A fatal motorcycle crash near Fox Lake on June 9 left Jeff Sorge and Bob Geith without their long-time friend and the inspiration behind their cross-continental trip, but they may now have made some new lifelong friends after being taken in and cared for by local residents.

The trio was heading from Georgia to Alaska when the accident occurred. They were on their way to see their friend Tom Bolton’s mother in Palmer, AK, after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

“He really wanted us to go on this trip with him,” Sorge told the Star this week. “He was so desperate to go before she passed.”

In the end, Bolton didn’t make it.

Sorge and Geith continued on in his honour, making it to Palmer to visit his mother – although the visit was now a memorial for Bolton.

Last Sunday, a group of people who attended the crash scene joined Sorge and Geith to erect a cross at the site where their friend, Bolton, had his fatal crash.

The Fox Lake residents had made the cross and had asked the pair to come back on their way home for a ceremony.

“They’re such amazing people,” Sorge said. “We’re family forever with that group.”

All through the process, from the people who arrived on the scene of the crash, to the way they were greeted at the hospital, to the support they received from lodges and campgrounds along the way, Sorge said they received care and support on a level he’d never expected.

“Those are the people that need to be recognized in this world,” Sorge said. “Sometimes you see it, but it’s unusual.”

On May 26, the three of them had packed their bikes – Sorge’s and Geith’s BMW GS’s and Bolton’s Ducati Multistrada – into a trailer and headed from Georgia to a friend’s place in West Yellowstone, Mont., to begin their journey on the bikes.

Bolton was from Georgia, while the other two are from Florida, so trailering the bikes to Montana saved many miles of crowded freeway travel across the U.S.

They got on their bikes, riding up through Banff and Jasper, Alta. and along the Alaska Highway.

On the morning of June 9, they left Johnson’s Crossing, stopping briefly in Whitehorse before heading for Dawson City.

When Bolton’s bike veered off the North Klondike Highway and into a ditch, Sorge said Bolton was riding at the rear and didn’t know why he went off the road. The coroner’s report suggested he may have hit loose gravel.

As soon as the accident happened, Geith hit the SOS button on his Garmin InReach and headed for the nearest house, while Sorge begin basic first aid.

Geith ran into Pauline Paton’s house and called 911.

Then Sorge said Paton started calling her neighbours, who all began to show up at the scene.

“The neighbours work really well together,” said Mandy Johnson, owner of Yukon Horsepacking Adventures, which is close to the crash site at the south end of Fox Lake. The waterway is about 90 kilometres north of Whitehorse.

She said her husband, Armin, “jumped in the truck and headed up there immediately.”

Sorge said they were then joined by a local who said they had been a military medic, and a German internal medicine doctor who had been passing by on the highway.

Bolton was still alive when they got to him, but sadly never woke up after the crash.

It took about 40 minutes for the ambulance to arrive at the scene, and Sorge and Geith got on their bikes to follow it to Whitehorse General Hospital.

When they arrived, they were met by Marshal Johnson (no relation to Mandy and Armen), who works as part of the First Nation Health Programs (FNHP) at Whitehorse General.

Though he works mostly with Indigenous youth initiatives at the hospital, on this day Marshal Johnson stepped in to the emotional and cultural support role that the FNHP team provides for family and patients.

He saw them pull up to hospital and took them aside to give support when the news of their friend’s death was delivered.

“He brought us into an office and sat us down,” Sorge said, “And they came in and told us he had passed.”

Hearing the pair are religious, he then arranged for a local pastor to come talk to them, while contacting a local sheriff in Bolton’s hometown to get Bolton’s pastor to deliver the news to his family there.

Sorge also said the RCMP officer attending to the crash, Const. Carson Hutton-Brown, was at the hospital as well.

He came in and gave Sorge a big hug. The compassion the officer treated Sorge with is something he says he will never forget.

“He was wonderful,” Sorge said.

Once they left the hospital, Mandy and Armen Johnson stepped in.

“All the neighbours got together and said, ‘Gee, we just have it on our heart to help these guys,’” Mandy Johnson said.

They decided to offer a cabin, and got the neighbours together to have a dinner with them in the dining lodge at the horse packing ranch.

They tried to get the pair to stay longer, but Sorge said they didn’t want to feel like they were taking advantage of the generosity.

So, they said goodbye and kept on their journey to see Bolton’s mother in Palmer and have a memorial there.

All along the way, Sorge said, motorcyclists and lodge owners had heard about the accident and provided them with supportive words.

The story had gained traction in the news media at the time, as there was another motorcyclist who had died in a crash on the Dempster Highway a day before Bolton’s fatal mishap.

That individual was also from Georgia, and though this was a coincidence, it sparked attention.

Bolton’s family encouraged Sorge and Geith to continue on the trip. When they came back through Dawson City, they were contacted again by the people down at Fox Lake.

“That whole group from out there at Fox reached and said, ‘we know you’re coming back, we’re not going to take no for an answer; you are going to stay with us,’” Sorge said, breaking into tears while on the phone with the Star from Tatogga Lake Resort on the Cassiar Highway, “‘and you’re having dinner with us, and you’re having breakfast with us, and we would like to make a cross.’”

After last Sunday’s ceremony, Sorge and Geith should now finally be on their way home, crossing back into Montana to pick up their bike trailer any day now.