This is what I was alluding to earlier: you will find remoteness and ruggedness like nowhere else in North America up north, but not challenging riding terrain on the routes. (That I have experienced anyway - I'm sure it's out there though).
The Alaska highway is 100% pavement. Lots of motorhomes, and the bike I've seen most often is probably a Harley FLH. Scenic, but too easy! So from Whitehorse head further north to Dawson City. Do a short loop on the gravel Silver Trail past Mayo on the way. Dawson is tons of fun, and you will meet international travellers there with license plates from Germany, Austria and so on.
From Dawson`Do the Dempter' to Inuvik. It's gravel, but the feeling of remoteness is still very powerful. It's my favourite experience from all my trips up there. I first rode the Dempster in 1998 on a $1,000 Suzuki GS1100. I went as far as the Arctic Circle, which was enough on that bike. I went back in 2002 and rode a KLR to Inuvik. KLRs are very un-sexy bikes, but it was perfect for this trip. Comfortable, reliable, great luggage capacity, and it easily had the fuel range to do the 375km to the only gas stop on the Dempster. A 570 would work fine, but you'd have to carry some gas, and I think that even with traveling and camping very lightly you'd still be hard-pressed to pack everything you'd need on that bike. But it could certainly be done.
In Inuvik I took a Cessna to Tuktoyaktuk for the day. Kind of wild to taste whale meat, take a dip in the Arctic Ocean, and to learn a little bit about the Inuit people and their culture.
On your way back south, take the Top of the World highway out of Dawson to get back to the Alaska highway. It's scenic, but gravel, so easy on any bike. From there, maybe ride to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. It's supposed to be nice as well, but I haven't done it. Again, all of these are easy dual-sport routes. Street bikes could do them, if the weather was decent.
I've only seen the main routes in Alaska after that. Some very nice scenery, but I didn't stray off the beaten path anywhere. It was all way more crowded than the Yukon.
The North Canol would be a great adventure. I would not do it solo, as it is very remote. At the very least take a SPOT locator. Tom Grenon has some good info on this abandoned route.
http://www.motorcycleexplorer.com/index.html It's an out-and-back ride. Lots of river crossings, and arguably as remote a location as you're going to find on a bike in North America. We've thrown around the idea of doing this, and I seem to recall plotting it out on a map to calculate that it'd be around 330km in before you reach an impassable river. So obviously you'd need double that in fuel range to get out again. Some of it is an old road, but now in places it's apparently more of a trail.
I imagine some locals could tell of great singletrack all over Alaska and the Yukon, but I haven't heard of any exciting routes that go point-to-point to get that experience of going somewhere, rather than just ripping it up for a day ride.
I've done bike trips as long as six weeks and 10,000+km up north, as well as some hiking trips, and some interesting stuff like building a raft in Whitehorse and sailing/floating 700km to Dawson City. We've done that one twice. I love it up there. To be honest, I think you'd still have fun on these rides even though the terrain would not challenge you or your bike. The appeal comes from the remoteness of it all. For example - the Yukon is huge, but the population is something like 40,000, and more than 30,000 of those folks live in Whitehorse. Plus the wildlife. I've seen as many as seven bears in one day. And more moose than you can shake a stick at. Plus bison, carbiou, coyotes, foxes, etc.
BTW - You can get tires at major centres up north, like Whitehorse. Make sure your stuff is reliable though, because the distances can be great if you need to be transported to a mechanic. And I can't even imagine how long it would take to get parts sent to some of the places I've been. That's another reason that luggage capacity is important - you're wise to bring a lot of spares and a lot of tools. More than you would normally bring anywhere else.
but had a great time. truly middle of nowhere on the navajo nation as a white eye
