For many, the Klondike conjures up images of weather-beaten old prospectors in the Gold Rush days. If you came here to get-rich-quick on gold, you’d be kinda disappointed. But what you wouldn’t be disappointed with is the fabulous remote, desolate wilderness and wildlife – there’s plenty of that ‘round here. After 11 weeks of ‘rona virus lock-down in Whitehorse and our plans taking a few hits, we could finally cross the vast Yukon Territory to the Klondike and the Arctic Circle, do a bit of grizzly spotting, fail miserably at getting-rich-quick, see the midnight sun, enjoy a pretty ghost town, and reach the end of the road not once, but twice!
Arctic Plans and Hits
Before lock-down we had a nice little loop planned: up the Klondike Highway to Dawson City, west on the Top of the World Highway into Alaska, pop-up to Prudhoe Bay, then looping south back into Canada again. The ‘Arctic Ocean’ bit of this ‘Plan A’ was a side-trip: from Dawson up the Dempster Highway through Northwest Territories to Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean, then back to Dawson to re-join the Alaska loop. At 900 km (each way) of dirt road, this is a bit of a monster-sized side-trip, but we like an adventure road. Since reaching Antarctica back in December 2015 (by boat from Argentina), we had always been keen to reach the Arctic Ocean to complete a ‘proper’ end-to-end journey of The Americas.
No sooner had we compiled Plan A, it took a deeply wounding hit: the Covid closure of the US/Canada border rendering our Alaska adventure dead-as-a-dodo. Okay… ‘Plan B’: up to Tuktoyaktuk, tick the ‘Arctic Ocean’ box, then schlepp 1,400 km back the same way 😣. Unfortunately, ‘Plan B’ also took a hit when NWT closed its territorial border with Yukon. We could drive the first 900 km from Whitehorse up to the NWT border, but not the final 500 km through NWT to the Arctic Ocean. Arrgh!!! Back to the map…. Aha!! The Arctic Circle line runs through the Yukon just south of the NWT border. Okay… that’ll be ‘Plan C’ then. Sticking in the Yukon, destination Arctic Circle!
So when the Yukon Government said we could travel again… off we zoomed! Okay, Cuthbert isn’t the fastest truck on the road and we ‘tootle’ rather than ‘zoom’ anywhere, but hey, we’re on the road again… and it’s a thing of beauty! One benefit of travelling in these ‘rona virus times is the quiet roads. We guess that ordinarily in June, the Klondike (and maybe also the Dempster) Highway would be chocca-bloc with RV-tourism. Thanks to Ms ‘Rona Virus, we have the roads pretty much to ourselves.
Bearly
The Dempster Highway to the Arctic passes through vast wilderness and the scenic Tombstone Park. Braver souls than us flock here most summers for remote hiking. Now don’t get me wrong, we do like a hike. It’s a cool thing to do. But here’s the thing… bloody big Grizzly bears roam freely around these parts and frankly, they freak me out!
Grizzly Bears are big – around 270 kg and 2m long. They can be aggressively predatory. They can out-run, out-climb and out-swim any human. What’s not to be scared of, eh?? “Oh, just get out there…” say the locals… “just make some noise and they’ll probably stay away” (note the ‘probably’ bit there!). Or how about this for Advice of the Century: “Take some Bear Spray… just in case you get attacked” Oh, right. Thanks for that little nugget. That’ll be okay then, I don’t think!! We are really keen, desperate even, to see a Yogi Bear or two. It’s just that we’d rather observe him from the comfort of Cuthbert rather than ‘up close and personal’.
Destination Arctic – Covid-North
After three days of tootling through the wilderness, at around 16:00 hrs on Thursday 11th June 2020, we moseyed-on over latitude 66°33’ North into the Arctic Circle! We have crossed both Tropics and the Equator several times on our travels, but crossing a polar circle is a first! It is precisely 1,654 days since we arrived at the southerly tip of Tierra del Fuego in South America on 2nd December 2015. The GPS reckons we could have reached here in 22,318km/13,868 miles with a mere 280 hrs of driving. We actually took 142,892km/88,665miles and four and a half years! Better late than never… eh?
At the Arctic Circle line we were just 60 km away from the NWT border. Yes, we know… thanks for reminding us… we can’t go into NWT. But as we were so close, we thought we may as well do the last bit up the road to the border. At a latitude of just over 67° North, we reached the closest to the Arctic Ocean that we’re allowed to go – we’ll call this ‘Covid-North’ 😊. Time to turn around.
Sunny Nights
We spent a couple of nights in the Arctic Circle. Well… I say ‘nights’… but it didn’t actually get dark. What sorcery is this?!! Down in Whitehorse at around 60° North we’d heard the radio weather-chap forecasting a ‘sunny night’ and we’d had ‘nights’ with just a couple of hours of dark(ish)ness.
All these photos were taken at midnight!!!
Up here in the Arctic Circle in June, Land of the Midnight Sun, the sun doesn’t set at all. We do love a bit of sunshine and it does make for some beautiful midnight scenes, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. The 24 hours of daylight really plays havoc with our body-clocks! Looking out the window your brain says 16:30hrs but your phone says 00:30 hrs. How the devil are we meant to get any kip?
We have black-out blinds in Cuthbert which easily shut-out light, but they also block airflow. It’s uncomfortably warm without a bit of airflow. But if we crack-open the roof-lights or window shutters to let a bit of air in, the sunshine floods in too!! If we’re honest, it’s not a situation we considered when ordering Cuthbert and it’s not one which troubles us unduly for globetrotting generally, but it’s a bit of a pain in the backside whilst we’re here!! We’ve fashioned some make-shift window blinds out of brown paper bags. They look at bit odd, but they allow air in whilst filtering out the sunshine. First world problems… the struggle is real.
Grizzly at Last
Apart from a brief sighting of a black bear by the road – which was cool, but too brief to even get a snap – we saw very little wildlife on the way north. But southbound we got lucky. First, we had a beautiful fox visit us to watch Marcus doing some kite flying at our camp-spot. Then we saw a lynx and a majestic, but paparazzi-shy, Bald Eagle. We saw pure-white wild mountain-goats drinking at the river. Finally, our long-awaited ultimate Yukon wildlife experience… a huge brown grizzly bear trotting down the road ahead of us. Wowser!!
We stopped at a distance; he looked so deceptively soft and cuddly, with a funny kind of floppy, lolloping walk. After a while he wandered into the bushes so we edged forward slowly… there he was… pottering around some 10m away at the roadside, totally oblivious to our presence. We could have sat and watched him for hours, but we’ve read we’re not supposed to hang around for long, so we drove-on after a couple of minutes. Happy bunnies we are with the wildlife we have seen in the Yukon, but Mr Moose is still conspicuous by his absence… Where’s the Moose???
Seeing such spectacular wildlife wandering free in its native habitat is such a special experience and one of the many reasons we chose this lifestyle. However, the danger these critters pose to us on foot is also one of the frustrations in these areas – we’re just too chicken to go out for a hike!
Moose antlers… but where’s the moose? Bear Paws in our camp! Fox in the Arctic
Even before we actually saw Mr Grizzly, we saw paw-prints in the dirt around our camp-spot, and lots of bear pooh too! So we knew for sure they were around, probably watching us through binoculars, just waiting for us to stray far enough from the truck to grab us for a tasty snack 🤣. It reminds us of a time back in Africa, we had been truck-bound for several days and were desperate to get out for a hike. We’d wandered no further than 100m when we saw fresh, deep lion prints in the dirt, prompting a hasty retreat back to Cuthbert!
Pretty Little Ghost Town
With the Arctic Circle box happily ticked, we re-traced our route back down the Dempster Highway to the Klondike and Dawson City. Dawson was the centre of the 1890s Gold Rush and is nowadays the cutest little town in the west. Fabulously preserved and restored, almost every building is in the style of that era. It’s now a seasonal tourist town but it’s no Disney-Fakery, it’s real history with substance and authentic stories behind it. It’s built on a layer of perma-frost and some of the buildings are slightly the worse for it 🙄
Dawson City would absolutely be an awesome place in other times. Sadly, but understandably, this year the streets are deathly quiet. Some businesses are open and the tourism bodies are doing an admirable job of trying to get people up here but tourism is so restricted at the moment, we guess it’s just not worth the major attractions opening. Nevertheless, Covid-Dawson is the prettiest little ghost-town and we really enjoyed ourselves there. We’d love to go back one day to soak up the vibe of a buzzing summer music town.
Get-rich-quick
One great attraction in the Klondike is a self-guided tour of the gold fields and getting-rich-quick panning for gold. We had a go at gold-panning in Costa Rica a couple of years ago, but here in the colder waters of the Klondike, we were reluctant to immerse ourselves in the chilly creeks🥶.
One way to get-rich-quick here is to crouch in the water, scrape up silt/gravel and pan it to find your fortune in a gleaming nugget. Another way is to take your spade 50m up the hill, dig out some ‘pay-dirt’, take said ‘pay-dirt’ down to the creek and pan it to find your fortune in a gleaming nugget. We tried both, but maybe this getting-rich-quick malarkey requires a little more dedication and commitment than our half-hour swilling a bit of mud around. We failed to find our fortune in a gleaming nugget, but it was a fun day out.
Top of the World Highway – Covid-West
Before we left Dawson City and the Klondike, we thought we’d take a look along the famous Top of the World Highway. We can’t go all the way into Alaska, but the views are meant to be nice and we thought we’d go as far as we can within Canada. At 140° West, some 20km before the Alaska border, the road is closed. This is a far as we can go… our ‘Covid-West’… and we have to turn back (again!).
So within a few days we had reached our ‘Covid-North’ and ‘Covid-West’ extremities. It’s all south and east from here, back down the Klondike Highway. Watch this space… still more of the Yukon to explore….
