Northern Travellers

The sourtoe cocktail club is a strange Dawson city tradition of sorts. You can be inducted in the Sourdough bar in the Downtown Hotel (where we stayed) between 9 and 11 each night by an entertaining fellow known as the captain. The original captain has now retired and moved to Whitehorse. You can buy his rather odd memoirs/biography throughout the Yukon. From what I gather, the original captain got to bragging about his navigation skill shortly after his arrival in Dawson. The locals got a bit tired of his boasting and decided to play a bit of a prank by getting him to drink a cocktail with a preserved human toe in it by telling him that all true captains of the area had to perform this task (the toe was provided by a fellow who’d cut it off to prevent gangrene from spreading and had kept it as a reminder to himself). Apparently this caught on and now there are something upwards of 38,000 inductees (my membership number is 38249). I may be butchering the tale a bit, but here are the photos of our induction (toe must touch your lips for the drink to count).

The new Captain is a highly entertaining fellow. During the day he actually takes folks on backcountry hiking tours.

Yeah… we had to take pictures of ourselves eating Klondike bars in the city of Dawson, center of the Klondike gold rush.

Hi all,

I thought that since we didn’t get to write about a lot of the stuff we got up to while we were doing it (much of the north, particularly the parts without people, doesn’t have internet), I’d post a few photos and descriptions at random.

Here’s a photo of the grizzly bear that approached us on the Dempster highway. Things were going great until it walked behind the vehicle. We turned to watch and through the small mud-free opening (where the wiper cleared the rear window) we saw nothing but bear. It had jumped up on my bike and was gnawing on the handlebars. Doug urged me to put the car in gear so I threw my camera at him and managed to pull forward a few meters. The bear decided my bike was not delicious enough to chase and ambled off down the road (probably to find one of the many insane cyclists who complete the 800km gravel road trip each year.. I imagine it already had a taste for cyclist).

We’ve managed to return to Vancouver in one piece… which is remarkable considering the number of bears we saw around where we camped our last night (14!).

We made it safely back down the Dempster in two days, abandoning our plans to hike due to persistent cold and rain. No more flat tires or other woes, but we did meet a grizzly, which proceeded to chew on the handlebar of my bike (bear photos to come).

We then spent a night in Dawson and joined the Sourtoe Cocktail club (photos to come). For those not aware, new inductees to the club must drink a shot of some hard liquor (choice is yours) with a mummified human toe in it. The toe must touch your lips for the drink to be considered complete. As per anything in the North, there’s a colourful story behind that.

We drove from Dawson to Whitehorse yesterday in the hopes of a sunny day or two to visit the Kluane. No such luck. My tent is thoroughly soaked, but most of our gear is dry so we’ll continue to camp here in town until the weather clears, or it’s time to head back home (we have to leave by early Saturday). I guess we’ll do the touristy things: shopping, visiting the hotsprings and the wildlife preserve, and sitting in warm internet cafes, for the next couple of days if we have to.

After a couple of days on the Dempster (somewhere between 700 and 800 km of dirt road), we arrived in Inuvik on Sunday evening. The daylight up here, even this late in the year, is hard to get used to. Darkness doesn’t completely come and it’s still sunny at about 11pm. Add that to nights spent watching the northern lights rather than sleeping and you have some very strange sleep schedules starting to form. We had to force ourselves to get up with an alarm today in order to be ready for a charter to Tuktoyaktuk, on the Arctic ocean. The town of Inuvik itself is quite large and developed from what we’ve seen. Today we’ll get our incredibly muddy bikes off the truck and do a bit of exploring. Below are a few pictures of our trip. I’m sure we’ll get more time to explain them when we return, but as always, we’re eager to get out there and enjoy the adventure, rather than documenting it all in detail. The photos are from along the Dempster and our overnight camping stops. No major mishaps on the road, except for one flat, which we enjoyed changing in a blackfly infested roadside pullout at sunset. Our consolation prize was the excellent makeshift campsite we picked out a little down the road, where the northern lights blanketed the sky from dusk to dawn.

Nearly full moon and the Northern Lights along the Dempster

Lana and Doug in Tombstone Territorial Park

Doug in Tombstone

My bike, after two hours on the Dempster (usually it's green)

Sunset as we were changing our flat tire

Aurora at dusk along the Dempster

Aurora at 2am along the Dempster

Slow Aurora near Fort Macpherson

Aurora in Fort Macpherson

A roadside Inukshuk just south of Inuvik, north of the Arctic circle

Northern Lights in Dawson City

Hi Travellers!

We reached Dawson City on Wednesday evening and have stayed until today. We have had a great time here and were able to see a bit of northern lights while in the town, and from our hotel room. Pictures will be coming soon. We’ve also got a good collection of pictures of the town, the dancehall girls at the casino (Canada’s first legalized gambling estabilishment). No sourtoe adventures (there’s only a 2 hour window in the evening), but we’ve got another night in town on the return trip.

Today we are heading off to the Dempster Highway and somewhere in the next few days we’ll be doing a backpacking trip in Tombstone Territorial Park. We are really excited about this leg of the journey and after talking to a local photographer we got some info on where the caribou and other animals are at the moment so we are feeling good about our chances for some great wildlife photography. For those of you who haven’t heard of Tombstone Territorial Park you should check out the photos of Robert Postma for some great ones of the park and the north. The colours are changing late this year so we might get the best pictures on the return trip rather than the trip up. As a spell of good luck, the clouds are clearing and the aurora are forecast to be active again tonight and tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll find a great camping spot for viewing!

More soon!

Why Hello Travellers,

Last night we found ourselves in the town of Faro, Yukon. After being soaked with rain in Whitehorse and with the good looking forecast for northern lights we looked for a place in the Yukon with a clear weather forecast and came up with Faro. When we arrived we found a lovely little mining town with a great campground in the town (so great that a $6.50 campsite comes with free hot showers, firewood, internet and coffee and snacks at the interpretive center across the road!). It should also be pointed out that the town itself is very beautiful. It’s covered in lovely gardens and even has a strange golf course that winds through the entire town.

We decided to view the northern lights when the sky cleared so we headed to bed for a brief nap. I was a bit confused about why my alarm didn’t wake me up at 2am like I had set it, and with Lana getting up and out of the tent, and the alarm ringing at 2:25am, I was even more confused about why hadn’t it gone off before. I climbed into the car with Lana and she informed me that she had told me to turn off the alarm numerous times and that I had just pushed the snooze button.  Apparently I was sleepy.

When we set off to the bridge right outside of town we were greeted by some northern lights in the NW in the clear portion of the sky. There was not too much sky without cloud cover, but we were able to get a little bit of a show. See some pictures below (they’re posted as proof that the lights were there).

The trip has been pretty interesting so far for wildlife, but we were in for a treated yesterday. While we were driving to Faro, a cougar slinked across the road in front of us.  It wasn’t a long look and we didn’t get any pictures, but both of us got our first look at a cougar in the wild. After that we proceeded to go the the Fannin Sheep viewing area just past the town. We were skunked as far as sheep go, but we managed to see a porcupine on the way back, and another while we were looking at the northern lights. One of the coolest things was the arctic fox that came up to us while we were cooking dinner. It wandered around us for a little while, about five feet away and then headed off. We saw it again when we returned from viewing the northern lights at about 5am this morning/last night.

Doug in Front of an Old Haul Truck

Northern Lights in Faro

Nothern Lights in Faro

We made it to a very soggy whitehorse. Here are some photos from the road:

The signpost forest in Watson Lake

A baby moose waits for its mother to cross the road

Buffalo near Liard Hotsprings

We managed to get on the road at 9:15am Saturday. Spent the first night at Mcleod lake (it’s so easy to find places that have ‘Douglas’ or ‘Mcleod’ in them… but there’s never a Rupp River or Lana Meadows anywhere to be found). We spent Sunday cruising past wildlife and forest, with very few stops for photos and made reasonable time to Liard River Hotsprings. The hotsprings are a completely natural set of pools in the middle of a boggy moose and bear filled forest. They were beautiful and very warm and we spent a good part of the evening out on the boardwalk in the bog taking photos of the steam in the moonlight. The stop is highly recommended, even though the campground was pretty crowded. The surprise of the trip up was the buffalo. Apparently there’s somewhat of an infestation. I believe they’re a re-introduced herd. They have taken to sleeping on the hwy and can be seen all over the place around the hotsprings and for the next 90km north. This morning we packed up and drove the last leg to whitehorse. It looks like we’ll be camping just south of the town so we can cycle in and about (also there’s showers!). Anyways.. we’re on the wireless at the public library so we’ll make this one somewhat short. Tonight.. reasonable chance of northern lights. Tomorrow/Wednesday even better. I’m seriously stoked to being in viewing range. Next stops: Dawson on Wednesday, then Tombstone!

So we are off today, of course the alarm didn’t go off, but that only seems to have pushed our 7am start to more like a 8am start. we are so excited and have been busy packing the car, and I should be doing that right now, so I will be off.

The adventure begins and I am stoked!