Blue is the colour

Well we were wrong - we went on at length about the temperatures in the Rockies and how we had never been so cold - well this week we have averaged minus 30 and down to -34 in the mornings - we found that seriously cold and icy enough to turn any exposed body part seriously blue very quickly! However, undeterred and Balaclavas to the ready we ventured out to see yet more lakes - this time with no chance of breaking ice. We were given a demo of the techniques used for ice fishing - it was too cold for us all to stand around and do the real thing - well would you have done? The ice on the lake was over a foot thick and apparently gets to 3 times that depth by the end of the winter.
Sorry, forgot to mention that we have taken four days out of snowy Vancouver to fly to Whitehorse in the Yukon. It is getting close to the artic circle here (or as close as I am likely to get in the near future). The area is famous for the gold rush in the late 1800's and is still big on minng. Sadly we didnt pick up any gold nuggets. The town of Whitehorse has around 23000 inhabitants and the whole of the Yukon only 31000 in an area significantly bigger than the UK.

As we arrived (by plane) the scenery was great - long swathes of apparently deserted snowy countryside. When we arrived however the locals were bemoaning the lack of snow and in fact instead of the normal average 1-2 foot of snow for this time of year we only had 3 or 4 inches. The snow thing was a bit of a shame - especially as we had left Squamish over the weekend with well over a foot of snow - well above their seasonal average!.

This prevented us from dog sledding but we did pay a visit to a dog racing outfit. It was really interesting. The guy who owned it had won the Yukon Quest several times (1000 mile dog sled race) and the dogs were sericously hardy - away go my arguements about it not being fair to keep a dog outside in Wales - these were outside in minus 30-40 and all weathers and seemed very happy about the whole experience.

We did manage to go snowmobiling which we all thoroughly enjoyed - the best bit was at the end when after trailing though some lovely winter wonderland scenery in the woods we came out onto Lake Cariboo and snowmobiled across the lake - awesome!
Fiendish got to drive his machine back with Fatty on the back - very brave I say. He, Fiendish, has changed his name temporarily to Frozen five. Just until he warms up a little I think!
The other thing we had come to this area for was the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis. These appear on the horizon if you are sufficiently far north and there is enough solar activity. Sadly the activity was quite low while we were there and despite several late nights spent looking at the sky, all we managed to see was a green hue and one falling star.

We left the Yukon (no sighting of Yvon either) glad at having made the trip up to such a different place but slight disappointed that as a result of weather conditions we were not able to experience all that we had come for.

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