ON THE DEMPSTER HIGHWAY – Born and raised in Dawson City, Richard Nagano has been travelling the Dempster Highway for close to 40 years.

He's been up the gravel road more than 2,000 times since he was 10, he guesses.

At 25, he started work for the Department of Highways and Public Works, joining the road crew based at the Ogilvie maintenance camp.

Now, more than 20 years later, he is the northern area superintendent for Highways' transportation branch – responsible for managing the maintenance of Canada's only public, all-seasons highway to cross the Arctic Circle.

Last week, the department organized a media tour of the Dempster.

Over the course of the two-day trip, Nagano served as the Star's chief guide, allowing not only a glimpse into the inner workings of the highway's upkeep, but unique insight into his own relationship with the renowned road and the land it travels through.

The Dempster accounts for 9.6 per cent of the Yukon's highway system and about 16 per cent of the department's budget.

But more than a few of its frequent travellers suggested that budget could handle an increase – the highway isn't known for its smooth ride.

"The Dempster used to have a real notorious reputation for flat tires,” said Allan Nixon, the assistant deputy minister of Highways' transportation division, in Dawson on the morning of Feb. 12.

But it's not as bad as it used to be, he continued. At least one truck driver would later disagree, but Nixon expected that.

"Coming from a long line of truck drivers, I'll tell you that they're never happy,” he said. "But I think when you do talk to the ones that run the road on regular basis, they really appreciate the work that the highways crews do.”

Settled in behind the wheel of a black GMC Yukon for the 195-km drive to the Ogilvie maintenance camp from Klondike corner, Nagano shared a few of the Dempster's main maintenance challenges.

Crews from the three camps (Klondike, Ogilvie and Eagle Plains) are constantly working to reduce snow drifting, clear the rights-of-way, repair culverts, resurface and grade the road, not to mention general road maintenance, Nagano said.

It's almost impossible to clear the brush along the side of the highway as quickly as it grows. But it's important because it acts like a snow fence accumulating snow, he explained, pointing to problem sections along the way.

Closing in on kilometre 34, Nagano slowed the Yukon, crossing a section of flooded road.

Crews had set up a generator and were trying to keep the roadway thawed using heat tape.

Nagano explained that each year, the road crews hope the first snowfall will be a big one, enough to insulate the ground so it doesn't freeze too deeply.

This year, there has been more snow than usual (which could mean washouts come spring), but it came late.

The ground froze so deep that when temperatures warm, melting the glacial snow and ice, the frozen ground can't absorb the melt water and it builds up.

The goal is to keep the area thawed so the water will run through. If that doesn't work, crews will try ditching to direct the water to culverts.

Of all the challenges the Dempster presents, weather is almost irrefutably the most difficult.

It's a challenge for the road crews, no question, but it's no easy task for mechanic Terry Kell either.

"The guys are up there trying to keep the road open and I just try to maintain the equipment so they can do it,” Kell modestly described his role during a media interview at the Ogilvie maintenance camp on the afternoon of Feb. 12.

Kell has been travelling the Dempster for the better part of two decades, caring for equipment at all three of the Yukon's maintenance camps.

Windshields are a common item on his repair list, he said – not surprising, given the nature of the road.

Cold weather can cause a fair number of problems too.

"Steal gets brittle when it's really cold so it tends to break a little more, so there's a little more welding,” he said.

And Ogilvie is one of the coldest spots along the Dempster, Nagano said – he would know, having spent eight years based at the camp before moving to Klondike camp and onto Dawson City.

Nagano remembers his camp days fondly, when he wasn't working he enjoyed hobbies, or worked on the machines.

And come hunting season?

"Boy, I had it timed right out when to go out and where to be for the moose, eh?” he said.

"It was good, I enjoyed it. It was mostly old-timers then,” and he took full advantage of the many opportunities to learn from them.

Nowadays, he's having trouble filling vacancies at the camps. The mines don't necessarily pay more but they offer more overtime opportunities, which can draw those open to camp life away from the government positions.

They aren't thinking of the pensions, Nagano hinted a few times.

Heading out from Ogilvie, driving through one of two avalanche watch areas on the highway, Nagano recounted what at first sounded like a tall-tale, the story of how he ended up stuck on top of a snow slide.

"I was just doing my road checks and it was kind of hard to see,” he began.

"All of a sudden, I came right up to it and I was slamming the brakes on but all of a sudden, I was on top of it.”

He's not the only one it's happened to, either.

It's a funny anecdote, but there's a moral to that story. The Dempster mid-winter is no joke.

"The guys gotta do their road checks in the morning, eh? Just to make sure there's nobody out there,” Nagano said earlier that day.

"I really love the Dempster in the winter just because it makes you feel so small,” Nixon said.

"But you could realistically die out there; there's only about 50 vehicles a day on average, which is not a lot.

"If you get out and you get stuck and a blizzard comes in, it can be a pretty lonely place,” he said.

It wasn't more than a few weeks ago that a few truckers and couple crew found themselves in a sticky weather situation, Cathy Brais, the foreman at the Eagle Plains maintenance camp and the first full-time female road foreman in the Yukon, told media soon after arriving at the lodge.

The truck drivers were quite comfortable to spend the night on the road waiting out the storm with food, water and their bunk heaters, but the highways guys had to be rescued.

"It was horrible out there that night,” said Brais.

"Even myself, it was one of the worst times I'd ever seen out there.”

Brais has worked at the Eagle Plains maintenance camp since 2008, becoming foreman in 2010.

When she took the job, she made the move from Beaver Creek and decided to make her home base the Eagle Plains Lodge, where she now has an apartment.

With a population of 14, Brais often has to explain why she chooses to make her home there, and Feb. 12 was no different.

"The scenery's great, the people are great, the crew's great, and I like my job,” she said.

"The government buys this equipment and I get to run it. I don't have to pay for it, but I get to operate it and remove snow, I can blade roads and it's great.

"You have the wind blowing through your grader in the summertime, you're driving and bears are walking in the ditches beside you,” she explained.

"I have a hot tub, I have a deck, so I have all my creature comforts.”

"We even took the hot tub up to the Arctic Circle Boxing Day this year. It was -11 and not a breath of wind. It was the most perfect day,” she said, making life at Eagle Plains sound nothing short of a constant adventure.

But it's a lot of work too. And sometimes it must feel like they can never do enough.

After breakfast last Wednesday morning at the lodge, two truck drivers shared their thoughts on the state of the Dempster.

Jim Sherburne has been driving the highway since 1984.

"I'll tell you what: in 1984, the road was a hell of a lot better,” he said.

"When they put their boys to work, the boys went out there and worked,” he continued.

"I'm not saying that they don't work today but I mean they used to work 10 hours a day, work 10 hours a day, not just put in a 10-hour shift.”

Crews on the N.W.T. side were working until just past 10 Tuesday night when he pulled past the territorial border on his way back to Whitehorse, Sherburne said, adding that you almost never see Yukon crews out that late. Overall, the N.W.T. portion of the Dempster is a better drive too, he said.

The road conditions are a constant frustration for Sherburne.

"There's no money in this, I gotta keep fixing my truck,” he said.

"Sometimes the road is so bad you can't take in the beauty. Why? Because you're too busy watching the road to see where the next pothole is.”

Kyle Reid, a truck driver from Redwater, Alta. who transports fuel to Fort McPherson, took a more pragmatic view.

"It has it's good days and it has it's bad days … it's usually good in the wintertime; summertime it's rough, but that's just the nature of the beast,” he said.

"I know the foreman from here and I know the one from Ogilvie and they put a lot of effort into trying to keep it as good as they can.

"Sometimes they run out of money to do it because the government has only budgeted them so much but it's not their fault. They do what they can do with what they have,” he said.

Continuing north on the Dempster last Wednesday morning, Nagano noted the beginning of what's called Hurricane Alley, a valley nestled in the Richardson Mountains, just before the end of the Yukon's portion of the highway.

On Wednesday, skies were blue and the winds were relatively calm, but it wasn't difficult to imagine what the impact of gale force winds could be.

"All I know is she can blow pretty nasty, especially when she starts moving the snow around,” he said.

Running from about kilometre 452 to kilometre 460, Brais said she's seen winds reach 131 km/h in Hurricane Alley.

"The snow poles along the road are 100 feet apart, and there are times when there is zero visibility,” she said.

"We get a lot of ground wind and you can still see all the poles so you can keep going, we'll keep (the road) open but we'll monitor it. But when the poles start disappearing, they're like a life line and you need to be able to see them.”

Earlier that morning, Reid described driving through Hurricane Alley as "unnerving sometimes,” remembering the high winds the last time he was coming south.

"With fuel trailers, they catch lots of wind and when they're empty, of course, they're fairly light, so they're moving around a lot.”

Hurricane Alley and an N.W.T. section just past the border account for most closures in the Eagle Plains section, a problem in either of those portions can mean both sides close, preventing travellers from getting stuck in between.

Considering the unpredictable wind conditions, heavy equipment operator Jerry Geddes thinks the government's budget for the highway is "bull----.”

"This is the most volatile wind conditions probably in the North,” he said as he plowed the pullout at border hill.

And wind is just one of the many challenges crews face in maintaining the roadway.

But as Reid put it, "there's people up in the North that need stuff; this is why the road's here.”

The history behind the Dempster's a little more complicated than that, but for people from Fort McPherson and Inuvik, the importance of the highway and its caretakers might just be that simple.

For Nagano, he has six more years on the government payroll, but his relationship with the roadway won't end when he retires.

A former guide, he's hunted in the traditional territory of his First Nation, the Trondek Hwech'in, adjacent to the Dempster for decades. Last Wednesday, he even shared his secret to sheep hunting – but not for publication.

Each fall, he helps lead a first-hunt camp for youth aged 12-18 at Cache Creek, where he's recently built a cabin.

"It's one of the big major events for the kids; they all look forward to it,” he said.

"I make sure I take time off for that, I never miss it.”

There's no doubt Nagano will continue to travel the Dempster when his highway career comes to a close. It just might involve less paperwork and fewer meetings.