We leave Whitehorse tomorrow for a spot just outside of Alaska for a couple of days. The weather hasn’t improved much, still cold, windy, and damp – and we are looking forward to a change of scene.
We had some hail storms yesterday.
Conditions improved enough for us to go to the MacBride Museum. It had some wonderful exhibits on the 14 First Nations, the Gold Rush, and Yukon ecology and geology.
It’s pretty amazing how the embankments of the Yukon River are so unstable, there have been three landslides so far this spring affecting one of the major roads into town.
credit – Yukon News
Afterwards we went up to Miles Canyon on the Yukon River. It played a major role during the Gold Rush of 1897 as a treacherous stretch of water that was the death of many prospectors dreaming of reaching Dawson City . It’s supposedly the most photographed spot in the Yukon, and it’s hard to imagine steam boats traveling through the canyon, or the hundreds of handmade boats of greenhorn prospectors, many of whom died trying to navigate it.
credit – MacBride Museum
The lake below the canyon serves as a floatplane base, but being so early in the season few planes were there. The lake is formed by a hydroelectric dam with the longest wooden fish ladder in all of Canada. By the time the salmon get there they have traveled over 2,000 miles.
The wild lupine is blooming everywhere.
3 For the Road 