mountains, the highest range in Canada, in a silence so total you can hear time itself crack. Winter might be the off-season on the Alaska Highway, and that makes it all the better for a road trip. Just promise you’ll tell everyone how frigid and desolate a drive it was when you return home.