… Trip Cut Short — Fostering Adventure

Autumn Splendor And The 60th Parallel

Watson Lake to Whitehorse & a Trip cut short

The next milestone to make along the journey north was Whitehorse. Aside from being the capital of Yukon, it’s also the centre of commerce for the entire territory, and the largest town in northern Canada. Straddling the Yukon River, it’s home to over 28,000 people, which is seventy percent of the entire population of Yukon. With a decent population comes all the amenities. From big box stores to multiple coffee bars, its got everything one needs. Even for tourists like us.

For us, Whitehorse is near a six hour drive from Watson Lake, and by the time we finished at the Signpost Forest it was already 17:00. So we knew we’d need to be looking for a camp spot in fairly short order.

Tucked into our camping spot for the night.

The area on either side of our path was pretty wild, with the forests coming right up to the road, and no settlements for some distance. So it took some time to find a spot that was accessible, but not exposed. By then it was almost 19:00. Our hidy-hole for the night was down a long dirt track in the forest, that the map showed ended at a creek between lakes. Unfortunately, just before the hill down to the creek, a tree had come down across the road and barred any further travel. Not needing to get to the creek bad enough to pull out a saw and have at the tree trunk, we backed up a bit to a small clearing, turned the truck around so we had an easy egress, and called it a day.

Camp location along the highway to Whitehorse.

An areal view of our camp location.

The soft dirt track down which we made our way to our spot.

The clearing was in the right spot just before the downed tree.

Even in a location like this, a few select adjustment to the truck's position made levelling the truck possible.

Driving back out to the road the next morning.

We rose early the next morning and were on the road by 7:00. This early start put us in Whitehorse at lunchtime, which gave us plenty of time to fuel up and check our provisions.

Our morning sunshine didn’t last long, and we resolved ourselves to a grey day.

We stopped at this rest spot to have look at the lake and mountains.

Numerous signposts explained what we were looking at.

First snow of the season was now making itself seen on the mountains.

Colourful ground and snowy mountains. Can’t ask for more than that.

Approaching the small town of Teslin.

Teslin has a really good tourist stop on the other side of the bridge.

The bridge crosses the rather large Teslin Lake.

These bridge deck grates can be tricky for motorbikes. Especially when wet.

Driving alongside Teslin Lake after passing through town. We blinked, and missed seeing the town.

A large map of the region showing the towns, lakes and rivers.

Driving alongside Marsh Lake. More colourful than Teslin Lake.

The nice thing about driving on clean roads in heavy rain is that it washes the truck quite well. It’s all nice and shiny.

Finally rolling into Whitehorse.

Driving along the Yukon River coming into Whitehorse. By doing so we pass the S.S. Klondike paddle wheeler National Historic Site.

Fuelling was done at the Integra Tire shop, a business we’ve frequented before as they have both fuel, a dump station and a spigot where one could take on potable water. This time however, we only needed the fuel since we no longer used a black tank, and our water supply was in good shape.

Being in Whitehorse also allowed us to get on the internet courtesy of Starbucks Wi-Fi. Conveniently, it was available from out in the parking lot that it shared with Walmart. From the internet I was able to get onto the Yukon511 site to check on the road conditions going north, and ensure that the bridge over Eagle River was repaired and open for vehicles as heavy at ours. That bridge was indeed now open. That was the good news. Unfortunately, there was also bad news. It showed that the road near Dawson City was closed due to a slide. In fact, several slides. Unfortunately for us, it was south of the turnoff for the Dempster Highway, and therefore blocked our ability to go north toward Inuvik and beyond. There was also no indication of how quickly the road would be clear. A local news article I found online really ruined it for us though. They had an areal photo which didn’t look very encouraging. Nor was the comment in the article regarding the concern that the entire hillside may be unstable.

Hard Decisions

The news of this new impediment was quite disheartening. Now we had to decide what to do. The drive up to Dawson City would take two days, and consume roughly $400 of diesel. So it’s quite an investment wasted if we got there and couldn't proceed further, since it would cost another $400 in fuel to get back to Whitehorse. We were also running out of time, as we had commitments back home in a few weeks. Being further delayed would complicate that. Besides, there were reports of snow falling on the Dempster up north, which really didn't worry us and could actually make the scenery even more spectacular. But the time frame constraints couldn’t be ignored. So once again, our attempt to see the Arctic Ocean seemed to be over. We turned the truck around, and with great disappointment, headed back south.