Date:         Fri, 5 Jul 96 18:13:40 PDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         copley@healthcare.ubc.ca (Tobin Copley)
Subject:      VW Buses to the Arctic 2 weeks away!

Hi all,

It's been a while since I've made a posting to the vanagon list about the
upcoming "Top of the World Tour" to Inuvik in the Canadian arctic, so
here's the skinny:

My partner Christa and I are organizing a trip for VW bus owners to the
northern-most point one can drive to in Canada: Inuvik, Northwest
Territories, at the north end of the unpaved Dempster Highway.  Until just
last year (I think it was last year), the Dempster was the northern-most
public road in North America.  (Then they opened the romantically-named
Dalton Haul Road to Prudhoe Bay, AK--which follows the scenic ;-) Alaska
Pipeline--to public traffic, but it will still only get you about 100 miles
further north than the Dempster will).

Driving the Dempster Highway is widely regarded as one of the greatest road
trips in North America, if not the world.  Over 750 km long, it is unpaved
for its entire length, crosses two major rivers by either ferry or ice
bridge (depending on season), and traverses the arctic circle, the
Pacific/Arctic continental divide, rugged mountains, vast plains of arctic
tundra, and some of the most remote country many of us will ever see in our
lifetimes.

Participants in the Tour will be coming from places as far away as Puerto
Rico, Indiana, Southern California, Texas, and Ontario.  It is my suspicion
that Puerto Rico plates are somewhat uncommon in Inuvik.  The tour will
officially start in Vancouver, B.C.  From there to Inuvik and back, we will
deliberately choose to take the roads less travelled--and many of them are
unpaved.  In fact, nearly 3,000 km of our trip will be driven on a complete
absence of asphalt-like surfaces.

And we will have time to smell the wildflowers.  The days will be long
that far north, so we can poke along all day stopping where ever we like
for a stretch, or a view, or to catch some fish, without worrying about
running out of daylight.

The trip to Inuvik and back from Vancouver is scheduled to take 23 days,
and will cover nearly 8,500 kilometres.  Aside from Christa and me, who
drove their 1976 westy 15,000 miles in a 3 month circumnavigation of North
America last year, who would be crazy enough to do a trip like this for
their "vacation"?  You might be surprised.  Twelve buses will be rolling
out of Vancouver in convoy early on the morning of July 22nd, pointing
their noses northward to innumerable mountain ranges and the aurora
borialis.  More will be joining up with us along the way.  By the time we
cross the wooden one-lane bridge at the start of the 770 km unpaved
Demptster Highway, 17 buses will be bouncing over the washboard surface
toward the vast plains of the MacKenzie River delta.

Yes, we'll bring our cameras.  In fact, many trekkers will be bring
laptops, some with *digital* cameras.  We hope to post daily (or near
daily) dispatches and photos to both the vanagon list and to the trip's web
site at http://www.chaco.com/inuvik.  If you want to learn more about the
trip, check out the extensive information resources compiled on the trip's
web site.  Once the trip is underway, our progress will be documented at
this www site, so follow along with us!

Ron Lussier has done an incredible job building the site and using it to
develop PR for the trip.  VW Germany has the Inuvik trip site listed as the
#1 personal VW page on the official VW of Germany Home Page.

All the fun officially starts at my place in downtown Vancouver on Sunday
night, July 21st.  I expect we'll have a bit of a party.  Any vanagon list
members who might like to meet other list members "in real life" are
welcome to come for the send-off soiree.  Email me for my address, or call
me at home at (604) 689-2660.  Some folks are arriving a day of two early,
so we may have a practice party Saturday night.

Two weeks to go, then northward ho!

Tobin

---------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin T. Copley                        copley@healthcare.ubc.ca
Dept. of Health Care and Epidemiology     Voice: (604) 822-6219
University of British Columbia              Fax: (604) 822-4994
Vancouver, B.C. Canada  V6T 1Z3