2004/07 Yukon trip - Trek to the Arctic - |
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We stopped at the Fortymile River for some rock gathering. The gravel here was shining with mica and iron pyrites (fool’s gold) so every gravel bar looked like an Eldorado. It must have been tough for the miners to actually find the real gold.
There were lots of interesting side roads and spots to stop on the rivers, but most of them were associated with 
mining claims, and the miners take a dim view of trespassers. We took one long side trip, though, to the city of Eagle, 60-some miles off the highway over the mountains. The road is slow and varies from gravel to rock to dirt, and narrows to one lane along the cliffs through the canyon, but it’s pretty and interesting country, mainly spruce forest, thick in the valleys but thinning to just the odd tree in the high areas. Many areas were burned. We saw maybe two or three cars in three hours of driving. We did see a young moose though, who seemed surprised to be meeting a camper on his moose trail. [In retrospect, it seems more likely that this was a caribou calf.]
Buses are preceded by a pilot car which warns other drivers that something big is coming. Apparently there was a bad bus accident a few years back.
Eagle was Alaska’s first city, but now it has just over a hundred residents. It has a beautiful setting on a hill over a big bend in the Yukon River, with a backdrop of mountains. It’s a few hundred miles downstream from Whitehorse where we last saw the river. It has a fort and other historic buildings that we planned to visit the next day.
We stayed just outside town in another BLM campground. The campground host told us that the temperatures in the spring and early summer had been in the 90s with no rain, and then a thunderstorm in mid June had caused thousands of lightning strikes, setting fires all the way up the highway. The fires had burned for six weeks until heavy rain had finally put them out after they’d destroyed over 100,000 acres of forest. The fires have resulted in financial problems for all the residents dependent on tourist dollars. The local canoe outfitter had joined the firefighters to earn some money as he had no customers coming through on the road.
Tuesday 3rd August
I took an early morning run down to the river and then back up the dirt road to Telegraph Hill. One of the houses had an almost complete brand new paddle steamer in its front yard. I assumed this was for running river excursions in future years. I also met up with an ex-New Zealand couple on holiday from Victoria, BC.
Back at the campsite I found that we’d lost the pin that holds one of the headlights on, so I wired that up. Luckily we don’t do much night driving as it doesn’t get dark here at the moment. Last night I thought I might catch a glimpse of the northern lights by getting up in the early hours. At midnight there was enough light outside to read, at 1 am it was a bit darker, and at 2.30 am it was getting light again! It was, however, quite nippy at 37 degrees. Up here, June is spring, July is summer, and August is fall.
We visited what’s left of Fort Egbert, about a half dozen buildings out of what used to be a very large military 
presence 100 years ago. It was built to house and protect the telegraph system, the Internet of the day. Amundson, the Norwegian polar explorer skied hundreds of miles from the Arctic Ocean to Eagle to send a telegram. Basically it said “Been gone three years. Found Northwest Passage. Send money. Will wait.”
Eagle looks dead for most of the day but it comes alive for a few hours when the ferry boat comes in from Dawson City and the bus comes in from Tok. Then the museum opens up and the local artisans bring out their wares to a marquee by the bus stop. We stopped there to fill up with water from the original Eagle well. We were almost on our way to Dawson City when Sandie got talking to a lady selling rocks and jewelry and found out that the river bank below the town is loaded with lace agates.
So we spent an hour down there and then staggered back up to the truck. We were almost on our way again when we noticed that the canyon walls around American Creek were glittering with serpentine and asbestos. However, a company already has a claim on those cliffs so we had to leave them there.