Category Archives: Yukon

Bracing for the Buckwheat

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Skiing over these Yukon and White Pass Rail tracks is easy since they are covered with several feet of snow. It’s cold here at the interior end of the Chilkoot Trail, plus 5 F, but isn’t uncomfortable until the wind blows up the line.  When the sun breaks through a thin cloud layer the greens, whites and grays of the forest wake up.

A quiet place most of the winter (recent wild things tracks confirm) it must brace itself for tomorrow’s cross country ski race. Even now volunteers construct an aid station, Inuit style, from snow blocks but shaped like a pirate ship—skull shaped prow, beetle killed lodge pine masts and booms, Jolly Roger flags festooning the rigging.  What must the coyote think-the one that left such purposeful tracks in this now sparkling snow?

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Prayer Flags over the Gold Rush Trail

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The quiet peace on this late winter day makes me suspect history. Again we ski between the famous White Pass and Lake Bennett — both reputed choke points during the Klondike Gold Rush. Later we will cross the US Canada border and drop the precipitous 14 miles to Skagway, which tries hard for the summer tourists, to look like its 1898 self. Only these battered railroad buildings, just managing under great caps of snow, even hint of the famous rail tracks beneath.

During other visits here I could almost hear the stampeders’ cross cut saws reducing the forest. Today, perhaps stunned by the warm windless day and the cloudless ski, I think of little but the ski. Two days ago a couple hundred skiers raced each other on these trails. You can still enjoy the dragon crested replica of China’s Forbidden City they made of snow blocks. Tibetan pray flags still flutter their colorful warning at the summit of the steeper drops. We ignore caution and fly down under the flapping prayer then glide onto a large flat meadow to gaze at a nearby string of mountains. Concentrating on the mountains I ignore the single set of tracks made by a large running animal that marks the meadow.

After settling into the ski rhythm I start thinking of all the beauty we had seen on this trip but run out of time before cataloging more than today’s experiences. There was the Yukon River now being drained by open water that steamed in the morning sun. Later there were the mountains between the Alaska Highway and here, each dappled with shadow and light. We stopped briefly at Carcross with its views of Lake Bennett and Nares Lake. Open water on the later reflected a great hill that is spotted like an Appaloosa horse. Now there are this series of meadows decorated with the weathered skeletons of tall spruce.

Later we will board the ferry for the 6.5 hour ride along a mountain lined fjord to home. Without wind we can expect to see the reflection of each mountain lit up by spring sun.

Borderlands

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This Whitehorse ski area is an intersect area where man and wild things coexist. Men move most freely in daylight but the abundance of animal tracks show that they own the night. I choose the smaller, less used tracks that meander through a mixed forest of hard and soft woods. White spruce, some showing the red bark of mature trees space themselves between well formed alders. Yesterday’s overcast skies remain but let though enough sunlight to cast shadows on the snow.

Deep in the woods I watch a squirrel wait by the side of the trail like a homeless person timing the crossing of  an expressway. Forming a question mark with its tail, it tenses then springs across the ski tracks to the safety of the bordering trees. Minutes later I reach a disturbed meadow where large standing spruce, needless and black, dominates the surrounding willows. A small bird of prey flies from the top of a spruce with a quick flutter, then a glide, and another flutter. I’m surprised to see that the willows have already formed fuzzy catkins which are dropping seeds.

Back in the heavy woods a raven waits by the side of the trail until I stop. Then he waddles into the middle  of it and nests down next to the ski tracks.  He knows I am coming for I am the train. The train stops and reverses, leaving the bird stranded at the station.

Someone has hung an eagle feather at the junction of two trails. It dangles by an almost invisible thread, a tired thing of cinnamon white and brown. The eagle discarded it. Man hung it here where no decoration is needed.

A Whitehorse Day in Black and White.

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We feel a little betrayed by the promising pink sunrise that started the day. Since then a thin gray cloud layer has blocked the sun from Whitehorse Yukon Territory. Thin as  it is this overcast is made edgy by the sunlight filtering through and offers none of the comfort or drama offered by cloudy days in Juneau. Our hotel is full of Asian tourists here for the Northern Lights. They may have to wait a day or two to see them.

With plans to visit the Canadian Tire store on the way home we drive 35 kilometers north to a hot springs complex where cross country ski trails snake through a poplar forest. It’s good skiing but we miss the drama of yesterday’s ski near Lake Bennett.  Moose tracks cross the ski tracks many times but none of the big animals has walked on the tracks themselves. With the forest floor covered with deep soft snow you would expect them to use the packed trails. At one point we passed nearby a moose, which startled us when he broke nosily away. Every though they look like some kind of farm animal moose scare me more than bears. When they take it into their mind to stomp you they persist until you either escape or feel pain. It is worst if you get between a cow moose and her calf.

While the gray ski offers little beauty, that of the gray barked poplar forest has all the romantic beauty of a black and white film from the 40’s.  The trees have a Scandinavian sense of personal space, leaving a couple of feet between each neighbor. Thin, tall, and always just a little crooked, their trunks rise ten or fifteen feet above the snowy ground before sending out branches. Even then they grow upward like saints in prayer rather than out like an apple tree.