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.