2005/07 Alaska Trip - North to Alaska - Whitehorse and Pine Lake |
|||||
We passed the great mountains at Jakes Corner, where we turned off for our sidetrips to Atlin and Skagway last year, and then drove on to Whitehorse, capital city of the Yukon.
There’s a really good museum we went to last year. It’s called Beringia and it is all about the land bridge that joined Siberia and Alaska and the Yukon back in the last Ice Age. John and Edna went there while we hit Walmart and Canadian Tyre for supplies down in the town. The latter obviously has a serious theft problem as many goods were in locked cases, with instructions that the customer was to be “escorted to the checkout” if buying the goods.
 |
Alaska Highway (Whitehorse, Haines Junction, Kluane Lake) |
|---|
We all took a quick tour of Whitehorse afterwards, as it’s an interesting town, squeezed between the cliffs and the Yukon River. The Alaska Highway runs along the top of the cliff, bypassing town, but giving access to Beringia and the airport. The airport’s runway ends at one of the cliff tops, and apparently this was a big concern on 9/11 when the closure of US air space caused some very large airplanes to be diverted there.
Past Whitehorse, the scenery changes and the mountains become more rounded. This part of the Yukon has always been rather dry, so it was not glaciated and the mountains have been eroded over a long period with no glaciation. It was mainly dry for us too, but dark and chilly. Roadworks had turned the highway into a sea of mud in the mountains before Haines Junction, enough that we needed four-wheel drive to get through with the trailer. The traffic behind us disappeared and we assume that the lead car must have got stuck somewhere. There was also a motorcyclist being seen to by an ambulance, so we guessed he’d tipped over too. Roadworks are always a challenge on these roads, as there is no alternative route. You have to go in and mingle with the earth movers and bulldozers. The locals seem to mainly drive pickup trucks or all-wheel drive Subarus, and you can see why.
We found a campground at Pine Lake and pulled in there for the night. It was too cloudy and wet to see the mountains above the lake. We got a fire blazing enough to be able to cook despite the showers rolling through all evening.
Monday July 18th
As the day started dry I went for an early walk to the lake and made about fifty yards before the rain started again! I saw the mountains for a couple of minutes.
Next.