I have a couple of work projects up in Whitehorse and beyond so I was up there at the end of August and now again the end of October. Tess flew out to meet me on my second day (late Thursday night) so that we could do a bit of a tour as she had never been. I have a one project which is the Kluane Lake Research Centre which is an arctic centre run by the UofC. It's on the edge of Kluane National Park and is where most people fly into Mt. Logan from. Here is a good article about the facility that was published in Canadian Geographic.
From there Tess and I drove back to Haines Junction and then South towards Haines AK. The drive is amazing. Being the shoulder season we crossed less than 5 cars in 250 km and experienced an incredible change in landscape as we went. It went from boreal forest, to alpine tundra near the Chilkat pass and then coastal rain forest as we dropped towards the ocean. The alpine of course had me most awestruck as the ski touring possibilities are endless! Right off the road in any direction you can venture as far as you want with plenty of peaks and steep runs to be had. It looks like the key is finding the best way up, but with a bit time and good conditions the skiing would be epic. It is clear why ski bums do the spring pilgrimage up here to ski! The terrain near the pass is more like large volcanic hills and as you get closer the coast the mountains only get bigger. I think this is the southern edge of the St. Elias range but I'm not sure. Unfortunately just when the mountains get really big the roads starts to drop into a deep valley with dense old growth forest. With glaciers and snowy peaks around us we were excited to get off of the snowy and icy highway in the pass and into Alaska!
Haines is quite the place. Like its sister city Skagway they are primarily summer tourist towns with a bit of influx during the spring for heliskiing. Everything of interest is closed. And I mean everything!! All the good restaurants and hotels close for the winter so we were stuck with bad pub food and a dingy hotel. Lucky we found the outdoor store open and laughed with the lady at how they act as the unofficial visitor info since the actual info centre across the street is rarely open! Even with the sign saying it will be! She also pointed is towards a small organic grocery store which was a saviour and so we ate microwave burritos for dinner and cereal for breaky to avoid the terrible and expensive restaurant food.
Every November there is the largest congregation of Bald Eagles in the world in Haines. They flock to the area for the late Chum salmon run. We were a little early and didn't see the 3-4000 they get later on but certainly saw several hundred! It was really cool. We even managed go get really close to one feeding on a salmon he had just picked out of the river! I swear that these eagles are significantly bigger than the ones in the interior! We didn't manage to spot any of the famous brown bears which was too bad, but I guess we'll have to go back in late September next year!Ha!
Overall a super fun trip. The ferry over the Skagway was beautiful and the drive back to Whitehorse through White Pass was really cool to see as well. Again, more skiing possibilities for sure! Whitehorse was good too, with a wicked bakery and an amazing Italian restaurant dinner. I can't wait to go back in March and do some skiing! There are some benefits to traveling with work!
Make sure to check out the pics!
Here are the full MB files of the top ten because the compressed files just don't do justice!
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