Five Mile to Elliot Highway: Alaska Cycling

By Dave Briggs · Published 2009-07-28 · Last updated 2026-07-19

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Continuing my cycling adventure in Alaska, today's ride saw me cycling from Five Mile to somewhere on the Elliot Highway.

Organising the bicycle trailer

(Blog post written: Tuesday 28 July 2009)

I sorted the setup up of my bike and trailer out during the night, the upshot of which, is that I can now peddle Bob up steep hills!! Yay me!

Now initially, this was good, because even though I was still travelling at a snails pace uphill, I was still travelling. I stopped off at Yukon River to buy some drinks and snacks, and carried on once more.

Problems with my knee when cycling

Certain sections of the Dalton Highway after Yukon River were in far worse condition than that I'd just cycled over, and this constant jarring in combination with cycling up the steepest hills soon gave me a new and exciting problem - A bad left knee.

Now, the one thing you don't want to let you down when you are cycling are your knees, because then you are in proper trouble. As indeed I was.

In addition to this, I also made a tactical mistake by choosing not to stop at Hess Creek, and instead carrying on for another 4 hours until I reached the end of the Dalton Highway. So yay me for finishing the Dalton, and ouchy, knee.

Wild camping in Alaska

I carried on down the Elliot Highway until I found somewhere suitable to stop, and after 12 hours cycling, I set up the tent for a spot of wild camping.

I was worryingly low on water and not near a river, so I had to ration what food I had. Dinner consisted of four tablets of Ibubrufen. I guess the cost of cycling today was pretty low as a result!

Dave Briggs
Dave is a UK travel writer living in Athens since 2015. With 20 years of firsthand travel experience and over 80,000 km of bicycle touring across six continents, he's been blogging at Dave's Travel Pages since 2005. Every guide is based on places he's actually been.

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