The ExploreNorth Blog

It is soooo beautiful right now – the temperature is still not bad, hanging around -20°C (-4°F), and the sunshine and thick frost are distractingly pretty. Yesterday I went exploring for a bit. I had to meet a Web site client out to the west just before sunrise, and the pastels of the morning light made it difficult to not stop along the way.

Although it was clear on the Alaska Highway up on the bench above the Yukon River, the fog in the valley where downtown Whitehorse is located was very thick, and I heard the radio announcer say that he couldn’t see much of anything out the window. That’s the #1 reason that most of the new housing built in the past 20 years is up on the bench or on the hills even higher – to keep out of that fog, which can last for many days, even weeks when it gets really cold. Although the radio guy called the current fog “ice fog”, it isn’t really. Ice fog forms at temperatures of about -40°C and lower – this stuff is just caused by the cold air hitting the relative warmth of the open water on the Yukon River and some lakes.

After my meeting I drove a bit further west, but didn’t seen anything too inspiring – this is one of the few photos I took. Although it looks like very early morning, this was shot at 11:10.

Elk are common off to the west of town, and I met a group of 4 bulls grazing alongside the highway.

About half a mile from the elk, this sign at the Drury ranch made me chuckle – it says “Yukon Elk Meat”. They have their own herd of elk I must try elk some day…

The view below is looking back to the west along the Alaska Highway.

A frosty irrigation system at one of the farms.

A detour along the “Old Alaska Highway” (the Historic Mile 929-934 section) produced this photo, which is the view towards Whitehorse.

This photo taken on the Alaska Highway shows the valley fog clearly – yuch!

I spent a few hours at the cruise office, then took a few photos at the airport and Transportation Museum on the way home about half an hour after sunset. The woolly mammoth looks right at home, doesn’t he? This would have been a better photo if I had shot it from 20 feet or so to the right, but I didn’t have my snow-wading boots with me.

If you’re a squirrel, a sheltered woodpile no doubt looks like a great place spend the winter. There are lots of places to nest in complete safety and relative warmth. But squirrels don’t seem to know what woodpiles are created for – that the pile will be taken apart and burned. Yesterday the youngsters in the main stack were made aware of that sad reality.

Some of you will probably be surprised to hear that we like squirrels, and encourage them to stay by feeding them all winter. Yes, they can do a lot of damage, but we love watching them. We have squirrels living in the woodpile, in the barn, under the hot tub, under the greenhouse and who knows how many other places. A marten cruised the property last winter but if he got any squirrels, the population drop wasn’t obvious.

It hasn’t gotten particularly cold yet, so yesterday was a good day to refill the wood room in the basement – with the wood that created the first layer of the squirrel condo.

There were 4 nests in that first row of wood, made mostly from dry grass. I put the nesting material off to the side so the squirrels could fairly easily rebuild, and they were hard at work very soon after I left.

It was a short move – only about 4 feet from the nesting material to some suitable entrances.

I’m sure they were cozy again in short order.

Some of the squirrels decided in recent weeks that they wanted to stay very warm this winter, and had gnawed a hole in the wood room door large enough to get in. That door is now steel-reinforced! At the same time, a woodpecker seems to have had the same idea and did a fair bit of damage to the wood siding of the house in the same area the squirrels were working on. Luckily he gave up – and hopefully found a home in one of the dead trees nearby.

I try to get down to Skagway to see the last ships each year, and yesterday turned out to be an excellent one. Lousy weather (as expected), excellent day. I always wonder whether people know the kind of weather to expect when they book these very late (or very early) cruises – some day I’ll do a poll.

I stopped at Emerald Lake for a minute, of course

Carcross is very quiet now – Matthew Watson’s Store is boarded up for the winter. Our cabin always looks cozy this time of year, though.

“Welcome to the Yukon” – brrrrrr!

At the south end of Tutshi I had a Moose Moment of note – see yesterday’s post for details.

There is a lot of water running through the pass – the usual waterfalls are much bigger and there are a lot of waterfalls that are only seen during heavy rains. Some day I’m going to spend a whole day taking pictures of waterfalls here – you know, set up the tripod and be serious about it

There wasn’t much traffic on the road, and most of the buses had few people on them. The 3 people on this Chilkoot Charters bus were certainly getting a personalized tour

People pay a lot of money to cycle down the White Pass – go figure. With traffic roaring by inches away, I wouldn’t do it even in the warm sunshine.

My impression is that a lot of people didn’t even get off the ship – it certainly didn’t look like there were 6,000 extra people in town!

Over to the Railway Dock to see my railfan friend Gil before he and his wife head south. He drives one of the shuttle golf carts during the summer.

There were lots of Avis rental cars lined up at the ferry dock, probably on their way to Juneau (Avis Skagway is now closed until May). On the way home I saw an empty car carrier headed for Skagway, perhaps to take others to Anchorage or Fairbanks.

The Fairweather Express heads for Haines, with Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas behind.

Big red bags from the Alaska Shirt Company were being carried by a lot of people.

The diamond shops were all quiet despite the SALE signs.

I could spend hours taking photos like this.

Although I’ve occasionally wondered over the years about the location of the cemetery for people who died between the dates seen at the Pioneer Cemetery and the modern one (ca 1920-1960), I’d never looked for it. Thanks, Kathleen, for telling me where it is – it’s a wonderful place!

I came home so buzzed last night. I love Falls colours, I love the running water, I love the ships – and I sure love moose!

It’s that time of year when moose mate. Today I got incredibly lucky and witnessed part of a mating dance at Tutshi Lake.

I first saw this bull on the sand bar at the south end of the lake, at the mouth of the Tutshi River. He was just a speck – these photos are all shot at 300mm and then enhanced with about a 3x “digital zoom”, approximating a 900mm lens!

I moved up the highway about 1/2 a kilometer, parked and shut the car off. When he walked over to the edge of the forest I could hear him calling.

This cow came over to him.

They ran around in the water, making a great deal of noise – calling and grunting.

Then away they went, out of sight.

A sighting like this is extremely rare, and this was shot a few feet from my car. None of the other cars or the many tour buses on the highway saw it. This is a very good example of why I live in the Yukon. I may bitch and moan about the winters, but this experience, as with my wolf-pack encounter a few years ago, will stay with me forever. Absolutely magical.