0403VWID4-37

DAY 8: DEADHORSE, AK

We spent the night in ID.4. The temperature was 0 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 15 degrees Celsius. Our thermo sleeping bags kept us reasonably warm but the starry night illuminated by the full moon still wouldn’t end. The sun on the next morning lifted our spirits again and shortly before the 1,645 meter high Aitgun Pass we loaded up again at the DOT station Chandalar. This road patrol has the difficult task of keeping the pass and its two quite steep approaches passable for trucks all year round. Heavy clearing equipment is therefore constantly in use and actually accompanies us the whole way north. We use the loading time of about 6 hours also to warm up the ID.4 again and to read our emails. Along the pass road there is an avalanche warning and the 5 miles long approach we can manage without snow chains. Slowly we leave the Brooks Range and we reach the arctic tundra. No mountains or anything else can be seen. Only the Dalton Highway and the crossing Alaska Pipeline lies like a grey layer in the snow in front of us. The road is now very icy, although well prepared, but we still do not go faster than 30 miles also because after our last charging station in before the finish, Sag River, the leg of the journey is quite long and is 120 miles. With 100% charge we drove during the night to the northernmost point of the Dalton Highway, Deadhorse, an oil production town in the Prudhoe Bay region on the coast of northern Alaska. Despite a short snowstorm, we reach the northernmost point of the US highway network at 5 a.m. on April 4 at almost 20 degrees below zero. The display of our hotel showed this independently and we are happy after the arrival photo to spend our first night in a hotel in a long time. We are proud of our first stage goal reached and are the first to reach Deadhorse in April, with an electric car. Tomorrow we will be in town for one more day before heading all the way south again.

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