Boots, Bikes, Boats and a Beaver

View overlooking country around Whitehorse, Yukon

Ken with his first ever lake trout, caught at Muncho Lake

Overlooking valley at Altin Lake looking down toward Lewellyn Glacier

Lewellyn Glacier from the flight of the Beaver

The North, Alaska, Yukon and Northern B.C. really is an enormous piece of realestate. It is a vastness you really have to see and experience to totally comprehend. The few highways that stretch the 1000's of kms barely access any of it. The Alaska Highway itself stretches from Dawson Creek to Delta Juntion, depending on who you ask some say it ends at Fairbanks, and it is on this 2286 km stretch of highway that Ken I saw more R.V.'s that than we have seen on any other. We saw so many R.V.'s that we sometimes wondered "Does anyone really lives up north or are they all visiting?".
The KTM has not been getting as much use as we had hoped, so far. There is lack of access roads that are navigatable on such a big bike, most are boggy or gracier and river beds much too rocky to ride on, a quad would be much better in the bush up here. In the last month the only trips on the bike have been to the Arctic Circle, a fouled trip to Skagway ( it was the weather that was foul, really) and on the local roads around towns we have been visiting.
With the lack of roads to bike we have put on our hiking boots and headed for the hills. Why is it hikers always want to go uphill? The sweat from the climb always awards a fantastic view, miles of glaciers moutians, rivers and a enourmous amount of lakes varing in size from a no names puddle to the 130 km long Altin Lake. We tried our hand at canoeing another of the great northern rivers, the Peace River, on a sunny northern B.C. day we paddled our way from the mouth of the Halfway river downstream 58 km to Taylor B.C., a 6.5 hour trip that well worth the time and effort.
Ken has tried his hand at fishing in the few lakes we could find a way into, catching anything from whitefish to northern pike to greyling. some bigger than other but always enough to suppliment our diet nicely. He has a good time fishing and I enjoy the outing paddling the canoe, especially when the scenery is as awsome as the mountains and the touquiose coloured water of Muncho Lake.
The best way to see "The Great North" is definately by plane. While at Atlin Lake Ken and I decided to go up in a 1950's single engine Beaver float plane, it can take you places that you just can't reach by bike, boat or on foot. Atlin Lake is at the foot of the Lewellyn Glacier, claiming to be the 7th largest glacier in the world. Lewellyn stretches from Atlin Lake over to Skagway and down to Juneau, Alaska. Fying over the ice flows was like flying over a range of mountains that are covered by clouds that never move, and only have the peaks sticking out. Miles and miles (km and km) of ice really make you think about global warming and where we would all be if all this ice melted and talking to the locals this ice is melting fast. Back on the flight add a few mountain goats to the scenery around the mountains and you have a once in a lifetime experience.
When Ken and I started this trip we thought it would be a once in a lifetime thing but now we are vowing to come back and continue an adventure here where time and fasination are your only limits.