2004/08 Yukon trip - The road home - |
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We set off south on the blacktopped Klondike Highway. This road goes all the way to Lake Lebarge and Whitehorse where we’d been back at the end of July, but we were planning to turn east on the Campbell Highway before we got that far.
We stopped at a rest area with a view of the Tintina Trench. This is a massive fault line that runs across the Yukon, much larger than California’s San Andreas fault. It’s responsible for most of the earthquakes in this area and it’s also the reason why there are so many metals to be mined. As well as gold there is silver, lead, zinc, tungsten, and copper. It’s also a natural migration route for birds, a corridor through the mountains.
From there on, we passed miles of recently burned forest. We camped just off the road along Clear Creek, a rushing, tumbling stream.
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Silver Trail (Mayo, Keno and Keno Hill, Wernecke Mine) and Klondike Highway's mines |
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Saturday 14th August
Saturday was fine and a little less smoky. We followed the Klondike highway to Stewart Crossing, and then took another side trip on the Silver Trail along the Stewart River to Mayo, Elsa, and Keno. Mayo was initially a gold mining town when people were mining the gravel bars of the Stewart River, but became a boom town supplying the miners when silver was discovered further upstream at Keno. Since the silver ran out it’s been on a downhill path, and most of the original buildings have disappeared. There’s been an effort to save what’s left of the town through tourism but on a Saturday afternoon on a holiday weekend we were the only tourists in town. We were close to being the only people in town, and were walking down the middle of Centre Street without being in any danger! Some people are trying hard: the motel was a mass of flowers, but next door there was a derelict and vandalized gas station. We drove out to the town’s picnic spot at Five Fingers Lake to make tea. Nobody there either.
We left the Mayo area and set off on the gravel road to Keno, but one of the rockhounding guide books had mentioned that there was red jasper in the creeks on the Minto Lake Road, so we turned down this narrow dirt road. It was interesting country and had obviously been mined over the years, but we didn’t find much jasper. However, Minto Lake looked pretty so we set up camp there for the night. The area may have been someone’s home at some time as there was a log cabin ruin, but it looked like it was now used by the Indians as a fish camp as there were racks for drying fish. I found a beautiful piece of red jasper in their fire pit.
When I was scouting for a good camping spot I saw a large pair of brown hairy hindquarters in the bushes on the other side of the creek. It looked like a grizzly, but I couldn’t tell for sure from that end and by the time I came back with the camera the bear was gone. There was plenty of bear scat in the area so we’d have to be careful.