Results tagged “Yukon” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Senior Researcher Marilyn Terrell is just back from a trip through the Yukon Territory, and she's thrilling all of us with stories from her trip. You can read her previous entries about her Yukon adventure here and here.

The ultimate destination on my Yukon River trip two weeks ago was Dawson City, just as it had been for the Klondike gold prospectors streaming down the river 112 years ago. To learn more about the Gold Rush, I picked up a wonderfully informative history by Pierre Berton, "Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush", from Mac's Fireweed Books in Whitehorse to read during the trip.

For the prospectors, the journey started with an arduous slog over the Coast Mountains along the Chilkoot Trail from the port at Skagway, Alaska. Each prospector had to make numerous trips in order to haul 1,000 pounds of equipment and supplies down to Lake Bennett, where the Yukon River begins. The North West Mounted Police were patrolling the Yukon when the Klondike gold rush began 1897, and would not permit any ill-equipped miner lacking the requisite 1,000-lb. "outfit" to start the journey, because there were no grocery stores along the Yukon River or even in Dawson City itself. You had to bring enough canned food with you to survive on for a year, until the next riverboat might bring supplies.

Some hasty prospectors raced to Dawson City in the fall of 1896, traveling light without supplies before the main rush began, and they were congratulating themselves on getting a jump on the competition when a messenger appeared in a canoe from downriver in Whitehorse. Instead of the news they were expecting, that a steamboat was on its way with food for the winter, the early birds got the grim word: no more riverboats would be forthcoming that year, and unless they wanted to starve they'd have to leave immediately, as the river was already beginning to freeze up.

Before I left for my Yukon trip, I'd been following Ed Wardle's considerably more dangerous Yukon adventure "Alone In The Wild" on Twitter.  Ed received training in wilderness survival, medical emergencies, and firearms handling, then he was dropped into the Yukon wilderness with a load of supplies to carry on his back and expected to survive on his own for three months. He had a video camera that he used to film his daily dispatches from the wild, and these dispatches were collected and edited to make a reality TV show on the National Geographic Channel. He ended up lasting 50 days instead of the expected 90, and had to be emergency airlifted out of there. You can watch some of his videos here, and you can see him get progressively thinner as the weeks go by and he had to collect, catch or shoot his own food to survive. 

I didn't realized until I returned that my trip covered some of the same general area as Wardle's, but my experience could hardly have been more different. Instead of shivering in a tent, I lived in a series of rather luxurious heated cabins. Instead of carrying all my gear on my back, I simply zipped my suitcase and it was magically transported by boat, car or floatplane to my next destination. And instead of having to shoot my own food, I got to enjoy delicious cuisine expertly prepared and served in a rustic (but warm) dining room. But even in my comfortable surroundings, I was reminded of how dangerous the Yukon really is. We learned a hunter had died of hypothermia the day before we arrived at one of our cabins, and our guides had to carry guns to be ready for charging bears. Wardle may not have survived the full 90 days, but frankly, I'm impressed he made it as long as he did.

You can watch the latest episode of "Alone In The Wild" tonight at 9pm on the National Geographic Channel. Ed talks about his experience here.

Senior Researcher Marilyn Terrell is just back from a trip through the Yukon Territory, and she's thrilling all of us with stories from her trip. You can read her previous entry about her Yukon adventure here.

The first few times someone on my trip spotted a bald eagle, we all grabbed binoculars and cameras. But after three days of seeing very little birdlife besides bald eagles, trip member Roy dubbed them the "pigeons of the Yukon."

We've seen other species along this Great River Journey from Whitehorse to Dawson. At Lake Lebarge we heard loons on the water and spied fat grouse scratching in the underbrush. Around a bend on the Thirty Mile River we surprised a pair of trumpeter swans who took off, silently, flapping enormous white wings. At Pelly River Ranch, farmer Hugh Bradley pointed out some Yukon turkeys (sandhill cranes) in one of his fields and predicted we'd soon be seeing more. Sure enough, a squadron flew over our cabins next morning, gobbling noisily, heading south.

Senior Researcher Marilyn Terrell is in the Yukon Territory for this week, and she's blogging, and of course, tweeting, whenever she can. She sent along this dispatch:

I spent ten hours yesterday walking the streets and trails of Whitehorse, (pop. 24,000) the capital of the Yukon Territory (pop. 40,000 people, plus 30,000 bears). Ate breakfast at Baked aka Bakerei Kaffeehaus (+1 867 633 6291) where the blueberry scones are wholegrain, the latte foam artfully swirled, and toddlers saute plastic vegetables in tiny pans in the wooden play kitchen.

Down by the Yukon River waterfront at Rotary Peace Park, '60s classics blared and crowds cheered the anchor-leg runners of the 110-mile Klondike International Road Relay as they approached the finish line. The race began at midnight in Skagway, Alaska, and runners carried flashlights over the Coast Mountains through White Pass along the Chilkoot Trail, which originally brought the goldminers in the stampede of 1898. The race officials announced the names of the runners and their teams: the Skinny Ravens from Anchorage, Sole Train from Juneau, CrowsFeet, an all-female masters team from Anchorage, the Chocolate Claim Runners from Whitehorse, the Smokin' Old Geezers, Team Run Amok, Blood Sweat & Beers, Twisted Blistered Sisters, the Molten Lava Tigers of Doom, The Fast and the Delirious. There were 1,200 runners, 700 women, and many junior teams.