David and Enid's Travels

Dezadeash Lake with Enid on Rock Glacier trail

We are on the edge of Kluane National Park, which is just across the road from this Yukon Government campground.  It is cheaper to stay in the Yukon park, and as well, there is a fire ban on in Kluane, but not on the territorial side.  Firewood is also free in the Yukon parks, so it wasn’t a hard decision to make to stay here, and not at Kathleen Lake, which is in the national park.  At Kathleen Lake campground there is also no drinking or cooking water, while here we have the lake.

It is a bit cool in the southerly breeze from the lake, but at least it is keeping many of the bugs away.  However there are large clouds of some kind of a tiny gnat.  They don’t bite, but they are flying all around.  There are also many bees here, getting the last of the fireweed blossoms.  They seem to be attracted instantly to the truck, so as soon as you stop they swarm around it.

We left Whitehorse this morning in the rain, again.  By the time we were partway here to the park it had stopped, and now it is a very nice clear sunny day, with some clouds.  The temperature is about 17 °C, a bit cooler than it has been, but it is sure nice to be out of the rain.  It is surprising that they have a fire ban here, given the amount of rain we have been in.  It must be dry here in the rain shadow of the St. Elias Mountains, Canada’s highest, just to our west.  From here you can’t see the glaciers, but we will probably see them on one of our hikes if we get high enough.

This afternoon we hiked a short trail called “Rock Glacier Trail”.  We scrambled up the hill a bit past the end of the maintained trail, which was easy to do as it wasn’t too steep, and is just the broken rock of an old moraine.  At the top there were some small stunted poplars.  Someone had also taken the trouble to construct several chairs from the broken rock, so we sat in them and took our pictures.

After that we drove the Yukon to the boat launch and washed it in the lake.  It was very muddy, as there are several kilometers of construction between here and Haines Junction.  When they repair the roads here they water them, and then grade and roll the gravel.  It must help to compact the rock, but it sure makes a mess of your vehicle when you drive through it. 

Last night we set up the tarp to eat supper, and after supper I went to lower one side to keep the rain from running off onto our tent.  When I did that I somehow pulled the peg out of the other corner, and the pole struck Enid in the head.  She was sitting at the table, and she got quite a large goose egg, and a headache.  So in addition to getting us wet, interrupting our travel with road closures, the rain has caused other problems as well!  It is very nice this afternoon to be able to sit out without worrying about the rain.

I find it surprising that the leaves here on some of the trees are already starting to turn color.  It hasn’t frozen yet, but the poplars are turning yellow.  The berries that we would normally pick in the late fall such as high bush cranberries are already ripe.  The growing season is so very short, but the long hours of daylight still allow the plants to flourish.

Pelly Crossing on the highway between Dawson City and Whitehorse

It was very foggy out this morning, low cloud actually, hanging over Dawson when we left, but as we drove farther south it began to clear.  By mid-morning it wasn’t a bad day, though we didn’t do much except drive.  We got to Whitehorse about 3:30 pm, and checked into the Hi Country RV Park http://www.hicountryrvyukon.com/ just west of the city along the Alaska Highway.  It is a nice RV park, as RV parks go.  They’ve left up enough trees to give a little bit of a division between each site, though not nearly as much as there is in the Yukon campgrounds.  But, it is close to town, only three or four minutes away, and it has showers, so we can wash up tomorrow morning.  After we got our tent up, we went into Whitehorse and restocked with groceries for the next week.

Unfortunately, the rainy weather has apparently followed us here.  While it was nice when we arrived, it sprinkled a bit while we ate supper, and now it is raining quite steadily, and perhaps has settled in to rain for the night.  Tomorrow we will be going over to Kluane National park.  We will have no Internet access for a while, possibly until we get to Tok, Alaska in about a week.

Boundary, Alaska, Historical roadhouse

It began to rain last evening, just as we were leaving Dawson for the Yukon River campground, which is across the ferry on the other side of the river.  We got the tarp up over the picnic table, the tent up dry between spits of rain, and all our gear into the tent without getting it wet. 

It rained heavily a few times during supper, but then it cleared a bit, so we walked down by the Yukon River.  The bank of the river looks very muddy, but the ground is actually quite firm.  There are many rocks right along the river, each one about eight inches to a foot in diameter, that have been swept clean by the fast current in the Yukon.  The river is very high, and very muddy.  It is so fast that the ferry makes a wide sweeping arc as it crosses the river.

Rain continued quite steadily through the night, but stopped by about seven this morning.  We packed up, and got everything away quite dry, except for the tent fly which is saturated, and so we packed it in a garbage bag separately from the rest of the tent.  We left for Chicken, Alaska, at about 8:30 in misty rain.  As we got to higher elevation the rain increased, as did the fog, for we were now driving at the same altitude as the clouds.  It was very wet, and very hard to see.

We got to the border just about ten a.m. and the border crossing was having trouble with their Internet because of the rain.  They use a satellite connection, and with all the cloud the signal was not very strong, and so very slow.  We waited about ten minutes at the crossing while they checked our passports.

“We hope the road isn’t closed,” Enid said as the border guard handed our documents back.

“Watch the shoulders.  They’re very soft with all this rain,” replied the guard.

We drove on, past the junction to the road with Eagle.  It is clearly marked “Closed” with a large fluorescent sign.  At about twenty miles past the border we kept meeting vehicles, a couple of motorhomes, so I thought “good, the road to Chicken must still be open.”

Within another mile or so Chicken Creek started to run beside the road.  It grew rapidly into a muddy  torrent, ripping through the willows, and racing beside the road, great standing waves of muddy water crashing over every boulder, and nearing the top of the road.  As we crested a hill, we saw a blue flashing light, and a truck sitting sideways across the road, just ahead of where the creek was now overflowing its banks and crossing the highway.

A grizzled bearded worker, very stereotypically the Alaskan bushman, walked up to us and said, “You’ll have to go back to Dawson.  The road’s closed, and it’s the third time in the last two weeks.”

So that is what we did.  Along the way we flagged down most of the oncoming cars, including a couple of motorcycles, and told them the news.  Unfortunately, we were the first car turned back.  We stopped at a rest area just across the Canadian border, and talked to the drivers of the last two vehicles we’d met.  They said they had driven across, but that there was a lot of water running over the road.  One driver said he’d met the service truck coming down the hill. 

Chicken is out for this trip.  The only place we really saw in Alaska was the tiny hamlet of Boundary, just across the US – Canadian border.  There is an historical roadhouse there, which is the subject of today’s picture.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to see much of the magnificent views from the “Top of the World Highway,” just the mist covered tops of the mountains below us.

We are now on our way back to Whitehorse.  The forecast for Dawson is not good, no sun until next Thursday and so we decided to stay in a hotel in Dawson today, as it is still pouring rain.  We will drive to Whitehorse tomorrow.  We’re in a nice little cabin, with a kitchenette, so it will be the first supper indoors for us since we left Prince Albert.  We’ve also got the tent fly hanging up inside it, so it should soon be dry.

We had a diagnostic light that’s been on in our Yukon for the last two days.  We stopped at a service station when we got back to Dawson, and they checked it out with their computer.  They indicated that it’s probably not a big problem, but they couldn’t fix it anyway, and we’d have to go to a dealer.  The closest one will be in Whitehorse.  The light is off now, though they said it will eventually come back on again, so if it does before Whitehorse, we’ll have it looked at there.  That would mean we can’t leave Whitehorse until at least Monday.

Grave in Dawson City

Cloudy and cool today, unlike yesterday when it hit over 32 degrees.  We drove to the Discovery Creek historic site, stopped in at Dredge number 4 (but didn’t go on the tour), and then stopped for a shower at the RV camp and laundromat. 

After that we drove up the Dome road to a lady’s house where she does crafts.  She told us that we should tour the cemetaries, so we did that.  There are many gravesites from the days of the Gold Rush, some with markers that must have been replaced.  Many of the markers are old wooden boards, and it is impossible to read them any longer.  After that we came into town and toured the Dawson City Museum for a couple of hours.

Shortly we will be going to get some groceries, and then to find a campsite on the other side of the Yukon River.  We have to cross the ferry.  Tomorrow we will probably be going across the “Top of the World Highway” into the US, and will see where we end up.

Robert Service Cabin, Dawson City, Yukon

We decided to leave Tombstone Campground this morning, as there didn’t seem any reason to hike over unknown terrain, just to justify staying here one more day.  We reached the junction with the Klondike Highway before 11:30, bought gas, caught up our email through the open access wifi at the Klondike River Lodge, and washed the Yukon.  It was very dusty.  We then drove to the Klondike River campground which is about 20 kilometres east of Dawson, set up camp, and drove into town.

As you approach town it looks so very desolate.  All the ground is nothing but bare piles of rock and gravel, the dregs from the days of mining by dredging.  Right on the outskirts of town there is an RV park with a Laundromat, and a small garage.  We stopped, got the tire fixed, and washed the clothes.  After that we spent a couple of hours in Dawson, walking down many of the streets – let’s face it, Dawson isn’t all that big!

Among other things we stopped into the Palace Grand Theatre.  When we were here in ’97 we attended the Gaslight Follies there.  Now the theatre isn’t used for that any longer, and it has been made into a museum.  The Gaslight Follies have moved into the casino.  We don’t care now, but when we were here in 1997 Graeme and Geoffrey really enjoyed the show, and now they wouldn’t be able to, as entrance is restricted to those over nineteen.

We walked to the Robert Service cabin which has raspberries growing from its sod roof.  The restored Jack London cabin is just down the street, with Pierre Berton’s old residence in between.  It is strange that this small town has such an interesting literary legacy.  We looked at the cabin, but didn’t go into the museum.  After that we walked by a few of the other old restored buildings, including the largest of them all, the commissioner’s residence.  However, it had just closed, and the next tour isn’t until Friday, so we likely won’t see inside.

After that we stopped for an ice cream cone.  I debated whether to get one scoop or two, and settled for two.  “Would you like that in a waffle cone, cone, or cup?” the clerk asked.

“A cup,” I answered while Enid was deciding what flavour she wanted.   But when the two scoops got into the cup, it looked more like at least three scoops, so Enid and I just shared.

Speaking of raspberries, Enid is now out picking them here in the campsite.  There are many wild raspberry bushes here.  The high bush cranberries are loaded with ripe berries, but we really don’t have any way to prepare them for eating, so they are safe. 

When Enid got back with the raspberries, we decided to eat some of them right away, just in case there is an extra load of wormy protein in them tomorrow!  We’ve had that experience before.

We also defrosted the fridge tonight.  It has been extremely good to have that, so much better than a cooler.  We can keep almost a week’s frozen meet in its small freezer, milk, our bread so it doesn’t go stale so quickly, and many fruits and vegetables.

We decided to leave Tombstone Park this morning.  The weather is still fabulous, so we are going in to Dawson.  We need to get some tire repairs, and do the laundry etc.,  so that will probably be how we spend the afternoon.

Mount Monolith from Grizzly Creek trail viewpoint

Today we hiked on the Grizzly Creek trail three kilometres in to the Mount Monolith viewpoint.  That wasn’t our original plan.  In one of our guidebooks it says there is a trail that starts from a gravel pit at kilometre 61.5 of the Dempster Highway.  But there is no gravel pit at that location, and nowhere that would be possible to hike.  We drove back to a pullout we’d seen coming south, but it was into a deserted private cabin.  So we continued south to the start of the Grizzly Creek trail, arriving just at the same time as a tour bus.  They let the passengers out and I thought we would be forced to pass them along the trail, but they didn’t go very far.  We passed them in the first 200 metres, and I’m sure that’s about as far as they went.  They definitely would not have been fit enough to do this trail.

The trail starts out broad and flat, and nicely gravelled.  But almost at the point where we left the tour group, the trail becomes narrow and very rooted.  It continues like this, fairly flat, as it follows the creek.  At kilometer 1.7 it begins a climb.  The first few metres of the climb are up a set of stairs, which I don’t quite see the reason for, as shortly the trail became steeper, and quite rugged, with several locations where there is a lot of broken rock, and there are no stairs for the rest of the trail.  At kilometre two you rise above the trees that you have been walking in to this point, and can start to see east towards the Ogilvie Mountains.  At kilometre three you reach a viewpoint where you can first see Mount Monolith.  We ate lunch here, and then Enid lay down in the shade while I walked on another half a kilometre, and 50 metres more gain of elevation, to a total height of 1420 m.  This makes the trail quite steep, as it has gained about 400 m of elevation in the last kilometre and a half before the viewpoint.  From this higher viewpoint you get a sweeping view across the valley towards Mount Monolith.

As we ate a group of about ten German speaking hikers went past us.  They stopped to eat at the top of the ridge, and they were just leaving as I got there.  On our way down we saw quite a number of backpackers hiking in with heavily laden packs.  Two of the hikers were young park rangers.  This would be a difficult backpacking trip, as the climb is steep, and you are only half way up the altitude gain at the viewpoint.

Once down the trail, we drove back towards the campgrounds, and found a gravel pit at kilometre 67.5, so we assume that it is a typo in the tour book.  We may go there and do some more hiking tomorrow, or we may just go into Dawson.

David and Enid at lunch spot on Angelcomb Mountain

It is almost too good to be true. Today was our second good day of weather in a row. Although it was never a completely clear sky, always obscured somewhat by high haze, it was a warm day, with the temperature over 22 °C by noon.

We had a great sleep, with no noise in the campground overnight, and no rain drizzling on the tent. We both slept in until almost nine am today. While it’s still very light here at night, it’s also darker than in Inuvik, with some sense of twilight and morning.

Today we hiked up on Angelcomb Mountain. We started by pulling off the road at a siding, and simply struck off across the tundra. At first it was just short dwarf birch, but by picking our way we could get through parts that weren’t too thick. As we got higher up onto the ridge, the small brush ended, and we were in alpine moss and short grass. We kept climbing, and just before lunch spotted a trail coming from the north of where we were. We followed this up to a large rock outcropping that sheltered us from the wind while we ate lunch. It was warm, and the wind was strong enough to keep us bug free.

After lunch we continued to follow this trail, and climbed quite high to about 1650 m, though not all the way to the summit of the mountain. It would have been another kilometer or so of walking atop the ridge to get there, so we started back down. On the way down we followed the trail to the gravel pit where it starts. We met a couple on the trail, formerly from Candle Lake, but now living in BC. We chatted with them for quite a while, and learned that this is the Angelcomb trail. However it isn’t advertised by the information centre, I believe because it is where the Dall sheep have their lambs in May and June.

The views from the heights are spectacular, and Enid is getting less intimidated by them. She felt quite proud of her accomplishment today in getting up so high on an exposed ridge.

David changing tire on Dempster

The Dempster is a highway whose existence one could easily question. Completed in the 1970’s, with hopes of an oil or gas boom, but that went bust, it is 737 kilometres, all but 15 or so of them tire chewing gravel. Today it serves little purpose other than to supply Inuvik (and indirectly other small towns like Tuktoyaktuk) and to bring tourists to the North. Without any industry to speak of, except for the hope that gas will still be discovered, Inuvik, like so many other northern towns doesn’t really have much promise for the future. One wonders why the people of Tuktoyaktuk seem excited about the possibility of a road to Inuvik, for it will destroy the isolation which makes the town unique, and Southerners want to visit.

Tourists are the main users of the road in summer, and there are far more campers on the back of half and three quarter ton trucks than there are supply semis. It is often a very long distance between each vehicle on the road, so isolation and remoteness are truly present, and what draws the tourists. There aren’t a lot of travellers, but most of them are Europeans seeking the wilderness experience.

This morning we left Inuvik early, on the road by seven am, and drove 670 km to the Tombstone campground. The reason for our early start was a restless night. It’s the August long weekend, and it was noisy in the town. It wasn’t the campers keeping us awake, but rather the party going on across the street.

Before we even reached the Mackenzie River ferry we had our first flat tire of the day. It was almost impossible to get the nuts off the wheel, but I just managed to do it by jumping on the tire iron and forcing it as hard as I could. Finally the final nut broke free. It didn’t take too long to change, in fact we were the first vehicle on the ferry when it opened at 9:30. The Peel River crossing was very high, as the river is in flood. Many large driftwood logs were floating rapidly by. Because of the high water, the approach to the ferry is very soft, and I put the Yukon in four wheel drive to get off.

Just before the NWT-Yukon border we spotted several small herds of about twenty to thirty caribou. They have magnificent huge antlers, and were grazing in the tundra. The caribou were not very frightened of vehicles, several of which were stopped along the road in this area; however, when I got out of the vehicle with my cameras they were much more skittish, though they stayed around long enough to allow me to get some good pictures before they moved out of sight.

Grizzly on the side of the road

Just a few kilometres down the road was a grizzly bear, walking quickly down the road. We stopped, and Enid took this picture. My cameras were all in the back of the Yukon, and I was not going to get out and get them! I did climb over the back seat and dragged them to the front. To top off the problems, I only had one picture left on the memory card in my camera, and so had to change that. I missed some good pictures because of it. The bear wasn’t too large as grizzlies go, but would have weighed three hundred or more pounds. Its coat was very long and shaggy, fur probably 10 centimeters or more in length. It walked slowly along the edge of the road, digging at things, probably ground squirrel nests, paying absolutely no attention to us in the vehicle. Then it stopped about 25 metres farther up the road from us, and started eating something from the ditch. I thought it would be a ground squirrel, but we drove right up to the bear and saw that it was eating a caribou. It stripped the flesh from the skin, and ate only the flesh, leaving the hide behind. A few ravens sat watching, but didn’t come close. We watched for about ten minutes, before it stopped eating and moved slowly away still with its head down scratching at the ground and searching for other kinds of food.

After lunch we stopped at Eagle Plain and got our tire fixed and changed, so we once again had two spares. Later in the afternoon we reached the flooded area of the Ogilivie River. There was a stretch of several hundred metres where they were repairing landslides, and the road was very rough. It was here that we got the second flat tire of the day, this time on the passenger side rear. We pulled off to a viewpoint, and tried to change the tire. I couldn’t budge any of the wheel nuts. There were two trucks there that were hauling and working on the road repairs. One driver came over and used a sledge hammer to pound on the nuts while we torqued them off. Most of them came loose doing that, but two would not budge. He then got a four foot long pry bar and we used that on the tire iron while he hammered again, and that broke the nuts free. To complicate matters further, the jack couldn’t lift the Yukon high enough from the ground. Enid got a flat stone from the river bank, and we put that under the jack to lift it higher. At this point another delivery truck came along and the two men in it helped us finish changing the tire. They even threw it back up on top of the roof racks for us.

We drove on with no further incident to Tombstone Campground, and got here about seven pm, NWT time. So all told we were on the road for twelve hours today.

Enid and David in the Arctic Ocean at Tuktoyaktuk

Well, we finally made it here after a thirteen year wait.  It was an absolutely fabulous day, the pilot said the best one that they’ve had here all this summer.  The sky was clear, and the air was calm, and so we got excellent views out over the tundra.

Well, at least I did.  Unfortunately on the flight up Enid got stuck with the seat next to a window that  was not clear plastic, but rather  cloudy semi-translucent yellow.  She couldn’t see anything out of it, and it wasn’t easy to get a view out of either the window ahead or behind her,  Fortunately we got a different seat on the way back, and so then she could see ok.  The plane was just a small six seater Cessna 270, and it was in pretty bad shape.  The back seat Enid had on the way up wouldn’t even lock in place at first.  So we weren’t too impressed with that part of the adventure.

However, all in all it was a fun hour over the Mackenzie Delta, followed by two hours in the town.  It’s a pretty typical northern town, small, dilapidated, and poor.  We took a “dip” in the Arctic Ocean.  Well we waded.  It isn’t really all that cold, not much different than any northern Saskatchewan lake.  Enid said it was much warmer than the mountain lakes she’s swum in.  I went down into the ice house, but Enid didn’t, as it was down a vertical ladder about thirty feet.  It was very cool under the permafrost.  I don’t think that they really use it any longer, but it does make a good tourist attraction.

Tomorrow we will be leaving and driving south.