Start of the Alaska Highway and then Disaster strikes the Powderhunds!

Shortly after the last post we officially entered the Alaska Highway.

Dawson Creek, BC, milepost 0.

Despite the arbitrariness of mile 0, it’s fun to officially be on the last leg of the drive, also the longest leg of the drive as we have 1642 miles to Anchorage. We have The Milepost, the mile-by-mile guide to the Alaska Highway so we get all kinds of fun facts. For example, we know that at mile 34.4 we cross the Peace River Bridge, the longer water span on the AK Highway.

We stopped in Fort St. John (milepost 47) to figure out if we want to go on further for the night and decided to just call it a day. We originally said we would sleep at ski areas and Walmarts and Fort St. John just happened to have a Walmart. Time to bite the bullet and camp in the parking lot.

DISASTER STRIKES

It was 7 deg. and getting colder when we stopped, but when we turned on the heater we got nothing. It blew cold air so the fan was working, we could hear the fuel pump clicking, we could feel air intake on the combustion air, but we had no heat. No heat is no bueno when it is going to be 0 deg. overnight. I suppose we could have just fired up the van every once in a while and used the engine heat, but there were nice warms hotels that allowed dogs just across the street. Oh well, that was always the backup plan if things went awry, better to be comfortable and safe.

There are only a few known problems with Espar heaters and I was most worried that the combustion chamber was fouled with soot. I don’t have the tools or parts on the road to begin dealing with that kind of problem so I checked the company web site for anyone who services Espar heaters in the area. In what is likely the second most impressive Easter miracle there was a service tech 10 miles back along the road listed on the company web site. Of course he was not likely to be working on Easter so we rented the room a second night and hung out in Fort St. John.

Monday morning I called the shop – Hans on Mechanical Services – and the miracles continued as the phone was promptly answered and I was invited to come right by. The shop was warm and clean and Hans went right to work to see what might be wrong. In the end we could not figure out anything specific that was wrong, but Hans resurrected the heater. Hans checked that the pump was drawing fuel from a jerry can, he separately ch died the fuel flow was good from the tank, he checked the exhaust was not obstructed and the air intake was good. The only thing he changed from my install was to use a slightly different fitting from the fuel line to the pump to clean up the connection. The only particular thing he noticed was some moisture in the exhaust pipe between the heater and the muffler. It’s possible some of this could have frozen and partially obstructed the exhaust, but it’s not clear that would have prevented the heater from firing. We also decided to very slightly change where the exhaust ends so tire spray does not hit it.

Whether it was the checkup or the warm shop, the heater was working well when we left. Hopefully it will keep working in the cold as it is unlikely we will be camping in any warm shops on this trip!

Now we are again headed north, guidebook in hand and book-on-tape rolling.

(I was going to post this shortly after Fort St. John, but we have had zero coverage for the last few hours. We are now using the free WiFi at A&W in Fort Nelson. We also learned there is only one restrictive cell company and we aren’t likely to have roaming for a quite a while so don’t worry if you don’t hear from us for a while.)