7/31/207, Valdex, Alaska

Hello from Valdez, Alaska. We have had some problems posting pictures on the blog and also sending pictures via Email, so you will not be getting an illustrated travelogue.

We had a pleasant trip to Valdez from Tok. Although it was only 250 miles, sections of the road were very rough, with lots of frost heaves. Also there were stops to admire to admire the spectacular scenery --- lots of mountains streams and quite a few moose wading in the streams. To get to Valdez, it was necessary to cross a costal mountain range, which while not very high (about 5,000 feet), crosses alpine tundra, and very close to a big glacier. From the pass on top of the mountain we descended into a canyon, characterized with rain-forest type foliage and many very beautiful waterfalls.

The first few days we were here were sunny days with a daily shower in the evening or late afternoon. In the morning, the fog would gradually rise over the surrounding mountains, and we would be treated to views of glaciers (nine of them surrounding us) and several waterfalls tumbling down the sides of the mountains, many of them probably fed by high glaciers.

Valdez is an interesting town. The harbor is noted for being one of the most northern harbors that do not freeze. The town was started during the days of the Klondike Gold Rush, the last years of the nineteenth century. An “All American Route" to the Klondike up over the Valdez Glacier (which sits astride a mountain) was proposed as an easy way to transport supplies need to start mining, by pulling them on sleds up and over the mountain. The route was ill-fated. The trip was extremely difficult; would-be miners fell in crevasses, and suffered from the extreme cold. The trip down from the summit on the other side was nearly as difficult as the trip up. Rather than take several days to cross the glacier, it took several weeks. The town started as a point of departure, and later as a refuge for those who did not succeed.

In the 1960’s there was disastrous earthquake in Alaska, and it hit Valdez particularly hard. There were many deaths, and many buildings destroyed. When it came time to rebuild, study showed the “old town” was built on unstable soil, and it was decided to move the whole town (what house that could be moved and rebuilding the rest) to the present town site about four miles away. So mow the present town of Valdez (population of about 1400) is fairly new and modern.

The Alaska pipeline ends near here, across the bay. Of course the harbor is the site of the infamous oil spill from the Exxon Valdez tanker. Although the memory of this mishap is burned into the memory of the residents here, the actual site of the spill is perhaps fifteen miles away beyond the mouth of the harbor. Although the oil spill devastated a large part of the coast of Prince William Sound, much of the sound is still pristine and in good shape.

This is the height of salmon fishing season now. People line up on the shore of the bay and cast a red spoon out into the water. One can see the salmon out in the water, jumping about. Apparently the salmon are schooling in preparation for a run up the creeks to spawn. A daily fishing license costs twenty dollars, and that allows you to keep ten fish. The fish are about a foot long. People in the know say they only keep the female fish, as the flesh of the male fish is a little soft. The fishing seems to take place an hour before to an hour after high tide.

Every little steam, river and creek is full of salmon going upstream to spawn. These fish are turning red, and getting a long under slung jaw. The fish are pretty beaten up, with gashes in the skin. In one place there is a creek leading up to a power plant. A large screen has been placed over the stream to keep the fish from going up and interfering with the plant. The fish are so thick below the screen, one could really walk across them, if they wee not so slippery. Around the edges of the stream, the fish pile on top of each other, attempting to get up the stream. Of course, in a relatively short time all these fish will die. In most streams, I gather, they make it to some point, spawn, guard the eggs a few days, and then die.

We have seen other wild life here. At certain times of day, there are eagles, sitting in trees; I suppose getting ready to fish, when everyone is gone. One morning we saw a bear, out fishing. Madeline, actually saw the beat catch a fish!

We took a boat trip one day, out to see the glaciers and wildlife. The glaciers were a sight to see. The ice was all a light blue. One glacier was sending out a significant amount of icebergs that extended out several miles into the sea.

Tomorrow, we return to Tok. Then we will work our way down to Haines, Alaska, where we will meet some friends, and later visit my cousin Henry, who lives in Juneau

July 26, 2007, Chicken and Eagle

Hello everybody, since our last posting we have gone into Dawson (also known as Dawson City) to see the sights. We visited the town’s historical museum, much of which dealt, as you might guess, with the town’s early gold rush days. There was also a small railroad museum with two locomotives. In the early 1900’s a group of entrepreneurs incorporated a short line, narrow gauge, railroad, developed to serve the miners. All the railroad equipment and locomotives had to be shipped to Dawson from Whitehorse by steam boat, in many cases, disassembled. The railroad was mismanaged from the beginning, but eventually went broke, because the mines mostly became consolidated into several dredging companies, requiring less labor, and a decreasing population.

We visited Jack London’s cabin. Jack London was a relatively unsuccessful miner, whose cabin was originally 40 or 50 miles from Dawson. As a nutritionist I was interested to learn he nearly died from scurvy the final year he spent in the Yukon Territory, losing all his teeth. However he capitalized on his experiences in the Yukon Territory with his many best-selling books, such as “The Call of the Wild”, and short stories, such as “To Build a Fire”. I remember reading his books when I was in my early teens, but I suppose his writing is less popular now, and dated to some extent.

We departed from Dawson, last week, taking a ferry across the Yukon (no bridge) and then over the “Top of the World” Highway. This road is part paved, partly gravel, and partly oiled but in poor repair. We did not find the road as bad as we expected. The stretches through Yukon Territory war largely over alpine tundra, above the tree line. There were spectacular views of mountains on the left and on the right. After crossing the border into Alaska, the road turns to gravel. It is mostly, but not always two lanes wide, the shoulders are very soft due to permafrost, and one needed to know exactly where one’s tires were when meeting an approaching RV or truck, to avoid sinking into the soft shoulder and getting stuck. We spent a fairly leisurely day traveling, and stopped to boondock in a very pleasant BLM campground.

The next day we took our car, and went on a side trip to the small town of Eagle, about sixty miles north, on the Yukon River. As we went on our trip we ascended to a long stretch of road in an area covered with dense brush and aspen trees. We ran into many groups of caribou --- groups consisting of two to perhaps ten animals. There were males, females, and what appeared to be both new born and year-old calves. We later learned that this was an unusual event, seeing a herd this time of year; we were probably seeing a herd, migrating because of forest fires in some area where they usually summer.

The trip to Eagle was over the Forty Mile River area, where much of the gold was discovered prior to the rich strikes in the Klondike. The small towns are gone now, and many of the early roads seemed to have disappeared, so the forest in the valleys is really wilderness now.

Eagle is a pretty little town. At one time it was the center of activity in this part of Alaska. There was an army detachment in a fort, and a custom house, to handle trade between Dawson and Eagle. Eagle was named from eagles that used to soar above the cliffs on the Yukon River. The Yukon is quite wide here, and I will post a photo of the river and the cliffs. We visited the local museum, and got a guided tour through the old courthouse, that contained many artifacts from early days. There is a BLM ranger station supervising the fort of which there are several buildings remaining and area historical site, and helping travelers to the Yukon-Charley River Wilderness. There is also an Indian village nearby, but we did not visit. Madeline asked what people did for shopping for food and clothing. The answer was, they go to Fairbanks twice a year (over two hundred miles away), and depend on gardens for produce in the summer.

We returned to our campsite, and the next day we proceeded down the road, passing by the small town of Chicken. Chicken is an old gold mining town, said to be named “Chicken”, because the original settlers wanted to call it “Ptarmigan”, after the bird, common to the area, but none could spell the word. There is a development called “Beautiful Downtown Chicken” which includes a gift shop, a liquor store, saloon, café, and two outhouses (with the name, on a sign, “chicken poop”. The ceiling of the saloon is lined with hats, with an occasional pair of panties. It is said that the panties can only be put on the ceiling, if they are taken off in front of everyone! That gives you an idea of the level of humor in Chicken ---vulgar, scatological, but funny.

From Chicken, we continued on the road, until we reached the Alaskan Highway, and we drove on a few miles to the town of Tok. We are now in a campground, the Sourdough. There is nightly entertainment – a bluegrass band of the owner and two others, followed, by a pancake tossing contest. Toss a pancake into a bucket, if it goes in, you get a free pancake breakfast. Lots of kidding and lots of fun.

Tomorrow, we go to Valdez (pronounced Valdeez).

Dawson City, continued, July 18, 2007

Landscape from the Dempster Highway, en route to the Artic Circle

We drove from Mayo, YT to Dawson City on Friday the 13th. We had a couple of Friday-the-13th misfortunes.

Driving to Dawson, we crossed several places where the road was being repaired, and there were several miles of gravel, rather than paved road. Although we had made plans on how we were going to protect the windshield of our toad (towed car) when we were going over extended lengths of gravel road, somehow, we forgot all our plans and forged ahead. The result was a car windshield with three or four “stars” and three major cracks. We spent the next day trying to repair it with our windshield repair kits, with only fair success. We hope the windshield will hold until we return to the lower 48.

The second misfortune -- when we arrive in Dawson City and were relaxing, Dan’s front tooth, which is a false “pegged” tooth, fell out. The next day he tried to repair that with superglue. It held for about four hours, until he ate a raw carrot. He now looks like Alfred E. Newman.

These are minor mishaps, and we expected some problems would occur on our trip; but we will have lots to do when we get to a place where we can get mechanical and personal repairs.

After getting patched up as best we could, we took a journey on the Dempster Highway to the Artic Circle. The Dempster Highway is a dirt and gravel road that goes from just south of Dawson to Inuvik, a town in the Mackenzie River Delta in the Northwest Territory, about twenty miles from the Beaufort Sea. The entire trip is about 500 miles one way, but we only went about halfway to the Artic Circle. Because of potential road conditions and the lack of services (no gasoline or service station the first 240 miles on a road renowned for sharp shale causing flat tires, (Flat tires on an RV are a major, major problem), we drove our toad and stayed overnight at a motel ( the first motel after 240 miles).

The trip was a bit of an adventure. After traveling about 50 to 80 miles through spruce forest, we emerged upon tundra, which is similar to the alpine tundra in the Rockies in Colorado; only here it occurs at about 5,000 feet. When we got in the tundra area, we went through Oglive Mountains, and across a continental divide separating drainage to the Atlantic Ocean from drainage to the Artic Ocean. The landscape was mostly alpine or perhaps artic tundra, but in areas around rivers and creeks there were a lot of forest, so we were crossing many different types of landscape. After passing through the mountains, we came to long and high hills, with interspersing valleys. There were several types of flowers, but by far the most common was fireweed, the Yukon Territory’s territorial flower. In some stretches fireweed lines the road in a swath, ten to twenty feet wide --- beautiful. (The territorial bird is the raven, of which there are many in the wilderness.)

We stayed overnight in a hotel, and the next day drove about 25 miles to the Artic Circle. As I should have known, but did not, the Artic Circle represents the most southerly point where the sun does not set on the first day of summer (the solstice). As you go north of the Artic Circle, the number of days which the sun does not set in the summer (or come up in the winter) increases.

The temperature was not particularly cold at the Artic Circle, or where we stayed overnight. Perhaps medium-weight-jacket temperature might be the best way to describe it. It did not seem particularly exotic to be there, but when I examined a map, I discovered there are only two places in North America where you can drive past the Artic Circle--- the Dempster Highway in Yukon Territory which we were on, and the Dalton Highway, which follow the pipeline to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. Labrador for example lies well south of the Artic Circle. So I guess we really are explorers.

We returned to Dawson, where we are still doing touristy things. Our destination was the Klondike and we are here. I found out the Klondike, which refers to the gold bearing area, actually is a river that flows into the Yukon River in Dawson. In turn the gold-bearing creeks flow into the Klondike. The most famous of these creeks was Bonanza. Our campsite is at about the mouth of Bonanza Creek. Bonanza Creek although not a very impressive creek, is perhaps fifteen feet wide and about six to ten inches deep. One could easily wade across it. Yet about ten miles up this creek was the initial discovery of an immense quantity of placer gold, which led to the Klondike Gold Rush.

We visited the site of this first gold discovery yesterday, but there is little to see there, just some trees on a small creek. Up and down the length of the creek, there were huge piles of tailing and mining spoils. In some places an entire hill had been dug up, and mined for placer gold. Much of the creek and the area surrounding our campground was mined with dredges, so many of the buildings are built on piles of gravel remaining from the dredging.

There are still a number of small active placer mines in the area.

Today we will visit some of the local museums and Jack London and Robert Service’s cabin. Later we will be taking the “Top of the World Highway to Chicken, Alaska. This highway has a reputation of being difficult, especially in wet weather, so we will probably wait for a couple of day without rain, before we go.

In earlier pictures, I included a photo Madeline took of a sunset at our campsite here in Dawson. The picture was taken at around midnight1 I had already gone to bed when she took it.

To the Artic Circle, pictures, posted 7/28/2007

This picture of a sunset was taken at about a half hour after midnight. (I was long gone asleep, Madeline stayed up to photograph.




Mother moose and baby moose leaving from a pond, because too many people around.





This is a beautiful picture of the Dempster Highway, lined with fireweed.






Sunday before last, we took a trip up the Dempster highway to the Artic Circle, via the Dempster Highway out of Dawson city.. Above is a picture of me at the Artic Circle. The background shows the terrain, typical of that area -- tundra abd mountains.

Dawson City, YT July 18, 2007

These are pictures were taken at Dawson City, Yukon Territory. The first picture, which looks something like a river boat is actually a large dredge, that was in service from 1913 to the early 1960's. Mining by dredges, operated by large companies replaced many of the small individual placer miners. The dredge worked by pulling up buckets of pay dirt on a continuous chain of iron buckets on the right hand side of the dredge in the picture, processing the gold-containing gravel by sluices inside the dredge, and discarding the tailing to the left. The dredges operated in the bottom of small creeks, digging a pool of water as it removed the pay dirt, and filling the pool behind it with tailings. Thus, although not readily apparent,the dredge was floating in a continuously self-made pool of water. The pay dirt was typically in a band of gravel, ten to twenty feet deep, below a tremendous level of overburden. Much of the work of mining was removing this overburden, which was usually frozen with permafrost. Systems had to be used to melt the permafrost, before it could be removed.

The top picture was taken on top of a high hill (mountain?) overlooking Dawson City. The view is looking up the Yukon River. I wanted to give you an idea how large the Yukon River actually is.

A Pretty Good Looking Prospector

Good morning, everyone. We have had a little trouble uploading photos, so have been doing it piecemeal.

This prospector panned out two to three flakes of gold, when I took this picture.

Pictures from Mayo, YT; July 13, 2007

Below is a picture of the machine in a placer mine that reduces the volume of gold-containing ore to less than 0.1% of its original volume.

Below is a picture Moont Hildane, which reinds me to some extent of Mount Monadnock.

Mayo, YT; July 12, 2007

For the last two and half days we have been staying at a campground in Mayo, YT and taking day trips to explore. We are in the midst of an area in which there was silver mining area in the first fifty years or so of the twentieth century. The big silver mines were in the little towns of Elsa and Keno City, each of which now have populations of approximately five and twenty. In the silver mining days, silver ore was transported in bags to Mayo, where it was put on steamboats, (not unlike the steamboats that used to ply the Mississippi River) to be transshipped to Whitehorse, eventually ending up in smelters in Seattle. Mayo, once a major river port, now has a population of four or five hundred. About half the citizens belong to First Nation, which is a Canadian term for an Indian tribe. Mayo has a post office, government liquor store and various governmental offices, as well as one restaurant a grocery store, two gas stations and, of all things, a Chinese restaurant.

This area here in many ways is reminiscent of Southern New Hampshire, where I was raised. Many dirt roads in fair repair, lots of lakes (more and bigger than in New Hampshire), lots of gravel and gravel pits. The foliage is mostly aspen and black spruce, not too unlike New Hampshire grey birches and hemlocks. The thing that is most striking to me is that the whole area seems awfully lonesome. You can travel down a road, and you will probably see another car about once every half hour to an hour. When traveling, one rarely sees another house. There are side roads, but not very many of them and you get the feeling that you are about a mile from complete wilderness. The local mountain is Mount Haldane Mountain, which reminds me of our Mount Monadnock. A picture of Mount Haldane is above.

One thing that is different is that the rivers are large, and long. May of the rivers are navigable, and steamboats wee a major form of transportation in the early 1900’s, with many landings, to take on wood. The Yukon is a major river going from Whitehorse, up to Dawson city, and then down through Alaska. On the road to Dawson from Whitehorse, there are many overviews and the Yukon our Mississippi or Missouri River for size and width, and is often in the middle of a very beautiful valley, surrounded by mountains.

Silver mining is pretty much defunct now. There is a little gold mining – more about that later. We are staying at an RV park associated with a motel, neither the RV park or the motel seem very busy. However once or twice a day a helicopter lands in front of us and two or three people get on or off. We discovered that there is exploratory drilling going on out about a 45 minute helicopter trip from here. We are seeing some of the drilling worker leaving or returning from a 12-hour shift. They say the drilling company interested in any minerals they find, and if they find a productive spot, I suppose it will be mined.

What have we been doing? The first day we toured Mayo. This mostly involved going to the visitors Center and learning the history of the area. Yesterday we drove to the two Silver mining towns, Elsa and Keno City. Elsa is closed to the public and people there are protecting the area hoping, I suppose, to be able to open the silver mine some day. Keno City (population about 20) has an interesting museum, mostly dealing either with mining or the past history of the town’s glory days. We ate lunch at the local snack bar (hotdog and potato chips) and then drove up to the top of Keno Hill, the site of the original big silver strike. It was very cold up there. Although there were some interesting hikes we could take, it was just too cold (There was still snow in shaded spots from the winter.) Keno Hill would be a mountain in New Hampshire, about as high as the Pack Monad nocks. We then drove home, Madie stopping to unsuccessfully pan gold.

Today we drove to a placer gold mine. This is a sort of family affair. The mine was started by our guide’s grandfather, and is now run by his father and brother. It sure makes gold mining seem like uncertain and arduous work. Placer mining means that they are mining gold that has deposited in old creek beds, or glacial run-off. Placer mining differs from “hard-rock” mining, because there are no rocks that have to be crushed, etc. Essentially the process involves finding which level of gravel contains the gold (usually the gravel down near bed rock), then removing over-burden until the level containing gold is reached. Then the gold-containing gravel is dumped into a machine, whose name I forget, which is really a classifier. (See picture) It removes the big stones, dumped out one end, then the lighter gravel, comes out each side, until a small amount of pebbles and sand remains, caught on baffles and matting like a door mat, that hopefully contains the gold. This in turn is removed for further classification to get concentrated gold, in another smaller classifier. This final step of concentration takes place about every week and a half, so it takes that long until one is sure they are mining in the right spot. And will have a pay day. A picture of the machine that does the first separation is above.

After this wonderful tour with all this explanation, we (Madeline, I am not that patient) had a chance to pan gold (See picture). Madeline panned out about three flakes. That was pretty good, I think, but she wonders if she should not return the pan for one that recovers more gold.

We are having a wonderful time. Tomorrow, we leave for Dawson City.

Opps! Cant get the pictures upoaded today. I''try again another day.

July 8, 2007 - Whitehorse, YT

Where the Buffalo still roam in Canada!

It is Sunday night and we will be leaving Whitehorse after a three day visit. W e will also be leaving our new friend, Mike and Annette, who will be traveling on but in a little different direction.

Yesterday we went to a local museum, "The Yukon Beringia Interruptive Center”. I have a special interest because my brother, Dave, a geologist, spent a large part of his career studying Beringia and became an expert on the subject. Beringia refers to the Bering Land Bridge that formed during the last Ice Age, when the formation of glaciers removed so much water that the level of the world’s oceans lowered. This lead to the migration of animals and probably plants from Asia to the North American contentment, and, of course, in the reverse direction. The museum was excellent with many excellent exhibits as well as some very good and informative movies.

A high point on the museum visit was a demonstration of spear –throwing using the hinged spear-throwing tool used by aboriginal peoples. After the demonstration we had an opportunity to try it ourselves. It is not as easy as it appears. One thing I learned was that mastodons and mammoths, although both large elephant-like animals were quite different. Mastodons were browsing type animals living of branches and bark of trees, and became extinct, probably due to loss of habitat—trees and forests giving way to grass land. Mammoths were grass-eaters. I asked the question, why could not mastodons eat grass? The answer lies in their teeth. Mastodons had teeth more designed like ours for cutting, while mammoths had huge teeth, which have a series of fine groves, enabling them to grind grasses to fine particles, which could then be digested.

Today we went to another local museum which dealt with the history of the area. A large part of the museum dealt with various techniques for gold mining, and also with the various routes the miner-to-be took to reach Dawson City -- also our eventual destination. The rigors of their trip were enormous – almost unimaginable. Sadly, by the time many of the men reach Dawson City, most of the claims with good prospects for gold had been filed. However, a short time later, another gold rush started toward Nome Alaska.

July 6, 2007 -- Whitehorse, YT

Today we are in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. We left Toad River last Monday after spending the weekend. We thought we would stay at Toad River until it stopped raining, but we eventually gave up and started moving. He rains have abated, but we still seem to get showers every day. Above see a picture of a moose calf that I described in out last post.

Monday night we stopped at Laird Hot Springs, a Provincial Park, which has two Hot springs Madeline and I went dipping. The spring pool was about four feet deep. As we got closer and closer to the spring, which was at one end of the pool, the water got hotter and hotter, until eventually it was hotter than we could stand. The water was somewhat sulfurous, which I guess is supposed to help cure whatever ails you.

We met some Escapee friends, Mike and Annette; we had met them earlier in Dawson Creek, and have been traveling (Leapfrogging) with them the last several days.

On Tuesday night we stopped at a restaurant, by a lake, that offered free camping and a boat ride, if we ate there (Mukluk Annie’s Salmon Bake). We had a good time. The boat was a pontoon boat, captained by the man who started the restaurant seventeen years ago, is now retired (turned the business over to his sons), and operates the boat for fun. He was a raconteur, and told many entertaining stories about life in the Yukon Territories.

The following day we moved on. We had a minor mishap crossing a bridge which was being worked on by he road crew. The bridge lane was 110 inches wide – our motor home is 101 inches wide. Turns out I did not know where the sides of the motor home were, as accurately as I thought, so we now have some bad scrapes and dents on one side.

We are now in Whitehorse for a few days. Whitehorse is on the Yukon River, and is at the foot of Whitehorse Rapids, a dangerous set of rapids, named because they reminded the Klondike travelers of the heads of white horses. These would-be miners, usually bypassed the rapids, by having a commercial outfit portage their goods, and hired pilots to take their boats through them. They were required by the Canadian government to carry enough supplies to suffice them for a year – over a ton of supplies per person. After bypassing the rapids, the travelers would embark again, to travel up the Yukon River to Dawson City.

This weekend we will visit some of the local museums, catch up on our laundry, hike a little and then leave for the Klondike on Monday.