Blizzard on the Dempster Highway, 5/21/2014

I only slept a couple hours, and got up in the middle of the night. I started driving about 1:30 in the morning in the surreal dusky light, until I hit the snowstorm, when I stopped to crash at a rest stop. There was a Yukon government utility vehicle parked at the turnout where I stopped, but there was no sign of anyone in or near the vehicle.  I woke up about 5:30 in the morning to about an inch of snow and ice on my car, and near whiteout conditions. I had to thaw and scrape for a while with the defroster bowing on the window before I could take off again. 

This type of road condition had made me turn back in Alaska (and it wasn't even snowing), but now I had to keep going to get to gas, because I didn't have enough to get back. So I said to myself, "it's not as bad as it looks" and took off in the early morning. And it wasn't as bad as it looked. It made me think that I probably could have made it past the Atigun Pass in Alaska.   Of course, I had no snow tires or anything that would have helped me negotiate the icy road; it was all up to my driving.

This is what I woke up to this morning.