DOGSLED WITH A LEGEND
Whitehorse is south of the Arctic Circle, so there is no Arctic night in late November. Still, the Yukon’s capital gets light around nine a.m., dark around three p.m., and in between it’s too damn cold to be outdoors anyway—unless you’ve arrived to go dogsledding, in which case you’ll want to drive twenty minutes outside of town to Frank Turner’s Muktuk Kennels.
Although he’s originally from Toronto, Frank is a venerable dogsledding legend in the Yukon. He’s the only man to have competed in twenty-three consecutive Yukon Quests, known as the “toughest race on earth,” routinely placing in the top six, winning it once, and twice receiving the Vets Choice Award for his exceptional treatment of his dogs. He’s the only Canadian-born person to have won the race in three decades, and he held the fastest-time record for over a decade. Joining him for an afternoon dogsled is like having a pond hockey lesson with Wayne Gretzky.
As a dogsledding virgin, I was intrigued, concerned and ignorant about the concept of harnessing dogs to pull a heavy sled across frozen tundra. When you grow up with apartment dogs, it’s difficult to believe that certain breeds thrive in such extreme environments. It instantly became clear that Frank’s 125 dogs are treated with as much respect as, if not more than, any suburban poodle—fed the latest naturopathic food, regularly exercised and treasured like members of a large, mostly canine family. Each Muktuk dog is lovingly named, given a kennel and cared for by the staff of international volunteers.
The dogs greet me with enthusiastic howls when I arrive, shaking off the cold, a low sun still pinking up the sky. The dogs circle their kennels amidst a cacophony of barking, making for an exciting welcome. Puppies race excitedly in a large, enclosed, wooden hamster wheel. Muktuk doesn’t breed and sell its dogs, and they’re made up of various crosses between husky, malamute, wolf, Labrador and tough-as-bones Yukon mutt. Turner frequently takes in local dogs that are in need of a better home, and runs an adoption program for retired sled dogs, but you have to prove yourself a worthy owner first. I inquire how an outdoor sled dog fits into an indoor family home. “Go ahead and ask one,” he tells me.
Each dog has its name proudly stencilled on its individual green kennel. I hesitantly approach a husky named Falcon, and am surprised to find him as friendly and good-natured as a golden retriever. Most of them are. In fact, they are far from being savage beasts, and Turner is trained to slog through hardship. Turner is confident any one of his dogs would make a loyal, well-trained pet, and treats them as such.
It’s time to suit up in layers of provided warm gear, including military-style snow boots to keep my feet warm and dry. We’re heading out to a frozen river in the Takhini Valley, and I’m commandeered into the team, collecting dogs from their kennels and carrying them to a customized trailer. Turner drops nuggets of advice as we do so. “It’s all about teamwork. People think it’s the rider in control, but it’s all about the dogs. They need to trust you. If the dogs aren’t happy, you’re not going anywhere.” It becomes apparent that despite the spectacular surroundings and the thrill of the sport, dogsledding is more about relationships than anything else.
After a short drive, we arrive at a frozen lake. My eyes become moist, which is not ideal when the temperature is below -30°C. Once unloaded, the dogs eagerly anticipate their run. Frank gives me a brief lesson in dogsledding mechanics: yell “Gee!” for right, “Haa!” for left and “Whoa whoa!” to stop. Sleds have brakes and footpads to control speed. I have six dogs harnessed to my sled, and as the saying goes, unless you’re the lead dog, the view is all the same.
ON THE BUCKET LIST: Frank Turner
I’d love to go to Newfoundland. My image is that it’s beautiful, with small communities I can identify with, full of colourful characters. There are some similarities with the Yukon in terms of distance, and I imagine we’d both be considered different from the mainstream.
Frank Turner
Owner, Muktuk Kennels
Yukon Quest Winner
With a whiplash jerk, the dogs set off into the snow, relishing this opportunity to release their pent-up energy. Dog power is not horsepower. Without my control, my team would run themselves senseless, exhausting their energy and possibly injuring themselves. Frank has to constantly remind me to apply the brake, to find the rhythm and flow. Once I do, the true nature of dogsledding—teamwork—becomes as clear as the ice crystals clinging to the trees. Watching the effort of each dog, muscles pounding beneath thick fur, how their individual personalities influence their speed and endurance, makes me appreciate how little effort I need to expend to glide across the lake. With the dogs in their groove, I can look up and truly absorb the jaw-dropping scenery around me.
We spend a couple of hours racing along the snow and ice, and I get accustomed to my team, their personalities, their strengths. Val is a firecracker, Livingston a loyal, steadying force. Incredibly, a healthy Quest pack can travel around 160 kilometres a day, at a speed of around 15 to 20 kph, depending on conditions. I imagine Frank’s race experiences, wrapped up freezing in the sled as temperatures drop to as low as -70°C, under the bright stars and glowing northern lights. He trains hard all year to prepare his body for the sleep-deprived physical pounding of the Quest. The unprepared leader puts the team at risk, and the team comes first.
Before the sun sets, we return to the trailers, feed the dogs and crack out the hot chocolate and thermal warmers, elatedly retreating to Muktuk before the dark afternoon shadows flash-freeze our bones. With a new appreciation for life in the North, you’ll be hard pressed to find happier animals—people or dogs—than on a dogsled adventure.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/dogsled
SWALLOW THE SOUR TOE COCKTAIL
When you’re constantly dealing with different cultures, it’s easy to put your foot in it. A friend had told me that a bar in Dawson City serves the most disgusting drink in the world, and I told him he was one stick short of a kebab. Live baby mice in China, boiled spiders in Cambodia, fertilized duck eggs in the Philippines—you generally have to head east to find the tattered fringes of exotic world cuisine; and besides, everyone knows that Canada’s Beaver Tails are not made of real beavers. I had belittled my friend because this “Sour Toe Cocktail” could not possibly be real, with its special ingredient found nowhere on earth. Actually, it’s available everywhere on earth—it’s just very, very odd.
“I’m telling you,” he told me, “they drop a severed human toe into a drink.”
Really, I just didn’t think Canada had it in her.
Dawson City boomed as a major centre of the short-lived Klondike gold rush. Between 1896 and 1898, the population swelled to 40,000, making it the largest city north of San Francisco. By 1902, the gold had dried up, along with dreams of fame and fortune. Dawson City quickly turned into a small outpost with sinking wooden storefronts, population 1,300. In 1973, a local eccentric wanted to capitalize on the summer tourist traffic heading to the Top of the World Highway. Captain Dick, as he is known, had recently found a severed toe in an old log cabin. Now, when the temperature plummets to -55°C, hard men are known to do strange things, including, as poet Robert Service famously suggested, setting themselves on fire. Captain Dick dropped the shrivelled toe into a glass of champagne and called it the Sour Toe Cocktail. He started a club, crowning himself the Toe Captain. To join it, all you had to do was order the drink and let the toe touch your lips. Word caught on; a legend was born.
Four decades later, I walk into the Downtown Hotel, chilled to my bones. It’s winter, and the icy streets of Dawson are deserted. Captain Al, tonight’s Toe Captain, is awaiting new customers at the bar. Behind the counter sits the eighth reincarnation of the original toe, preserved in a jar of salt. Over the years, toes have been stolen, lost and, in some unfortunate cases, swallowed. The current toe is a sickeningly big appendage donated by an American who lost it in a lawn-mower accident. Every customer gets the same toe. I pay five dollars for the tumbler of Yukon Gold (long since replacing the more expensive champagne) and five dollars to join the club. There’s no doubting the authenticity of the digit: yellowed and pickled by the salt, a broken nail crests the top. My stomach lurches, as Captain Al launches into a well-rehearsed ritual:
The World’s Grossest Foods
If the Sour Toe Cocktail makes you queasy, consider some of these treats found around the world:
“Drink it fast or drink it slow, but either way, your lips must touch this gnarly-looking toe!”
I arch my neck, taste the sweet bourbon and indulge in this ceremony of cocktail cannibalism. Not too bad. Perhaps a little too much toe jam on the high notes.
Captain Al tells me the club has over forty thousand members. Anyone of drinking age can join, and since the Downtown Hotel is not responsible for what you put in your drink after it’s purchased, the health authorities are powerless to do much about it. Tourists now visit Dawson City specifically to go toe to toe with this challenging libation, much as Captain Dick anticipated. With my name logged in a book, I receive a card confirming membership in the Sour Toe Cocktail Club. I immediately email my friend to apologize for having dismissed his story about a drink with a dismembered human appendage. In my defence, it had been one tough story to swallow, but travel writers should know better than to step on anybody’s toes.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/sourtoe
DRIVE THE DEMPSTER HIGHWAY
There are road trips, and then there are adventures. The Dempster Highway, a ghost road built for an oil and gas boom that never came, certainly belongs in the latter category. It begins forty kilometres east of Dawson City and runs north on a narrow gravel strip for some 750 kilometres before eventually reaching Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories. By this stage, most motorists have turned back, happy to have reached the Arctic Circle, just over 400 kilometres into the journey. Considering that many will already have driven 500 kilometres from Whitehorse just to get to the starting junction, we’ll forgive them.
The World’s Smallest Desert
Crossing the Yukon by car, you might want to pop into the aptly named Carcross, located on the South Klondike Highway between Whitehorse and Alaska’s Skagway. At just 642 acres, the nearby Carcross Desert claims to be the world’s smallest desert, although geologists prefer to call it the sandy remains of an ancient glacial lake. Either way, the fine grain and terrific views make it ideal for the very desert-like sport of sandboarding.
Decades ago, when the oil trucks abandoned the road, they left a pathway through a land of pristine mountains, valleys, plateaus and tundra. Call it the Serengeti of the North, substitute bears for lions, muskox for wildebeest, caribou for bucks, and wolves for hyenas. You’ll also find Dall sheep, wild horses and some two hundred species of birds.
The landscape and wildlife are a perk, but the main priority is getting in and getting out in one piece. This is not the road for just one spare tire. Motorists tell tales of four blowouts in a matter of miles, leaving you stranded as close to the middle of nowhere as you’d ever want to get. Sharp shale shreds tires, and three or even four spares are recommended for the journey. There are no emergency pullouts, and fuel stops can be spaced hundreds of kilometres apart. The name of the highway itself serves as a warning for the unprepared: Corporal Dempster was an RCMP officer who found an RCMP patrol frozen to death after getting lost without a First Nations guide.
Parks Canada has supplied some spartan campgrounds along the way, with no electricity and pit toilets. They’re a welcome refuge, but they won’t save you from the relentless bugs in summer. Pitching a tent can be more trouble than it’s worth, what with the bears and wolves, so many drivers opt to sleep in their cars. The road unfolds over a landscape that does, however, yield its rewards: epic views of mountains, rivers and valleys; wildlife crossing the road; fireweed exploding at the end of the short summer. The few motels and gas stations cater to passing traffic, pearls of survival on the endless gravel string. Fresh water is trucked in, and accommodation can fill up quickly. Gravel is replaced by thick mud, with dreaded punctures just a speedometer click away. No wonder so many drivers turn back at the Arctic Circle, their adventure quotient filled to the brim.
If you keep going, the mountain roads become even more challenging, aided by weather that threatens visibility and sticky mud waiting like flycatchers for cars. In summer, there are ferry services over several rivers, while winter allows cars to drive directly over the ice, including those braving the legendary ALCAN 5000 Rally race. The final stretch to Inuvik consists of a couple of hundred kilometres of tundra before the highway connects to a paved road. After days of dicey gravel, it feels as if the car is floating on air.
So why is such a gruelling road trip on the National Bucket List? For starters, it’s a lifeline through some of the most desolate and remote scenery you’ll find anywhere in the world. A personal challenge of skill, perseverance and sense of adventure. Canada’s North, and all its creatures, awaits you on a rocky road you’ll never forget.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/dawson
SKATE ON A CRYSTAL LAKE
Hopefully, you’ve noticed that the items that make up the Great Canadian Bucket List rely on things that you can actually do, as opposed to fantasy scenarios that are fun to imagine and all but impossible to experience. This is why you will not find the following:
When I saw a YouTube clip of a bunch of guys shooting a puck to each other on a mirror-ice lake, surrounded by mountains and with fish swimming beneath them, I had to wonder: can you really do this? Yes, you can. Or, more cleverly, yes, Yukon. Granted, the conditions have to be goldilocks, and this does not happen every year. It has to be early winter, when the temperature drops for weeks, the lakes freeze up, but the snow is yet to fall. Alternatively, snow has fallen but heavy wind has scattered the flakes before they can scratch up the smoothness of the lake surface. Every three years or so you’ll find these conditions at one of several lakes not far from Whitehorse: Kluane Lake, in the national park, Fish Lake, Kusawa Lake, and the scene of the video that went viral and dropped jaws around the world, Windy Arm on Tagish Lake. It’s part of a chain of lakes that form the headwaters of the Yukon River, framed by dramatic mountains that create a tunnel for the wind to barrel through, hence its name.
Local photographer Peter Maher takes his family out every year searching for this type of magic. He’ll arrive at the shore and check the ice. Just ten centimetres will do it, since trucks can drive on fifteen centimetres and thrill-seekers might go out on as little as five. Strong winds keep snow off the ice and the surface as smooth as freshly cut glass. Once you’re skating, it’s a window that reveals schools of grayling or trout swimming beneath you, or bottom-feeders drifting along the sandy depths. Ice bubbles create beautiful art in the ice, smooth pockets of air suspended like frozen thought balloons. You can skate for miles on this pond hockey rink of dreams, although strong winds might blow you farther than you intended. Peter might have someone drive the car ten kilometres down the road to avoid the family having to skate against the wind, which I’m sure his three kids appreciate. He’ll whip out his camera and take some remarkable photos.
Gather Round, Ye Sourdoughs
You can’t just show up in Whitehorse and call yourself a sourdough. The term dates back to the Klondike gold rush, when the name of the hard, fermented bread eaten by locals was bestowed on those who managed to stick around from the freeze of fall to the thaw of spring. Everyone else, well, they were just a bunch of cheechakos, a Chinook word for a newcomer.
Once word gets out, locals start showing up with their skates and sticks. There used to be dozens of people, but with Facebook and YouTube spreading the good news, these days there might be hundreds, not to mention people coming in from farther away. Of course, on a lake that stretches over a hundred kilometres, there’s plenty of room for everyone, with games of pond hockey featuring twenty or thirty players, all bundled up, carrying Thermos flasks with hot chocolate (or something stronger), gliding on their reflections in a real-life fantasy.
“This is one of the things that makes being a Canadian so special,” says Peter. And while you may not be able to show up and do this every winter, it’s special enough, distinctly Canadian enough and real enough to make it onto the bucket list.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/windyarm
PAN FOR GOLD
The Klondike gold rush of 1898 was a boom that could be heard around the world. Although it was short-lived, you can still hear the faint whispers of its allure—the seductive promise of instant wealth—with a visit to Dawson City and a half-hour drive to Gold Bottom. Once a town of five thousand people, Gold Bottom has just five residents these days, all still involved in active gold mining. During the summer months (-40°C weather doesn’t draw too many people), you can sign up for a panning tour and sift through real pay dirt, with the bonus of being able to keep whatever you find.
As you slip on your rubber boots and load your 36-centimetre metal pan with rocks and gravel, spare a thought for the hardened prospectors who came before you. When word finally got out about streams of gold discovered up north, some 100,000 people flocked to the Yukon in search of glory. Dawson City, a ramshackle outpost, became the largest Canadian city west of Winnipeg. The boom was such that a single room in Dawson might rent for $100 a month, when a four-bedroom apartment in New York City could be had for only $120. Only 40,000 people accomplished the 400-kilometre journey through the rugged winter landscape. To stake a claim on the Klondike and surrounding rivers, they had to bring everything with them and face months of dirty, back-breaking work. Unfortunately, by the time the majority of prospectors arrived, most of the claims had been staked, the gold extracted, poems written and fortunes already made. It didn’t take long for booming Dawson to sink back into the ghost towns of history, its proud salons literally sinking into the permafrost.
Parks Canada and the government came to the rescue in the 1960s, restoring the town as a National Historic Site, preserved for the thousands of tourists who visit each year. People come from around the world for the history, the quirks (see Sour Toe Cocktail, page 320), the scenery, the drives and the boom-time legends. Such as Chris Johansen, a miner on Hunker Creek, who offered one Cecile Marion her weight in gold if she would be his wife—an offer that cost him $25,000 when the 61-kilo beauty agreed.
It was the same Hunker Creek where David Millar is now bent over and facing upriver, explaining how to pan the pay dirt. His family has been operating the Gold Bottom mining camp for over three decades, expanding it with rustic log cabins and daily tours, rain or shine. Calf-deep in the muddy brown water, he fills the pan with water, shaking it gently at first while picking out the big rocks. Dipping the pan at a 45-degree angle, he adds more water, the pan is spun and shaken, the gravel slowly rinsed and discarded. Gold is nineteen times heavier than water, so you’ll know you’ve got something when you spot tiny flakes resting at the top of the pan. It’s a slow process for first-timers, and you might walk away with anywhere between one and ten flakes.
Tips for Panning for Gold
In the meantime, expect to learn about the entire process, hear about the gold rush, and even see mammoth bones, teeth and tusks that have been discovered by miners digging into the permafrost. There’s an eight-centimetre nugget on display in the mine’s Gold Lodge, and enough value in the area to keep several mines in profitable operation. As you walk away with a vital keepsake, your hard-won treasures certainly won’t be worth much in value, but panning at Gold Bottom, unlike prospecting in the nineteenth century, is all about the experience.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/goldpan
FLY OVER KLUANE NATIONAL PARK
About two hours’ drive from Whitehorse along the famed Alaska Highway lies the sleepy little town of Haines Junction. There’s not a heck of a lot going on, besides hikers and climbers hanging out at the bakery and an impressive new cultural museum celebrating the life and times of the region’s Champagne and Aishihik people. The town receives a fair amount of passing traffic made up of RVs, motorbikes and cars making their way north, enjoying hour after hour of snow-capped mountains, valleys and glaciers, as well as the occasional moose or elk. From the road, you simply have no idea what lies beyond those first peaks—the striking and magnificent wilderness encompassed by the 22,000-square-kilometre Kluane National Park and Reserve. And although you can stop for a hike around the crystal-clear Kathleen Lake, even climbing a nearby peak, there are limits to where your legs can take you.
Which is why I’m sitting in a six-seat Cessna 205 operated by Sifton Air, embarking on a one-hour flightseeing tour. Call me a Robin with a bird’s-eye view of the world’s largest non-polar ice caps, the continent’s tallest mountains and an alien world of rock and ice.
The altimeter wobbles at six thousand metres when we first see the Kaskawulsh Glacier, a massive river of moving ice that S-curves through a chain of mountains, carving out a valley with all the patience in the universe. Eighty-two percent of Kluane’s surface area consists of mountain and ice. The scale of this natural beauty even has our pilot reaching for his camera, a man who flies this route daily during the summer tourist season. In the context of endless ice, giant rockfalls and shark-fin granite peaks, our plane feels as small as a gnat, and my adjectives thin as toothpicks. We fly up the glacier, hoping for a glimpse of Mount Logan to the east. Almost six kilometres tall, the largest mountain in Canada also boasts the largest base circumference of any mountain on earth, including the giants found in the Himalayas. The tallest peak on the continent, Mount McKinley, takes up residence farther north, in Alaska, and together with other plus-5,000-metre peaks found in the area, it’s clear why climbers have been coming here for decades.
Today, fortunately, is not one for ropes and harnesses, to cling to life by my fingertips. Although the Cessna bounces around in the thermals, rattling and roller-coastering, I’ve learned that such turbulence presents as much of a problem for planes as small bumps in the road do for cars. Even though it’s a crisp summer day, Mount Logan is hidden in the clouds, so we bank left and make our way towards Kluane’s most impressive wall of ice, the 70-kilometre-long, 5-kilometre-wide Lowell Glacier. When moist Pacific air collides with these Arctic air masses, it results in huge amounts of snow, compacted over time into glaciers. Lowell’s surges and ice dams have resulted in devastating floods, with local legends recalling whole villages being washed away by tsunamis of mountain water.
Canada’s Highest Mountain
Located within Kluane National Park is Canada’s Mount Logan, towering at 5,959 metres. Even if it does take second place to Alaska’s Mount McKinley, North America’s highest mountain, Logan is still higher than any mountain in Africa, Europe or Oceania. It has the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth.
Down below I see deep crevices, cut like scars into the ice, and pools of ice-blue water, among the purest drinking water on Earth. We trace the glacier, watching it break apart into braided streams and muddy silt, and continue the journey over stunted forests of aspen, spruce and poplar. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for bear and moose, and spot a half-dozen white Dall sheep, the park’s most abundant mammal, impossibly perched high atop a mountain.
The hour-long flight is almost complete, and I’ve seen just a fraction of this vast open space, the flora and fauna hidden from above like secrets. Most of Kluane is accessible only by air, hence the flightseeing options available in Haines Junction. Hop on board a plane or helicopter and witness the blue ice and black rock brush strokes on a truly spectacular Canadian canvas.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/kluane