In all of my years traveling north, I can not believe that such an exceptional route has remained off of my radar. The Canol road is a single lane, very rough, partially maintained route, that takes you from Ross River, Yukon
to Norman Wells NWT. It was built by the USA military to pipe high grade oil from the wells in NWT, to Whitehorse and finally to Alaska. If you have studied the construction of the Alaska Highway at all, you will have an understanding of the remarkable accomplishment it was. It spanned nearly 3000 km, and was completed in less than 8 months, through some of the most challenging terrain and conditions. The Alaska Highway has maintained its prestige even today, but for some reason the Canol Road has been practically forgotten.
It is difficult to find an area in the north that is not beautiful, but this route is a step above the rest. The first section, to Quiet Lake is mostly treed in and rough, but once you begin the climb into the mountains, the views are truly breathtaking. We took three days to complete the South Canol, and it is much easier than the North Road, but I recommend taking more time if you can. Every night, we enjoyed a beautiful camp spot, but all day long we found ourselves driving passed countless other spots we would love to try.
We took this trip right at the beginning of hunting season, so it was the busiest time of year that this road will see, but even at that, we only saw four vehicles in three days of travel. Lucky for me, two of those vehicles were fans, so I got to have a great little chat along the way. And they got to see my poor mans trailer fix. lol
The Canol Road far surpassed any expectation I had, but the one thing it was missing was a night of Northern Lights. I try to plan Northern Lights viewing nights off of an app called Aurora, and it is typically very accurate. For some reason, with a high KP rating each night, we didn't even get a hint of the Aurora. Lucky for us, our first night off the road started and finished with an absolutely spectacular Northern Lights show. I was up until 3:00am shooting, and I couldn't possibly have asked for a better end to this adventure.
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