0044 21st June - Eagle Plains to Dawson City

By the time we woke up, the camp site was deserted !  Partly because of the bear sighting last night, not many people had camped, so that partly explained it !  But when I stuck my head out, the sky looked pretty dark and rainy, so we quickly packed up and didn’t even do our normal cup of tea. And lucky we did get going quickly because as we started driving across the camp area towards the Lodge, it began to rain.  So we slipped in and got a coffee to go, while I topped off with fuel for the run back to the main road (ie tarmac surface 300 kms away !!), and then we hit the road south.

 

From Eagle Plains you pass through the Continental Divide, with both the Wernecke and the Little mountains off to the east, and the Mahoni range on your right – But of

course, we could see nothing except the muddy road ahead !!  We passed a side turning with lots of big wooden boards piled up – They are used to make access roads for oil rigs etc across the perma frost ground of the tundra a) so the trucks don’t sink, and b) so the permafrost layer is not permanently damaged.   Shortly afterwards we passed an old rig site we had seen on our way north – Now just a well head for production, but still with all the wooden boards laid out around it for protection.  Doing anything up here with the permafrost is certainly difficult – You either have to wait for winter so the ground freezes solid so you can build an ice road to drive on, or you have to build your own road with wooden boards !  It makes you realise why most things are actually done during the winter when, despite the cold, everything else is easier !

 

Headed south back through the Ogilvie Mountains, and it was very misty - At one stage we could only see maybe 10 feet in front of us, so we were going very slowly.  As we came down through the gorges, it cleared quite a bit and made for a very eerie run down the road.  we stopped to make some lunch beside a river just off the road, and while doing so, noticed all sorts of interesting "detritus" !!  Bear scat - Looked quite fresh !  Then some more.  Then we found bits of fur and bits of legs and things - Whatever it was, it wasn't going to need its legs or fur again !!  Hmm - I think we might have stopped where a bear has recently been having a meal !!  Definitely time to move on out of there !!

 

On the plains we finally saw some caribou grazing.  The Porcupine herd (as it is named), is now up to 250,000 strong, and migrates across the Dempster every year - these were obviously just a few stragglers left behind !   Then it was on down through the Tombstone National Park, with its similarly named mountain peak, before we finally crossed the Yukon River Bridge and hit the tarmac road again.  That had been a long 4 days and over 1400 kms of dirt road on the Dempster, but it was well worth it.  The scenery is amazing, and I strongly recommend it to anyone heading up that way.

 

We went back into Dawson to wash the car and have a good night's sleep before heading south. On the road in to Dawson we passed the oddly patterned gold dredge rock piles again, and stopped and explored them a little more.  Then Janet went in to the museum for a while, while I went off to a high pressure wash station to wash the car - $1 for 3 minutes, and it took me $13 when I cried enough, but still wasn't completely finished !  The mud was everywhere, and being full of Calcium Chloride I didn't really want to leave it on the car, while on the outside the mud also made it almost impossible to even get in and out without getting it all over you, so it had to go !!

 

As I went back to pick up Janet, I met a German couple in a Swiss registered Land Rover, so we were chatting about our respective adventures beside the road for a while !   We then did a final 'splore around Dawson City, looking at some of the original permafrost affected buildings, before we went to the campsite - Where we found Karl, Marie, and 18 month old Kayla, our intrepid Canadian / French trio of cyclistes extraordinaire were in the next door site !!  We had last seen them on the Top of the World Highway near the Canadian border a week or more before, and while we have been all the way up the Dempster and back, they have just made it down into Dawson on their bikes, and apparently had a rough time with a couple of bad days of rain and mud on the road.  So we had a wonderful dinner together, and broke out a couple of bottles of wine - We enjoyed the evening, but I think they were even more grateful for a break of a few days during their epic journey to south America - I wonder where we will meet up again next ??

 

A clean car, tarmac road ahead, and a lovely relaxing evening over, we could look forward to the next part of the journey - Heading south on the Alcan Highway.

 

Pics are here :-  https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0044EaglePlainsToDawsonCity?authkey=Gv1sRgCMml2oK1j6SMpgE#