Email Bag

Rudie

Carlos

Hello every body.
We are doing well and have just completed a camping trip up north to Alaska and the Yukon. My dreams of work have reduced to almost nothing, while Leslie still dreams of Elmwood two or three times a week. First a bit of background to set the stage. We spend most of the time in the Yukon, Canada's most North Western province. (Yes, I know it is a territory, but the European readers would not know what that is.) Stretching from the 60th parallel till well inside the Arctic Circle it is half a million square km, an area larger than England and France combined. Whitehorse is the capital, where half of the Yukon population of 50,000 people live. Most of the Yukon has a summer (frost free days) of 3 months or less and the rest of the year it get progressively colder till temperatures in mid February drop to minus 50 - 60 degrees. This is not much of a growing season, so nearly any vegetable must be imported or grown in green houses. It also means that trees (only in the southern part of the Yukon) grow very slowly and even small trees are quite old. The long winters make people do all sorts of strange things. More about that later. Two events shaped the history of the Yukon. The first event occurred over a hundred years ago in 1896 to be exact, when gold was discovered in the Yukon and the Klondike gold rush began. Many headed North with big dreams. Contrary to those dreams, few miners left the Klondike with pockets full of gold. Even fewer held on to their wealth. The Canadian historian Pierre Burton estimates about 100,000 headed for the gold fields between 1897 and 1899. About one third made it. Probably half of them actually mined for gold. Of those only a few hundred struck it rich. The search for gold was hard, backbreaking labor done by hand. Mining was a wet process from start to finish: standing in chilly rivers and streams, swirling icy water in pans and through sluice boxes. The climate didn't offer a warm welcome either. Hordes of mosquito's were ever present during those "three good months". When the winter came, all the miners could do, was set fires to melt the ground. Then with picks and shovels, they'd loosen and scrape whatever earth they could, repeating the process over and over again. As they neared bedrock, the miner had to work alone in a smoky hole on hands and knees, filling bucket after bucket with gravel. When the loose gravel reached the surface it froze again. In the spring the payoff might come, when they shoveled the hard fought for gravel into the sluices to harvest the gold. The second event was the creation of the Alaska highway from Dawson Creek B.C. to Fairbanks Alasks. The Alcan highway to be more precise. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Americans were afraid that the Japanese would invade Alaska. The USA would need a road into Alaska to be able to move troops and supplies for defense. The highway is 2400 kilometers long and was build in eight months, from March 1942 till November 1942. An heroic effort. More than 10,000 men of the US army engineer corps were moved up North. Trucks, road building equipment, furniture, food, tents, and other supplies all had to be located and shipped north. Road work began in April with crews working out of the 2 largest construction camps, Whitehorse and Fort St. John. The highway followed existing winter roads, old Indian trails, rivers and, on occasion, sight engineering. For the soldiers and civilian workers it was a hard life. Working 7 days a week, they endured mosquitoes and black flies in summer and below zero temperatures in winter. Weeks would pass without any communication between head quarters and field parties. In June the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands (West of Alaska) adding a new sense of urgency. Crews working from East and West connected at the end of September and by October, a vehicle could travel the full length. A moment of reflection however would point out, that after the Japanese invaded Alaska, you would only have to wait a few weeks (till winter), before the whole invasion army would be frozen to death. It gets cold up here! The first part of our trip was heading north to Prince George, which is about 800 km north of Vancouver. This beautiful drive took us up the Fraser river at the height of the salmon run, past such interesting places as Hell's gate and the Fraser Canyon. Then we followed the Caribou highway , which starts at Lilloet. This is the old Barkerville gold rush highway. In Prince George Leslie's cousins, Bob and Maxine joined us. We rented a van because we did not want to expose Leslie's nice new car to the gravel highways of the North. It was a minivan with a 4 wheel drive. We needed to remove the second back seat in order to accommodate all the stuff that the women considered necessary. We packed the van to the roof and have enough food to feed an expeditionary army for at least 6 months. Food is apparently expensive and hard to find in the Yukon. Whitehorse was our first destination. It is a 2000 km drive to the North West of Prince George. We decided to take inside BC roads up and return over the Alaska highway. The Cassiar highway was just the ticket. Heading straight north, it joins the Alaska highway about 450 km before Whitehorse and has many interesting stops. An early stop was Kitwanga fort, which was on a rather small but steep hill beside a Native village by the same name. We learned all about the native warrior Nek't , who donned armor made of grizzly bear skin, reinforced with slate and wooden boards. This must have weighed quite a bit, but he still managed to swing his club named "Strike Only Once". He built a fortress on this hill and rolled "tree trunks of death" down on his enemies. Girls were taken to puberty pits to learn how to behave as women. Little information was provided about what that actually entailed. This might be something for Elmwood (the private girls' school where Leslie used to teach) to consider. It would not require any new buildings, just some pits, dug into the school yard. No mention of similar rites for boys. I guess they just knew naturally how to behave as men. Further on we had an interesting stop at Moricetown canyon. The Bulkley river thundered through it with great speed and the waters at the base of the falls were swarming with salmon trying to swim up the falls. A Indian man was fishing with a gaff, hooking salmon. He stood right at the edge of the falls with a rope tied around his waist to prevent him from falling into the raging river. We saw him spearing three salmon in the space of half and hour. A 70 km side trip took us to Stewart, which is right on the Alaska border. We crossed over into Alaska at the Hyder border crossing . No American customs official in sight. So for the first time in my life I entered the States without extensive questioning about my intentions and background. Then a 37 km drive took us along a pothole ridden road with spectacular views of the Salmon river with large gravel beds. Salmons love them for procreation. After about 10 km the road began to climb and eventually we were more than 2 km above sea level. The road was originally a mining road to service a number of copper and silver mines from the 1920's till the 1960's. We saw a black bear on the road, but approaching tourists in an 4 wheel drive scared it off. When we reached the toe of the Salmon glacier, we observed a number of bright green Kettles (holes in the rock created by ice blocks that later melted and filled with water). A bit further up we spotted a hoary marmot. Leslie was a bit slow and managed only to photograph it's tail. Then the road took us above the glacier. Rock slides had taken bites out of the road and the view of the 300 meter drop down was sort of dizzying. At the end of the road we looked down upon the ice field and were impressed by the sheer size of the various glaciers it was feeding. We could clearly see how the shape of the rocks underneath created crevasses on the convex surfaces, while closing them up on the concave surfaces. At this point in time it was close to 7:00 p.m. and it was getting rather cold. Many insects were out and considered us easy game. On the way back we stopped at Fish creek to watch salmon spawn. A stimulating sight. Once we hit the Alaska highway, it started to get colder quickly, especially at night. So Bob and Maxine kept each other warm. I am quite warm in my arctic sleeping bag and Leslie's hot flashes are keeping her warm. The next side trip was two hours along a bumpy gravel road to Atlin, one of the gold rush towns in 1898. At the height of the rush it had a population of over 10,000. It was a thriving community with a boat service. The town right now has a population of around 500 people. There are a lot of rusted out pieces of equipment lying around to remind you of days gone by. The town itself has a stunning view of the mountains and glaciers across the lake. It is one of the last places in the world where gold nuggets are mined, and is known as an artistic community. We camped just outside the town along Pine Creek. This was an unserviced campground run by volunteers from the community and was very pleasant. We had to get water from a small natural spring about a kilometer and a half down the road. At the local cemetery we saw the graves of the original discoverers of the gold deposit. They lived only to about 30 years of age. Not much time to enjoy their new found riches. Some interesting stories about the deaths of pioneers included: starving to death for an aviator whose plane crashed, and a train accident on the two mile portage railroad. A 16 year old boy was mistaken for a bear and shot to death. A number of very young children died when 10 to 25 days old, and a number of old timers reached 85 - 90 years old. All together an educational experience. Further down the road was Grotto Creek. Here a creek came bubbling out of a cave in the rock wall. It was a cool and shady place, the sort where Adam could have met Eve, if it only had been a little warmer. As it was, Adam would have frozen his uhh toes off. Of course we visited the Pine creek waterfalls. Without a doubt these are the most artistically impressive waterfalls, that I have ever seen. The falls are in a deep gorge. A number of increasingly steep rapids, lead to a steep water fall, which cut sharply at a right angle, and led into another set of falls, ending in a large circular pool, which cut a pothole in the wall of the gorge. The speed of the water setup a large, whirlpool motion. The water, turned 270 degrees and then the pool emptied out into another waterfall, which flowed into a longer set of small waterfalls and rapids. The whole setup provided a spectacular display of water works and the deep gorge with the large trees surrounding it, made it look like something out of the dinosaur age. On to Whitehorse. Once we arrived in Whitehorse, we had some trouble finding the campground until we realized that the town map had North pointing toward the bottom of the map. The street names are numbers and the highest street number was Eight. That evening we had dinner in a huge miner's tent converted into a restaurant, where the prices ranged from expensive to outrageous. This is par for the course we were told. Some restaurants charge prices between "Say What??" and "You got to be kidding!!". That evening we graced the "Frantic Follies" with our presence. This was a reenactment of the Follies during the gold rush. It was great fun. These cancan gals sure can kick. Great costumes and great show. The jokes were also about 100 years old! And of course, a number of rather unwilling volunteers from the audience were dragged onto the stage and made fools of. The next part of the trip was a circle, from Whitehorse to Skagway, on the Alaska coast, by Ferry to Haines Alaska and back to Whitehorse. The road to Skagway follows the White Pass into Alaska. It is quite forbidding and I wondered how anybody could have cross this on foot or with a supply train. Apparently, during the gold rush, the Mounties would not let anybody cross the pass without at least a four month supply of food. Someone actually build a railroad across it in 1898. Quote of the day of the contractor: " Give me enough smooze and dynamite and I"ll build you a road to hell". This sounds like the American way. We do not know what smooze is. Maxine says that snoose is chewing tobacco. I think it is slang for booze. The ferry to Haines was large and comfortable. Haines is inside one of Alaska's fjords. We found a great campsite along a boulder strewn creek about 200 meters from the ocean in a heavily wooded area. The evenings were getting colder now. We were playing cards in the flickering light of our lantern in our warmest clothing. Strip poker is not a good game here. Leslie and Maxine were wearing gloves and Leslie is also wearing her woolen headband to keep her ears warm. Haines did not really turn up anything interesting or noteworthy. This seemed to be a good time to leave Alaska, so we drove up to the Canada border along the Chilkat river on our way to Haines Junction. This was an alternative route leading to the Klondike over the Chilkat Pass . The pass offered beautiful vista with many glaciers visible from the highway. We made a stop at Million Dollar Falls campsite. No one was there. The campsite had a large wood lot for camp and cooking fires. A large sign warned of 2 year prison terms for stealing firewood. I presume that in this climate stealing firewood can be the difference between life and death most of the time. Further up the highway, at Dezadeash lake, was a large rock glacier. A rock glacier is a Glacier, which is close to dying. Large amounts of broken up rocks and gravel are still lying on top of the remaining ice field and the whole mass is slowly sliding down hill. We hiked up the rock glacier where life in the form of lichen and small plants had already taken hold over the last few hundred years. The whole surface had an undulation shape caused by the glacier stresses underneath. We all have been wearing winter clothing since Whitehorse. Leslie is bundled up day and night. This is only the end of August. I have trouble imagining what February would be like. We finally settled in at Kluane National Park Campsite at Kathleen lake. This National park is 22,000 square km, one and a half times the size of Holland. The national park campsites have wheelchair accessible outhouses and bilingual signs. I have not seen anyone in a wheelchair so far, and this far north no one speaks French. The next morning it was freezing and I was caught between the opposing forces of needing to pee and staying in a nice and warm sleeping bag. While this power struggle took place I made a number of observations and deductions on camping in freezing temperatures. Our tent is pretty air tight and water tight, but lets out heat easily. The condensation from our breath makes the inside of the tent and the outside of the sleeping bag rather wet. If you curl up in your sleeping bag and do not keep your feet in the foot end, it gets cold there. When you try to circulate the air inside your sleeping bag to warm that part up, you will suck cold air inside your bag. This is unpleasant. It takes some skill to cover up the air holes at your shoulders and then pump your sleeping bag. It is not possible to dress yourself inside a mummy type sleeping bag. You have to get out first and get cold. It pays to keep your clothes inside the sleeping bag for a while to warm them up first. Observations after I got up: Frost covered outhouse seats are very cold. The women said it was worse for them. It was hard to start the kerosene stove (Gas line frozen??). There was frost on the picnic table and it looked like a small curling rink. This inspired us to play curling on the picnic table with the metal coffee cups, while we were waiting for the tea water to boil. An early morning campfire was a necessity to keep warm. Back to Whitehorse. We have not had a shower for four days, as all campsites were rather primitive. This started to get noticeable. Driving with the windows open is really not a good alternative. We revisited the campground for an hour, because it had hot showers. Greatly refreshed we headed down the Alaska highway back to Prince George. That night we are stayed in Liard which has a hot spring. It was about a 15 minute walk through the forest and warm swamp over a wooden walk way. The hot springs themselves are a cascade of two large natural pools. They have gravel bottoms and are about a meter deep. The first, higher one, had the water bubbling up at 52 degrees C. By the time it cascaded as a small hot water fall into the second pool, it had cooled down to 42 degrees C. The second pool also had a cold spring feeding in from the far end. By moving towards it, you could get into quite cold water. Because it was a natural pool, the forest grew right up to it, and the hot water allowed tropical species to grow, which are not found anywhere else this far north. It was now about 10:30 p.m. and quite dark. There were no lights except the moon and stars. The whole pool was covered by a large cloud of steam, visible in the flashlight. A very romantic setting. The road back to Prince George was uneventful. There were a fair number of animals along the road. Buffaloes, a flock of thin horned mountain sheep and 6 caribou. Ahead of us a caribou buck got off to his side of the highway to avoid an oncoming truck, but the caribou cow on the other side, ran across the road to follow the buck and nearly got run over. The last two days were spend in a lot warmer area and the last night we had the nicest campsite to date along the Peace River. We enjoyed a beautiful evening with the full moon coming up somewhat later. The moon light was scattered by the ripples of the fast flowing river and the fragments of light played hide and seek with the rocks in the water and the leaves of the trees. The whole area had a fairy tale ambiance. How is that for Rudie getting poetic?
PS Anybody who wants to be dropped from the distribution list please say so. People who have not received letter #1 (Visit to Churchill Manitoba), or #2 (Banff National park) and still want it, please drop us an e-mail. Please note the this is our preferred e-mail address. (dehoogr@netscape.net). We can access it from any internet cafe. The other one (leslie.baird@sympatico.ca) is only visited every two weeks or so.
Rudie..

Hello Rudy/Leslie...very nice recount of your journey to the North. I came into work today not expecting to learn a darn thing. I'd like to learn more about the "puberty pits" though....yikes! Hello to everyone on this list...and hello to my kin. I think about you from time to time and wonder where the heck you are, it's a delightful surprise to hear that the adventure is in full swing. We have felt the leading egde of Fall over the last couple of nights here, I imagine at your parallel things are even more chilly. In answer to your call below, by all means keep me on the mailing list. I truly enjoy reading about your travel. I will print a copy of this message and present at the next gathering. Maybe Tina can do likewise. Take care both of you, I'm looking forward to your next trip report...cheers! Carlos Dwarka A/Chief, Messaging and Network Services 993-7367