Dempster Highway, Yukon/Northwest Territories

Demster Highway

The Dempster Highway connects the Klondike Highway in the Yukon Territory of Canada to Inuvik, Northwest Territories on the Mackenzie River delta.  During the winter, the highway extends another 194 kilometres to Tuktoyaktuk, on the northern coast of Canada, using frozen portions of the Mackenzie River delta as an ice road.

Audio Nominations

Email Nominations

Audio Nominations

Listen Now Pitch 1 (0:42)

Listen Now Pitch 2 (0:36)

Real Player RealPlayer is required to listen to audio files. Download the RealPlayer plug-in for your browser.

Email Nominations

Alana Mero

The Dempster Highway - this is one of the most beautiful and awe inspiring roads in the world. From the Klondike gold fields to the Mackenzie Delta you cross mountain ranges, traverse valleys and view nature at it's finest. The road is an engineering marvel as it stretches for over 700 kms through some of the roughest terrain in the world to link the arctic to southern Canada.

Heidi Slat

The Dempster Highway, loses its treeline, 100 km from the nearest town of Dawson City .  From there, you are swept into a fall mirage of reds, oranges, yellows all clouding your sight in a surreal palette painters could only dream of.  Mountain peaks untouched by the ice age, tower in a vest of snow. You pass the Artic Circle, see grizzly bears feasting on fields of berries, caribou herd and feast before winter falls...and  the skies maintain that Simpsons contrast  of cotton candy cloud on a glacial blue canopy.

Laura Christie

Stunning fall colors and always an adventure to travel the highway.  You could see hundreds of Caribou, be swarmed by thousands of flies and mosquitoes, or spot a Grizzly feasting on blueberries.  There is no place like it in Canada and the craziest part is that you'll hardly encounter any other tourists.

Kathy Gates

The Dempster highway is the only place in the world where you can ‘hear’ Silence.  The Engineers and Road makers must have had inspiration and beauty in their hearts to lay the road down where every corner affords magnificent beauty, and a glimpse of the wildlife that populate the region, and the abundant wild flowers carpeting the ground.

Rob and Louise Fox

The green of the Richardson and Ogilvie mountains and valleys is unbelievable. The valley where you cross the Artic Circle is so vast and when these valleys and mountains are in bloom it is truly breathtaking.

Sharon Edmunds

The Dempster Highway is magnificent in its' grandness...it is larger than large....the term 'vast' just doesn't cover it.... and the colors of the tundra in the Fall will leave you speechless - except to continually be saying 'WOW' when looking in ANY direction.  It truly is a special place!

Chris Donaldson

The magnitude of the mountains and the eroded hills the road goes over is entrancing. The area was not touched by the last Ice Age and is all natural erosion creating many unusual rolling hills. The mountain range on the east side of the route looks like the deposits from retreating glaciers. I felt I was driving through something primordial. Had a dinosaur, mammoth, or even a unicorn jumped out of the tundra, it would not have come as all that much of a surprise.

Judith Venaas

Visitors from around the word have discovered the phenomenal beauty of this highway and make the journey a major focus of their vacation.  So, why not take the journey on this unique well-maintained gravel highway as it winds over two mountain ranges, crosses the continental divide, passes through three natural regions, traverses the Arctic Circle, loosely following the old dog team routes on its way to the great Mackenzie Delta and Inuvik, Northwest Territories
I have been driving thid highway for 10 years and the beauty and serenity is still breathtaking!

to the top