Yukon calling!
A century’s worth of history remains intact on the banks of Canada’s iconic river.
A tilted smokestack appears first, leaning diagonally above the ruins of the S.S. Julia B. Thrashing along a trail. I come across rusted boilers littered among collapsed wooden decks and wheelhouses before I spot — rising eerily above the trees — the S.S. Schwatka’s towering paddle wheel, which once propelled her along the Yukon River.
Seven of these abandoned stern-wheelers make up “Paddlewheel Graveyard,” evidence of a forgotten era in which waterways served as a primary means of transportation throughout North America. My buddy Moe and I are on an eight-day canoeing adventure down the Yukon, paddling in the path of the 1896 Klondike gold rush stampede and the bold pioneers who followed them.
The Yukon Territory is a wild area the size of California with only 36,000 residents, and its main artery is the river, which runs 1,980 miles from northern British Columbia to Alaska’s Bering Strait. The most popular stretch for canoers and kayakers is the 444mile leg from the territorial capital, Whitehorse, to Dawson City, a stretch of old settlements, gold mines, trading posts, North-West Mounted Police outposts and beached stern-wheelers.
Keen to see the uniquely preserved Fort Selkirk (built in 1848) and to paddle through Five Fingers Rapids, Moe and I decide on a less-traveled, 252mile section from Carmacks north to Dawson. We hop a 2½-hour shuttle from Whitehorse to Carmacks, load our camping gear and food into a 17-foot fiberglass canoe and launch into the river, heading north.
We are following the final stretch of a yearlong journey “stampeders” undertook to reach Dawson’s gold fields. More than 100,000 international dreamers, schemers and charmers arrived in Skagway, Alaska, clambered in winter over the Chilkoot Pass carrying 1 ton of supplies, then built boats at Bennett Lake in spring to reach the Yukon River. Only 30,000 made it, and most who profited during the rush “mined the miners.” One of the profiteers was Frederick Trump (Donald’s grandfather), whose empire began with a hotel and restaurant on the Chilkoot Trail.
Wide and loopy, the Yukon sweeps along at a swift 5 to 8 mph through a spectacular sub-alpine landscape of low hills blanketed in aspen, black spruce and lodge pole pines. Within an hour, we spot a black bear on a shoreline purple with fireweed. Sandstone river banks are pockmarked with the nests of swallows swooping in clouds. Kingfishers dive-bomb around our boat.
“Stay tight, river right,” Moe, an experienced whitewater canoer, advises from the stern. “And don’t stop paddling, whatever you do.”
Adrenaline fires my system as we approach Five Fingers, choppy whitewater rushing between tall cliff islets. Waves splash over the bow, the canoe bobs and bounces, and we flush into calm waters. Easy for us, but often a disaster for makeshift boats and paddle wheelers that had to be winched upriver through the rapids.
“Stay tight, river right,” Moe, an experienced whitewater canoer, advises from the stern. “And don’t stop paddling, whatever you do.”
Farther on, we pull in to Merrice Creek just as a Toronto couple camping there land an Arctic grayling for dinner. “Are you going to the festival?” they ask. Everyone we’ve met on the river is heading for Dawson’s annual music festival, a lively affair that takes over the historic gold rush town’s churches, gazebos, pubs and parks.
Puttering along the next day, Moe and I pass landmarks with names like Trouble Hill, Sleepy Hollow Bar, Push Button Bend and Lucky Joe Creek. Stacks of logs appear at some of the many riverside wood camps — fuel for stern-wheelers that once burned two full cords every hour.
We beach at an old log homestead where a spruce tree has sprouted up through a partially collapsed roof. I poke my head in a window frame lined in vintage bottles at a cast iron frying pan atop a battered wood stove. Rusty gold mining pans and tobacco tins line a shelf dangling diagonally off the wall. Alongside, half-buried in tall grass, the bed of a 1930sera truck is still loaded with firewood.
Over the course of the trip, Moe and I encounter brilliant sunshine interspersed with torrential downpours of warm rain and a lightning storm that has us huddling under a tarp nibbling gorp. Often we just let the canoe drift in the current, enjoying the views, sipping rum and coke.
At Minto Bluff, dozens of Dall sheep dot a steep slope. We watch a black bear slip into the river and beat the current to the far shore. Then a moose and her calf swim in front of us. We slip out of the main stream to explore lazy back channels where we pass huge beaver dams and spot two bald eagles sitting protectively atop a hefty salmon on a gravel bank.
On Day Four we spot an intact village ahead of us perched on a bluff. Fort Selkirk, established as a Hudson’s Bay Co. trading post in 1848, had a rough history: Attacked by First Nations, it became a settlement and North-West Mounted Police post, then was abandoned when the new Klondike Highway to Dawson killed the stern-wheelers. Remarkably, the wooden buildings never burned and more than 40 have been restored. We wander through the deserted town’s homes, shops, churches, garage, cemeteries and schoolhouse, some partially furnished with wrought iron beds, rocking chairs, rows of shoes, mementos. One is still wallpapered with 1903 issues of the Montreal Gazette newspaper.
A few more days on the river and we approach our destination. We hear Dawson before we see it — festival music drifting upriver. Stepping ashore, we schlep our gear through crowds along Front Street, numb with culture shock, to a funky outpost selling everything from wild animal pelts and antique tea sets to chunks of woolly mammoth tusks pulled from permafrost at mining sites.
We’d spend the weekend visiting shops where miners still bring pouches of nuggets, listen to buskers and bands and watch can-can dancers twirl at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s casino. But first I check into my modern Klondike Kate log cabin for my first shower in a week. Mud swirls down the drain at my feet.
At the end of eight days on the river, the only gold I want to see is liquid, crisp, and served in a tall frosty glass.