-Even in the day of GPS, there are still lost roads. These are the most extreme and isolated passes on the planet.
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Ice Road to Tuktoyaktuk, Canada
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Distinction: Northernmost road in North America, open only during the heart of winter.
-In the summer, the only way to get to Tuktoyaktuk, a town of fewer than 1000 people at the top of Canada’s Northwest Territory, is by plane. All electricity in town is from a diesel generator. And residents shop for food and provisions only twice a year: in the heart of summer, when the Beaufort Sea area of the Artic Ocean is open and ships can come in, and in the dead of winter, when trucks can drive across the Mackenzie River, which has frozen and turned into an ice road.
-Inuvik, a town about 80 miles south of Tuktoyaktuk, is the end of the line for the gravel Dempster Highway, which meanders the tundra from Whitehorse, Yukon, over the rolling moonscape north of the Arctic Circle tundra. In the winter, when temperatures regularly drop to minus 40 F and the Mackenzie freezes, a road is plowed north from Inuvit, making Tuktoyaktuk accessible by land.
-Tuktoyaktuk, which means “looks like a caribou” in Inuit, is home to about 40 hotel rooms. Tourists come to the Mackenzie delta where the water features “pingos,” large frozen ice mountains that are covered with dirt and support plant growth. The tallest is 160 feet, and nearly 1000 feet wide at its base. Down in Inuvit, the most prolific occupation seems to be taxi driver—about half of the total vehicle population are taxicabs, which are left running 24/7 throughout the winter to keep from freezing.
-We drove this highway one winter and were treated to spectacular views from bluffs of stark, blue-hued short trees scattered haphazardly over pristine ice-covered ground for hundreds of miles. The only drama of the drive is the occasional cluster of white-feathered ptarmigan pigeons, invisible against the white snow-covered road surface, until they alight into flight when approached, narrowly missing a windshield.
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Alaska’s Dalton Highway
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Distinction: Northernmost road in the U.S.
-Oil companies searching for oil on the North Slope of Alaska built a private 414-mile haul road in 1974 to move equipment from Fairbanks to the company-founded towns of Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse on the Arctic Ocean, and to provide access to the 800-mile pipeline that moves oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, where it is loaded onto tankers.
-The road, named after oilman James Dalton, was opened in 1995 to the public, though it’s mostly filled with semis bringing supplies up to the oilfields. The trucks normally drive in the center of the two-lane gravel highway, and in the summer bounce rocks into car windshields and headlights. There is a town called Coldfoot about halfway to Prudhoe Bay, with one of only two fuel stops on the entire route. There are a few places to camp, and a hotel at Coldfoot, but bears inhabit the tundra and local residents tell us that they are the biggest danger, especially when a truck carrying food slides off the slippery road.
-Moose appear in the wooded areas of the route, and beyond that there are more caribou, bears, wolves, eagles, and small arctic foxes than people. The landscape becomes treeless about two-thirds of the way to Prudhoe Bay, and the best views come from the top of the 4,800-foot Atigun Pass, a rough path carved through a divide in the northern tip of the Rocky Mountains. The rocky terrain still shows the bulldozer tracks left from the road’s construction.
--Trans Labrador Highway Route 500
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Distinction: Closest you can drive to Greenland, but watch out for the spring snowmelt
-The Canadian town of Goose Bay, Labrador, is closer to Ireland than it is to Colorado, and there is just one road connecting the rest of North America to the small town of 800 people: Route 500, the Trans-Labrador Highway. A civilian airport and a Canadian Air Forces Command were built out here just after World War II, and laid the foundation for the construction of the highway.
-Route 500 starts at Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial border with Quebec, winds through the small town of Labrador City. The road spans 315 miles from Labrador City to Goose Bay and is all gravel. The wide, smooth gravel splits rolling hills covered with tall pines. And despite the large trucks that bring supplies and equipment for the hydroelectric industry, the road surface remains smooth and well-maintained.
-In the spring, however, massive snowmelt runoff washes the highway away in many places, making the trip to Goose Bay treacherous. Traveling east toward Goose Bay one spring, the runoff washed the road out behind us. About five miles later, the road was washed out ahead of us. Only a quick fording of the washout behind us to our west prevented us from being stranded 150 miles from either Goose Bay to the east and Churchill Falls to the west. We stopped a sheriff in Labrador City to ask road conditions on our trip east to Goose Bay, and he said he wouldn’t recommend the trip, but that we were free to try the drive at our own peril.
-Since then, the Canadian government began a program of loaning satellite phones to motorists making the trip—there are no cellphone towers along Route 500.
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Nordkapp (North Cape), Norway
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Distinction: Northernmost road in Europe
-The ancient island called Mageroya, 1300 miles north of Oslo, Norway, was an isolated habitat for more than 10,000 years. Then one day the Norwegian government recognized the value of tourism in its Arctic Ocean frontier, and in 1976 built a paved road and tunnel under the sea allowing cars to reach the island.
-The road is called E69, it winds up to Nordkapp, a 1000-foot-tall cliff on Mageroya overlooking the Arctic Ocean. Folks we’ve spoken to who have driven highway E69 to Nordkapp describe it as a fast, modern two-lane highway that promotes fast driving—until there’s a patch of black ice or compressed snow on the tarmac. Then it’s easy to slide into a ditch, reports one traveler we spoke with who had rolled a Saab sedan after sliding off the snow-covered road on the way back south from Nordkapp.
-Nordkapp is at the very top of Europe, well beyond the Arctic Circle, yet it is relatively mild because of the Gulf Stream and gets only a few feet of snow during the five winter months.
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Bolivia’s “Road of Death”
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Distinction: The only way from La Paz to the Amazon—and the closest road to the hereafter.
-Bolivia’s “Road of Death” has a higher death rate on its 60 miles than any road on the planet. It runs from Bolivia’s capital of La Paz down into the northern jungle town of Coroico, where the Bolivian yungas (jungle) begins in the Andes. From Coroico, the road continues northwest toward neighboring Brazil’s jungle. Hundreds of people die in accidents on this road each year, yet the speed is only slightly faster than a walking pace.
-Part of the road has been paved, from the approximately 10,000-foot-high La Paz up to Unduavi, but there are no guardrails. The elevation rises to 14,000 feet above sea level for over 16 miles, and the cliffs on the sides of the road can rise more than half a mile above the bottom. At this altitude, truck drivers chew coca leaves to prevent altitude sickness. From there, the route to Coroico then drops 10,000 feet in just 40 miles.
-After the paved road ends, the route narrows into one lane, with places every mile or two that are wide enough for two trucks to almost pass without scraping each other. Hundreds of hairpin turns make looking ahead for oncoming traffic impossible, so often it’s easier to drive the road at night, when headlights are visible around corners.
-The road is so treacherous because it was built by prisoners, during a 1932 war with Paraguay, and hand-chiseled into the sides of sheer canyon walls. The most amazing thing about the accidents on this road is that people have actually survived the fall. In a good year only 100 people will die; a bad year costs 300 lives.
-The total time to cover the 90 miles from La Paz to Coroico is 4 hours on a good day with little rain or rock slides and erosion from waterfalls. But with these pitfalls combined with heavy traffic the trip is more like 6 hours.
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To Tiera del Fuego
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Distinction: Southernmost road in the Western Hemisphere
-The Northern Hemisphere’s end-of-the-Earth roads terminate in barren landscapes in places that aren’t for the faint of heart. But the final destination of Highway 3 in Argentina, which runs all the way south to the island of Tierra del Fuego, is Ushuaia, a modern city of 50,000 that packs tourists into five-star hotels and restaurants on their ways to skiing, fishing, sailing, and mountain biking in the surrounding glaciers, mountains, and forests. Tourists also gather here for cruises to Antarctica, and there’s even an End of the World museum in Ushuaia.
-The town in located on the Beagle Channel, named for the ship that brought Charles Darwin here in 1823. Tierra del Feugo (land of fire) drew its name from the Yamana tribe of peoples, who, it is said, used to build fires in front of their huts. Descendants of the Yamana still live in the region, which has been populated for 12,000 years.
-Most tourists arrive here by plane or cruise ship, but the main highway is well-maintained for those who undertake the long journey by land. A short detour through Chile is necessary to get from mainland Argentina, and the journey includes a ferry trip across the Strait of Magellan, which leads to Punta Arenas, Chile.
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Darien Gap, Panama to Colombia
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Distinction: The last true wilderness in the Western Hemisphere; last driven by car in 1985, never since
-The Pan-American Highway connects the extensive road systems of Mexico to those of Colombia. It is a continuous stretch of road—with the exception of a jungle in southern Panama about 50 miles wide called the Darien Gap. A 50-mile-wide delta of the Atrato River soaks most of the land, keeping the ground swampy. Several attempts have been made to build a road, but potential environmental damage, disruption of the indigenous tribes who live there, and possible influx of diseased cows from South America to North America, have thwarted roadbuilders.
-That means the only way to cross the gap is off-road, an extremely difficult trek due to the deep water in the marshlands. The Guinness Book of Records recognizes the all-land crossing of the gap by Loren Upton and Patty Mercier, who found an all-land path for their Jeep CJ-5 and spent 741 days making the drive. (Previous attempts, which began in 1923, all used boats and barges to navigate across swampy areas.)
-Since the 1990s, armed revolutionaries (FARC guerillas) have occupied much of the Colombian side of the gap, and have kidnapped tourists and trekkers in the area—yet another reason not to attempt the crossing.
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South Africa Highway N7 Namibia to Cape Town
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Distinction: Southernmost road in Africa—and one of the prettiest extreme roads.
-The second-largest canyon in the world is Namibia’s Fish Canyon, which lies just north of the country’s Orange River border with South Africa. That border also marks the starting point of the smooth, paved N7 highway, which points toward Cape Town, the southernmost city on the continent.
-The N7 traverses the dry, barren desert of Namaqualand, but the land is only this way for about nine months of the year. In August and September, the beginning of springtime in the Southern Hemisphere, annual rains give life to an amazing array of wildflowers that face north to the sun, which is over the Northern Hemisphere. Because of the variety of flowers and blooms, the towns of Vanrhynsdorp and Nieuwoudtville are homes to two of the largest flower and bulb nurseries in the world.
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Torugart Pass
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Distinction: Into the desert where no man returns, and the world’s final border struggle between two superpowers
-Cross the Torugart Pass from the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan to China and pass under a huge four-story stone arch that sits alone in the desert on a two-track dirt path, and you find yourself on a road next to a dry riverbed. When we drove this section, chain-gang workers were breaking rocks with pickaxes nearby. Chinese journalists told us that some of the workers were students who participated in the famed Tianamen Square revolt in 1989, and were sentenced to hard labor.
-Armed guards stand on both sides of the arch, so close to each other you figure they’re likely all buddies—the crossing itself is so far from any civilization that there’s nobody to talk to but your rivals. Historically the Soviets and rival Chinese had differing policies of immigration, travel, and sharing, and despite relaxed global policies from both sides, it was still that way when we crossed.
-Yet here is where blonde-haired and blue-eyed Chinese children underscore that China is a land of 55 indigenous languages and ethnic variations. Further, as the dirt road descends from the mountain range onto the desolate desert floor, you’re reminded that the name of China’s largest desert, Taklimakan, means, “Once you enter, you will never leave.”
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“Road of Bones,” Siberia
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Distinction: Northernmost road to the Pacific in Asia
-From 1932 to 1953, inmates from prison camps struggled to build a highway through Siberia. And when a road worker died, his bones were placed under the roadbed—hence the popular name Road of Bones.
-Desolation is the main geographic characteristic along the 1000-mile Kolyma Highway from the Siberian city of Yakutsk to the port city of Magadan. Because of the lack of any service, settlements or civilization, it is nearly impassable in mild weather, and easier to drive when it’s ice-covered. Ruts and washouts become so deep during a rain that only large trucks can get through the muck. Travelers on the route, mostly motorcycle adventurers, report there is absolutely nothing resembling civilization along its length.
-This story originally appeared on popularmechanics.com.
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