North

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How far north can you drive? Where does the road end? At what point do you have to bust out dog sleds and snow shoes? One possible answer might be Inuvik. At the top of Canada's Northwest Territory, it's two degrees above the Arctic Circle and Canada's northernmost town. (Alaska has four towns further north. Barrow is the northernmost.) My friend Jerry and I once planned a fantasy trip to Inuvik. We were going to take our fathers (who, not surprisingly, didn't think it would be such a great idea.) The trip had the added advantage of traversing the storied Yukon. As a kid I followed the adventures of Sergeant Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounties. The gold rush brought a lot of seedy characters to the Yukon. Only Sergeant Preston stood between them and the Yukon's curiously large population of helpless widows.

From Skagway it's a straight shot north into the Yukon. I'd come this far, I couldn't resist. I rented a used PT Cruiser from Sourdough Rentals. They have the cheapest rates in town, a staggering $80 per day. (Avis, Sourdough's only competitor, is $120 per day.) At this rate I could only afford one day. One day to see how far north I could drive. I set my sights on Whitehorse, the Yukon's capitol city, even though Sourdough's contract expressly forbade driving beyond Emerald Lake. (According to Google Maps it's a mere 24 hour drive from Whitehorse to Inuvik.)

Once on the road I forgot about the gold rush era, instead my imagination was captured by another era: the Pleistocene. Twenty thousand years after humans first passed through this area it seems we still only have a narrow toehold here. The remnants of the Ice Age glaciers still flow from mountain tops into pale green lakes. It's easy to visualize herds of mammoths plodding through the vast valleys, hounded by saber-tooth tigers. Caribou and brown bear are still abundant.

I stopped for coffee in the town of Carcross (a dis-improvement on the original name, Caribou Crossing). Carcross is populated mostly by Tagish Indians who survive by ambushing the occasional Royal Princess Tour bus with dream catchers and miniature totem poles manufactured in China. From Carcross I blew past Emerald Lake, stopping long enough to snap a photo, and didn't stop again until I reached downtown Whitehorse.

Whitehorse is not one of the world's great capitol cities. The downtown consists of eight treeless city blocks. The sidewalks are made of wood, the stores still have old-time facades, but parking meters have replaced hitching posts.

In a Whitehorse coffee shop I struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to me. She looked like a dowdy, middle-aged housewife. She said she was from Fairbanks, passing through Whitehorse on her way to some obscure town in British Colombia. When I asked why, she wordlessly pulled a worn tabloid from her purse. She opened it to an article about some huge gold nugget and plunked it in front of me. Apparently the nugget had been found during the gold rush in a creek that runs through the town. "But why are you going there?" I repeated.

"Figure if there's this one, there's gotta be more," she replied through a grin of green-gray teeth.

This is a familiar situation for me. I over-romanticize places, I endure hardships to reach them, I pat myself on the back when I arrive, then I realize that my Shangri-La is another man's Poughkeepsie, and my Indiana Jones is his (or her) Mary Poppins. For example, before my first trip to Zimbabwe I knew I wouldn't be the first white man to visit Victoria Falls, that honor would go to Livingston, I supposed. But maybe I would be number 10 or number 100. And I was number 100, number 100 off the tourist-laden train that stopped there that day!

So why go anywhere? Why not fly to Fairbanks and book a room at the Marriott? I think Sir Edmund was right. When asked why he climbed Everest he replied, "Because Jerry hasn't been there!"

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Photos

Heading north
Got NIN blasting in my ears

My ultimate destination
I stopped in a little Tagish village and this guy had his house decorated for Christmas!

Pleistocene
You cn almost see the Mammoths plodding across this photo

Bear Hunting
Left my car parked at the top of a fjord while I went looking for bears. Actually, I was probably a bit too far from my car when I took this.

Reflection
Cool reflection in this lake

Carcross RR Bridge
I decided not to risk it

Roadside Attraction
In my opinion Canada leads the world in funky roadside attractions

Eagle holds its ground
This bald eagle wouldn't let the dock hand tie our ship up when we arrived in Juneau

Comments

[Ray Gwyn Smith]

We just got back rom Desolation Sound in British Columbia. Something about feeling all that untravelled space beyond the roads.