Dawson City to the Arctic Circle

Coming from the south one passes the Dempster Highway turn-off before reaching Dawson City. Don’t turn there! Continue to Dawson for two important information centers. A big official one with free internet has all you need to know about the surrounding area and the Klondike gold rush history. The other, across the street, is managed by natives from the Northwest Territories (NWT) and has the most up-to-date information about weather and road conditions along the 465 mile Dempster, Canada’s only road above the Arctic Circle.

Dawson City was the epicenter of the Klondike gold rush. Gold was discovered in 1896 on Rabbit Creek, soon renamed Bonanza Creek. Local prospectors staked their claims. But by the time stampeders from around the world arrived in ’98, the gold bearing streams had all been claimed and by ’99 the rush was over. The boom population of 40,000 now hovers around 1400.

By 1905 surface, or placer mines were played out. Corporations bought out the small claims and brought in dredges. By 1913, there were 12 working the Klondike drainage. Dredges are floating sluicing plants that dig their own ponds as they scoop up gravel and process it through screens to separate out the gold. They then eject the tailings with an overhead, sweeping chute, leaving corrugated shaped piles of rock.

On the way to find a campsite, we visit Dredge #4, one of the largest dredges to ever work the Klondike area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This old picture gives an idea of how they worked, and the devastation left behind.   The entire Klondike River valley for miles and miles is nothing but tailing piles.

We decide to camp high above Dawson City on the Ridge Road, one of the first built in the Yukon to aid miners hauling out their ore. Our camp is hardly legal, next to a trailhead, but there is no traffic so we park there anyway and have the place to ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took 20 years, starting in 1959 to finish the difficult Dempster. The road is built atop a thick gravel pad to insulate it from the underlying permafrost. Without insulation the road would sink below ground level. Many gravel pits along the way provided base for the road building effort. We find these gravel pits welcome campsites with rocky substrate instead of the mud found in the official campgrounds.

Oil discoveries in the area prompted starts and stops on road construction. Political wrangling prolonged the effort. Finally, in 1979 the road to Inuvik, a First Nations village in the NWT, was officially opened and named after Royal Mounted Police officer William Dempster who used to run the dog sled trail from Dawson to Ft. McPherson. In 2017 they extended the final 86 miles to Tuktoyaktuk on the Beaufort Sea. Because the oil and gas business has declined, natives of the area are counting on tourism to take up the slack. (They’re going to have to figure out a way to improve the weather).

Back in Dawson, the news at the information center is not encouraging. There are 2 free ferries in the NWT across very big rivers. The first ferry, on the Peel River, is closed due to flooding and people are stranded on both sides. It should reopen in a day or two. Also the native lady running the info center disabuses my high hopes of seeing polar bears and musk oxen. Not that they don’t live there, just not anywhere near the road. We might see some caribou if we are lucky. Humm. Oh well, we’ll just see how it goes.

We start up the Dempster August 29. First section forested and not too colorful. We see very little wildlife. Tried to hike Grizzly Lake trail but got soaked. Passing the Tombstone Territorial Park, colors start changing to the golds and reds we remember from before.

 

Found a lovely camp site with a pond, near an airstrip in the Ogilvie valley. Washed the mud off the camper so we could get in without getting smeared. On our evening hike (it’s still light until at least 10pm) a black bear sauntered out of the woods very close to us. I was so startled, I forgot about the camera. Broken clouds and drizzle greet us in the morning and soon segue to snow.

Stop at Eagle Plains, one of the few dots of civilization in the vastness. Eat lunch, check email and ask for weather predictions. Peel River ferry open now, but Mackenzie River ferry closed due to gale force winds. Weather to continue in same pattern for at least the next week. Humm, again. We press on to the Arctic Circle. It’s cold, with snow flurries, but the sun peeks through occasionally lighting up spectacular scenery.

When the sun does shine through, the vistas are magnificent. We are driving through what was known as Beringia, the land bridge that existed between Alaska and Siberia that enabled migration of humans and animals to North America during the ice ages. Beringia was not glaciated. It was a grassland steppe that included the land bridge, which stretched for hundreds of kilometers into the continents on either side. The eastern boundary was the Mackenzie River in the NWT. Further east was an ice shield, up to 2 miles thick.

Fossil remains show that spruce, birch and poplar once grew beyond their northernmost range today. Woolly Mammoths and other megafauna roamed the steppes and would have provided food, hides and incentive for the first paleo pioneers. Today mammoth tusks are turning up more and more often as the permafrost melts. Mammoth ivory is very valuable and highly sought.

Several miles beyond the Circle we find a quarry. Decide to camp because it’s getting late and there aren’t any official campgrounds nearby. We try hiking on the muskeg, a miserable, lumpy mess of humps and water. Don’t get very far in that endeavor.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll leave us there, in our gravel pit north of the Arctic Circle, until the next installment.