The ExploreNorth Blog

The pain never really does go away, does it? I was just going through my photos looking for some commercial submissions and found a photo of Kodi, taken at the Pennington section house on Lake Bennett back in August 2003. He had, as he did so often, gone on an independent exploration of the property. I was on the ground and just happened to look up to a second-storey bedrooom window. We had such a good life together

Living in Whitehorse has a lot of pluses. Especially when you have secluded acreage 15 minutes from downtown. Not only do you have pretty well every service you need close at hand, the wilderness is literally at your back door.

On Saturday afternoon the Fall colours on Golden Horn looked so good from our deck that we decided to take a drive up Mount McIntyre, or “Mount Mac” as everyone calls it. So up the Alaska Highway we went, turned left at the old Lobird road, went through the gravel pit and 20 minutes from home we were heading up the mountain.

This is the view that keeps bringing me back to Mount Mac, looking southwest over the head of Fish Lake, with Mount Granger on the left. The fireweed in the foreground makes a nice border along the road.

The higher up Mount Mac we got, the more beautiful it was, but off in the distance…. Father Winter is sneaking up on us!

On the summit there’s an aircraft communications system that’s “fenced off” with 3 strands of barbed wire. There’s also a sign that says “No Trespassing” and that no doubt discourages many people from exploring further. The track that goes to the right of the fence isn’t easy to spot but within a few hundred feet it turns into a good 4-wheel-drive road.

On the nearly level summit past the communications system, the Fall colours were beautiful – not as bright as I’d hoped for but certainly enough to brighten up the day.

The tundra offered a great location for a family photo, and Kayla really got into the wilderness spirit with a good wolf-howl! Or was that just a Rebel yell?

This is the view to the SSE from the location above. The mountain to the left is Golden Horn – our house is at the foot of the mountain, further left.

The wind up there had a bit but we went for a bit of a walk to enjoy the incredible views, with the city right below and Marsh Lake off in the distance to the right in this photo. At this location we were right on the city boundary!

It’s hard to believe that the tiny plants that cover the ground up there can be so hardy.

The Tracker is the perfect little truck for this sort of outing. The high clearance and short wheel base make roads like this quite simple – as long as you judge the right line to take through the rocks! Coming down this section was actually worse than going up (it’s much steeper than it looks in this photo).

Starting back down the mountain.

We took a wander at the spot where the truck is parked above. Here’s a closeup of some of the most brilliantly coloured plants – bearberries, I think. Kayla discovered blueberries and turned into a berry-picking machine!

The cranberries were a bit past prime but still quite good.

This is the shortcut that goes pretty much straight down to Fish Lake, saving a very long trip around on less-rough roads.

Fish Lake was a busy place. It seemed to be an organized group of some sort, with powerboats and a big video camera. We didn’t stay.

Here’s a map of where we went – click on it to greatly enlarge it.

Cathy and I are fairly good about getting out for a walk with the dogs at least once a day. Just short ones, a loop around the property, but it’s something. When we lived in town we used to go to the airport for our walks quite often, and last night we went there again, I think for the first time since we moved to Mary Lake. Although the Centennial Trail is the popular trail in Whitehorse, I prefer the airport for several reasons.

First, there are airplanes – sometimes really good action, sometimes just airplanes sitting off in the distance. We lucked in to Air North’s 7pm departure just as we walked by the runway on the way to the trail along the top of the “clay cliffs”.

What a beautiful evening to see the Yukon from the air! Yes, I did just get home from a long trip, but I still got a twinge that I’d like to be going somewhere

This is the furthest-north point of the trail along the cliffs – it’s a long, dizzying way down! I love seeing the city from this perspective – it’s a great reminder of how beautiful the setting is.

It was a fairly slow night at the “WalMart RV Park” – some nights there are more than twice this many rigs. This may seem to many people like an odd way to “camp” but some of the local RVs parks that you pay a lot of money for are even worse, jamming motorhomes in on a gravel parking lot. I wish that the Yukon and Alaska would use New Zealand as a model of what to offer campers – few people camp at malls there.

Looking across downtown to Grey Mountain. The largest building, with the green roof, holds government offices. The furthest line of buildings is the hospital complex – with the hospital on the left and the new (under construction) nurses’ residence on the right.

The airport trails range from a paved path to this ATV-enhanced route along the airport fence, to wide open meadows full of flowers.

We encountered the 2 immature bald eagles from the nest along Robert Service Way. A couple of women we met had just seen them arguing over a ground squirrel one of them had caught!

A different look at Main Street, at 7:35. One of the things I really do like about Whitehorse is that Main Street is still the main street instead of a nearly-abandoned backroad as in many cities. Malls and superstores hurt downtown for a few years but the vitality has returned, perhaps even stronger than before.

On the drive back home, we came upon this very “Yukon” scene – a floatplane being returned to Lake Schwatka after spending time with a mechanic up at the airport.

In the hour that we spent on this walk, we saw a total of 5 people and 1 dog. That’s one of the main things I like about the airport trails – the fact that they get very little use.

We docked at Juneau a few minutes ago, right at 6:00am. The clouds are low, the rain is coming down in buckets. I expect that a whole lot of people will be doing the same as me today – staying on board. If it was my first or second time here I’d certainly be putting on my rain gear and heading out, but my only plan here today was to go up Mt. Roberts for a hike, and that’s not likely to happen.

Yesterday was the day I’d been waiting for – Cathy took the day off work and brought Kayla and Monty down to see me.

This is one of the more distinctive peaks along Taiya Inlet, seen at 4:34, about half an hour before docking at Skagway.

The sun was trying to break through the clouds, but it wasn’t clear what the day would bring.

The Western Titan was backing out with an AMS barge. Note the scale – there’s a tiny Kenworth right above the pilothouse of the tug.

Another example of how tiny we are in this world. When you hear of a small aircraft going missing up here, this is what the search crews are dealing with.

The Golden Princess arrived just after we docked, the Infinity, the Zuiderdam and a small Cruise West ship within the next hour or so. That’s a fairly busy day, but not the busiest.

A look at the ship signature wall – the Canadian National Steam Ship “Prince Rupert” was added on July 19, 1930.

“Soapy Smith’s Skull” was added to the wall in the early days, though nobody seems to know exactly when.

The first gangway being put in, at 05:37.

The walkway that’s been built from the Railroad Dock to town over the past few years has been beautifully executed.

Shuttle buses run constantly for those who would rather ride.

Cathy arrived at 10:30. We had an early lunch at the Bonanza Bar & Grill, then drove over to Dyea to let the fur-kids play on the beach. The wildflowers were wonderful.

This is my favourite of the handful of historic sites left at Dyea – the rotting pilings of the wharf used by stampeders 112 years ago.

The bugs were really bad on the beach so we didn’t stay as long as we had expected. There was an occasional light mist of rain, but it was barely noticeable.

Snack time for the kids.

The irises are certainly at their peak. We’re always thrilled by the richness of the coast after getting used to the dry interior forests.

There was a great deal of money being made at Dyea yesterday – buses were constantly bringing people to the dog sled and horse trail ride operation.

I hadn’t been in to the Dyea townsite for many years and Cathy had never seen the famous “false front”, so we took that short walk through the forest.

All of the buildings were bulldozed by the guy who owned the land 50+ years ago, but this one false front somehow escaped.

Back to Skagway, where we gave the kids dinner before hiking up to Lower Reid Falls.

Lower Reid Falls.

Me with Monty and Kayla.

Devil’s Club – lovely to look at, nasty to touch. I well remember this stuff from when I was a kid living on the coast – I got nailed by it many, many times.

The fast-cat dropped its last load of passengers and headed back to Haines for the night. It’s passing a breakwater that was built last year. The Golden Princess was the first to leave. The Infinity was supposed to be next in line but was having “propulsion problems” and couldn’t move, so we left next. I hope that the problem on my favourite ship was quickly solved.

Passing the mouth of the Katzehin River, 18 miles south of Skagway, at 10:15pm. There may some day be a highway from Juneau to this point, to make it easier for Juneauites to get Outside. All Alaska needs to do is find $400 million to make it happen – they’ve already spent $25 milliion studying it in recent years.

I slept like a log last night – 8 solid hours. That’s very unusual for me when I’m on a ship. It’s now 07:50 and it’s still raining hard, but the clouds have lifted substantially, so I’ll post this, go for breakfast and see what Mother Nature has in store for us.

Yesterday was a fine Spring day in Whitehorse. Flower buds are poking out of the ground everywhere – crocuses, Arctic poppies, delphiniums and fireweed the most noticeable on our property. Kayla and Monty don’t even want to come in the house anymore

The snow is rapidly melting off Golden Horn…

We started packing away winter clothes, and Molly got right into helping out with that job!

It’s Trade Show weekend up at Mount Mac, and turnout was quite light – too nice to be inside? Last year’s turnout was good, though, and the low turnout may also be a comment about moving back to Mount Mac – last year it was at the Canada Games Centre, a wonderful facility for this sort of event.

Cindy and Amanda working the Expedia CruiseShipCenters booth (I did a shift on Friday night and it was very slow).

This morning, though, that Spring feeling is gone – this is what we woke up to, and the stuff is still falling! Maybe I jinxed it by putting summer tires back on Cathy`s Tracker yesterday