FromAtoB

Dawson was the home of the Klondike gold rush and in 1899 when George Carmack found gold in a Wolf Creek he started a stampede of thousands of men. The gold mining is still going on today.

The first few years were dominated by small individual concerns mining the gold using pans, sluices and small workings. However shortly after the turn of the century big corporations became involved and dredges were used. We toured Dredge No.4 which was the biggest one in use and which has been preserved by Parks Canada.

A Dredge was an enormous (No.4 is 2/3 as long as a football pitch and 8 stories high, weighing over 3000 tons) barge which sat in a pond of its own making. It dug out the ground at the front and dumped out the “tailings” at the back. The pond would move, slowly, like this. In the interior of the Dredge was a system for separating the gold from the rest of the material first using a sorter then a series of sluices. No.4 was built in 1912 and continued working right up until 1960 . Perhaps the most amazing thing is that the dredge was operated by only 4 people although an army of people were required to prepare the ground for 5 years ahead of the Dredge– particularly to thaw out the permafrost.

The Dredges completely destroyed the creeks and valleys that they worked on and driving towards Dawson the extent of the impact can be seen as there are miles of piles of gravel and rock.  Modern day mining is controlled for environmental impact but this wasn’t the case back then.

Just up from Dredge No.4 is the Discovery Claim – this is the place gold was discovered for the first time in Dawson and then a bit further upstream is claim  No.6 which has been set aside for anyone to try their hand at gold panning. We had a go but probably not surprisingly given a complete lack of technique didn’t find anything.

After this we drove up to half Dome – a hill overlooking the town and the Yukon river. We lunched here with a spectacular view.

The town of Dawson itself is one of the nicest towns we have seen in  Canada. Almost all the buildings date back from the gold rush itself and large number have been carefully restored.

In addition they have the SS Keno, a small sternwheeler that used to bring silver ore from Mayo to meet the Klondike for transfer to Whitehorse, preserved on the waterfront.

After spending some time in Dawson we caught the free ferry over the Yukon and settle d into the campground there for the night. This was the ideal location to take a hike to the Sternwheeler graveyard. After the road was built the sternwheeler’s became unprofitable and a number of them were left to rot in Dawson. They are now pretty smashed up  but still make an interesting destination. Obviously not many people visit them because the trail is pretty overgrown and a bit of effort is required but it was well worth it.

It took us a day to drive from Whitehorse to Dawson but we had a couple of interesting stops along the way.

The first place we stopped was at the Takhini Hot Springs where the natural hot water has been channelled into two pools. The bigger one was nice and warm and the smaller one that you reach through a gate from the big one was pretty hot but not unbearable. They also had a cold shower next to the pool which was great for cooling off and then plunging back into the hot pool.

We also stopped off at Five Finger Rapids and hiked down from the road (down the longest staircase in the Yukon) to the river. This rapid splits the river into a number of channels. The Sternwheelers had to use the East most channel to go through which was pretty narrow. On the way upstream they used a cable attached to the shore to help winch them through as well as their paddles on full power. It could take them hours to get through and they burnt so much wood that they had to restock as soon as they were through.

After this we drove on through to Dawson and camped for the night just short of the city.

We finally made it to Whitehorse where we decided to spend 2 nights. After checking out the local campsites (read car parks) we decided to camp in another car park – Walmart, for free. A popular choice clearly as I counted 36 other campers on our first night. This was only a 5 minute cycle from town so very convenient.

We had a full day in Whitehorse and started by cycling the memorial pathway along the Yukon River. We discovered a Bald Eagle Nest with an adult guarding 2 babies along the way and at the end of the path is the biggest fish ladder in the world after construction of a dam prevented the Salmon from returning up their birth river to spawn.

We came back along the path and visited the S.S. Klondike, definitely worth a tour if you are in the area. This was the biggest of the stern wheelers that moved goods and people from Whitehorse up to Dawson City during the gold rush. They took 1.5 days to go downstream from Whitehorse but on the way back it was up to 5 days against the current.

In the afternoon we went to the Beringia Interpretive Centre,  which is a natural history museum dedicated tp depicting the wildlife of the upper Yukon during the last ice age. This was one of the few places in the North of the Americas which wasn’t covered by ice and instead was a vast grass plain with Woolly Mammoths, Muskox and a giant short nosed bear (about twice the size of a grizzly)  roaming around. I was taken with the giant beaver (I wouldn’t want to come across one of these) which can be up to 8ft long.

In the evening at Sarah’s request we visited the Frantic Follies. This was an old style music hall production which aims to give a flavour of what entertainment was like during the gold rush. This wasn’t quite a west end production but was enjoyable all the same. However we were the only people in the audience under 60.

Also while in Whitehorse we tried the beer from the local brewery. They have a selection from a weak lager through to a dark bitter. We weren’t such great fans. The lager was a bit gassy for me but that’s what we’ve found with most Canadian beer.