Alaska and the Canadian Rockies

Twenty nights from Alaska through the Yukon and the Canadian Rockies to Portland, flying in and hiring a bike. It is the longest tour in the operator’s range and covers the sort of distances that part of the world demands.

Alaska starts it on remote highways, then the Yukon, and Stewart in British Columbia, which sits at the end of a road beside Hyder in Alaska, with the Salmon Glacier above it and ice fields beyond. The Stewart-Cassiar Highway includes around 150 miles of dirt, which is the only rough riding on the trip and the price of going that way rather than down the Alaska Highway.

Canada proper follows past Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies at 3,954 metres, into Jasper National Park. The Icefields Parkway then runs south, and it is the road the whole tour is built around: well over a hundred miles between two walls of glaciated mountains, with scores of glaciers visible from the saddle, and it is regularly named among the finest drives in the world.

The route crosses the Continental Divide towards Waterton, then takes the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Montana, cut into a cliff over Logan Pass and open only in high summer, and finishes through the American Northwest on historic trails and river valleys to Portland. The bike hire, hotels, breakfasts, dinners as listed, maps and GPS routes are included, with fuel, flights and other meals separate. The price is quoted per person. Three weeks is what this route needs: the fuel stops are a long way apart, the weather at that latitude is its own argument for flexibility, and bears are a genuine consideration rather than a novelty.