Disappearance on the Alaska Highway

Not dried up over centuries — stopped, in four days, as a glacier upstream quietly decided to send its water somewhere else. I rode across what's left of it: a dead riverbed you could still call a river if you didn't know better. This is the last leg of the Alaska Highway, 372 miles from Whitehorse to Delta Junction, where the highway officially ends — mountains holding 17 of Canada's 20 highest peaks, a border crossing four episodes in the making, and the strangest, most modern piece of geology on the entire route.

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Chapters:
0:00 Intro — A River That Stopped Existing
1:19 Morning Camp, Whitehorse
1:59 The Overland Trail — Two Dawsons Explained
3:25 Takhini River Valley & Otter Falls Cutoff
5:03 Haines Junction & the St. Elias Mountains
5:51 The Village Bakery
7:39 Our Lady of the Way Catholic Mission
8:19 Kluane National Park Visitor Centre
9:10 The Slims River — A River That Stopped Existing
11:21 Destruction Bay
12:54 Burwash Landing
14:31 Meeting Tony
14:43 The Donjek River
16:14 Road Conditions & Wire Repairs
16:52 Tony's Breakdown
24:41 Leaving Camp — Toward Beaver Creek
26:18 Beaver Creek & Our Lady of Grace Church
27:12 Approaching the U.S. Border
27:40 The Alaska State Line
28:03 Keith & Carrie's Honda Grom
29:15 Crossing into the United States
29:21 Jim the Dog Musher
30:30 Improved Roads After the Border
31:22 Tetlin Junction & the Tanana River Bridge
32:11 Tok, Alaska
33:20 The Final Leg to Delta Junction
33:51 Robertson River — Ice in Summer
34:59 Johnson & Gerstle River Crossings
35:14 Delta Junction — The Official End of the Alaska Highway
36:05 Closing — Back to the Slims River

About the Episode

This is the final episode of the Alaska Highway chapter, covering 372 miles from Whitehorse to Delta Junction, where the highway officially ends and hands off to the older Richardson Highway for the run into Fairbanks.

This stretch holds one of the strangest geological events documented anywhere in modern times: in May 2016, the Slims River, which had fed Kluane Lake for thousands of years, stopped flowing entirely over the course of four days, after retreating glacial meltwater found a steeper route into a different river system — sending its water to the Pacific Ocean instead of the Bering Sea. Geologists call it river piracy, and this is the first time it's ever been documented happening in real time, caused directly by modern climate change.

Along the way: two Quonset-hut churches built from military surplus steel by resourceful priests, the St. Elias Mountains and Kluane National Park, Destruction Bay and Burwash Landing, a fellow rider's motorcycle breakdown on a remote stretch of gravel, and finally, the Alaska border — a milestone four episodes and thousands of miles in the making, ending at Delta Junction, Historic Mile 1422, the official end of the Alaska Highway.

This channel follows one rider, solo, on a Ducati Multistrada, documenting the history, geology, and people found along the way — not just the well-known stops, but the roadside oddities, ghost towns, and small-town history that most travelers ride right past.

#AlaskaHighway #MotorcycleTravel #Ducati #Multistrada #AdventureRiding #Yukon #HainesJunction #DeltaJunction #KluaneNationalPark