Klondike HWY @en
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Central Yukon
Still in central Yukon, I visited Keno City, a “City” of 21 inhabitants actuelly ! I must say that the price of silver and zinc are really down, so the mines are actually shut down.
1. The hotel and one of the two bars of this quite surprising “like out of the past” village.
2. Service.
3. The other bar with the owner’s car still running!
4. In the well-stocked museum on past mining, a two-wheel drive motorcycle for mud terrain!
5. Again up the mountains for the night, I admired a gorgeous sunset.
6. Nice boondocking site, isn’t it?
7. Some snowpatches remain at this elevation.
8. Magic light at midnight…
9. Last gleams under the clouds…
10. Another mining site from early 1900.
11. Resuming the Klondike Highway to the north-west, I can not believe my eyes! A “rolling hotel” almost like those we had seen in Romania forty years ago. Each passenger has a “drawer” as bed! It is envy, isn’t it..? 😀
12. One of the many lakes along the journey…
13. Dawson City, a villa quite special, festive, almost without modern building; so far removed from all that many people make quite everything here, especially at night in the local casino or one of the many bars…
14. The “continues to produce Belle Époque-style shows every night.
15. Funny advertising for this store… 😉
16. Euuhh, can I really park there..?!! 😀
17. An example of the difficulty to build on permafrost. These buildings are a century old. Protecting the soil from the cold during the winter, they make the permafrost melting, destabilizing their poor foundations. So they continue to “sink” into the ground.
18. Overview on the city along the Yukon River…
19. … which continues her journey toward North_East.
Vivalavida then took the path of the great north on the Dempster Highway, a road that still frightens many travelers. A thin ribbon of over 750 km through boreal forest and tundra, which turns into slippery mud in the rain, mainly driven by the large trailer trucks supplying Inuvivk at the terminus, with a single service station / motel more or less mid-way… To come soon… 😉
South West Yukon (2)
Continuing the discover of backcountry roads the next day, I arrived into mining areas, some of which are still active today. Guys continue to look for gold…
1. VivaLaVida on the trail.
2. They are so many small lakes everywhere…
3. Over the tree limit, it’s meadows with lots of blueberry trees. Grizzly bears are probably really feasting here at the end of the summer!
4. VLV brave despite its only two wheel drive.
5. A mine site operated until three years ago and now closing. The government requires the demolition of buildings, but also the restoration of the landscape, including the filling of extraction areas and site cleanup. A big work which will take several years…
6. Back to Whitehorse, the Yukon capitol town, where the most popular campground is the local Walmart parking lot, who knows why. Beautiful sunset after midnight.
7. One of the Twin Lakes along the Klondike Highway.
8. Back through Carmacks, forced stop to say hello to Shanon and Garry ! 😀
9. Yukon River at Five Fingers Rapids.
10. That landscape is mostly formed of mudstone, a kind of petrified mud that contains many boulders. The river carves its bed sometimes making beautiful cliffs.
11. Camp at Frenchman Lake.
12. Quite Sunset at 01:30……
13. In some places, even the mighty river meander…
14. Detour towards Keno City with a stop at the remote Hansen McQuesten Lake.
15. In the mountains East of Keno City.
16. Higher, view of the many lakes in the valley with McQuesten Lake at the right background.
17. The few backcountry roads were all made by mining industry and remnants remain.
18. Some are practically unused except by Vivalavida..! 😉
19. Inaccessible valley to the east. To give you an idea of the low population density here: the area of the Yukon is ~ 482’000 square kilometers – Switzerland is ~ 41,000, or 12 times less – and its population has just reached 37,000 where more than 25,000 inhabitants live in Whitehorse ..! In short, there is room for the bears here! 😉
20. Not far from the summit of this mountain, the track doesn’t look like really anything…
21. … end ended by the only tracks of VLV.
22. I slept there tonight.
23. There are only a few first flowers on the tundra up there.
24. And golden plovers which spend the night here!
25. At summit of Keno Hill, a sign indicating some foreign places; I seems that I’m at about 3,000 miles away from Geneva in a straight..! 😉
25. Sweetness of the sunset from this splendid point of view…
Following of VivaLaVida’s trip through the Yukon soon…
D5 Creation