Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway and the Arctic Ocean

138 km all-season gravel road north to the Beaufort Sea — opened 2017

The Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway opened in November 2017 and is North America's first all-season public road to the Arctic Ocean. It is 138 km of gravel, taking two and a half hours each way, mostly across treeless tundra dotted with thousands of small lakes.

Tuktoyaktuk itself ("Tuk") is an Inuvialuit community of about 900 on the Beaufort Sea, with grocery stores, a couple of guesthouses, the famous pingos (ice-cored hills) on the outskirts, and a beach where you can dip a toe in the Arctic Ocean and collect a certificate to prove it. Tour operators in Inuvik run day trips by van or by car. Doing it yourself by rental car is possible but expensive — windshields routinely crack on the gravel; check your insurance.

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Until 2017, Tuktoyaktuk was only reachable by air in summer and by an ice road across the frozen Mackenzie Delta in winter. The all-season ITH cost $300 million, took five years to build, and required engineering the road bed to insulate the underlying permafrost — building a heavy road on top of frozen ground is the kind of problem that doesn't exist anywhere south of here.