Through wildfires, we follow the traces of the gold miners in the Yukon and reach Dawson City, home town of the Klondike gold rush.
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Welcome to Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon and biggest city in the North of Canada. Around 26 000 inhabitants leave here, which is 75% of the whole Yukon’s population! We are happy to be here during summertime, because we cannot imagine how tough the life must be in winter 😅 Right now, it’s warm and sunny and we enjoy it very much!
Something is wrong in town today: internet is down. This is bad news because we have been on the road for 5 days and we have lot of work to catch up. This general breakdown is due to wildfires surrounding the town. We can only pay in cash as nothing is working in the stores and in the garage where we change the oil of the Jeep. We settle by Tim Hortons and try to work as best as we can despite the situation.
On the evening, we order a pizza and eat in front of a dam near the city. Before we go to bed, we admire a beautiful sunset: it’s 11pm!
Thursday, July 7
Good news today: internet is back! We settle once again by Tim and stay there from 8am to 7pm! Then it’s time to do some groceries, gas (including our two 20 L gas tanks) and go to the visitor center to gather some information. There are wildfires on the road we plan to take tomorrow and some parts of it are closed. We order a Chinese supper in town and go to sleep at the same spot as yesterday.
Friday, July 8
We spend the morning visiting Whitehorse and its old buildings from the rush gold. The contrast between these old buildings and the modern city is funny: a Sport Expert in an old store, old frescos on the walls, old parking meters, cute old houses that are still inhabited. We love the town’s theater!
We also visit the SS Klondike II. This great boat was built back in 1937, when the SS Klondike sank. It was used until 1955 to carry goods and people from Whitehorse to Dawson City, a dangerous trip of nearly 800km North on the Yukon river.
Lastly, we take a short hike in the canyon.
Nowadays, we don’t need boats anymore to go to Dawson City: we can drive the Klondike Highway! It’s meant to be a 6 hours drive, without taking the wildfires into account. After 2 hours on the road, we arrive at Pelly Crossing, where the road is closed. Nobody knows when it will reopen. It could be this evening... or tomorrow. We wait. What else can we do? We don’t want to go back to Whitehorse and make a huge detour through...Alaska!
Luckily, we are not alone: our German friends that we met on the road are here to keep us company! They just came back from Alaska and the Dempster Highway and they have lot of advices to share. And not just advices: as their trip is coming to an end, they offer us some accessories! Thaaanks! We also meet Alex the trucker. We don’t really like truckers because they ride fast on the road, pass us crazily fast and made an impact on our windshield. But Alex is super nice. He loves our Jeep and invites us to come and spend some time on his island, near Toronto! Wow, nice, maybe someday 😉 He is travelling with his son and together they drive 24/7. When one is sleeping, the other is driving. All summer. We are Friday and they are going on the Dempster (from Edmonton, which is around 3200km!) for the third times! 😲
We have been waiting for 3 hours when a car stops in front of us: the road will open in 5 minutes! Uproar! No way we are gonna miss the convoy, it’s probably the last today. Alex, who was very talkative, disappears in less than 10 seconds. We gather our stuff and hit the road! A pilot car in the front, a sweeper car at the back. We are about 30 vehicules. The first kilometers, all is okay. But then we got near the wildfires: lot of smokes, reduced visibility, burnt trees on the sides of the road and even some burning areas on the sides. An apocalyptic atmosphere.
After 60kms, we arrive at the end of the wildfire area. There is still lot of smoke and we cannot spend the night here. We decide to continue and drive towards Dawson City. The road is sometimes in poor conditions. We eat inside the car (chips, peanuts and cookies)!
It’s 6pm midnight when we finally arrive at Dawson City. We lose track of time when the day never sets! 😀 A beer with our German friends and we go to bed! Friends, thanks again for these hours and evening spent together. And many thanks for all that you generously gave to us: the Milepost found its place in our cockpit and we used it every day on the Dempster. The fish was absolutely delicious! And we hope we will find some gold in the river! Most of all, thanks for the America Beautiful Pass, it’s a great gift and we will make good use of it, for sure! 😊
Saturday, July 9
Gold was found in the Klondike River in 1896. Immediately, gold miners from all over the world arrived, the first nations living here for millennia were displaced and the city was built. A few years later, gold resources were drained and everyone left, rich or not. Now Dawson City is 1800 inhabitants and survives thanks to the touristic activities. Walking around the town, we can imagine the life of these men and women in this hostile place and the freezing winters they had to endure.
A guided tour allows us to visit some of the most emblematic places in town and to know more about the life of the gold miners. Dawson City’s bank, where gold could be weighed and exchanged against actual cash:
A saloon. Mirrors on the counter allowed men to catch a glimpse of the ladies’ ankles!
The post office
The abandoned village of Bear Creek is around 60 old buildings that have been abandoned as is when the gold activity turned out not to be profitable anymore. Everything has been left as is: there are hundreds of old folders and archives, calendars dating back from 1966 hanging on the walls, old shifts bearing the names of former employees, old maps of gold creeks in the area. This village was active from the 1900s to 1966, after the gold rush. It belonged to private companies. They were hiring young employees who were working 12 hours a day in the mines and lived here in poor conditions.
We learn more about the process used to forge gold bars and the way they were sent and sold to the bank in town.
Further down the road, we see a huge dredge, left in a dry river bed. When the production was at its highest, 23 kg of gold could be extracted within 3 to 4 days. Huge iron buckets dug the bottom of the river in order to extract tons of gravels. The biggest stones were extracted on site but the rest of it was sent to Bear Creek to be sieved. In nearly 50 years of operation, the dredge extracted 300 000 onces of gold and 65 millions of yards cubes of gravels 😲
Things have changed today, but not so much. Along the roads, on the surrounding mountains and near the rivers and creeks, we can see some huge modern machines digging huge amount of earth every day. The production is not what it was 60 years ago but the landscape is still damaged by this activity. We loved the city of Dawson City, but the surroundings are quite another story. Down the road, huge amount of earth and gravels have been excavated. Every portion of land has been dug, searched and abandoned. There are some old and rusty machines, old and abandoned RVs and ruins everywhere.
We try our luck in the Eldorado creek (promising name), in the Claim 6th. It’s a small place for tourist only to search for gold. It’s indeed impossible to search for gold anywhere. Each parcel of land belongs to prospectors and it’s better not to land a foot on their property! In this small concession open to public, there are some rules: we cannot come and search for gold more than 3 days during the season and we have to do it with rudimentary equipment: a pan and a shovel. I don’t think we will find any gold for that matter. We clearly lack experience and technics. Not today we are gonna be rich 😅
Water? Ok! Full gas tanks? Ok! Food? Ok! Mud flaps withdrew? Ok! Tires deflated? ok! The Jeep? Ok! We are ready, JP is ready. We can go!
3 commentaires
Superbe récit et magnifiques photos! Ça nous rappelle cette magnifique route sur laquelle nous nous sommes croisés à quelques reprises. Bonne continuation!
Simon et Juliette
Merci beaucoup pour votre message ! Ca nous fait plaisir de vous retrouver par ici ! 🙂 On vous fera une petite dédicace sur l’article sur la Dempster ! 😉
Ah, mais j’espère bien! ☺️