About 20 miles south of Deadhorse, I encountered a tundra fog ( dissipating in this image ) that instantly froze on my faceshield. As I was wearing glasses under the shield, flipping it up did'nt seem to be the smart thing to do. About the the 4th or 5th time I reached up to scrape off the ice (it was like trying to see thru a shower door) I found out that apparently I'm not as good riding an overloaded, heavy beast like this, one handed, blind, in loose deep gravel as I thought I was. I low sided the bike at ~50mph. The left pannier sheared off but stayed attached long enough to save my leg or bike from far worse damage. After the bike and I parted company, it bounced to the other side, then bounced back to the the sorry state in which it rests in this pic. Fortunately, except for a sprained left ankle with a piece of bone chipped off my medial maleolus, I was OK and the bike ( which later turned out to have sustained $7000.00 worth of damage ), still ran.
My only regret is that I didn't take more pictures of the Haul Rd. heading south that day. The conditions were horrible. They were made worse by the extensive road maintenance being done that day, which consisted of watering the calcium chloride impregnated dirt down to the point that it was like riding on oily snot. Where they were grading the road, it was like riding thru 4-6 inches of loose, oily snot. Those places are where I expected to go down. I t was so slippery that you couldn't even stop and put your foot down. Several of the other riders I met up in Deadhorse crashed that day on those stretches. I think the weight of my bike, coupled with the TKC 80's gave me better traction.