Through the Inland Passage, along the Chilkoot Trail and 3.500 kilometers down the Yukon River to the Bering Sea.
On August 16th 1896, Jim Shookum, Charlie Dawson and George Carmack came upon rich gold deposits by the Klondike River. They named the stream Bonanza Creek, which then made history as the world's richest gold find. The following years saw a hitherto unprecedented run on the goldfields of the Yukon River and its tributaries. A hundred years later, we set off to follow in the footsteps of these adventurers.
It is noon, and we're among the first to take possession of a place at what seems like the world's longest camping site. We have put up our tent on the afterdeck of the ferry that is taking us through the Inland Passage, from Bellingham south of Vancouver to Skagway in Alaska.
Instead of securing our tent with pegs, we tie it to the ship's rail on one side and use sticky tape on the ship's metal floor on the other. Thus, by the time we depart, a small city of over twenty tents has sprung up on two decks.
Most of the passengers are young Americans who are going to Alaska in the summer months for work. There are plenty of opportunities to meet people during the 3-day trip, particularly while watching whales or playing soccer. And even though the temperatures stay quite cool throughout, we spend the entire three days outside because we are scared of missing one of the spectacular whale sightings. We are able to fetch free hot water from the on-board restaurant, and so it doesn't bother us that we aren't allowed to cook on board for security reasons. Every time whales come close, a certain excitement spreads around the ship. By the end of the journey, we have watched two killer whales, several humpback whales and numerous dolphins. We reach Skagway shortly after midnight. There are only a handful of passengers left by this time.
Laden with rucksacks and pulling a handcart each, we walk the streets with their wooden sidewalks in dim moonlight. Because of our baggage, we identify with the prospectors who arrived here a hundred years ago. All that's missing are a pickaxe and a shovel.
The next morning, our first impressions are swiftly shattered as the streets are filled with trucks and busses, and the shops and squares are teeming with tourists. Here, we organize the next leg of our trip, which leads along the Chilkoot Trail to Lake Bennett, where we're planning to start our journey down the river in our inflatable canoe. Our original plan to transport our boat to Bennett by train falls through, as the train isn't running this year due to jurisdiction disputes between the Canadians and the Americans. Since there are no roads all the way to Bennett, we get a driver to take our boating gear to Log Cabin. Having hiked to Log Cabin, we will then have to haul it along the rail tracks ourselves for the final 12 kilometers to Bennett. That same evening, we set off on our 5-day hike over the mountains with only light baggage. We keep coming across the remains of huts and belongings that were left behind by the adventurers during their ascent. We can't believe that, a hundred years ago, people even tried to drag cast-iron stoves over the mountains on foot.
Our way leads through the valley's young birch woods until we reach the tree line and the first snowfields. It gets steeper, and we pass lots of scree before we reach the final ascent, the famous "Golden Stairs".
Here, a hundred years ago, a few enterprising individuals dug steps into the snow and charged the adventurers for using them. In those days, the Canadian Mounties did checks up here, to make sure the adventurers had enough equipment and supplies with them, because at the beginning of the Gold Rush there was absolutely no infrastructure in the hinterland. That's also why many people ended up tackling the exhausting ascent several times, trying to get all their belongings across the mountains bit by bit.
Today, there is still a small Canadian station at the top of the ridge, which is now mainly being used by mountain rescue teams. From here on, the ground is relatively even, and our way leads across vast expanses of snow that might harbour crevices. The snow is already quite soft, we often sink in up to our thighs and our boots are soon wet. The "Happy Camp", too, one of the excellent resting places, is still covered in deep snow, and we can't find a dry place for our tent.
The lower we get, the more often we see flowing water. This is the water that we are going to follow for the next 3.500 kilometers.
By the larger lakes Deep Lake and Long Lake, we happen upon the first warm, dry rocks in the sun, and we are able to dry our sleeping bags, which got soaked during the night.
As it's the beginning of spring and the river is slowly triumphing over the icy fist of winter, we can't always faithfully follow the indicated way along the river.
When we eventually reach open water, it's still not possible to use the boat and we have to be patient. The impressive waterfalls and rapids would quickly spell the end for our journey.
Quite a few adventurers lost their lives in the rapids of the river's upper reaches, as we have gathered from a memorial stone in Linderman City. The inscription by Robert Service, "the Bard of the Yukon", reads: "This is the law of the Yukon that only the strong will thrive.That surely the weak shall perish and only the fit will survive. Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain. This is the will of the Yukon-law how she makes it plain!"
We are still confident that we belong to those who survive...
In the evening of the fourth day, we finally arrive in Bennett, the end of the trail. Today, Bennett only consists of one inhabited house and an old, restored, wooden church. During the Gold Rush's boom time, 30.000 people lived here, mainly in tents, while they were getting ready for the boat journey towards Klondike.
We, too, want to start our boat journey at this legendary place, but first, we need to haul our gear from Log Cabin, which is 12 kilometers away, to the riverbank.
In Log Cabin, we build a sled out of wooden planks at a deserted railway station. Peter fashions runners out of strip steel to reduce the friction on the rails. Unfortunately, we discover after a few hundred meters that we can't transport our entire gear in one go. It takes us about two days, during which time we come pretty close to understanding what the adventurers went through 100 years ago.
On the very evening of our arrival, we get into our inflatable canoe and paddle the first kilometers. There is a convenient tailwind that pushes us from behind. At the same time, however, small waves are starting to develop, which we'd been strongly warned about before.
We had originally allowed three days to cover the 50 kilometers across Lake Bennett. But due to an ingenious sail that we have made out of driftwood and an inner tent, thus converting the strong tailwind into speed, we are able to reduce this time to six hours. We steer the canoe through the almost meter-high waves without difficulty, and only once do I have to stop it from capsizing when a wave proves too high.
After we leave the lake behind at Carcross, the water becomes more shallow and the wind calms down. For the first time, our boat is being carried by a light current, and we forget the strains of the past few days.
However, the weather keeps showing us that the promising names of bays, mountains and valleys are often meant as a warning. Once, while we are on a large, perfectly placid lake, we are suddenly hit by a strong squall that seems to come out of nowhere, and have to struggle against white-crested waves for a few hundred meters. Then, just as suddenly, everything is calm again. So it is no coincidence that this bay is called Windy Arm. At the end of the lake, we have trouble finding the outlet, and thus the beginning of the Yukon, in the shallows. We get lost between flat sandbanks and when we finally locate an outlet and follow it, we soon discover that we are paddling against the current. After a quick check at the next bridge, we come to the realization that the McClintock River is probably delightful, too, but that this isn't our destination. We're a little frustrated, so we pitch our tent in a nearby meadow and enjoy the evening sun. Unfortunately, we share this idyllic place with a marten and seem to have put our inflatable canoe directly in its path. In the morning, we find prominent teeth-marks on both outer air chambers as a thank you. In other words, nicely deflated. After we have fixed the boat, we finally find the right outlet and follow the Yukon through narrow gorges to Whitehorse, which we reach late at night.
In the old days, paddle steamers used to come as far as Whitehorse, to supply the settlements with food and other goods. Here, a mighty waterfall, which is used to produce electricity today, puts an end to shipping on the Yukon. During the last few years, Whitehorse has become a popular destination for canoists who paddle down the Yukon to Dawson. It's a stretch of 700 kilometers that can easily be covered in 10 days.
After we have added a fishing rod, a panning tray and 40 kilograms of provisions to our gear, we embark on the next leg of our journey in changeable weather. Thunder and lightning and squalls alternate with gorgeous sunshine and temperatures around 20 degrees Celsius.
In the evening, we are very conscious that it's still relatively early in the year. Luckily, there is plenty of driftwood on the riverbank, and a warm fire is swiftly built.
The further away we get from the snow-capped peaks, the more stable the weather becomes.
The village of Lower Laberge has never seen a road. Yet a rusty pickup truck has been quietly mouldering away in this place for a long time. Here, we take advantage of the good weather and prepare for the fast-flowing stretches. While we are preparing the new fishing rod, we hear a loud snorting coming from the river. We get to the riverbank just as a magnificent black bear is climbing out of the water on the other side. Our presence seems to have disturbed him.
Further on, we seize the opportunity to pull our first few greyling out of the water. The salmon season hasn't started yet, so we are more than happy with our first catch.
Some mountain slopes are still black from the fires that raged here last year. The forest floor is free of vegetation, the nutrient-rich soil does the rest and mushrooms are springing up everywhere. They've been picked and put out to dry on long tables in Fort Selkirk. This small ghost town has been turned into a museum, and its church and school invite a visit.
Two days later, we pass the spot where the White River feeds into the Yukon. You can already tell by its name that it carries masses of fine sediment from the glaciers in the mountains. Thus, the Yukon's water becomes so murky that it's impossible to fish. The sediment doesn't settle and stays in the water all the way to the Bering Sea, and from now on, we either buy fresh fish from the Indians, or we catch it with our bare hands in the shallows, the way the grizzly bears do.
Since we have time, we take an excursion to the Tozitna River, hoping to catch some fish in its clear waters. On the riverbank, we come across the distinct footprints of Master Bruin in the mud, and round a bend, the remains of salmon litter the pebbled beach.
In the evening, I go to watch the bears feeding on fish on the beaches. I get a good overview from the steep bank on the other side of the river, and I plant myself there with my camera. Five hours later, a strapping black bear appears and wanders along the beach. Unfortunately, he is on my side of the river. As the beach gets smaller, he climbs the bank and walks into the woods. I swiftly gather my things together and try to recall what to do in case of a bear encounter. When the bear stops about 5 meters away and peers at me from behind a tree, I stand on my camera case. I talk to him and after a short, rather one-sided discussion, the bear does a jump of about 180 degrees and vanishes into the undergrowth. My pulse rate stays above 200 per minute for quite a while, and on my way back to the camp I sing loudly and out of tune to avoid meeting another bear.
The next day, late in the evening, we arrive in Dawson City, the legendary hub of the Gold Rush. Dawson still makes a living from the Gold Rush today, i.e. from the tourists who visit the town. It is easy to forget the time over a beer at Diamond Tooth Gertie's Gambling Casino, especially when they're doing the can-can on stage.
Not all the buildings have been done up for the 100 years celebrations. In fact, some contemporary witnesses seem to await the final collapse.
In the beginning, the prospectors were still using shovels and panning trays on the riverbanks of the Klondike, but with time, the machines got bigger and more extravagant.
These dredgers then ploughed through the entire valley, all the way down to the bedrock. A lot of water was used to break up the ground and wash the soil.
Unfortunately, all the topsoil was lost in this way, and the whole Klondike Valley was turned into a gravel-strewn desert. Today, very little gold is sifted from the Klondike's tributaries. Instead, the large companies, especially the Japanese ones, have started to sift through the hills with big machines, right where the Klondike is said to have run before the hills existed.
Three days later, we say good-bye to Dawson and continue on our journey. Few canoists go further than Dawson, and from now on, the river is noticeably quieter.
It's not always easy to find suitable trees to make it harder for the bears to get to our food.
After a few days, we reach Eagle and thus Alaska. We get our entry stamp at the post office without any further formalities, and fill up our galley at the general store.
Just before Circle, the steep banks disappear and the river becomes visibly wider. Numerous flat islands herald the beginning of the Yukon Flats. As we've only just started to navigate with a map and compass, we don't notice until much later that in this area, the compass deviation due to the magnetic declination, i.e. the difference between the geographic North Pole and the magnetic North Pole, is around 27 degrees.
A few kilometers before Fort Yukon, we cross the polar circle. When there's no wind, the thermometer shows over 30 degrees Celsius in the shade. We land among the Indians' dilapidated huts and replenish our supplies at the well-stocked store.
Today, after 44 days of travel, we celebrate half-time. I've built an earth oven on the riverbank and baked a lemon cream cake. We're right on schedule and, as the weather's perfect, we are confident of reaching our destination.
A short while later, we arrive in Beaver. We can tell by the salmon drying in the sun on neatly lined-up racks on the beach, and the moose antlers mounted on a totem pole, that the cultural life is still fairly intact here, in contrast to some of the other Indian villages we've visited. There, we had got the impression that the cultural life revolved mainly around the liquor store. We buy a frozen king salmon, which is going to feed us for the next 2 days in the form of salmon soup, salmon steak, salmon fillet and home-made smoked salmon.
As we're getting ready to start, we realize with dismay that the seam on the right air chamber has opened up in the blazing sun. Because we can't really spend the night in the village, I try to fix the seam provisionally with glue and apply a Leatherman tool to act as a clamp. This holds during the short ride to our camp site.
While Peter is preparing our salmon dinner, I reopen a large part of the boat's seam, strengthen it from the inside with a hemming strip, sew it all up several times with strong thread, and finally seal it with two layers of rubber patches. We're both engrossed in our work, the boat is in pieces on the beach, and the whole camp smells of simmering salmon, when a black bear suddenly comes down the beach on the other side of the flat, sandy island. To avoid an unpleasant surprise, I call out early to warn the bear. But instead of turning and running away, as I'd expected, he now turns towards us and slowly moves towards our frying pan with the salmon. In order to defend our meal, Peter quick-wittedly grabs my red bivouac sack, which we'd used as a sail the day before and which is now drying on a tree trunk. A gust of wind seizes the bivouac sack, and thus the bear is unexpectedly faced with a four-meter high, bright red opponent. That stops him in his tracks. He at once beats a hasty retreat and disappears into the undergrowth.
Russian Mission is the first Inuit settlement we visit. The two Russian Orthodox churches are a reminder that for a long time, this area was dominated by Russians.
Pilot Village is a vibrant place, and you quickly notice that the transition to the modern age has been a lot easier for the Inuit than for the Indians.
From the top of one of the few hills, we catch a glimpse of the flat, marshy countryside with its countless watercourses..
During the few rain-free days, we seize the opportunity to do our laundryin the murky water. The clothes dry quickly in the steady wind, even thoughthe thermometer now rarely rises above 10 degrees Celsius. Our circulationhas gotten used to it, so we are able to take quick baths in the riveralmost every day, despite water temperatures of just 8 degrees Celsius.
The islands become flatter, and we keep getting the feeling that we can already glimpse the sea on the horizon, even though it's still several days' journey away. One night, we are surprised to discover that we've already reached the tidewater region. We had left the canoe on the beach before the tent in the evening, as usual, and during the night, we are startled to find it bobbing on the waves of the incoming tide.
The delta is 50 kilometers wide, which makes it hard for us to get our bearings. We can't identify the individual sandy islands anymore and, when we meet a fisherman by lucky chance, we ask him for directions. He explains that the islands shift every spring because of the melting snow, and that you can only navigate here with a brand new map or, better still, by using sat nav. Since our map is almost 30 years old, we put it away. From here on, we follow the fisherman's directions and make it safely to Alakanuk.
In Alakanuk, we arrange our return flight to Anchorage via Bethel. We have two spare days, so we follow a 12-kilometer long channel to the coast. Here, our river journey ends after 72 days and 3.345 kilometers. Now we have to say good-bye to the Yukon, which has become like a second home to us.
As a farewell, we take a last bath in the freezing waters of the Yukon. It hasn't changed since the White River joined it 2.500 kilometers before and is as sandy as ever, and it seems to have hardly mixed with the salt water from the sea.