“I would walk five hundred miles.”
– The Proclaimers

Well, it might not have been 500 miles, but it probably felt like it.

Whitehorse’s Patrick Jackson finished a 405-kilometre walk from the Dempster Corner to the Arctic Circle marker during the past spring.

It was both a personal challenge and a way to help out the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition.

Jackson is well-known as the former owner of the Changing Gear sports store on the Alaska Highway in Whitehorse.

With the business changing hands, he found himself with a little more time on his hands to indulge some of his bucket-list ideas.

One of those dreams was to walk to the Arctic Circle on the Dempster Highway solo and more-or-less unsupported. Doing it during a pandemic was just another layer of intrigue for Jackson.

“It was an idea that just wouldn’t go away,” he said in an interview.

And since he wasn’t lacking in the requisite gear, he decided to take off on April 11.

“It was good weather for the most part,” Jackson told the Star. “All but two days were sun.”

Jackson said one of the complications in gearing up for the mission was travelling between seasons.

In the mornings, it was still very much winter on the trail. By the afternoon, it was spring.

“That complicated things a bit,” Jackson said. “I had to carry more stuff than I would have liked.”

For the first week or so, he needed snowshoes to walk comfortably. After that, they were more of an encumbrance.

He was pulling his equipment in a specially-designed two-wheeled “chariot”.

The cart provided him with one of his few problems as the poles snapped under the weight of his gear approximately eight kilometres into the walk.

One social media plea later, and he had some donated poles delivered the next day.

“That was awesome,” Jackson said. “Other than that, the gear was fine.”

He had a few rest days built into his schedule, which were welcome as well.

There was one morning where he peeked out of his tent at a cold, stormy morning and simply said, “nope.”

The worst part of his trip, Jackson said, was around the Ogilvie Plateau.

“I don’t know why, but I just didn’t like it,” he said.

It’s not too difficult to establish one reason why. Jackson said there’s a 12.5-kilometre meander on the trail there he referred to as the Horseshoe.

“I could see where I wanted to go on the other side,” he said. “But I couldn’t walk directly to it.”

Jackson said he had travelled the Dempster before, albeit by vehicle.

He thought he was familiar with its vagaries, but soon found the perspective quite different from his feet than from a comfy car seat.

“The Dempster is very hilly,” he wryly observed.

He also had plenty of time to contemplate how difficult the journey would have been without the maintained trail of the highway to follow.

“Man, those old-timers were hard-core. I just had to follow the highway, not make a trail or live off the land.”

In the process, he raised more than $13,000 for the anti-poverty coalition.

“We are so pleased to continue working with Patrick,” Kristina Craig, the coalition’s executive director, said on the eve of the walk.

“He has suggested that YAPC is an integral resource in the community so this is a real show of support for the work we do,” Craig added.

“We really are blown away that Patrick has turned his walk into a fundraiser for us and that he is fully funding his whole trip.”

Coalition members were with him and Dawson, his dog, for every step, she added.

Jackson had been accepting donations on a per-kilometre basis, and said he had expected to raise only about $5,000. Obviously, he was very pleased he had low-balled his expectations.

His mileage varied from eight kilometres on the first day to 44.5 on his last.

“I really wanted to finish,” he said in a perfect deadpan.

As planned, he received a most-appreciated ride back to Whitehorse.

As to whether he would do it again, Jackson had a rather whimsical answer.

“Once the pain stops, I might think of it again.”