Heaves & Diapers...

It won't take long while doing research on the Alcan Highway before you come across the term “frost heaves.” None of the descriptions I read gave me the full picture on what a frost heave really is, and what to do when you encounter one. I just got a “watch out for frost heaves.”

Well, frost heaves are big undulations and sharp unevenness on the road pavement. It is caused by the permafrost underground, making the ground very unstable. When you drive through these frost heaves, your vehicle starts boobing up and down and can go airborne or scrape the road. Sometimes when the frost heaves go un-repaired for long, they finally create cracks on the asphalt that turn into nasty pot-holes. On the Alcan, you can see little red flags marking the frost heaves in the road....lots of little red flags. The best thing to do when you see these red flags is to slooooow doooown. You may be tempted to just swerve around the heave, but most of the time, your evasive maneuver will land you in another heave or a pot hole.

Frost Heave sign and red flag ahead

Once we got started on our way along the Alcan Highway, we started to notice that some RVers had extra protection in the front of their RVs.
Pieces of plywood, pieces of rug, bubble wrap, duct insulation material....all rigged up with bungee cords, and all kinds of tapes.
All this protection was to prevent nasty rock dings while driving on the unpaved sections of the Alcan Highway. We thought that the protection on the RVs looked like diapers. We tried to put a diaper on our trailer, but it was too late. We were far from any sort of hardware store to do it.
We also end up referring to the unpaved section of the Alcan as “diaper sections.”

So there you have it. When driving the Alcan, watch for heaves and get your diapers.



Here we are...on the left, our trailer naked "al fresco" with no diapers to protect from rocks. On the right, fellow Air-Streamer Mark, who did an outstanding job protecting his Airstream Classic.