DAWSON CITY – Greg Van Tighem arrived in Eagle Plains last Thursday, after a slog of a ride from Dawson.

The Jasper, Alta. fire chief left Dawson March 28 on a trip to Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.

Various travellers who had seen him along the way reported him making heavy headway through mud, snow, freezing rain and a bit of wind.

Van Tighem confirmed these stories during a landline telephone call while at Eagle Plains, as well as on his Facebook posts.

“It’s been a variety of conditions since leaving Dawson but mostly cold and windy! Critters raided my camp the other night and chewed through my (iPhone) charger cable and kept me up all night!”

The cell phone didn’t work at the hotel anyway, even though he had been told by his cell provider that it would. However, Van Tighem reflected, it still made a decent point-and-shoot camera.

Prior to Eagle Plains, he’d been camping alongside the road in conditions that had left both his tent and his sleeping bag somewhat damp, making it hard to get a good night’s sleep.

The critters he referred to turned out to be voles, and they kept running around under his tent floor.

More annoying, he said, was what appeared to be a flying squirrel that landed on the side of his tent and seemed prepared to anchor there until he gave it a swift kick to dislodge it.

It didn’t come back.

Settled in at the hotel, Van Tighem was enjoying the opportunity to dry out all his gear before moving on, which he hoped would be the next day, although the road was closed at the time of this interview.

Van Tighem admitted that he had had to abandon his plan of making 100 kilometres a day.

“At Tombstone Park, it was snowing pretty heavy and I didn’t get to see any of that beautiful scenery,” he said.

“I had to push my bike all the way up that hill. I’ve discovered that I can’t ride up the steeper hills any more. (With all this gear) the bike’s just too heavy.

“It works to my advantage though,” he said, “as it helps to keep my feet warm and gets the circulation going.”

Coming off that hill, the snow lifted, and in the valley, “it was absolutely stunningly beautiful.”

That night, the traveller slept by the side of the road in a little pull-out a plow had created.

“I got up about three in the morning and watched the northern lights. I’ve seen them quite a bit, but it’s nice to look out of your tent and watch them.”

The last two days before Eagle Plains were not that much fun, and the hill up to Ogilvie Ridge was one on which he actually broke down and hitched a ride.

“I would have been still pushing up that hill now, otherwise,” Van Tighem said.

That was the night it was incredibly windy.

He camped after dark and almost lost his tent fly. His tent partially collapsed on him in the night, and the condensation from his breathing got everything wet.

By the next night, everything was still damp and uncomfortable.

Van Tighem reached Eagle Plains the following night, hoping to dry out and move on refreshed, but the road was closed and it stayed closed for a couple of days.

He spent his time chatting with the drivers from at least eight trucks that had passed him along the way earlier, and with two skiers who were heading from Whitehorse to Old Crow, using traditional trails.

Van Tighem started north again last Saturday.

However, a report from Alberta contact Carolyn Duchoslav says he was forced to stop by the weather and that he slept that night in a trailer that a trucker who had left it by the roadside said he could use.

In one of Van Tighem’s last Facebook posts he said, “It’s a long hard road on an overloaded bike, but so far, I’m still smiling!”

Van Tighem started doing endurance biking eight years ago as part of a fund-raising team doing long distance rides around Hinton, Alta. He found the exercise got him back into good shape and lost weight while raising around $30,000 annually for MS research.

When one of his friends died from the disease, Van Tighem promised the man’s daughter that he would increase his fund-raising efforts, and so the long solo treks began under the slogan “end to end to end MS”.

Van Tighem doesn’t take donations along the way, but encourages people to donate to the cause online.