Epic Drives: Alaska's Dalton Highway in a 2014 Toyota 4Runner Limited - Automobile
This is Alaska, more than twice the size of Texas yet home to barely 725,000 hardy residents, most of whom consider winter temperatures of 20 degrees below zero a “thaw. ” Yet despite a landscape often frequented by more bears than humans, one plagued by some of the harshest weather on the planet, in 1977 brilliant engineers and heroic contractors completed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), which defies... I’ve come to drive the infamous service road carved and scraped into its shadow: the James W. Dalton Highway, 414 miles of almost completely unpopulated, mostly unpaved two-lane running between Fairbanks and Deadhorse in Prudhoe Bay. Remote, frequented by hurtling big rigs, and often buried by snow and ice in winter, the Dalton has earned a reputation as one of the world’s most dangerous roads. My ride is a 2014 Toyota 4Runner Limited, the fully optioned, leather-lined cream puff of the line, but the tires are better-suited to Beverly Hills than a fearsome byway. Before leaving Fairbanks, therefore, I swap the standard issues for a set of burly Toyo Open Country meats, which not only promise infinitely more protection from the road’s myriad perils, but also totally look the business. Soon, about an hour north of Fairbanks, the asphalt gives way to dirt and the Dalton begins. Source: www.automobilemag.com
