Daveography 🇨🇦
I made it to Dawson City! What a trip! The Yukon is so wild, and Dawson is bonkers.
Much more later.
Some highlights from canoeing the Yukon River in no particular order.
#1 - Old cabins and outposts scattered everywhere, all along the river. It's hard to date them, but suspect they range from the Klondike Gold Rush (1898-1902) to claims up to the 1950s.
#2 - Fort Selkirk, an old trading post that is still mostly only accessible by river.
The current fort dates back to 1892, a previous one to 1852, and has been a gathering place for First Nations for over 8000 years.
The Selkirk First Nation manage the site, including the campground, and are working on preserving and restoring many of the buildings.
Visitors can explore the buildings freely, restored or not. It's amazing!
#Yukon #YukonRiver #ForkSelkirk #Selkirk #NorthernTutchone #Tutchone
More photos of #FortSelkirk because it was that cool.
#3 - The Yukon River itself. We only paddled a bit under 1/10th of its full 3200km length, but every bit of it was absolutely breathtaking.
Many tributary rivers and creeks flow into it, and it gets very wide (and silty!) as they do, and that width really messes with your perception.
But it also makes it a great river to learn how to canoe, lots of room to make mistakes and few major hazards.
#4 - Wildfires. I've never been close to one before. Let alone three.
I don't know if the Yukon is seeing more wildfires than average, but I was reminded that fire is nonetheless an essential part of the lifecycle of the forest.
None were threatening any major infrastructure at the time. The day before I left a big part of the territory got a pretty heavy rainfall, which I imagine will tamp them down significantly.
#5 - Our guides with Sea to Sky Expeditions, Dayna and Kade.
Dayna in particular knows the ins and outs of the Yukon River very well, including many of the best places to camp.
The two of them together made an amazing meal plan that was varied, tasty, and kept us full and energized over the entire 8 day trip.
They were both very engaging, and made sure we all felt safe and had loads of fun.
Couldn't have made a trip like this without their expertise.
#6 - Wildlife. We didn't actually see a lot of large terrestrial animals on the trip, but we did see a female moose with two little meese, and later another young-looking moose (pictured). Also spotted a beaver, and red squirrels.
We did see some bears, but it was on the drive to our put-in, not in the wild-wild.
Lots of birds though! I counted 30 confirmed species of birds seen and heard, plus another 4 unconfirmed.
Mark Ingalls@Daveography this is a really cool thread, thank you for sharing.