Blog 5: The Yuke

Ah, we've gotten behind. And our time in the Yukon was about six weeks ago now... Fortunately it left some strong memories. 

The Yukon is about as wild as you can find in the western world. It shares a border with Alaska and its north breaches the Arctic Circle. It's 30 per cent bigger than Germany - but with only around 35,000 people. And plenty of wildlife - 300,000 caribou (!), 55,000 moose, 17,000 bears, 5,000 wolves, etc. 

We spent most of our time in and around Dawson City where a friend of ours from Vancouver, Ange, works summers. It's a seasonal sort of town as tourists and employees flock in summer's endless days, but there is a mass exodus for winter - understandable as the sun barely rises and it's -40. Nearly everyone leaves. A local told me that Dawson has the highest per capita rate of suicide and STDs in Canada. Sunshine: it's important.

Dawson has character. It's Jack London country, Gold Rush country, and the frontier flavour is still strong. Weathered wooden houses that line the dusty streets often tilt precariously - the town is built on permafrost and fireplaces melt this unevenly. Gerties, the casino, has can can girls and cabaret, and at the Downtown pub they put a human toe in your shot. 

Something about the frontier vibe got in us and we decided that we were intrepid folk. The type of people that would canoe 160 km down the Yukon River to Alaska. We rented a canoe, loaded our gear and pushed off from Dawson. On the way to Eagle, Alaska (just over the border), the river winds through some pretty impressive scenery: a ghost town - abandoned since the gold rush, the wreck of a steamer, a few native reserves, some starkly beautiful wilderness and plenty of little islands. These islands made good spots for camping and we cooked by campfire. In two and a half days we paddled into Eagle, and from there got a boat back to Dawson. 

It was a real trip highlight. Our bear fear has been downgraded from infinite to moderate, but we were still a little worried about grizzlies while camping. However, the only wildlife problem we had were two seagulls which swooped the canoe and tried to shit on us for about 10 minutes for getting too close to the nest. It was funny for a while, but by the end we were thinking about batting them out of the sky with the paddles. On our last day we rose at dawn and, drifting down in the still morning, we floated past a moose on the bank. Puzzled, she looked at us for a bit and then crashed back into the forest. The hazy light and our hazy minds made it seem dreamlike.

While paddling 160 km to Alaska sounds pretty hardcore, the reality was a little different. Eagle is downstream and the Yukon flows quickly. You can get there in about 20 hours on the water without lifting a paddle. So Jess and I spent most of our time drifting down sideways or backwards, lying back in the sun, taking photos, talking rubbish, occasionally reading. It got even cushier on my birthday when Jess surprised me and produced a bottle of red and some tasty cheeses. The next two hours were not hard. But even as we sipped our red, got a little tipsy, blissed out in the sun, we were sliding under some impressive cliffs and making good time to Eagle.

Pushing off from Dawson

Doing it tough

Eagle, Alaska.

Jess also got older in Dawson and we celebrated her birthday by watching a local funk band at the Midnight Sun hotel. The band was good, and the hotel well named, because as we were dancing at 2am there was still light streaming through an open door just to the right of the stage. The light thing was pretty bizarre. We saw sunsets at 12.30am and it never really got dark - just dusky. The light, and the knowledge that winter will be there again soon, gives Dawsoners extra energy. They really make summer count - it's kinda manic. After a summer in the Yukon, the winter must almost come as a relief. Almost. 

 Sunset at 12.30 am

We talked to a few Yukoners about surviving the winter and many of them say they like it. Some intense bonds are built when you're going through the ordeal with friends, and for people with a project it can be a good time to focus. But one friend who works summers said he would never do a winter, because friends of his had never quite been the same since.

It was brilliant to catch up with Ange and meet her lovely bunch of friends. We had some fun nights out, and afternoons spent in a canoe with beers or doing walks around the town. It was a little sad to leave.

Ange, Nic, Pitcher.

Keeper of the toe kindly rubs it on my face...

then makes sure I drink the toe-shot.

Not far from Dawson City is the Tombstone National Park. The landscape is stunning - everywhere mountains, part frozen lakes and rolling low green tundra. We did a two day hike to Grizzly Lake which mostly ran along a lofty ridge with valley walls falling steeply on either side. The clear lake sat quite high, and right underneath a number of jagged black peaks. It was another great hike, and it's something we want to do more of back home.

On the trail we met a lone walker named Berwyn, who works as a part time ranger. We were initially sceptical of his name and his Crocodile Hunter t-shirt, but he was fascinating. He lives in the Yukon year round, and for spring he spends a month in a bush camp working on his birch syrup venture (it's like maple syrup, but comes from the birch). When we saw him he was trying to get photos of two rare plants for a book on the local flora, and he and his young family usually live in a cabin he built near Tombstone. He was a very relaxed guy, and seemed completely happy to wander by himself or with us. In fact he seemed to be completely happy just about all the time, even in a Yukon winter. He seemed to be one of the more 'enlightened' people I've met. While monks aim for enlightenment through sitting and not doing anything, Berwyn seemed to be enlightened through doing stuff. He was always working on a new project, or walking in the wilderness, or doing something positive. He was doing a lot of things right I reckon.

The Dempster Highway starts near Tombstone and heads north into the Actic. It's ridiculously beautiful. One ranger described it to us as "hallucinatory" and it is amazing how many remarkable and completely different sights you pass in an hour on the Dempster. Parts of it are like the moon, and then you turn a corner and it's an idyllic river or lake scene, and then mountain sheep are dotted all over some crazy red cliff. The highway is not paved, but The Fridge was heroic again and didn't get a flat like many others. We also passed a car that had run off the road down a big ditch and was smashed up pretty bad. It was nerve racking as we went to help - we didnt know if we were the first on the scene of a bad accident with bad injuries - but the car was empty. We made it as far as the Arctic Circle, which was unsurprisingly a little chilly, then turned around and headed back to Dawson.

Friends of a friend live in Whitehorse, the Yukon's capital, and Jill and Paul were lovely to us. They served a dinner of bison (Paul goes bison hunting by snowmobile in winter) and recently caught trout. Both were delicious and we had a fun night drinking and hearing their stories from the Yukon and travels in Africa, Asia, etc. Neither of them are from the Yukon, but love their life there where hiking, hunting, fishing, cycling, and other adventure plays a central role.

We liked Whitehorse a lot. It was more cosmopolitan than we had expected, with some cool cafes, restaurants, and music shops. We got Fridgey's oil changed, because we like him.

Our lifestyle has changed from the time we spent WWOOFing. Obviously we're not staying in one place or working anymore, and we now live a budget nomad existence. We sleep in the back of the car or in the tent, cook by campfire, hike often and shower less. We are often indecently stinky.

I love cooking by campfire. There's something primal about making a fire and sitting around it. It just feels right.

But this camping lifestyle has put us at the mercy of the many many many mosquitos that Canada's summer brings out. I thought Australia had bugs, but some places we've been have been insane. One morning we woke up in the back of the car, and you could see the little bastards queueing up outside. They were all excited, banging up against the windows, and as soon as Jess opened the boot a squadron of about 50 swarmed in to stick us.

We've become mosquito assassins. With all this enforced training we've mastered the one-handed grab out of the air. Whenever we stop for a break from driving they sneak in, and when we start again the driver drives and the passenger kills. We must have killed hundreds - their tiny corpses are piling up in the car.

Another thing there is no shortage of is RVs (motorhomes). So many American retirees make the trip up from the northwest to Alaska, all in various forms of slightly unnecessary RVs. Some of them are huge bus-things. Some of them are pulled by semi-trailer cabs. They're out of control. 

Driving to Whitehorse we accidentally fell into an RV convoy for about an hour and a half. There were four of them and The Fridge. We drove second from last, between Carri-Lite and Senator. It all went so well for a while, like they all forgot that we weren't retired and we didn't have a toilet in our vehicle, but then suddenly they pulled over as one, and waved us through. 

Our last adventure in the area was to drive from the Yukon into Alaska, via the Top of the World Highway, and then back into Kluane National Park in the Yukon. All of this drive is renowned for its natural beauty but we saw very little of it because of thick smoke from four nearby forest fires. 

It was one of those summer days where it feels like the rest of the world is burning. The air was dry, hot and reeked of smoke. The sun was reduced to a dull gleam, like a coin, and barely registered - the light that did penetrate was a sickly yellow. Running atop lofty ridges, the Top of the World highway usually reveals expansive views below. They were completely hidden. In Kluane, which apparently rivals the Rockies, the huge peaks were just silhouettes. It was dissappointing, but the weather has been very kind to us otherwise...

Be well!

Nic.

August 7, 2009.