Dawson City

An easy roll down the tarmac brought me into Dawson City - the city of the Klondike Gold rush in the early 20th century. My plan to set out again for Whitehorse the next day was changed by meeting two other travellers (Iain from New Zealand and Catherine from Switzerland) and we jointly decided that they would rent bikes, and we would explore the gold rush areas a bit, and then canoe down the Yukon into Alaska.Our early start ended up with us riding out of the hostel after midday - and taking a slow ride up a long dirt road past the remains of the famous Dredge number 4. After gold was discovered, it didn’t take long before huge machines replaced the simple panning method.

These dredges would work their way up valleys and filter through tonnes of gravel each hour, sifting out the gold. These were big machines.
Continuing up the long climb, passing many old broken shacks, which a hundred years ago would have been small communities, we cooked up some noodles by side of the trail and headed into the bushes to set up the tent. Above us, a flock of maybe twenty eagles circled and the clouds cleared. We left the cover off the tent, which meant it was going to be a very cold night, but left us with a full panorama of the clear sky, perfect to see the Aurora Borealis - the northern lights.
As promised by Catherine (“yes, I feel we will see them tonight”), at around 10pm - we saw patches of green appear to the north - soon the sky was covered with streaks of greens moving, fading around the sky. At around 1am, one line of light crossed the entire sky, and suddenly brightened into an amazing shining green, before sending out bright rapidly rippling green and pink “waterfalls” of light across the sky. This display, totally unexpected by me, proved to be the most amazing part of the trip. It was worth totally freezing all night on top of a hill.The next day brought a final push up the track to the top, with great views towards the snow-capped Oglivie Mountains I had passed through a few days before.

All this up made for a well earned long fast decent. Stopping at a working gold mine, we were all educated in the ways of gold panning, and deciding it really wasn’t worth the effort - we headed back to Dawson City and the Youth Hostel, stopping to buy a stupidly big pizza on the way.

The Pizza also made a good breakfast, and we headed into Dawson to buy provisions for our 180km canoe trip down the Yukon. With one canoe, laden with three people, a bike, all our bags, water and food, late in the afternoon we pushed the boat into the river. About ten minutes later we passed the last house, knowing that it would be three days before we got to the next place, Eagle Alaska - there was no turning back.

We saw the first bear - a black bear on the north bank, after a couple of hours, so, we set about finding a small island to camp on - no way were we camping on the main shores. We found and scouted an island - it seemed far enough from both shores to be safe so we made camp and made a meal out of various types of noodle.

The following day passed slowly, drifting down with the flow, just a bit of paddling so we could steer. The landscape next few days could be described, even more than the rest of the north, as wilderness, just rounding corners in the river to see more endless mountains, islands and sky.
Late on the third day, a local fisherman, the first person we had spoken to, told us the border was just around the corner, and it was only twenty miles to Eagle. Well, we nearly missed the border. Between Alaska and the Yukon, the border is marked by a clear cut through the trees. On one side hung a small Canadian Flag, followed, on the other side by the flag of the USA. We were in Alaska.