Return to the Mountains: Stage 5 of my Yukon Walk, August 6 to August 30, 1990

  

After the long crossing of the gentle wooded Yukon Plateau (see this post) I returned to the mountains on a section of my Yukon walk that had the most spectacular scenery but also some of the toughest terrain I've ever crossed. There were no towns north of Dawson City and just one hotel at Eagle Plains so I'd arranged food drops at two maintenance camps on the Dempster Highway, the only road, as I expected to be walking for at least another month. With autumn approaching and knowing I would soon be in the Arctic I had sent a down pullover, thick sweater, warm mitts, gaiters and thick wool socks to Dawson. My pack would be heavier but I would need them all before the finish.

North of Dawson I was looking forward to reaching spectacular Tombstone Mountain and its equally magnificent neighbours. Reaching it was tough though. Easy walking on dirt forest roads gave way to a desperate struggle through dense alder and willow thickets. At one point it took two hours to thrash two miles. Further hard walking in more dense brush and across boulder fields led into the heart of the mountains. Paradise! I camped at Talus Lake, looking across the shining water to Tombstone Mountain itself. 

The four days I spent in the Tombstone area were the highlights of the whole walk. I could have spent many weeks there. But I needed to reach my supply points and keep heading north. The landscape of the rest of the Ogilvie Mountains was still impressive and mountainous, though nothing like the Tombstone Range. The walking was often still tough too as I ploughed through muskeg swamps and black spruce forest. 

Two wildlife episodes stand out from this part of the walk. The first was seeing a grizzly bear and watching it foraging as I passed by on the other side of the valley. Magnificent and exhilarating! Later on I was watching the Ogilvie River when I sensed movement and turned to see two wolves. They were scavenging rubbish left by a horse packing party who had camped nearby. 

Then there was the night of the Northern Lights when I spent  an hour lying on my back oblivious to the cold ground watching great waves of green light sweeping the sky, by far the best display of the aurora I've ever seen.

Twenty days out from Dawson I reached Eagle Plains and settled into the hotel for a rest day. Ahead I could see the Richardson Mountains in the Arctic, the final stretch of my walk. Autumn was here and the first snow might occur anytime soon. 

I wrote a book about the walk. It’s long out of print but I expect there are second-hand copies around.

Photographic Note: I carried two SLRs, the Nikon F801 and FM2, plus Nikkor 35-70, Nikkor 24mm,and Sigma 70-210 lenses, plus a Cullman tripod. Films were Fujichrome 50 and 100 slide ones. The total weight with padded cases was 4kg. To digitise the slides I photographed them on a lightbox with my Sony a6000 with a Sony E 30mm macro lens.

Along the Yukon River & through the Klondike Goldfields. Stage 4 of my Yukon walk, July 13 - August 3, 1990

Beyond the little settlement of Carmacks (see my last Yukon post) I would not cross a road or pass through a village or town for twenty-two days. Yet during this long remote section of the walk I met more people than on any other. This was because for half the time I followed the Yukon River, down which a procession of canoes and small boats drifted and paddled, pulling into the bank to camp, and for much of the second half I was in the Klondike goldfields where there are still miners working.

I was still alone most of the time though, only camping with others on a few nights. The river is the way to travel here. I met no-one else on foot. I could see why. The land is forested and gently rolling. I could walk all day and see little change. The walking was tough at times too. There were paths and old tracks in places but sometimes I was bushwhacking through dense spruce forest.

This forest was beautiful in a soft, subtle way though, and there was much wildlife. That included bears. I never saw one but I saw plenty of signs such as droppings and tracks. I made sure to cook and eat well away from my tent and to hang my food in the trees, though few of these had branches long enough to stop a determined bear. Usually I set my kitchen up by the river, my bedroom back in the woods.

The first half of the walk was hot, very hot, with temperatures in the 30s Celsius every day. Even in the shade of the trees I sweated continuously. At dawn and dusk there were mosquitoes. Drifting down the river did seem appealing.

After a week I arrived at the abandoned settlement of Fort Selkirk, which was being restored as a historic site. Here was where I was meeting the Youcon Kat tour boat, which was bringing my supplies from Whitehorse. I was two days early however so had time to relax, watch the river, and talk to people. I laid out my gear and photographed it. An awful lot, I thought. It was.

My pack was about to get much heavier though. The Youcon Kat arrived. I unloaded my food box. I had packed enough food for fifteen days. I knew I'd need it but I wasn't looking forward to carrying it all.

At Fort Selkirk I left the Yukon River, having been advised that following it would be difficult. The alternative route wasn't easy at first though, with more dense forest to negotiate and several rivers to cross. After six days the first signs of the Klondike began to appear. Ruined cabins in the trees. Old roads. Then blasted terrain. Working gold mines. The romance of the 1890s exists in the tourist area around Dawson City. Beyond it is the reality of an environmentally highly damaging process, the land stripped bare, great gouges hacked out of the earth.

I was relieved to reach Dawson. I had a bad cold, which didn't help my feelings in the goldfields. I was tired too. From here I would be back in the mountains. But first I needed a rest.

I wrote a book about the walk. It’s long out of print but I expect there are second-hand copies around.

Photographic Note: I carried two SLRs, the Nikon F801 and FM2, plus Nikkor 35-70, Nikkor 24mm,and Sigma 70-210 lenses, plus a Cullman tripod. Films were Fujichrome 50 and 100 slide ones. The total weight with padded cases was 4kg. To digitise the slides I photographed them on a lightbox with my Sony a6000 with a Sony E 30mm macro lens.

Lakes, Rivers & Forest. Stage 3 of my Yukon walk, July 2 - July 12, 1990 .

Pilot Peak

After two days in Whitehorse I set off on one of the longest single stretches without resupply on my Yukon walk, eleven days to the little settlement of Carmacks. The route took me across a land of lakes and rivers and forest. There were mountains but they lay away to the east and west of my route, which went northwards, roughly, across the undulating Yukon Plateau.

There were old abandoned trails in places, in others I bushwhacked, sometimes with great difficulty. Whilst some trails were marked on my maps many weren't and I often had to guess which was the best one to take. There were campsites too, sometimes recently used and sadly strewn with garbage, but I met no-one. I had rivers to ford, sluggish and dark and often thigh-deep, and swanps to wade.

The weather was mixed with heavy rain and hail at times and often a cool breeze. Despite often being in trees there was a great feeling of space. This wilderness was vast. I was well into the walk now and feeling a sense of completeness. This is where I wanted to be. This is what I wanted to be doing.

Campsites were pleasant rather than spectacular. Their joy came from being here. I had brought a tarp as a cooking shelter, the presence of bears meaning it was unwise to cook in or near my tent - I saw fresh grizzly tracks and, once, fresh bear droppings close to camp. Where there were used fire pits I cooked over wood, saving my stove fuel. One of my most memorably camps was in dense black spruce forest on a wet night. I lit a fire in front of the tarp and sat gazing at the flames, relaxed and content.

Despite the often tough terrain, the uncertainty about a route, and the initial heavy load the many rivers and lakes gave a soothing feel to the walk, a gentleness not there in big mountains. This was placid country. There was much wildlife too and I saw beavers, red fox, bald eagles, golden eagles, common loons, goldeneye, red-winged blackbirds, and gray jays. One night I heard wolves howling, a wonderful wild sound. This really was wilderness.

I reached Carmacks on July 12 , checked into the one hotel and had my first proper wash in eleven days. Then it was a day of chores - laundry, mail, resupplying, and, crucially, finding information on the next section which would take me to the abandoned settlement of Fort Selkirk, where I would meet the Youcon Kat river boat with my supplies, and then on through the Kondike to Dawson City.

Previous reports as I relive this trip here and here. 

I wrote a book about the walk. It’s long out of print but I expect there are second-hand copies around.

Photographic Note: I carried two SLRs, the Nikon F801 and FM2, plus Nikkor 35-70 zoom, Nikkor 24mm and Sigma 70-210 lenses, and a Cullman tripod. Films were Fujichrome 50 and 100 slide ones. The total weight with padded cases was 4kg. To digitise the slides I photographed them on a lightbox with my Sony a6000 with a Sony E 30mm macro lens.

On my Yukon walk I reached Whitehorse June 29, 1990.

Ten days after setting out on the Chilkoot Trail from SE Alaska into Canada (see this post) I arrived in Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon and by far the largest town in the Territory.

From the Chilkoot Pass I descended to Lake Bennett, where in the winter and spring of 1897/98 thousands of gold seekers built ramshackle boats while they waited for the ice to break so they could float down the Yukon river to the Klondike goldfields. I continued on foot to the little vilage of Carcross, my first supply point. Collecting the first mail and supplies is always significant on a long walk. It means it really has begun.

Between Carcross and Whitehorse is a range of mountains, outliers of the Coast Range I'd crossed on the Chilkoot Pass. Knowing that beyond Whitehorse I'd be traversing the vast forests of the Yukon Plateau and it would probably be over a month before I could climb above the trees again I planned a route over these mountains, climbing 1773 metre Caribou Mountain and 2020 metre Mount Lorne. Appropriately I saw my first caribou of the trip, a cow and a calf, near the first summit.

Both mountains had rocky sections where some exciting scrambling was required. With my big pack this required care. The views were superb with wilderness stretching out all around. The weather was mixed with showers, sunshine, and a cold wind. I felt exhilarated and excited to be there.

My route beyond Whitehorse was sketchy, the outline depending on where I could reupply and whether I could cross some rivers, the detail depending on the terrain. I might find abandoned trails but some of the time I'd be going cross-country.

There are few places in the Yukon with post offices or shops - indeed, there are few places in the Yukon at all. Only one lay on my planned route between Whitehorse and Dawson in the Yukon, a walk of 600-650km through difficult terrain that looked like taking a month or more. However in Whitehorse I was able to arrange for a tour boat, the Youcon Kat, to take supplies to the abandoned settlement of Fort Selkirk. This split my route into three - I'd only need to carry ten days of supplies at a time. I hoped this would work okay.

I wrote a book about the walk. It’s long out of print but I expect there are second-hand copies around.

 

 

Photographic Note: I carried two SLRs, the Nikon F801 and FM2, plus Nikkor 35-70 zoom, Nikkor 24mm and Sigma 70-210 lenses, and a Cullman tripod. Films were Fujichrome 50 and 100 slide ones. The total weight with padded cases was 4kg. To digitise the slides I photographed them on a lightbox with my Sony a6000 with a Sony E 30mm macro lens.

On June 19, 1990, I started my walk through the Yukon Territory

On the Chilkoot Pass

On June 19, 1990 I stood on the windswept banks of the Taiya River in SE Alaska. Here, where the river meets the arm of the Pacific Ocean called Taiya Inlet, once stood the town of Dyea, the starting point for thousands of gold seekers heading for the Klondike in 1988. From Dyea they hauled goods and equipment up to the Chilkoot Pass, where they entered Canada, and then went down to Lake Bennett to build boats and float down the Yukon river to the goldfields. 

Turning away from the coast I took my first steps on a walk that would take me 1,000 miles through the Yukon Territory. I knew little about the country ahead as there were few sources of information.

For the first few days though I would be following the 53km (33 mile) Chilkoot Trail, which follows the route of the gold seekers to Lake Bennett. After that there would be no marked trails, indeed, few trails at all. The journey really was into the unknown and I wondered just how feasible it was.

 

All that lay ahead as I left Dyea and followed the trail into dripping rainforest beside the raging river. High above glacier-clad mountains rose into the clouds. The last of the winter’s snow still lay up there too and I knew I’d be crossing much of it as I climbed to the 1067m (3,525 foot) pass.

Along the Chilkoot Trail there are campsites, some with cabins. As there are bears here (as there would be the whole walk) I used these for cooking and eating and gear storage, so I didn’t have to hang my food. I slept in my tent. 

 

The weather was mixed, with some heavy rain, brief bursts of sunshine, and gusty winds. The climb to the pass was steep, the terrain a mix of rocks and snow. 

The clouds were streaming across the sky as I looked into Canada for the first time. The journey had begun.

 

I wrote a book about the walk. It’s long out of print but I expect there are second-hand copies around.

Photographic Note: I carried two SLRs, the Nikon F801 and FM2, plus Nikkor 35-70 zoom, Nikkor 24mm and Sigma 70-210 lenses, and a Cullman tripod. Films were Fujichrome 50 and 100 slide ones. The total weight with padded cases was 4kg. To digitise the slides I photographed them on a lightbox with my Sony a6000 with a Sony E 30mm macro lens.