July 28, 2010

60 degrees North - Whitehorse, Yukon - Canada


The Alcan Highway.

Most cities are built below 60 degrees North - Oslo being a rare exception. Before this trip I had never been North of 55 degrees. Whitehorse is now my high water mark for the Northern hemisphere. After taking the Alaskan ferry to Skagway - we rented a car and drove into the Yukon and retraced the 1890's stampeders trail to the gold fields - except without the 40 pounds of nails and denim.


White Pass. An eerie landscape which spends most of the year buried in snow.

We hiked the Chilkoot Trail - or at least one third of it. There was a gorgeous hanging glacier suspended above the trail.




This is a mural of the stampeders carrying their required 1 ton of supplies over the pass and into the Yukon.

I don't want to say that the gold mining history of the Yukon and Skagway has been grossly commercialized, but suffice to say - there's a lot of fudge in these towns.


My mom got the 'cool under pressure' award on the Chilkoot hike. While my Dad and I were wandering around looking for the ruins of Dyea - Joan ran into two grizzly bears and pulled out her new iphone and snapped this shot. This shatters my claim that my mom will never smoothly operate an iphone.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

aye mately! Looks like so much fun! Hope you sail into Yelapa this winter!

Anonymous said...

Awesome pic from your mom and cool spot but you're not on a boat.