2015/02 Yukon trip - Takhini River |
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Takhini River |
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In the morning we had -25 and a dark overcast sky with a few snow flurries. The others were off snowmobiling and mushing, and we opted for a snowshoe walk to the 
Takhini River. However, Christiane said we wouldn’t need snowshoes for that trail, so we set off with just our boots and cameras and a picnic lunch.
We followed the road to a parking area and picked up the old Dawson Overland trail from there. The trail was well compacted by snowmobile traffic so the hiking was easy, except for the weight of our boots.
We dropped down to a bluff above the river and then we were able to get down onto the frozen river. We thought there was probably a dock somewhere underneath the snow. The snowmobile track continued onto the ice of the river, which was over a hundred yards wide at this point. This view from the river gives an idea of the scale of the scenery. Downstream the Takhini flows into the Yukon River, which flows north through Lake Lebarge to Dawson City and the Klondike to the Bering Sea.
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Takhini River walk |
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We’d have to walk a long way to see any different scenery so we had our picnic right there on the river bank and then headed back. We saw no one on the trail but back at the road there was a snowmobile and a couple getting their dogs and sled ready for a trip. We saw this Norwegian Fjord horse amongst the aspen on our walk back.
The cloud cover persisted so everyone had an early night. It was still cloudy next day when Christiane took us into Whitehorse for our flight back to Vancouver. We’d 
avoided the Yukon’s occasional -40 and seen two nights of lights out of three, one of them good and the other spectacular, so thought we’d been very lucky.