The Yukon
We spent October 2021 in Canada’s Yukon Territory, a time when peak tourist season is over, fall colors are finished, and winter has already begun. We came on a quest to see the northern lights, and had poor weather and luck the entire time we were there, but the raw scenic beauty made up for the lack of aurora. We flew into the city of Whitehorse, and explored most of the territory via car, going as far north as Dawson City and Tombstone Territorial Park.
Snowcapped mountains surround Whitehorse, the capital and largest city in the Yukon. It’s home to the major airport and acts as a commercial hub for the rest of the territory.
The population of the city is around 30k, while the second largest city, Dawson, is barely 1,300. It seems like a bigger city than it is. The downtown is modern, clean, and well organized. Plenty of shops and restaurants of every type, and multiple large grocery stores.
Whitehorse is incredibly beautiful, and its benefitted immensely from very well thought out urban planning, where all the neighborhoods are separated by forest to reduce noice and pollution. The city has the cleanest air of any city in the world one of it’s many claims to fame. The mighty Yukon river runs through the downtown, and the interesting thing you can notice from this picture of the urban city center is the lack of industry along the waterfront. The airport is situated on a plateau overlooking the city, so you can’t see it at all from the city center and you rarely notice the noise from planes.
The oldest neighborhood in the city, Riverdale, lies across the Yukon River from the main commercial center. The surrounding wilderness here is full of hiking and bike trails, with many going up into the mountains in the background.
Karol in front of the northern lights just on the outskirts of town; this spot was only 3 miles from downtown Whitehorse. Just a few minutes by car will bring you to pristine wilderness with no light pollution, which makes Whitehorse one of the premier destinations in the world to see the northern lights.
Facing southwest, showing the city center as well as the airport plateau above.
Some more relatively weak Aurora from our favorite spot near the city.
Our first adventure was driving south on the Klondike Highway, towards Skagway, Alaska. About 45 minutes south of Whitehorse is the small hamlet of Carcross, home to the “worlds smallest desert” pictured here. In reality it’s just a cool sand dune area where you can ride ORV’s (not an actual desert, too much precipitation) not unlike Silver Lake Dunes in Michigan. I figured this would be a great place to try and capture the northern lights.
The BC border isn’t too far south from Carcross, at this point we were maybe 1.5 hours from Whitehorse. Due to Covid restricting traffic in and out of Canada, we only saw 2-3 cars the entire drive as no one was coming up from Alaska.
Golden hour light hits the lower elevations of a rugged northern B.C mountain.
Karol pretending she’s not a model.
The entire drive south from Carcross towards Skagway was breathtaking; huge mountains, lakes, rivers, every bend was more scenic than the last.
The extreme northern part of BC is extremely beautiful and rugged. Lot’s of areas to pull off the road and camp, this would be an amazing place to take a camper van or RV.
Haines Junction, the gateway to Kluane National Park and the largest junction/town of any size for quite some distance. There’s food, gas, lodging, and a few hundred people that live here. And 2 Chinese restaurants and an ice cream place. It doesn’t have much history other than it came about in the 1940s during construction of the Alaskan Highway. The entire town is flanked by massive mountains, which are home to Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan at 19,551 ft.
Having decent Chinese Food in a place like this was a cool experience. It also wasn’t absurdly priced, so I gave it 5/5 stars.
Some nice off-grid homes mixed in with more bare bones cabins.
The mountains of Kluane National Park
Once you leave Haines Junction and head west to Silver City, the views get even better. The entire drive up to this point had mountains of some size, but these were the largest so far.
The occasional off-grid cabin dots the landscape, giving the place a familiar human element even though it can be hours between towns.
This was as far as we drove on the Alaskan Highway, near Silver City, just short of Destruction Bay and the Alaskan border. Had we continued westbound, we couldn’t been to Fairbanks in about 6-7 hours. This area was incredibly beautiful and looked similar to parts of Iceland - large tidal estuaries with snow capped rugged peaks a few hundred feet away. Unfortunately it became incredibly foggy as soon as we arrived, and it looked like a storm was headed our way.
Silver City, marked so on the map at least, turned out to be a University of Calgary environmental research station, as well as a local air strip. Surely at one point this was an area of silver mining/prospecting, but nothing of the sort today. Just Karol and her coffee mug.
We took several two-tracks off the main roads to see where they went, but didn’t push our luck too much in the rented Ford.
The town of Carmacks is the first remnant of civilization you see after you leave Whitehorse, after 1 hour 45 minutes driving north. There’s gas, groceries, a restaurant, and anything else you “need”.
The bridge out of Carmacks heading north, next stop of any sort is a gas station in Pelly Crossing, about 1.5 hours away.
Five Finger Rapids - Although this doesn’t look like much, during the Gold Rush this section of the Yukon was infamous for the wrong reasons. Eventually the rapids were blown up and the river was altered, providing safe passage for gold prospectors heading north to Dawson. Currently it’s a good place to stop just north of Carmacks, and there’s trails leading down to some nice overlooks.
A furry mountain goat makes an appearance.
The next stop after Carmacks is Pelly Crossing, a gas station, bridge, and a few dozen homes.
The final few hours after Stewarts Crossing (an unmanned fuel point, outhouse, and a large steel bridge) looked like this.
The further north you go, the landscape becomes more and more desolate, the trees get shorter, the air becomes cooler…
Once you get within a few kilometers of Dawson City, it becomes obvious that human’s have made an impact here. These formations are the result of industrial scale dredging that started after the initial goal rush ended.
Most of the creeks and rivers in the area have been permanently dredged/altered due to gold mining.
The entire drive into Dawson is covered in dredged piles of mine tailings.
Although thousands of prospectors had left the area with less than they had when they arrived, there was still gold to be found. The final few kilometers before Dawson City show a striking reminder of the area’s recent boom town history. This view was captured from the top of Midnight Dome, which gives you 360 views over Dawson and the surrounding area.
Dawson City, famous for being the epicenter of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898, is a remote and quirky place. No chain stores or paved sidewalks, a population of 1,300, and over a dozen saloons. It used to be home to nearly 40,000 people at it’s peak, and just a few years later in the early 1900s was back down to a couple thousand. What’s left is a remarkably restored historic city set in a picturesque backdrop, in the middle of nowhere. It’s about 7 hours drive from Whitehorse, the nearest city of any size, and just a bit further to Fairbanks, Alaska (although the highway doesn’t continue past Dawson during the winter months).
The day we drove from Whitehorse, the road was closed in stretches due to snow/black ice. By the time we reached Dawson, it looked like an ice rink.
The view from the summit of the Midnight Dome, a popular overlook where you can drive your car to the top.
Dawson City viewed by drone. In the far left, you can see the remnants of a prehistoric landslide, and just to the east is the Midnight Dome, the slightly snow covered summit overlooking the city.
The Dawson City General Store had all the groceries you needed, and was open every day all year. A lot of places were clearly closed for the season as we came about 1-2 months after Tourist Season ended.
The Downtown Hotel, home to the famous Sourtoe Cocktail. The following videos will shed light on what that is, not for the squeamish.
Karol went first and had her choice of toe. For anyone wishing to learn more about the toe (yes it’s a cocktail with real mummified human toes in it) watch this short CBC documentary on the toe and it’s Toe Captain Terry.
I went next and enjoyed the savory flavor of human toe, and received a certificate.
Some snowy mountains looking northwest towards Alaska, from the top of the Midnight Dome.
Riding a bike on solid ice in downtown Dawson City.
A residential area of Dawson City.
Many of the old buildings are sinking in the permafrost, requiring expensive foundation repairs.
There are no paved streets or sidewalks in Dawson City due to the permafrost.
A typical Dawson City residence, the homeowner here greeted us in a grizzly fur jacket and face paint while chugging a bottle of Yukon Jack.
The turnoff to the Dempster Highway, which takes you north to Tombstone, Eagle Plains, and other villages before you get to the Arctic Ocean, which typically takes 2 days.
We were greeted with a nice sunrise at around 9:30am. These are the first few kilometers of the Dempster Highway.
The Dempster Highway is a graded dirt road that stretches nearly 600 miles, and connects the Klondike Highway near Dawson City with the communities of Fort McPherson, Tsiigehtchic, Inuvik, and Tuktoyuktuk on the Arctic Ocean.
As the road approaches the Ogilvie Mountains, you also enter Tombstone Territorial Park. It quickly transitions from boreal forest to snowcapped mountains and taiga.
The snow was several feet deep just a few miles up the Dempster Highway, although there was almost none at the entrance to the park. Next time I’ll bring snowshoes, even in October.
From here, the next stop is about 350 miles away in Eagle Plains, right next to the sign for 66 degrees north, aka the Arctic Circle. After this point, it’s mostly barren taiga until it becomes mostly arctic tundra once you get into the Mackenzie River Delta. The last stop is in Tuktoyaktuk, a coastal first nations community of a few hundred located on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. The final stretch of the Dempster Highway was completed from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk in 2017, so passage there by vehicle all year round is a new thing, before you could drive the ice road in winter months or fly.
Tombstone has some incredible 10+ mile hikes that we weren’t able to do because of snow, which bring you closer to some of the famous jagged peaks like Tombstone where the park gets its namesake. The hike to Grizzly Lake seems to have some incredible views as well. We were able to get some extremely distant views with the telephoto lens.
Some large trucks had to stop and put chains on before going up this hill.