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Published: September 15th 2006
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Abandoned Gold Dredge
In the mountains above Chicken, we encountered this decaying gold dredge, abandoned on a small creek. Morning dawns early and cold, we load up and start on the road to Dawson
City. We turn right from Chicken onto a gravel road and over an old
bridge, we start climbing up a long narrow road with steep drop offs on
our right and a straight mountain on our left, no room for mistakes. The
road in rocky, full of ruts and when you do encounter a car your tires are
just on the rim, one slight miscalculation and your over the side. We
continue on for a while and it’s my turn to drive, we stop and Larry gets
out and so do I, as I reach the drivers side door I notice the door latch
is pushed down, looking through to the other side I notice that the other
latch is also down. I yell over to my brother if he has the keys, no they
are in the motor home, in the ignition which by the way is running. So
you can get the picture real quick, here he and I stand on a mountain top,
engine running, dogs inside and no way to get in. We check each door
access panel and window, all shut
Old Dredge Mechanism
Worn and rusted gears and cogs inside the abandoned gold dredge. tight to keep the fine road dust from
entering and to keep us out. We try prying up one of the access panels,
but it won’t budge, frustration mounts, along with some stupid humor, who
is going to believe that Cody (the Pomeranian) locked two adults out of
their motor home. Seems when the yapping little fellow puts his paws on
the door to voice his disdain from being left behind, he also pushes down
the door locks.
As we stand looking at each other contemplating weather to use a rock or
fist to gain access into the drivers compartment, along comes a car, I
step out and wave down the driver who looks at me with instant distrust,
who in their right mind jumps out from behind a parked motor home in front
of a moving vehicle, me that’s who. So I ask if he has a screw driver and
we quickly explain what has happened, Larry does manage to jimmy the
storage compartment lock, we remove all the stored items from that
compartment, now the fun part. You can crawl up into the motor home but
you must lift up the bed and climb in. You could
Top Of The World Highway
Canadian and US Customs on the Top Of The World Highway. We are now in the Yukon! say it’s slightly smaller
than a queen size bed. The compartment in about three feet high, I am
slightly larger, you must get on your knees, hunch over looking like a
disfigured buffalo and start to rise up using your back to push up on the
platform holding the bed above. Once it starts to move enough for you to
put one hand through you then need to use your head to balance the bed and
try to move and shove your leg up and over into the home, and hopefully
the rest will follow without squashing you like a bug.
After accomplishing this small task, I then walked through and holding
back from launching that Pomeranian into orbit, opened the drivers side
door. I removed the keys and exited the cab and went back to help reload
the supplies, upon returning we again noticed that Cody had locked all the
doors. Needless to say, now whenever we exit the cab all keys are on our
person. With this little adventure out of the way, we continued on
through steep inclines, narrow valleys and along tumbling rivers until we
crossed over this mountain range and found ourselves in a
The Yukon River At Last
Our first view of the Yukon River. We are still several hours driving away from Dawson City. lush green
valley bordered by a small stream. It was here that we came upon another
gold dredge , this one however was not in pristine shape, it was just a
mass of rusted metal and rotting timber, but did a afford you the
opportunity to peer inside to see the inner workings. Large gears much to
heavy to cart off for a souvenir remain to intrigue your imagination. No
roads existed, no trains, the main river was hundreds of miles off, how
did they carry all those components up the mountain and down into this
valley to assemble this dredge. Fully assembled they are about 150 feet
long, 75 feet high and about the same in width. My hat was off to those
men, I know I could not accomplish that nor do I think many now could. We
continued on still crossing though valleys and over smaller hills and
mountains until we reached Boundary a small spot in the road and just a
few miles more the Canadian Border. We cleared through customs and
crossed over into the Yukon and stopped on top of the hill to look back at
Alaska and then started our adventure on the
Looking Over Dawson City, Yukon
Our first view of Dawson City is from a turnout on the steep road across the Yukon River. TOP OF THE WORLD HIGHWAY. It
lives up to it’s name, it takes you up up to drive the rims of each
mountain coming your way, as you drive you can see the road winding it’s
way ever higher around each mountain, all never ending.
Seemingly you think you are never going to see a low patch of ground again
nor touch a valley floor, the scenery is vast, rugged but beautiful and
lets you know how small you are. You see for hundreds of miles and not a
city, power line or phone/cell line is visible, that’s because there are
none. No services are available, you are on your own, the last time we
had a glimmer of cell phone usage was over two hundred plus miles back and
probably wont have any for about 600 more. Now on the U.S. side the
Alaskan highway is nothing more than a small rock/gravel lane to travel
on, and not maintained, however on the Yukon side it turns into a small
two lane oiled gravel road and is maintained to some degree. They mark
the holes, frost heaves etc. with red flags. But still in all a lot nicer
to drive on and you can actually get up to about 35-40mph. We continue on
for hours until we finally spot the Yukon River from an overlook, it is a
large rapid moving river and winds its way north. We continue down and
finally see signs that we are nearing our next destination, Dawson City.
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Mike
non-member comment
WOW
That was some adventure with the keys!!