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Canoeing the Yukon River
publication date: Feb 14, 2008
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author/source: Polly Evans
 Wanderlust.co.uk, 14 February 2008.
Thousands once stampeded down Canada's Yukon River in search of gold, but these days its greatest draw is utter tranquillity
We’d just left the city, but already we had the jade waters of the Yukon River almost to ourselves. We were accompanied only by a pair of bald eagles, one of which soared overhead while the other fed stringy pink flesh to chicks in a nest and glared at us through haughty yellow eyes.
Around a bend, we came upon a group of young males that swooped and soared between the scraggy branches of the trees that lined the bank. We counted eight, then ten, then 12. Then we stopped counting, and the only sound we heard was the drip and slosh of our own paddles.
A hundred-odd years ago, this silent waterway bustled chaotically as thousands made their way downriver to the gold fields of the Klondike. Most of the prospectors had already hiked over the arduous Chilkoot or White Pass trails from the Alaskan coast [see Wanderlust, March 2008 for details]. Next they built boats and embarked on the mighty Yukon River, whose currents (they hoped) would take them to the gold rush town of Dawson City.
Today though, the easy gold has gone; we had no hopes for it. And so, after a couple of hours’ easy paddling, we paused for a floating lunch. There were six of us in three canoes, including our guide Stefan, and, as we ate, the current carried us along. It was flowing at about 10 kilometres an hour. We could arrive at our camp for the evening with almost no effort at all.
The current weakened in Lake Laberge but we had a favourable wind.
“Let’s sail across the lake,” Stefan suggested. And so we lashed our canoes together into a makeshift trimaran, built a square mast from driftwood and tied on a tarp. A black bear stared from the shore at this strange scooting craft, then turned on its heels and loped away.
We camped that night on soft, mossy ground among wild roses and aspen trees. Our camps were in recognized spots but we were always gloriously alone: we only passed a couple of other canoes each day. While cities and tourist hotspots have filled across the rest of the planet, the Yukon River has gone the other way.
The Klondike stampede died after just a couple of years. The hundreds of steamboats that subsequently plied the Yukon – bringing supplies to those who still lived here and providing business for the wood camps that supplied their fuel – ceased to operate after the 1950s, when the Klondike Highway opened to link Dawson City to the Yukon Territory’s new capital, Whitehorse. Now, just crumbling cabins and slowly oxidising artefacts remain to remind the few who pass of those prosperous years.
We shared one camp with a rusting object that looked like a freestanding loo-roll holder. “It’s a vice, for clamping planks of wood,” Stefan explained.
At Hootalinqua, where the river widens and accelerates, there was once a police station with two constables, a telegraph office, a store, a roadhouse and a tiny island where ships could be pulled up for repairs and winter storage. The steamer Evelyn never left. She made her last voyage in the 1930s, but she’s still sitting on the island, a huge, dark, dilapidated hulk.
As we paddled on, the clear teal waters grew muddy; now the current churned loose silt, which hissed quietly as it stroked the body of the canoe. A belted kingfisher flitted alongside us; on the shore we saw a Canada goose with a huddle of goslings. A tiny mouse attempted to cross the river before us. Its desperate whiskery face stuck up above the currents while its feet and tail paddled for dear life. Later that evening, Stefan caught three pike.
“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” he remarked as I fried the fish over the fire, “but when I gutted them, I found two mice in one of the pikes’ stomach. One was quite fresh. The pike hadn’t even started to digest it.” I hoped it had not been the courageous creature whose tenacity we had so admired
Whatever its end, our efforts compared poorly with those of the mouse. After eight leisurely days we arrived at Carmacks where our trip came to an end. This tiny village with its population of little over 400 is named for George Carmack, the lucky prospector who started the whole hullabaloo. Very few that followed him to the Klondike ever did find riches. Less than half the hundred thousand that set out arrived in Dawson, and by then the best claims were gone.
Many headed straight back home and when, just a year later, gold was found at Nome in Alaska, most of those who remained packed up their sluice pans and moved on. Within a few short years, the gold rush was over. The decades passed and the river grew quiet. Now the seething crowds of humanity are elsewhere and, on the Yukon River, the bears and the bald eagles rule once more.
Polly Evans is the author of Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman, which tells the story of her learning to drive sled dogs in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Published by Bantam, February 2008.
Read more about Polly's Yukon trip in the March 2008 issue of Wanderlust, on sale 14 February
Getting there
Nature Tours of Yukon (www.naturetoursyukon.com) runs a variety of guided trips on the Yukon River for small groups. As well as package deals, they can tailor an itinerary to your own specifications, and offer canoe and equipment rental for those who wish to go it alone.
Air Canada (0871 220 1111, www.aircanada.com) flies from London Heathrow to Whitehorse via Vancouver from approx £700 return. Alternatively, Condor (www.condor.com) flies direct to Whitehorse from Frankfurt during the summer months. Prices start from €229 one way.
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