Cassiar Highway/Alaska Highway

The motorhome didn't suffer too badly on those winter trips. :B

Northbound at Liard Hotsprings on the AK Hwy


Southbound at Fort Nelson


A couple of days later at the ferry terminal waiting to cross home to Vancouver Island.

sue.t wrote:

mockturtle wrote:
I'll bet the scenery is at its best in winter :) but very few RVs are insulated well enough for severe winters. Too bad. :(

We made two winter trips to Yukon from Vancouver Island in a "3-season" 23' Class C, before we decided to move to Yukon forever:
- http://suethomas.ca/19981212_AlaskaHwy.html
- http://suethomas.ca/20011215_AlaskaHwy.html

Temps to -40.
Both grand adventures.

Looking forward to reading your journals and your web site! Thank you.

mockturtle wrote:
I'll bet the scenery is at its best in winter :) but very few RVs are insulated well enough for severe winters. Too bad. :(

We made two winter trips to Yukon from Vancouver Island in a "3-season" 23' Class C, before we decided to move to Yukon forever:
- http://suethomas.ca/19981212_AlaskaHwy.html
- http://suethomas.ca/20011215_AlaskaHwy.html

Temps to -40.
Both grand adventures.

All 8 of my rigs are RWD, I have yet to own a 4WD or FWD rig to this day....

Now I will say this :

No way I would drive a Corvette or any other RWD rig in the far north during the winter without snow tires at the minimum, especially climbing those type of hills along the Cassiar Hwy.

One of my most stressful winter long commute trips was driving the 73 Olds Cutlass from Fairbanks to Anchorage (Parks Hwy.) and back during Thanksgiving week 1998 in which this rig and my camper rig were the only two vehicles that had a sufficient heater to keep warm, as my Mom needed quality emergency preventive surgery as she refuses to fly on an aircraft, so of course it only had to snow during both commutes but didn't snow at all while in Anchorage until the final day leaving....

Equipped with the finest used summer tread tires anyone could roll on for under $75 for the set of 4, while having a full 3 inches of ground clearance, traction for winter driving was pretty much non existent.

Four inches of snowfall on the southbound trip between Healy and Houston while the semis crossing paths in the opposite direction were snowblinding me with either white snow or mud slush covering the entire windshield, leaving a much obstructed view to be desired until there was a nice safe pullout off the highway to clean the windshield enough to resume travel, although it was easier to deal with the 40 mph crosswind gusts upon reaching Wasilla with glazed to clear road surfaces.

Made matters worse on the return commute when there was 8 to 12 inches of snowfall to deal with, driving around 6 DOT snowplows between Anchorage and Talkeetna Junction is no easy task either with almost zero visibility of snow flying around the snowplows and cross traffic, stopped at Sunshine Creek to fill the gas tank as there parking lot wasn't plowed and gotten stuck 3 times trying to drive onto the highway (pick a groove going uphill) as I couldn't get enough momentum from a running start, once a low boy trailer semi drove onto the highway and flattened some snow, I followed it's path and finally made it on the highway.

Passing thru Chulitna Pass and those hills was nerve racking as I almost didn't make it up the hill past Honolulu Creek (broke traction twice), and the 9 percent grade hill just past the east fork wayside (barely had enough momentum left), drove non stop to Nenana as the road conditions were at least tolerable enough to drive on ok from the Teklanika Bridge on north...a trucker told me I was driving a coffin as he observed the car didn't have any taillights when he passed me earlier (taillight lenses were packed with snow) and didn't observe any car until right up on it (dark green body color and it was nightfall)....I sure felt blessed after passing two vehicles that had rolled over and sat upside down off the roadway.

My hats off to the guy driving that rig in some higher elevations with slick conditions somewhere along the way.

I'll bet the scenery is at its best in winter :) but very few RVs are insulated well enough for severe winters. Too bad. :(

No thanks. Would not drive RWD anything in that. Need some more traction with front wheel drive? Get somebody to sit on the front & hold on.

Was someone saying they couldn't?

My little Honda Fit is usually our vehicle of choice when sightseeing in winter. The front-wheel drive makes a huge difference.

This was the Haines Hwy at the Haines Summit in early March 2013.

Saw this car in Smithers. Guy looked like he was having a nap in the parking lot behind Pauls Bakery. I too figured he was pretty brave. Car was so low I was not sure he would even get out of the parking lot with the snow humps all around him.

This person is certainly very brave (or stupid) - is this the right time to remind everyone that it was warmer in Anchorage during the cold snap than it was in Nashville and Atlanta.

Hope they had a safe trip and reached their destination without incident.